You couldn’t buy the kind of savage, razor sharp, contentious hype that surrounded the original Grand Theft Auto game. Just ask Rockstar – they spent millions trying to recreate the buzz with the latest installment in the series. But corporate propaganda could never replace genuine, concerned public outcry, and it seems this advertising fault line now runs through the entire tectonic foundations of the GTA franchise.

Now, I’m not here to bash GTA IV. We at GamersDailyNews already ran a feature about the repellent nature of its hyper-advertising campaign, but at least the game lived up to much of its self-praise (as you can see in the review). The problem is that Grand Theft Auto has lost its way – it’s become something else. Sure, this latest chapter is a remarkable achievement. It’s just not the GTA I fell in love with 10 years ago. It’s become so far removed, in every aspect, that one doesn’t wonder if there’s a minor trade’s descriptions issue at heart.

So what were these major differences that have poisoned the original brand? On a superficial level the first game featured a bird’s eye view of the manic driving escapades, of course. Most gamers will agree that graphics do not make a game (whether quirky and cartoony or photo-realistic), but the choice to view the violence ravaged cities in this retro-tastic way lent the game a vital, toy-like quality that was lost as soon as the third dimension came into play.

Grand Theft Auto was the ultimate big boy’s toy. It was a caustic and sarcastic take on the middle aged man’s obsession with Scalextric or model railways. Those sedate automotive recreations that filled the attic conversions of middle-management types the world over was injected with an hilariously deranged wit; it viciously updated the concept to fall in line with the gradually twisting perceptions of the once-sensitive ‘90’s man’.

The approach of the new millennium saw the male personality veering away from the caring, touchy-feely disposition imposed on him during the last decade. He was once again ready to delight in a bit of harmless chauvinism, and to exert his mannish presence in frivolous venture as he once had. Grand Theft Auto prophetically recognized this impending shift in the Sacred Masculine, and provided precisely the right kind of pseudo-mindless, escapist nonsense the gender so enjoys. The visual style of the original game reflected this attitude perfectly by offering up a contemporary alternative to a sprawling Scalextic track which, if we’re honest, was at its most fun when the small Formula One cars went careening off the track in imagined fiery wreckage.

GTA III and its subsequent spin-offs and sequel seemed to have forgotten – or worse, ignored – this subtle, yet vital characteristic. It went boots first into the 3D realm not because it should, but because it could. And we were all caught up in this revolution in realism, but there was now something missing, despite the fact that on the surface there appeared to be so much more. The ‘big boy’s toy’ quality was stripped away to make room for a shallow, murky, free-roaming 3D world. Sure, it was a great game, but it was a great game for teenagers, the young and the restless – the juvenile middle-ager became a forgotten demographic.

The developer even reflected this dismissal of the grown-up man child by changing its name from DMA Design to Rockstar – an ostentatious, self-congratulatory title intended to alienate all but the ‘coolest’ of gamers.