Whenever it’s been a while since I tried a Rockstar game, I get this urge to try again. Maybe last time I just missed the point, or wasn’t in the mood for it, or didn’t go in with the correct expectations. It has to be my fault, right? I mean, this is one of the most critically acclaimed developers of all time; virtually everyone finds something to like. So why can’t I?

I keep hearing that Grand Theft Auto 4 is the best one; it has the most mature story, the most sophisticated mechanics, the most detailed world. And yet, with a handful of exceptions, I was frustrated or bored nearly the entire way through. The game asked me, repeatedly, to do chores and listen to dialogue, and if I didn’t do the chores in precisely the way the game requested it, I would fail and be forced to replay the entire mission from the beginning, with no checkpoints. Throughout the experience I was conscious that the way people usually play Grand Theft Auto is to roam around the detailed open city causing chaos. How bizarre, then, that the story missions are so strict and exacting in what you must do and how you must do it.

I’m constantly tempted to give Rockstar the benefit of the doubt, though. Maybe I’m doing something wrong by playing the story mode from beginning to end, periodically taking a break to go and do side quests. I want to tell myself that I was just supposed to roam around, picking fights and blowing things up and generally just seeing what I could do in this world. It’s possible to convince myself of this, though, because I needed to do prerequisite story missions to unlock different parts of the world map. The more I played the story and side quests the more things I unlocked to do. It was clear that Rockstar wants me to engage with their quests. So why, then, are those quests so antithetical to that sandbox spirit? Why not let me finish a mission in a variety of ways, like most big-budget open world titles do? Why does it matter where in the parking lot I put the car? Who cares?

This is essentially my problem with every Grand Theft Auto release. There are only so many ways I can say: “this campaign is overly restrictive and therefore very dull, despite what the sandbox setting would suggest.” I wanted to be really invested in Niko Bellic’s story but I just struggled to see past its presentation as a showcase for the different neighborhoods of New York Liberty City and the various neo-noir tropes that the developers have borrowed.

This is the correct way to structure the game, I guess. The map is the main character, and it’s an excellent map. Nobody does an urban sandbox quite like Rockstar, and I can’t fault them for the level of detail and personality on display across Liberty’s various islands. There’s a lot to do if you just want to roam around a bit, and I definitely think they were correct to write the story in such a way that it takes you to all the important locations in a fairly intuitive order. I just never felt that the story was doing anything to really sell me those places. At its best, it makes you think “wow I can’t wait to come back here after the mission and do something fun.”

I think with more engaging shooting mechanics you could even make the strict, linear missions work. Grand Theft Auto 4 is at its best when it just tells you “kill all these guys” in a fairly open area, and if the shooting were top-notch or even remotely fast-paced that would be enough, but unfortunately this is the most 2008 game ever to come out, and its mechanics duplicate the slow, cover-based mechanics of the time without exception. Worse, there are no mid-mission checkpoints, and every mission is bookended by long driving sections. I laughed aloud on my third try of one difficult combat-heavy mission when one of the NPCs I was driving to the mission location said something to the effect of “we’ll just listen to the radio on this drive.” Rockstar knew I would be sick of hearing their dialogue repeatedly! They knew it was stupid to make me do this drive over and over! So why didn’t they solve it?

I don’t have an answer for you. I can’t explain why Grand Theft Auto doesn’t want to be an exciting shooter, or why it doesn’t want me to make my own fun in its admittedly sublime open world. I can’t explain why Grand Theft Auto 4’s simplistic mix of movie tropes and good voice acting is so widely lauded as a good story. I’m not here for the story, though, so all I can do is lament that the game just doesn’t come together for me, and then move on to something else until I get the urge to try another Rockstar game in about ten months time.