I've been watching this dude play Grand Theft Auto 4 with the traffic at 9999999 'warp speed' and it's both hilarious and some sort of surrealist masterpiece

GamesActionGrand Theft AutoGrand Theft Auto 4I’ve been watching this dude play Grand Theft Auto 4 with the traffic at 9999999 ‘warp speed’ and it’s both hilarious and some sort of surrealist masterpieceWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Rockstar)

Nico looks at cars suspended mid-air.

Every so often the algorithm gets it right, and on this occasion YouTube served up one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. Several months agoAustralian comedian Tom Walkerembarked on a Grand Theft Auto 4 playthrough using a mod calledWarp Eleven (Super Fast Cars), which changes the behaviour of every vehicle in the game (barring Roman’s car) so that they “travel at ‘warp speed’, in other words they will drive (and crash) at ridiculous speeds, with or without a driver.”

And boy does this mod deliver. Walker is a fairly big deal in the Australian comedy world and often streams games (apparently his Truck and Farming Simulator videos are great), and he’s both a big GTA enthusiast and has the kind of mindset that can tolerate the madness which unfolds in a Liberty City filled with endless vehicles smashing around and exploding at stupid speeds.

The GTA 4 Fast Traffic Playthrough, part 1 | Tom Walker - YouTubeWatch On

The GTA 4 Fast Traffic Playthrough, part 1 | Tom Walker - YouTube

It is almost impossible to avoid death. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, every vehicle GTA has to offer is just flying around the place, in some cases literally, with collisions and explosions happening every second. If Nico stands still, a car will soon smash into that location. If he runs across a seemingly empty road, something will send him flying out of nowhere. Simply getting from point A to point B is a Sisyphean task of constant restarts and annihilation out of nowhere.

I don’t know quite why I find that so funny, but luckily Walker does too, and persists in trying to clear one of the game’s first missions, involving getting to Roman’s apartment. Beyond the yucks of watching a truck splatter Nico out of nowhere, it quickly becomes a fascinating exercise in negotiating a Liberty City where the floor isn’t quite lava, but may as well be. Walker quickly learns to prioritise things like height, using the hanging mechanic to cross bridges and sections of road, and safer zones like railtracks where traffic rarely appears (but, due to the way this mod works, there’s always a risk of a random car landing on you out of nowhere).

What ended up enrapturing me in this video were the sights this mod serves up. The constant crashes, bangs and comedy ragdoll deaths remain amusing (and boy does this thing give the Euphoria physics a good workout), but at times you’ll see simply remarkable things: at one point Walker’s in the water looking at a road where, for whatever reason, the traffic is hitting such an angleit’s all taking off. There’s this huge mass of vehicles zooming through the air in loose formation, in constant motion like a flock of birds.

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The PC Gamer Show Episode 3: Videoball, GTA 4 no-friction, Arma 3 Zeus mode - YouTubeWatch On

The PC Gamer Show Episode 3: Videoball, GTA 4 no-friction, Arma 3 Zeus mode - YouTube

Anyway: this is a great playthrough, and even if you just watch a minute you’ll get a few laughs and the general idea. It perhaps also taps into one of the things that’s so special about the GTA games, that great sense of freedom you have to decide your own goals and how you want to screw around with these wonderful sandboxes. It can be amusing to break things, and when it’s as ludicrous a twist as this it sometimes shows just how good that experience is: the fact that GTA 4 not only works as some sort of surreal vehicular deathscape, but is so hilariously brutal and fun in doing so.

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