Rockstar knew exactly what it was doing when it added a button to allow players to shove NPCs.
Grand Theft Auto 4's greatest crimes happen when you channel your inner Agent 47 and push people to their deaths: over the edge of a bridge, onto the railway tracks, down some stairs - whatever works for you, you miserable sadist. Going on a rocket rampage in Liberty City is so cliché. Grand Theft Auto 4, though, was different. You might be able to bring down massive structures by taking out support beams on Red Faction: Guerilla's open-world Mars, and Microsoft may be promising to let us topple entire skyscrapers with the power of the cloud for Crackdown 3's multiplayer, but character models are left to flop to the floor, float above the ground, wibble through scenery, or keel over in a canned animation. Yet while this visual arms race continues, character physics are being left to stagnate. Look at all those pixels, all that detail, and marvel at how far we've come. Blazkowicz sat next to his coarsely drawn early incarnation.
If not, perhaps you've seen Wolfenstein: The New Order's B.J. You've probably seen an image of PlayStation-era Lara Croft in all her stark polygonal beauty contrasted side-by-side with her modern character model. Charting the phenomenal progress of video games these past few decades is easy enough.
