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GTA IV Badassery

Grand Theft Auto IV's DLC, the Lost and the Damned, is currently out on XBox Live, but I'm afraid that I don't plan on downloading it anytime soon. You see, the inevitable tedium that was included with the last third-or-so of GTA IV kind of put me off from spending any more time in this current gen's version of Liberty City--but that doesn't mean I still don't find high-speed chases, car crashes, and cartoonish, over-the-top violence to be entertaining. I am human, after all.

At one point I thought I was safe from these urges, but my own personal bloodlust for all things GTA-related was recently rekindled by the amazing Idle Thumbs Podcast with their brief promotion of a fan-made GTA IV video constructed using the editing tools of the PC version of the game. Titled "GTA IV Badassery," the compilation features a series of hilarious (and bloody) vignettes stitched together with some expert editing techniques pulled right from cinema itself. Watch it with someone you love.

Video after the cut.

Posted Feb 20 2009, 03:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with no comments

Filed under: Grand theft auto 4, grand theft auto, gta iv, youtube, bob mackey, idle thumbs

The Lost and the Damned Bares All

To the consumer of mainstream, American media, there's nothing more abominable or disgusting than the human wang--just think about all of those modern gross-out movies where the depiction of a penis is a joke in and of itself. But before you start wondering how heterosexual women operate knowing that the male sex organ is a source of both disgust and hilarity, you'd best fire up the morality sirens because there's about to be a penis in a video game. Thanks to a tip (no pun intended) from 1UP's Kat Bailey, who probably would not like to be given credit for this, the world is now aware that Rockstar is the first developer brave enough to show its audience an entire penis with the new GTAIV DLC, The Lost and the Damned--even after going so overboard on the strippers' pasties. Before I get too wound up about this clear double-standard, we should probably just get to the clip--which I have hidden behind a cut. Why? Because I care about your job.

Posted Feb 17 2009, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 7 comment(s)

Filed under: rockstar, gta iv, bob mackey, controversy, the lost and the damned, nudity

The GTAIV DLC: Does Anyone Still Care?

The ending of Grand Theft Auto IV left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, if only because it was just so cruel and heartless to its affable main character; Nico Bellic's reward for 60 hours of revenge was nothing but a post-game purgatory in which he had free reign of a sterile city without the underlying social network so much of his pre-ending life was built upon. And while my backlash against GTAIV isn't quite as harsh as the current opinion held by quite a few games journalists, I never really felt the desire to play the game again after Nico's story was abandoned without anything even resembling an epilogue. Admittedly, the game's obsession with narrative over gameplay really made it suffer, but even so, the second Nico became an aimless NPC was when I stopped caring about anything GTAIV.

So now that we're a less than a month away from The Lost and the Damned, GTAIV's first DLC expansion, I can't help but utter the overused apathy signifier known as "Meh."

Posted Jan 22 2009, 10:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: xbox 360, gta iv, bob mackey, dlc, the lost and the damned

New GTA Game gets England's first 18 on the DS

The new Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS is getting an "18", the first for the Nintendo handheld. Interestingly, the GBA port of the original Grand Theft Auto, which features a simlar cartoonish, top-down view only got a "15".

So why is this ultra-pixellated game getting blasted with an "18" when much more graphic, realistically violent games like, say, Call of Duty 4 skate by with a "12"? After all, in the original Grand Theft Auto, a few red pixels was the extent of the game's violence.

Posted Jan 12 2009, 05:30 PM by Cole Stryker with | with no comments

Filed under: cole stryker, gta iv, ratings, esrb, gta: chinatown wars

C'mon Kojima: Port Metal Gear!

As things currently stand, I'm probably never going to play Metal Gear Solid 4. The reason? I simply don't have the money or real estate for a PS3. I'm a big Metal Gear Solid fan, so this situation is not entirely wonderful for me; but I've come to accept my fate and stay out of the console wars. However, a recent post on the Kojima Productions web site may justify any possible whining over the platform-exclusivity of Solid Snake.

From Kojima Himself:

The creativity of video games is now on the verge of crisis. Massive advertising campaigns are executed for games before their entertainment values are put into consideration all too often, resulting in sell-off tactics happening without hesitation. [Translation via Kotaku]

Kojima's complaint has everything to do with the fact that MGS4 just isn't selling as well as he hoped it would in his native country. Sales are by no means terrible, but a game of MGS4's budget and caliber shouldn't be moving less than a million copies. And a large amount of that budget--as Kojima claims--was spent on an expensive advertising campaign, making it even more difficult to turn a profit. Porting the game to the 360 probably wouldn't give the game much of a sales bump in Japan, who only really cares about Microsoft's system when some exclusive RPG surfaces in a green DVD case, but I guarantee that this decision would bring in a lot of money from America.

Posted Sep 10 2008, 08:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 5 comment(s)

Filed under: hideo kojima, metal gear solid 4, gta iv, final fantasy 13, sales

Counterpoint: Games Shouldn't Try to Be Movies

Tim Travers, Rolling Stone's movie critic has proclaimed GTA the "best summer popcorn movie" but I couldn't help but opt out of the merry round of high-fives going on over at Kotaku. For a couple reasons:

First, GTA IV doesn't really break any new ground. It's a better looking, more detailed iteration of GTA III. Travers claims it's a "wow of a start" (whatever that means) on the road to cinematic artistry. I loved what I saw of GTA IV. It's a visceral experience with excellent pacing. The game did not drag for a moment, and it's detailed universe is a huge improvement to Liberty City's literal and figurative jagged edges in GTA III. But mechanically, it's nothing new.

Secondly, and most importantly, I don't want to see games moving in this direction. I think Will Wright (boy am I in love with this fella lately) was dead on when he claimed in a recent interview that "...game designers suffer from envy...and many of them want to be film directors."

Posted Jun 18 2008, 05:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: kotaku, cole stryker, movies, rolling stone, metal gear solid 4, gta iv

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.