61 Frames Per Second

Browse by Tags

(RSS)

Tom Chick Gets His Panties in a Bunch over The Lost and the Damned

So, Tom Chick, of Fidgit and others, won't be playing Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and the Damned.

The reason I won't be playing Lost and Damned is because after a couple of hours with these characters, I have no desire to spend another moment with them. These are unlikable thugs doing reprehensible things. Bikers, who are traditionally the bad guys, are presented with all the usual stereotypes that make them bad guys. They're brutal, vulgar, and cowardly. I can't tell one from the other. The one who I think is supposed to be me is as typical a bald space marine as you'll ever see.

What I don't get is that this seems to be par for the course with GTA.

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.

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."

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.