61 Frames Per Second : Grand theft auto 4

WTFriday: CNET's Don Reisinger Is Afraid of the Human Body

Bob Mackey — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:50:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

So it looks like CNET's Don Reisinger has a bee in his bonnet about EA putting the most terrible, abominable, vomit-inducing creations of all time--human female breasts--into the video game adaptation of The Godfather Part II. If you've grown up in a lovely culture influenced by Christian morality, then you probably know that the naked human body is an affront to God and should be covered at all times, lest we get "devil britches," the unofficial terminology for not feeling any shame. Don seems to subscribe to this interpretation of the world, as his"review" of Godfather 2 is entirely fixated on the presence of nudity--he spends three sentences evaluating the game outside of his boob-induced outrage. Three sentences.

I imagine this hard-hitting commentary was very hard to write for Don, what with him coming down with "the vapors" so often.

Specifically, Don has two problems with Godfather II's boobies: A.) the original film didn't have any nudity, and B.) he's outraged that breasts could even appear in an M-Rated game. Let's take a look at the first issue:

Earlier this week, I contacted The Godfather II developer, Electronic Arts, with questions about the game's depictions of nudity. I tried multiple times to have my questions answered. After three days of waiting, I received a simple response to a not so simple issue.

"Nudity fits with the fiction, tone and style of the game we created," an EA spokesperson said. "It is part of the team's creative vision. The game is rated M for Mature."

But there's a problem with that response. The Godfather II, the movie, has no nudity in it. Considering the game is supposed to be based on that film, I don't understand why nudity was part "of the team's creative vision." Wasn't the team supposed to follow the movie's creative vision?

Translation: "Hi, my name is Don. I am a pedantic moron. You may not be aware, but I have just given you the green light to ignore me."

And here he splits hairs over the distinction between a Mature and an Adults Only-rated game:

There's just one problem: only the Adults Only rating makes mention of nudity. According to the ESRB's ratings, Adults Only games include "prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity." Sound familiar? The Mature rating is defined by the ESRB as "intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language."

[After a reasonable ESRB response]...I don't buy it. I don't see any justification for The Godfather II's Mature rating if we follow the ESRB's plainly stated ratings parameters. The Godfather II should have been rated AO, according to the ESRB's definitions.

Even if the nudity in Godfather II is gratuitous, Don's issue with the game indicates an opinion that can be applied more broadly. Based on what he writes, it seems as if any game that dares to show a breast (or nudity in general) should be given the ESRB's Adults Only rating--AKA retail death--in Don Reisinger's enchanted, sugarplum world. But why? Outside of the cultural baggage Don is schlepping around, there's no real reason nudity alone should merit the Scarlet Letter of the ESRB. Seeing boobies--polygonal boobies, mind you--should not be cause for concern, and every time some idiot has has a nervous breakdown over mature content in a game specifically made for adults, the industry takes a step back when it comes to what's considered "appropriate" content for a video game. And we all get just a little bit dumber.

I assume no one has told Don Reisinger about the visible penis in the GTA4 expansion pack The Lost and the Damned, and that's probably for the best; I imagine that Don's fear of the human body is so intense that he has to pee with the lights off. You probably shouldn't ask to use his bathroom the next time you visit.

Related Links:

How Much Simpler Do ESRB Ratings Need To Get?
Editors, Where Are Your Manners?
Puerile Pure: Disney Racer’s Profanity Revealed

Watcha Listening To: Rebel FM's Bully Game Club

Bob Mackey — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

One of the best parts of the short-lived 1UPFM was the Backlog segment, where the crew played through and talked about games from the not-too-distant past over multiple episodes. For a press that normally centers so much on the here-and-now, it was refreshing to hear discussions of fantastic games that were only a few years old, like Shadow of the Colossus and Psychonauts--titles like these may have dropped off of our gaming radars, but that doesn't mean they still weren't worth talking about. Thankfully, this favorite segment of mine has been reborn with RebelFM's (essentially, the non-1UP affiliated sequel to 1UPFM) Game Club; and while the last featured game, the 2005 Xbox Call of Cthulhu, wasn't really up my alley, their current Game Club game certainly is.

Rockstar's Bully met with some moderate success and saw life on three different consoles, but it never really seemed to get the credit it deserved as being more than just a GTA clone. I picked it up a few months after its original PS2 release not expecting much, and was completely blown away--so much so that I bought Bully: Scholarship Edition (which really should have been a better port) for the 360 a year later. This latter playthrough of Bully was in preparation for the then-unreleased GTA4, but in retrospect, I ended up liking Bully a helluva lot more than Rockstar's supposedly world-changing sequel. Bully took the GTA forumla, pared it down to a smaller location, gave it a completely unique setting, and the end result was a 20-25 hour game that was much more managable and fun than your standard Grand Theft Auto.

But you don't have to take my word for it; check out the Bully episode of Rebel FM's Game Club. Even if you haven't played the game, you may feel the overwhelming urge to go out and pick up a copy.

Related Links:

Watcha Listening to? A Life Well Wasted
Watcha Listening To: Rebel FM
Watcha Listening To: The Final 1UP Yours

GTA IV Badassery

Bob Mackey — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

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.

Related Links:

Grand Theft Auto IV's Post-Game Purgatory
The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 1
New GTA Game gets England's first 18 on the DS

War Stories

Cole Stryker — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:51:00 GMT

We talk a lot about our favorite stories in video games, regularly applauding the narrative prowess of the creators of Bioshock, Earthbound, and Grim Fandango. Some video games are routinely compared to their filmic counterparts (See Grand Theft Auto 4 and The Godfather). But what interests me most about video games is the medium's ability to allow users to create their own stories. We also talk a lot about emergent narrative on this blog as one of the things that video games can do that other mediums cannot. As Chuck Klosterman says:

Near the end of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara asks Rhett Butler what she's supposed to do with the rest of her life, and he says that (frankly) he doesn't give a damn. Now, the meaning of those lines can be interpreted in many ways. However, what if that dialogue happened only sometimes? What if this scene played out differently for every person who watched Gone with the Wind? What if Rhett occasionally changed his mind, walked back into the house, and said, "Just kidding, baby"? What if Scarlett suddenly murdered Rhett for acting too cavalier? What if the conversation were sometimes interrupted by a bear attack? And what if all these alternative realities were dictated by the audience itself? If Gone with the Wind ended differently every time it was experienced, it would change the way critics viewed its message. The question would not be "What does this mean?" The question would be "What could this mean?"

Steve Gaynor detailed three levels of storytelling in a recent blog post. Consider "High Level Storytelling":

The player determines what elements are present in the gameworld, and any narrative that happens there is entirely a collaboration between the player and the game's systems. The only fiction determined by the designer is the broad premise of the game's setting, and individual building blocks for potential outcomes. The Civilization series, SimCity, and The Sims exemplify this type of storymaking.

I remember when I used to play Starsiege: Tribes in high school, there was a chat room dedicated to "War Stories", where people would regale their fellow combatants with tales of daring do. I used to love sitting in on these, forgive me, diatribes.

The day was clear and the sky a brilliant blue. The mountains here were of a sufficiently high altitude that the atmosphere was thin and cold but still breathable. The Reflective sat meditating in a lotus position on a cushion in a large, airy room dominated by a huge window of hand-poured teraglass. He wore a thick green robe embroidered with white falcons. Thick silk wrappings covered his feet and legs. He wore archaic spectacles that contained no microelectronics or entek components whatsoever. Their sole purpose was to correct his failing vision. The thought occurred to him that what he truly needed was a way to sharpen his perception of cause-and-effect. He was not certain that the dragon of current events had not already escaped the grasp of the Triad.

Ugh, the dragon of current events. It's fan fiction, to be sure, so quality wasn't always there. But there was something magical about letting players use their imaginations to fill in the narrative gaps to a story that was up until then made up of mostly mindless gunplay. Today, the are much deeper opportunities for fans to imbue their game world with homemade narratives. MMOs and god games like Spore allows players to build a civilization from scratch.

Remember any game related storytelling experiences from your youth? Let us know in the comments.

Joe’s Top Ten Games of 2008 – Part Three

Joe Keiser — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The official mandate has come down from the top—that it is December, and we all write about games, so we all have to pick some arbitrary number of them that we enjoyed above all others this year. I am taking on this task in the way of our forefathers, using their traditional number (10) and order (from great to most greatest). Games were chosen for this list using a highly scientific list of criteria, including but not limited to dopamine levels, blood alcohol content, darts, and how well the box art fit into my photo mosaic of Satoru Iwata. Today is #4-#2.

4. No More Heroes

I don’t think I’ve ever cackled with glee more often at a game than I have at No More Heroes. It’s the ultimate otaku fantasy simulator, and it revels in obsession and bombast. It’s also the ultimate otaku simulator, and it revels in loneliness and sociopathy. Were the clunky town-based elements a bad impersonation of western sandbox design, or a cynical elbow to the ribs of western sandbox design? Is it a legitimately great game or a bad game that’s ironically great, and could it somehow be both? And what was up with that real ending? For No More Heroes, a game that loves and hates itself in equal measure, these questions could be debated endlessly. The most outrageous game of the year, and the must-play of the last twelve months that most people didn’t.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV

I’m fine with pouring the backlash on GTA IV. The game sold approximately five hojillion copies, so it can take it. But it’s important to not let that backlash become the entirety of the dialogue about the game, because the game accomplished so much. Niko Bellic, an unattractive man haunted by a violent life in Serbia, was a bold choice for the protagonist of a mainstream game. Liberty City was a palpable game world that stood at the forefront of environmental design both stylistically and, for a time, technically. It never held back, but it also didn’t court controversy for the sake of it. It always felt like it had something to say. And yes, it was a blast to play, the controls finally refined so it didn’t feel like you were in a constant battle with them (only an infrequent battle). It’s the best Grand Theft Auto by a country mile, it made me a fan of the series, and it’s also the first time I’ve been proud of the franchise for the way in which it represents the medium to the nation at large. The vast majority of GTA IV is what’s right about gaming, not what’s wrong with it—and to see that diminished in the face of PC bug discussions and whether or not the ending crumbled would be sad.

2. Rock Band 2

I spent most of 2008 playing Rock Band, and loving every second of it. But Rock Band 2 completely obsolesces its predecessor in every way, thanks to the most consumer-friendly feature list ever devised by a developer. Just about every issue with the first game, from nitpicking interface problems to frustrating band requirements, were all eliminated. The track list was of course killer but the game also included backwards compatibility with not just all downloaded songs, but the songs on the original game’s disc. The new online elements are interesting, varied, and keep Harmonix constantly in touch with the community. The DLC content grows without bound, getting better all the time. The only reason Rock Band 2 is not my number one game of the year is because most of the innovation happened in the 2007 version. But the series will end up defining the generation for me. This is the height of rhythm gaming, the height of party gaming, and the height of cooperative gaming. It might also just be the height of layperson ways to experience music.

Related Articles:

Joe's Top 10 Games of 2008 - Special Jury Prizes, Part 1, Part 2
10 Games Nadia Played Instead of Working: The World Ends With You, Super Smash Bros Brawl
Bob's Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Audiosurf, Braid, Grand Theft Auto IV
Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
What Amber Didn't Play in 2008
Time Magazine's Top 10 Games of 2008

Tales of The Focus Group: Peter Moore Takes No Guff

John Constantine — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I get latching onto game designers as personalities. It’s no different than the cult of personality that sprouts up around musicians, writers, and film directors. Gaming’s rich with characters too: from the robot-building eccentrics like Will Wright, frothing madmen like David Jaffe, and mean drunks like Tomonobu Itagaki. What mystifies me is the way gamers latch onto publishing executives and marketers. Seriously, who cares about Reggie Fils-Aime? The guy doesn’t make Nintendo’s games, he just makes sure they’re profitable. Or how about Peter Moore? When that wily Brit was in charge of Microsoft’s games division, there was no end of fanboy chatter about his antics. Oh, Peter Moore got a Grand Theft Auto IV tattoo! Take that, Sony! Once he moved on to EA Sports, the guy disappeared from the limelight, no longer a face for console war jibber-jabber.

Well, after today, I am forced to admit that I am interested in Peter Moore. Not because he’s starting some wild new business initiative to ramp up EA’s creative output or anything of the sort. No, I want to know more about Peter Moore because one of his last actions as president of Sega of America was to tell Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, to fuck off. Games Radar’s running a story that, during the Dreamcast’s final days, Moore ran a focus group that resulted in young consumers labeling Sega a "granddad with dementia who used to be cool but you couldn't remember why." Burn. When Moore had recordings of the focus group translated into Japanese for a meeting with Sega Japan, Naka accused Moore of doctoring the recordings. Moore’s response?

"I lost it. I turned to the interpreter and said, ‘Tell him, fuck you.’” Although the translator refused to convey Moore's feelings, he was pretty sure that his message got across. "Naka had lived in the US for three years, so I knew he understood. I walked out and never returned."

Why does this make Peter Moore interesting? Yuji Naka is responsible for Sonic’s shitty friends. Fuck that guy.

(Link: Games Radar, via NeoGAF)

Related links:

FMV Hell: Sonic CD
Trailer Review: Sonic Unleashed
Do You Hold Any Hope For Sonic Unleashed?
Alternate Soundtrack: Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Ratatat
Sonic is for Porn

Grand Theft Auto IV's Post-Game Purgatory

Bob Mackey — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Grand Theft Auto IV is a game completely dependent on--and some would say subservient to--its story and characters. Sure, other games in the series have their share of colorful cast members and interesting twists, but IV decided to scale back on the gameplay a bit in exchange for hours upon hours of babysitting Niko Bellic's friends. It was novel at first, but soon became disappointing after the realization that the limited content of these artificial social interactions replaced the endless playground fun of GTAs past.

So what happens when the oh-so important characters of GTAIV run out of recorded lines of dialogue? The answer is about as unsettling as anything else in the bleak life of Nico Bellic.

Jumping back into the game after its finale results in a few perfunctory calls from Nico's friends about the tragic events of either ending; but after that, nothing. There are no new people to meet, or anything for Nico to do besides live a completely aimless life in Liberty City. I really didn't expect Rockstar to throw in a lot of post-game content--after all, I'm surprised I even finished the damn game--but trying to play GTAIV after the final mission just feels wrong and empty. Maybe this is a testment to how important Nico's social network is to the game--or maybe the removal of said social network reveals the game for what it really is.

It could also be that, in some stroke of genius, Rockstar was somehow able to convey how unsatisfying revenge actually is, but I think that's giving them too much credit.

So is anyone else out there having similar problems getting back into GTAIV after finishing the game? I still have a few (non-story) things left to do, but I really don't want to make Nico find pigeons for me after being sentenced to such an empty existence. Yeah, he's a sociopathic mass murdered--but he's got heart.

Related Links:

The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 1
Yahtzee Rolls With the Big Dogs, Takes the Piss Out of GTA4
61FPS EXCLUSIVE: Peaceoholics Protest Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto 4

Where Is the New Indiana Jones?

John Constantine — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Euphoria, a physics engine created by developer NaturalMotion, has been popping up all over the place lately. To clarify, a physics engine is a piece of software that simulates real-world physics in a game. Euphoria specifically creates realistic animation for game characters on the fly, as opposed to the hand crafted animations traditionally used for computer generated characters. Euphoria is used in Grand Theft Auto 4 - when you see Niko’s body getting thrown about in a sickeningly convincing way, it’s Euphoria at work. The engine is also featured prominently in the much publicized, poorly-titled upcoming Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed. It’s a little distressing, however, that Euphoria’s intended debut has gone AWOL. I’m referring of course to LucasArts’ untitled Indiana Jones project. Announced at E3 2006, the new Indy game was, at the time, one of the most technologically exciting games seen to date. The brief trailer shown spotlighted a spry-looking digital Indiana Jones fighting people in both an alley and on a moving trolley in downtown San Francisco. Despite the announcement, filming, and release of a fourth Indiana Jones movie, nobody has seen or heard about the game since May of 2006. As you can see from the trailer, it has already aged when compared to other titles running on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Where did you go, Indy? I know you’ll be better than Crystal Skull!

The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto 4 Part 3

John Constantine — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I was hoping to open the final entry in my review of Grand Theft Auto with a definitive statement about its story, to find the game’s essence in the conclusion of its through-the-looking-glass tale of crime, brutality, and the American experience. I can’t. After one month, some thirty-five hours total, of playing Grand Theft Auto 4, I’ve quit. I’m not positive how close I even am to finishing the narrative portion of the game at this point because, not unlike the gameplay itself, there is no arc. After a certain point, the story merely plateaus with no discernible rise and fall. It ceases to be a compelling enough reward to keep playing the game.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is a work at odds with itself. It places you in a gigantic world and allows you to do what you will, but you cannot change it. It allows you to build friendships with the characters surrounding you but keeps you always at their mercy, penalizing you if you can’t answer your phone in the middle of a firefight. The cars control with severe realism but the game demands you drive like Sandra Bullock in Speed. Even the slightest police provocation is an arrest-able offense but you can escape them by turning a corner. But most problematic is protagonist Niko Bellic. In cutscenes and in conversation, Niko is a vicious but principled figure on an alluded to quest for revenge. He takes no relish in murder and cruelty which keeps him cursorily sympathetic, if not empathetic. But like so much of the game itself, his motives are equally confused. One moment, Niko is concerned with nothing besides honor, avenging fallen comrades and protecting his family, and the next he’ll kill his own mother if the price is right.

For all of its artfulness, its carefully constructed and elegant other-New York, its pitch perfect scripting and voice acting, the pitch-perfect satire of its radio and television, Grand Theft Auto 4 is still just Grand Theft Auto: an incredible playground but a broken game. One day, Sam Houser and Rockstar Games will craft their masterpiece - they’ve come awfully close here – but Grand Theft Auto 4 is not it.

GTA4 Review Part 1
GTA4 Review Part 2

61FPS EXCLUSIVE: Peaceoholics Protest Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto 4

John Constantine — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:19:00 GMT

Friday afternoon was bustling outside of Rockstar Games’ Soho offices in New York City when a group of Washington DC youths gathered to protest the recent release of Grand Theft Auto 4. Peaceoholics, a non-profit organization founded to develop support programs for young people involved in DC’s juvenile justice system, were led by co-founder and COO Ronald Moten to demand Rockstar stop marketing their Grand Theft Auto series to children under seventeen. As NYC Metro bus passed by adorned with a billboard for GTA4, Moten said that Rockstar’s game was a training simulator for young people, no different than games like America’s Army, a game used to train US Army recruits. “These games are training our children to be animals,” said Moten and and asked why Rockstar didn’t choose to make games about preventing crime that are as exciting as GTA. According to Moten, this was the third year Peaceoholics gathered outside of Rockstar’s offices. As of 1:30pm, Rockstar had not sent a representative downstairs to meet with the protestors.

GTA's defenders argue that the game isn't intended for minors; its detractors counter that thousands of kids play it anyway. Ronald Moten and Peaceoholics do have a point: Grand Theft Auto does indeed glamorize an urban crime lifestyle. I’m the first to celebrate GTA’s satirical content but I also recognize its earnest and lionizing moments. But Grand Theft Auto is not a training simulator like Ronald Moten argued; it’s entertainment, and its intent is in its audience’s interpretations. Rockstar is not in the business of creating criminals, they’re in the business of making games for money. I applaud the Peaceoholics’ conviction and goals, but I’m not sure they’ve chosen the right target.

You can read more about Peacoholics right here.

Whatcha Playing: A Little Singin’, a Little Dancin’

John Constantine — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Last Saturday, I woke up, put on the coffee, and sat down on the couch with the full intention of finishing off the remaining story missions in Grand Theft Auto 4. As the day wore on, though, I found myself continuing to ignore the controller, unable to muster the enthusiasm to play at being a hardened criminal. A whole Saturday was passing me by, gameless. It wasn’t until around nine o’clock that my roommate and I decided to bust out Rock Band that I got to gaming. I’ve been fairly indifferent to the music game revolution of the passed two years for one very specific reason: I suck at Guitar Hero. My finger dexterity simply doesn’t match my thumb dexterity. But, since a friend loaned his copy of Rock Band to my apartment full of twenty-something ne’er-do-wells, I’ve come to see the light, and it’s all thanks to singing. Karaoke videogames are too laden with pop and karaoke bars are simply too expensive for a man of my meager means. Rock Band lets me be Ozzy, Kurt, Shirley Manson, and Ad-Rock and the experience has been eye opening. Even more so than the Wii, Rock Band has proven to me the opportunity offered by alternative forms of control in games. And rest assured, Rock Band is a game, a clearly defined set of rules adhered to in order to achieve a specific goal. I just never thought my drunken rendition of “Say It Ain’t So” would ever be the route to the highest score or the next level.

I still haven’t finished Grand Theft Auto 4 but last night, I tried Wii Fit for the first time, adding a little more physicality to my recent digital rocking. I’m about as sore today as I was after three hours of drumming and singing. I’m not quite sure if Wii Fit is the product it’s been touted to be. So far, it’s missing Nintendo’s secret ingredient: fun. But more on that next week.

Previous Watcha Playings:

Another Slice of Cake

BS Zelda

With a Little Help From My Friends

The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto 4 Part 2

John Constantine — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Into the valley of death rode the six-hundred-plus minutes I’ve spent in Liberty City since I last wrote. I would like to tell you that the rabbit hole has gone deeper but the truth is that it has merely gone on, level and consistent. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, per se. As I said before, Grand Theft Auto 4 is an engaging piece of software beyond the basic freedom the open-world gametype offers up. The story has continued to entertain and while reaching Alderney hasn’t revealed some kind of treasure trove of new experiences, the missions that progress that story have continued to impress. One in particular, a full-on bank robbery, stands out. At first, the job seems like another cut-and-paste shoot out; go to marker on your map of LC, watch a scene of dialogue, proceed to shoot everything in site. What actually happens is quite different. You, as protagonist Niko Bellic, retrieve the money from the bank’s vault before everything goes wrong. One of your partners is shot to death and you must lead your surviving associates out into the city against the full force of the LCPD while sticking to a loosely defined path through alleyways and the city’s subway system. Eventually, the escape opens up entirely, leaving you to decide how to evade patrolling helicopters and squad cars. The bank job is exemplary of how much GTA 4 has grown as game with specific goals over its predecessors and how artfully implemented linearity gives your personal experience of the game that much more impact.

While the game has stopped surprising, I have found myself gaining even more appreciation for the physical presentation of the city itself. Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation lamented the turn from the caricatured presentation of older GTAs in favor of a more realistic approach but I take issue with the criticism. GTA4’s world may behave more like our own but its look is still unreal and beautifully so. Like many other great works of art, it’s at its strongest when implying something instead of directly mimicking it; a rainy night driving along the river, the city skyline cruising by, doesn’t directly recall the New York I call home. The light is over-saturated, the blur of speed too unreal. But it captures the romance of being there.

I’ll be back with final thoughts on the game in just a few days and be sure to check out part 1 right here. Who out there’s been playing?

NPD Wrap: The Times Are a Changin’

John Constantine — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

April’s come to a close and now, under the cold, hard light of math, three things are becoming clear. First, people freaking love Nintendo games. Sure, we already knew that, but over a million people bought Mario Kart for Wii in less than a week. Second, people freaking love Grand Theft Auto. Nearly two million people bought that in even less time. Third, our access to new videogames is going to change dramatically in the very near future. While these numbers may just look like numbers to us, to the people who publish videogames, the people who control when we get to engage these creations, the math is saying that 2008 is different. Tradition dictates that high profile, big hype games are held in reserve for the holiday push from late September through December and the rest of the year is just a slow trickle of quality goods. The math of March and April 2008 says that people will buy many, many games throughout the year, not just around Christmas. What happens now? Going forward, we’re going to see more games, more often. At least, until digital distribution destroys physical media and the whole issue becomes moot.

While the gigantic March sales numbers didn’t keep their drive through April, even with five days of juggernaut sales from Grand Theft Auto 4, all the players put in impressive showings. Wii sales kept pace, down to just 714K units from 721K, but Nintendo DS sales saw a more precipitous decline, down to 414K units from a powerful 698K despite the healthy software debut for both Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon SKUs. GTA4 moved the huge numbers expected, selling 1.85 million units with only days left in the reporting period but it failed to make an impact on HD console sales. Microsoft and Sony saw sales of their home consoles drop below the 200K mark but both companies can expect bigger sales through May thanks to GTA4 momentum and anticipation of marquee June titles Metal Gear Solid 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2. Software sales were cool on the whole. GTA4 and Mario Kart Wii dominated, but no third party was able to replicate the success Ubisoft and EA had in March with the debuts of Rainbox Six Vegas 2 and Army of Two.

Hardware Sales

Wii - 714,200

Nintendo DS - 414,800

PSP - 192,000

Xbox 360 - 188,000

PlayStation 3 - 187,100

PlayStation 2 - 124,400

Software Sales

GTA IV (360) – 1,850,000

Mario Kart Wii -1,120,000

GTA IV (PS3) – 1,000,000

Wii Play – 360,000

Super Smash Bros. Brawl – 326,000

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue – 224,000

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness – 202,000

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time – 202,000

Guitar Hero III – 152,000

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) -141,000

Out thanks to both Next-Gen and Kotaku for their coverage.

The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Part 1

John Constantine — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

We’re going to do things a little differently here at 61FPS when it comes to reviewing games. For starters, all reviews are going to be brought to you in three digestible installments. Games are simply too long – not to mention that many can’t be completed at all – to offer you the most thorough critical examination we can offer in a single helping. The just released Grand Theft Auto IV is the perfect candidate for this formula because while there are a set number of tasks to perform in its world that will allow a player to see its narrative through to a traditional conclusion (in addition to a number of tracked statistics that will result in a 100% marker,) the game’s non-linear nature means that it can go on forever. Want to turn on the game and see just how many Hummers you can pile onto a Coney Island pier? Have at it.

I’ve spent approximately fourteen hours in Liberty City at this point and while that’s no small amount of time, it’s clear that Rockstar’s world still has plenty to offer. I still haven’t made it as far west as Alderney, the game’s fictional proxy for New Jersey. That said though, I have been starting to wonder if I’ve already managed to press up against the boundaries of how play can actually effect the world of GTA IV. As Chris Baker so deftly pointed out in his piece about the game over at Slate, this game marks the first time the series has built a narrative and characters as absorbing as its setting. Those artistic achievements are reinforced by the game’s jump from a cartoon-caricature world to one that gives the undeniable impression of realism and gravity. While the ability to forge relationships with the characters that surround you is the game’s greatest achievement, imbuing your interactions with them with tangible consequences, Liberty City itself remains strangely unaffected. Irish mobster Packie may call to tell you how he saw a news report about a heist you pulled off together and you may hear that same report on the radio as you cruise about town. But you won’t see an increased police presence in midtown where you pulled off the job or any physical evidence of an investigation. Random toughs on the street won’t recognize you as you pass by and you can still wander unchecked down the highway with a machine gun drawn and motorists won’t bat an eye. It might seem unfair to fault GTA for not being a different sort of game but the rules of its world occasionally seem at odds with one another. My time with it is just beginning so here’s hoping that I find that my relationship with the city turns out to be as deep as the one with its citizens.