GAME REVIEW- "Rise of the Argonauts" (PC)

Leave it to the people of the gaming industry to target a successul competitive release and make it their life's work to surpass it. "God of War" wasn't anything terribly innovative, but it was generally fun. Never really got all the praise gamers were giving it, but even I'll admit that it was a great deal entertaining. So, several studios attempted to tackle the same formula and surpass GoW, such as Ninja Theory with Heavenly Sword and more recently, Codemasters and Liquid Entertainment with "Rise of the Argonauts".

"Rise of the Argonauts" had built some notable hype, as it promised quite a few things; intense action, various characters to choose from, combos, uprgadable weapons and special powers, a tight storyline based on ancient Greek mythology and stunning graphics. And while it makes all effort to deliver, unfortunately it does not.

King Jason of Iolkus looks infinitely more Greek than his -otherwise cooler- rival, Kratos

Liquid Entertainment's title is honest about one thing: it's ambitious. It tries. But even it knows that it could be a lot more than it is. The game is a distorted version of the legend of "Jason and the Argonauts" from the original myths, bastardized with several other aspects of Greek mythology. In this tale, Jason, King of Iolkus, goes out with his new ship, the Argo and looks for the Golden Fleece. The reason for that expedition is none other than the effort to bring back to life his wife, Alceme, who was recently killed by an assassin, during their wedding ceremony. Such a result cannot be achieved without the Fleece and with the blessings of Apollo, Athena, Ares and Hermes, Jason leaves Iolkus in the hands of his uncle Pelias and sets off with his friend Hercules as his companion. The plot otherwise involves assassins, mercenaries, a betrayal and a scheme to raise endless armies from Tartarus to take over the whole of Greece. I would probably try to keep my mouth shut here, in fear of revealing spoilers, but the story is so plain and so dull, that I doubt anybody will be either surprised or even interested to go through it on their own.

The failings of the story are quite interesting, really, since the game doesn't seem too keen on focusing in the main story, but instead on expanding in the world it has. There are some honest efforts to provide character backstories, in-game historical information, legends related to the story and even characters' own backgrounds. Unfortunately, not only are all these as dull as actually opening any dry book and reading it (even less, in fact, seeing how those books will probably be well-written and, you know, accurate), but they don't work because of another very important aspect: the gameplay.

Codemasters hyped their product mainly in the strengths of the combat system, but they intended to do much more with it; an action RPG. You know, like Oblivion. Or Bloodlines from Troika's "Vampire: The Masquerade" series. So, while action is certainly not absent, you spent most of the game going around, talking to people and completing 'quests'. But two problems with this:
One, the action segment of the game is hack'n'slash. Button-mashing, hack n' slash. While action, adventure and RPG blend quite well together, hack n' slash with this kind of RPG doesn't quite click. They attract two completely different crowds, neither of which will be able to compromise or find the silver line between the two styles. I like button-mashers on occasion and I like RPGs, but I couldn't adjust to the uneven gameplay.
Two and more importantly, the entire thing is just poorly executed. Most of the game is hammered by the RPG/Adventure portion. You'll spend the majority of the tale going around through the 4 or 5 different levels, talking to people. You'll have to pick from a variety of different answers, which will determine your Achievements (later on that) and fulfill requests from major or not-so-major players. Unfortunately, the whole thing is very poor in content and very linear. The quests you fulfill are mostly required to progress the story, they're tedious and require a lot of walking around; the fact that the dialogues with NPCs are long, slow and dull doesn't help one bit.

Worse, yet, the game restricts your gaming style all throughout the game. Combat is locked during those tedious segments, unless a scripted herd of enemies pops up. You can't even draw your weapon, let alone try to terrorize the NPCs. You can't talk to them, unless you need them for the story and when you do, they will only provide you with dry information. With the content being very poor on top of all that, 3/4 of the game are instantly borderline crap.

Beautiful and faithful landscapes help with the atmosphere

The battle system doesn't fare much better. When you do get to use it, it's decent, but nothing to write home about. There are two attacks (assigned to each mouse button in the PC version), a shielf attack, a block move and a dodge move. Jason carries three weapons; a sword, a mace and a spear. All three are upgraded later on in the game, though this is done through story points. They feature different attacks and do go as far as to be distinctly effective on different enemies, but there is no more than that. There isn't much in terms of combos and in the midst of a huge battle, it's unlikely you'll go to the trouble of combining free attacks, with block attacks and so on and so forth. Button-mashing is were the combat plays the most and, while it's fulfilling chopping enemy soldiers in half, even if the battle portion wasn't restricted, it would become repetitive.

In all fairness, there is something more to battle than weapons. The essense of the RPGing in this game is in the "God Powers". As mentioned, Jason has the blessing of four Gods for his quest. Each of these Gods gives him the ability to use different God Powers, which can be effective in battle. During the game, the player receives "achievements" (or "deeds"), from completing quests, killing a determined number of enemies and other typical things like those. By going into the pause screen, or finding the shrine of each god, then the player can "spend" them to said god and buy aspects. The aspects are special powers and abilities, some passive (like increased health) and some active. The active ones are the so-called "God Powers", four of which can be assigned to the num keys (1,2,3,4- D-Pad for consoles, I assume) and be used in battle. These are upgradable throughout the game, but unless you intend to go with just one of the four gods, don't expect to unlock them all by the end of the game. The God Powers are pretty neat and can be useful on occasion, but the truth is that the button-mashing will do the work alone just fine. It's probably where the battle system fails the most, too. The God Powers never seem useful or necessary, to the point -in fact- that I ended up assigning four powers, two out of which I never used more than once, because I saw no effect on the gameplay.

Enemy AI isn't much to look at, as most of the enemies will just rush into you or your allies, with the occasional block move to deflect your attacks. Most of the battles are easily won, with only the bosses posing any sort of threat; that is, with the exception of the final boss, where the difficulty curve takes flight off the chart and nears the impossible. Friendly AI is a good deal more useful, as your companions in battle (typically two, per level) are more powerful than the enemy footsoldiers and they have no qualms about showing it. It's really a pity that RotA never got around to allowing to switch between the different characters and instead forces the player to use Jason. While useful as NPCs, the Argonauts are all quite distinct and would offer a great deal of diversity in the battle system.


The highlight of the game is probably the graphics. Clean, crisp and detailed textures, good character models, nicely animated and beautiful backgrounds. In fact, the first thing I noticed about this game were the environments. As the game starts in Jason's palace, it was more than a welcome change to see a palace designed to remind something of an actual Ancient Greek building (there is this tendency, especially in games, to bastardize Ancient Greek landscapes and architecture with Roman, West/North European and even Persian/Turkish). There are also some neat details, like blood on the character models to indicate when health is low; neat visually, though its efficiency regarding the gameplay is rather questionable. The environments are small, but at least they're pretty to look at. On the flip side, the graphics don't mesh to well. I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with them, but while they're pretty, something's off... You'll have to see it for yourselves to maybe get what I'm saying. Also, the PC version suffers from frequent framedrops. They're not a deal-breaker, but they're a great deal annoying. Once again there is no customization beyond the resolution and once again I have to remind these nice people out there that the personal computers are not the industry's whore houses. They can't just shove their junk in them and hope to get the minimum out of the experience. Either do it right, or let PC gaming just die altogether.

Doesn't his face look real? Go on, touch it.

The sound department doesn't fare as well. The sound effects are adequate and the music is fitting, even if not memorable, but the voice acting is surprisingly bad. And surprising the low quality is, because the actual acting isn't all that bad. For starters, I can't fully blame the actors. I heard several recognizable voices and the credits reveal many names that have worked on several games before. Hell, half of the cast of the "Metal Gear Solid" series is there (not surprising, seeing how the Voice Director is Kris Zimmerman). But still, something's off. Maybe their lines are not well-edited together. Maybe the actors realized the ridiculousness of the script and tried to play along, but in the end it just didn't work. I don't know; whatever the reason, the whole thing just doesn't pay off. In combination with the bad lines and the tedious gameplay, you'll be surprised at how much text you'll just skip.

I wasn't caught in the hype, but I did want this game to deliver. It had promise and I do believe that gaming has yet to explore the actual wealth of Ancient Greece and its mythology (no, "God Of War" did not do that right). In fact, someone should totally make an Elder Scrolls type of game with that theme; I realize that Elves and Orgs are cool, but give it a rest already. Still, "Rise of the Argonauts" is not the way to do it. What classifies this as a bad game aren't so much the technical issues or the repetitive combat or the bad story, but mostly its inability to keep a steady pace, blend the gameplay styles properly and, in the end, deliver an experience that's exciting. When 3/4 of a game are as dull as the worst days of school, then something's wrong. Rent, only if you're really, really curious.

PC's Specs:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3Ghz
- 3GB RAM clocked at 800MHz
- NVidia 8800GTS 512MB
- Auzentech Xplosion 7.1 Soundcard
- Windows XP SP2, DirectX 9c

SANDBOX FUN! - Part II: "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City"

No, I did not intend to take these chronologically. Anyway, despite my gripes for the shift to "realism", I actually enjoyed a great deal about GTAIV. The presentation was solid, it was huge and fun and in the end, it just left off with some memorable moments and emotions. The only other GTA game that I recall doing that was "Vice City".

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" was the fourth -or 'second 3rd'- installment of the series. What does that mean? It's one of the... beauties... of free market to milk something until its tits turn blue and fall off. So, after Rockstar saw GTAIII becoming an unexpected, HUGE success, they thought, why take a few years and release a GTAIV, when they can re-release GTAIII, only with different levels? Enter "Vice City".

With the exact same engine and mechanics as its daddy, "Vice City" takes us away from the New York-esque Liberty City and takes us south. Set in Vice City, a small city modelled after Miami, it tells the story of former-mafia-member Tommy Vercetti, who just came out of jail and has to make a name for himself. GTAVC, set in the unforgettable and over-the-top '80s (1986, to be exact) is also the first GTA game to feature not only a solid story, but a main character with a distinct personality, as all previous installments had the player control a mute, unmotivated criminal, probably for purposes of immersion. The game itself takes a lot of its cues from the movie Scarface, from the city design, to the feel; in fact, it rips off the idea from the movie so much so, that a certain mansion that Tommy acquires is almost an exact replica of that of Al Paccino's screen character.

And with GTAIII's success, Rockstar could go on and hire big name actors for the voices. So Tommy is voiced by (underrated, IMHO) actor Ray Liotta, William Fichtner (who now holds the acting fort in "Prison Break" alone with Robert Knepper), Jenna Jameson (who is not a big-name-actress, but how many people had the balls to have an actual porn star voice a polygon pornstar back in the beginning of the decade) and many, many more. Though the story isn't deep and the characters aren't well rounded, the bad-movie gang dialogue in coordination with the voice acting make the characters very well liked and allows their story to have impact. It's, in some ways, an ingenious little trick.

Vice City itself is the pinnacle of an in-game, 1980s city. Palm trees all over, people with roller-skates on the beach, neon lights everywhere; even the colors of the sky during the day-night cycle add to the atmosphere. The city isn't nearly as big as IV's Liberty (though much closer to III's Liberty). You can drive from one side to the other in a very short time. It actually doesn't detract from the game much; there could've been a little more space for exploring, but there is something oddly fullfilling about learning how to navigate around the city without relying on your compass all that much. To get to Escobar Airport, you take the first left from Viceport and head straight. Or take the first left and then a right to go to Sunshine Autos. And other neat things like that.

I have particularly warm feelings toward Vice City, for several reasons. One, it just so happens that it's the game I played the most right after I graduated from high school- that's connected with finishing school, with going out of the high school overdrive and much more. So, yeah, I'm biased. Then, it's also because the game's set in the '80s. And while that's bias as well, it's undeniable that Rockstar managed to pull off a near-perfect job with the game's atmosphere.

The usual stuff's there; car driving, bike riding (I believe it was implemented in VC for the first time in the series), lots of guns, running over pedestrians, blowing up police and lots of nutty and memorable missions. But unlike GTAIV, which presents itself as so serious it almost forces you to obey traffic laws, VC just doesn't give a crap. There's very little serious about the game; the car physics are insane. Running over pedestrians is actually fun; they flatten on the ground comically and their bones breaking sound like pills cracking in a bottle. Headshots blow their heads up and severing limbs causes ketchup-looking blood flying all over. And there are all sorts of weird pickups around- KILL FRENZYs, health, armor, bribe pickups (to lower your wanted level), bullet-time and so on and so forth. Why didn't any of that pass on to the new-gen GTA?

VC still features the best radio program to-date. Sure, the '80s were superficial as hell, but that's also why it produced some of the most memorable things in entertainment to date. And that includes '80s music. Rock, pop, romantic pieces, all quality stuff, with hilarious DJs and even more hilarious commercials in-between. Not to be forgotten, the two talk-show stations with all sorts of oddballs making for genuinely funny programs. The radio itself, is one of the main reasons "Vice City" does so well in terms of atmosphere in fact.

Only bleak spot? The goddamn difficulty. All sandbox game developers that I'm familiar with seem to get a hard on from making their games impossible, but Rockstar seems to want to lead by being arguably the worst. GTAVC pits you up against some impossible odds much of the time. Missions like the bank mission, which sends you up against SWAT teams, especially in the era of no auto-aiming or cover system can be brutal. But the game won't stop there; take for example that mission, "The Driver". Where you have to win the race against another driver, who is equipped with a much better car, faster and indestructible, who can't be driven off-the road easily and who is an AI driver (which instantly means that he can take sharp turns freakishly fast). All while there are cops on your ass, who seem to dislike you, but not him. If you don't believe me about how much of an ass-mission we're talking about, have a look here (search for 7.7.4.3). See that Rockstar? A gazillion different strategies is not a good thing for a game for a broad audience. You know how I beat the race? Same way I did four years ago; I spawned a tank in front of him before the race started. Apparently, I was the only one who could drive around it. That's not a good thing either, Rockstar.

But if we get past the issue of the difficulty (which in PC, it's fortunately manageable, thank you kind people who make trainers), the game still is every bit as great fun as it was back then. It's fun, it's atmospheric, it's got great music, it's got Taxi missions (I stand by my position about the awesomeness of the taxi missions... with the Zebra Cab... replaced by a KITT model... after unlocking the cab's "jumping" ability). Considering I played it right after GTAIV, it's impressive how well it holds up to its newest incarnation and how easy it was to get immersed into, despite the inferior mechanics and (tech-wise) visuals.

Those who have played it know what I'm talking about. The All-Seeing Eye seems to be dead, but I think you can still play VC's version of MTA. Those of you who haven't played it yet, what the hell are you waiting for? It's cheap and not as hard to find as one would think. There was a PSP/PS2 follow-up, called Vice City Stories. It takes place two years prior to "Vice City" and stars Lance Vance's older brother Vic, who was killed by Diaz by the time the original VC takes place. It was the first game I tried after GTAIV, but I didn't get around to doing much. The PS2 version lacks any sense of optimization and looks -and sounds- like crap and the mechanics are dated and unfitting for a PS2 controller, while the difficulty remains considerably high. Still, the radio stations remain top-notch and Vice City itself is very much similar to that of the original.

HINT#1: If you have both versions or looking to buy one, always prefer the PC version. Aiming with the mouse is better, visuals are better, driving is worse, but not by much. And it usually goes cheaper and is easier to find. Plus you get mods and trainers.
HINT#2: The game has issues with newer hardware. Set compatibility to Windows '98 (because it has issues with dual-core processors and Win98 compatibility forces the game to use one core), set frame-limiter on (otherwise you'll get wacky car physics) and on occasion you might need to use a No-CD crack, even if you own a legitimate copy. Refer to GTAForums.com for more tech help.

SANDBOX FUN! - Part I: "Grand Theft Auto IV"

I never did do a GTAIV review, despite my intentions for the opposite. I prefer the PC releases of the series, for all the trainers and all the mods, but back during seasonal discount, I found the game cheap (when it was regularly going full-price) and got it for my PS3. But it took me a while to start it and then even more to finish it, so by then, the ship had sailed.

On the other hand, last week we had the PC release of GTAIV. And while I don't own, nor do I intend to own, the PC port, or do a proper review of the game, it's a good opportunity to thrown in some thoughts on the title, for those of you who consider getting it just now. That and this is a blog, which pretty much means it's my tool for spewing random crap that I don't need to answer for.

So, you're considering buying "Grand Theft Auto IV"? Few things you should be aware of:

1) If you are presented with the possibility, stay away from the PC version. It's incredibly ironic, seeing that its release was the very reason I got on my ass and posted this now, but word has it that it's shit. It's incredibly heavy even for high-end machines and it's hammered by bugs and bad porting. Rockstar insists that the problematic cases make up only 1% of the title's total buyers and I can't verify whether they're pulling this from their marketing ass or not, but in either case, do you really want to risk it?

2) If you enjoyed the previous installments a great deal, there is no reason you shouldn't like this one. Stop reading here and go buy it.

3) In GTAIV, the main hero is an Easter-European immigrant called "Niko Bellic". Unlike the previous freaks who wanted to take over the city, Niko just comes looking for the American Dream. Being a trained and cold-blooded killer himself, he makes his living in the usual GTA fashion. People say that the story is the best of series and while that may be true, for some reason they celebrate it because of that. It's true that it's better than the previous installments, but it never rises above "adequate" (admittedly, it doesn't need to, either). What it does do well is make you sympathize with and like (or like not to like) every single character involved at any point in the game and does exceptionally so with Niko and his "good-hearted" cousin Roman. It helps that the dialogue itself is above-decent (with some segments, especially the "shows" and the radio convos being trully memorable).

4) GTAIV is massive in terms of design. Liberty City is a great New York clone, with tons of territory to explore. It's not exahustingly huge, but going back to play, say "Vice City", where you take the same turn every other minute, you'll be content with roaming around the streets of Liberty City, even if only the first island of the game (per the series' habit, you don't have access to all areas of the city from the start). The city feels alive, with varying reactions from NPCs to varying situations (whether triggered by you or not).

5) At the same time, there is a lot of sandbox fun, outside the main missions, which mainly include taking your friends and going out to have fun. The attention to detail is oftentimes stunning too and contribute to making New Y-- eeeh, Liberty City feel trully alive. Niko is also equipped with a cell phone, which allows a far more direct way to contact the people he knows, making the experience more lively and the story more immersive. The phone can also be used to call 911 and get the cops, the paramedics or the firedepartment to get to you, should you need their services. And let's not forget the different restaurants, the bowling, darts and pool minigames, the Internet function, complete with e-mail and (in-game-world) site browsing, including constantly updated news in the liberal and conservative media outlets (news that mostly involve your actions), as well as a dating site, which actually does work (though the people you can date are pretedermined).

The NPCs have random behaviors. Don't be surprised if you're walking down the street and one of them pulls out a shotgun and starts shooting people- yourself included. Fortunately, you're not alone anymore, since the police will respond to ANY violence, even if it's not generated by you. That means that if you pull out a gun and go into a random firefight in the street, yes, the cops will come after you, but they will go after the NPC asshole as well. It was something that always bugged me in the previous games and it's been fortunately fixed. Similar details are all over the game.

6) In specific situations, the game offers options (kill this guy or spare him, kill this contact or kill that contact instead) and things like that. They are few and with the exception of a couple, their overall effect isn't all that impactful to the story or the gameplay, but they are a fun addition.

7) It's ridiculously easy to escape the cops. That's both good and bad. Unlike previous titles, where the cops would be on the lookout for you for x amount of time, depending on your Wanted Level, in GTAIV time isn't a factor. Instead, you get this circle on your radar that shows the area where the cops will be looking for you. If you get out of that circle (the size of which is proportional to the Wanted Level) and wait for a few seconds, you're scott free, even if the entire Green Lantern Corps is after you. Many complain that it makes the cop chases very easy, which is true, but on the other hand, the cars drive like ASS, so the new system makes the chase process a little less tedious. Imagine that oftentimes you'll try to take a turn, accidentally bump on a cop car and they'll start chasing you, which can be a ball-buster, since it happens a little too often. How good or bad the new system is really depends on the situation.

8) Old habits die hard and once again the difficulty curve seems to have schizophrenic tendencies. The learning curve is pretty short, if you get past having to learn how to do a few million different things, but the difficulty can bring tears to your eyes. There is no consistency (you can have a pretty tough mission early on in the game and several boring ones toward the end), which isn't much of an issue on its own, but as usual, the game at times asks you to surpass it, which is ridiculous. That means that when you find yourself in the middle of a tough mission, arm yourself with tranquilizers- pills, not darts. For yourself, not Niko. It's nothing new in the series, but it's a precedent that has.got.to.die. It's especially irritating, because if you fail a mission in a GTA game, you can't just push the quick load button or continue from the last checkpoint; you'll lose your weapons, you'll spend A LOT of money in a hospital if you're killed and you'll have to redo the entire damn mission, including boring driving parts and tedious prologues all over again. How many times can you drive to the other side of the city to lose the same mission all over again? Be warned.

9) On the bright side, there are A LOT of easy missions all throughout the game, so you'll have plenty of time to play until you decide to cheat your way through an impossible mission to progress the damn story. And despite my ranting, it's actually a bit easier in comparison to older titles.

10) The new targeting system is a step-up from the previous games. It allows an auto-lock feature, which is incredibly useful and, in fact, the entire combat system has been updated and refined, with hand-to-hand combat being less clunky and allowing you to take cover behing walls and objects, something vital during those long, hard ... missions. If there is one updated area over the past games that deserves praise, it's this one.

11) On the other hand, the new driving system is questionable. If you've played another GTA title before, forget all you knew about driving; it's radically different. The vehicles are all a lot heavier and handle more realistically, which means no more wacky physics, easy 180-degree-turns and so on and so forth. Handling speed is a major necessity this time around for handling your car properly (which is probably the best thing about adding the accelerate/brake functions on the L2 and R2 buttons in the PS3 version). This makes the PC version another big no-no without a supported gamepad with pressure buttons, since "hitting the floor" has zero rewards; it will only make it impossible to turn the wheel effectively and will most likely send you flying through the windshield. The bikes are even worse; in fact, they are so little fun and so damn dangerous, that they might have left them out altogether. They handle really hard and hitting on anything will most of the time cost you *at least* half of your health. What the deuce?

12) On the bright side, once you get used to the driving system, it contributes to the illusion of the real-life, big city. Not only is it a lot harder to cross Liberty in a time of mere minutes, like you could with, say, Vice City, but you'll be reluctant to not follow the rules of the roads; that means, don't be surprised if you find yourself stopping every (other) red light and sticking to your lane. In addition, the realistic approach allows each and every car in the game to have its own distinct handling and driving style, which makes choosing and keeping certain cars very neat and useful for the player.

13) TAXIS! The Taxi missions have been, unfortunately, shrunk so much they're not even noteworthy (a crime, in my opinion; the best way to learn how to drive around the city, making a few bucks and truly enjoying the radio, are the taxi missions). Also in the cabby area, there are TONS of them around. At first, they're really not worth noticing, but once you unlock the other parts of the city, they're very useful for avoiding to drive all the way to a waypoint yourself. They cost, but in the last 3rd of the game, I was using cabs almost exclusively.

14) Despite the attention to detail, there are some details that are inexplicably left unattended. For example, there are several missions that require you to follow a car- not shoot, not chase, just follow an unsuspecting driver. Well, it just so happens that never in these missions do these "unsuspecting drivers" follow traffic rules. Never. They don't stop at red lights, they don't stick to their lanes, they only try to get away from you, even though they don't really know you're there. It's a nitpick, I'm just picking it out, because it seems odd when in contrast to other areas that the title is carefully detailed. There are lots of those all around, too.

15) The uneven -or unforgiving- difficultyis increased by the importance of the "random" factor. That means that in a game this big, many things can happen and screw everything up when you least expect it. For example, imagine driving over to a mission point and as you go, one of your front wheels bumps on the sidewalk and the heavy car starts spinning and hits a cop car. The cops start coming after you, while you're already burdened with the mission itself. Imagine the same happening and instead hitting a walking cop and killing him. Two stars, harder to dodge, all while you're still in the middle of the mission. It's an issue that has yet, in concert with the difficulty issue and the save point system, to be addressed. The game finally saves in a temporary slot the game every time something noteworthy happens, which is a huge plus, but the "safehouse save" system shows its age.

16) The radio stations are back. Bigger and more expanded than before, they come with various tunes. Admittedly, they aren't all great and memorable, but many of them are very catchy and pleasing to the ear. One huge plus is that there is a wide-range of stations that play different music for all kinds of taste; pop, rock, jazz, hip-hop and so on and so forth. Still, the praise is reserved for the three talk-show stations (one of which features the return of Laaazzzzzloooow!) which thrive on the satire of everything relevant to our times; politics, terrorism, the ridiculous "war" between conservatives and liberals and so on and so forth. As usual, the writers parody American public opinion, a task masterfully adjusted to the loud show Americans have been putting out since the Iraq invasion started flirting with the term "debacle". Only downside, the almost complete lack of equally entertaining material from the music stations. The DJs have few lines, they aren't as funny and there's also a noticeable lack of outrageous commercials.

17) With GTAIV, the series takes yet another jab at realism. I must've mentioned it before, that one thing that detracts from the whole experience of most titles released after the turn of the millennium (that's 2001, not 2000) is this obsession with realism. Shooters no longer allow you to be shot more than a few times. Guns handle "realistically". And graphics? They MUST look like they came out of a movie, otherwise the world will apparently come to an end.

The GTA series has been suffering from that as of late, as well. In IV, the cars are heavier and harder to handle. The guns come with different recoil and stopping power. The health and armor bars get emptied a lot faster; in fact, the entire HUD has been redesigned, featuring only the radar and merging the health bar around it. Even the clock has been taken out, so as to make sure the existence of a fully detailed HUD doesn't make the game look less realistic. You have to go through the chore of calling your contacts and going out with them, if you want them to like you. In fact, with all these details that the game features, it's ironic that the majority of the sandbox fun is centered around these non-mission events/chores, making the game feel surprisingly linear for an open-ended-world game.

I'm not saying that realism, where needed, is bad. In fact, even this turn for the series is well-presented, for the most part and it doesn't really hurt the game itself. But it seems like Rockstar has kind of missed the point, after so many years, so many games and so many full pockets, wallets and bank accounts. I'm not one to love GTA; I think the entire series is ridiculously overrated. But realism and GTA, though they can click well enough, they aren't made for each other. Because GTA has never been about realism; even conceptually, the game is fucking outrageous! It's about ONE guy, who downs HUNDREDS of people on his own and takes over AN ENTIRE FUCKING CITY, all through missions that are as RIDICULOUS as they come. If we go back to GTAII, the game was exactly all about that. Anybody ever played GTA2 (or even GTA)? Fucking awesome. Did it matter that it was top-down 2D? Why the fuck would it matter, when there are missions like the classic Russian mob mission, where you hijack a bus full of people, take them to a grinder and turn them into hamburgers for the mob members? I'm not making this up! I'm all for the "sophisticated" experiences in gaming, with the dialogues and the high-class cinematics and all that, but sometimes, pure, stupid fun in an interactive medium is amazing. (NOTE: If you haven't played the original two, they're up for free in Rockstar's site. Go get them, they're awesome).

What I'm getting at is simple: there is a reason why we call open-world games "sandbox" games. A sandbox is meant for playing. Have you seen many kids playing in a sandbox, lining up their Playmobiles and playing "House" (the one with the husband and the wife, not the one with the cane and the Vicodin)? No, because it's boring! They take GI Joe figures and GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS and throw them left and right, because that's FUN. The idea of a sandbox game, an idea that Rockstar was fully aware of, since they came up with it, is to give SPACE to the player to do whatever the hell they want with it and have fun in it. Not so they can overcompensate for their boring little lives, by playing other characters' boring little lives. In a nutshell? The title offers the option to watch television in your safehouse. Few programs, somewhat funny, blah blah blah. Well, I'll trade the damn TV for the option to automatically gain cash for every car I blow up. Just 'cause.

18) There is a multiplayer portion that's simple to use and very entertaining. Though more diverse, anyone who's played MTA before will find it easy to dive into this one.

19) The title is "Grand Theft Auto IV", but this is actually "Grand Theft Auto VI", or "Grand Theft Auto VIII", if you count the two PSP spin-offs. Yeah, OK, this doesn't really have anything to do with the game itself, it just bugs me to much to ignore. This kind of pretentious BS irritates me. "This is the TRUE GTA IV, because it's on an ALL NEW graphics engine, so it's really FUCKING AWESOME!" Yeah, I didn't see you saying anything of the like when you were selling "San Andreas" at full price in 2004 and you were becoming richer than freaking God. It's bull crap, really, because not only is it a well-known marketing strategy that assumes the buyer is stupid, but it's also one hell of a way to discredit their own work on a title. What, the work put on "Vice City" was so half-assed and sloppy that it didn't deserve to be anything more than a GTAIII spin-off?

All in all, the title is good. The game is good. If you liked the others, you'll like this one too. If you didn't like the others, you probably won't like this one either. The game's huge in terms of design and a lot of work has gone into it. The updated mechanics work, for the most part. Despite the turn toward realism being increasingly worrying and completely unnecessary, it's at least well-worked in the game and the illusion of this "second life" can give a few moments of enjoyment; but only a few. It's a very fun game and an overall satisfying experience. But be warned that the difficulty can be insane, the random factor can be nerve-wrecking and the sandbox freedom is oftentimes ironically linear.