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Games improve your memory. Research has proven that people who play games have higher levels of concentration than those who don’t. Games help develop strategic thinking. Games help surgeons improve hand-eye coordination skills. Managers leverage games to help build and develop team dynamics at work.
BULLSHIT!
This one believes claims like these hold about as much water as the allegations that games inspire violent and psychotic acts. It’s a simple fact, that the roles games play in our lives are the roles we choose to assign to them, just like the roles movies, books or music play! Games are a means of entertainment, a story-telling medium, and by their own right, works of art in the interactive space. Analyzing their contribution to society from a utilitarian perspective is just a vain attempt to hook the nay-sayers in, and dispel (VERY widely held) notions that games are “a waste of time” and “meant for kids”. Honorable intentions for sure, but this just ain’t the right way to go about it!
Hit the jump for more of this drivel.
The episodic experiment began in mid-2006 with Half-Life 2: Episode One and SiN: Episodes - Emergence. Grand stories were told about how episodic gaming would mark a major shift in the way games are developed and delivered. All fine and dandy, but a year and a half since all the grand posing, where exactly do we stand?
WARNING (and Disclaimer): Personal opinions, long sentences and an abrupt ending to follow!
Normally, one would just afford a passing look at a billboard, or maybe a little gawking, if it happens to feature a skimpily clad hottie, but that’s a different issue. Seldom do we see a billboard that is truly a piece of art. And if the billboard happens to be featuring the magic word “GTA IV” on it, rest assured that it will be grabbing the eyeballs on a much larger scale.
So when the billboard in question started coming up in New York, it sparked off speculations on whether it might unveil the final release date of the game. Blogger Nick from Normalblog started following the slow but steady evolution of the billboard over a span of few days and posted the pictures on his blog for us non-New Yorkers to ogle at.
Even though, the much-discussed release date didn’t materialize, the end product turned out to be a stunning piece of art. Rockstar had promised us that things will be different this time around. By the look of it, they seem to be living up to their words.
Finding any information on Rockstars’ GTA IV is really hard, as not much of it is available and in these hard times we are all just guessing that it will be awesome and as shocking as the early games have been. During these tough times, Game Informer has come out with a huge ten page exclusive on Grand Theft Auto IV, which includes tons of details about the game. Here I have tried to summarize some of the major features:
The protagonist’s name is Niko Bellic - an Eastern European immigrant who has come to Liberty City to live the “American Dream.” He was persuaded to move to Liberty City by his cousin Roman, who claimed to be living a wonderful life there with two beautiful women, fifteen sports cars, and lots of money etc. The plot thickens when we learn that Roman was infact telling a lie in order to hide his own failures. Roman is a polite guy, whereas Niko is ballistic and Roman needs Niko’s help to pay off his debts.
The game is set in Liberty City of 2007, but it is bigger than the Liberty City we saw in GTA III. Moreover there will be no planes in the game and the rumors are that there wont be any deserts or country sides either. The game only focuses on one city, and thats the reason for not having planes or helicopters at all. Rockstar wants the game to look and feel more realistic, thats why there wont be any jetpacks or rollerblades either. Motorbikes will remain though.
As far as the city goes, Rockstar has recreated 4 of the 5 main boroughs of New York. The missing one is Staten island. Senator Andrew Lanza (who was born there and is currently the Senate representative for the south of Staten Island) said, “I’m glad Staten Island is left out, frankly,” and he went on to described the game as “poisonous,”. He reflected on the real reason his borough did not make the cut.“Perhaps it’s because they know Staten Island is the safest place in the entire city,” The irony is the Staten Island will be the first downloadable content available for GTA IV.
As far as the gameplay and the feel of the game is concerned, Dan Houser has compared the leap from GTA III to GTA IV, to the leap from GTA to GTA III. And here’s why: The game will only load once in the beginning and after that there will be no loading sequences in the game. Not even while moving from the interior of a building to the outside world. While you will walk you will be able to feel the weight of the body and the different surfaces will result in different walking animations. The physics have been improved and character animations are also above par. Its important to mention that there are many game screenshots available over the internet, but Rockstar has insisted that these screenshots are not representative of the quality of the game and the game will only look better as the release will draw closer.
In earlier versions of GTA, you received your missions from different persons, and somehow the game stuck to the storyline. It changes in GTA IV as the players will have a better control over their destiny. You will have more choices and options to work your way around in the game now as you will be able to contact the people thru your cell, directly talk to them or by many other ways to obtain information.
Rockstar have been emphasizing on the reality this time and that’s the reason why everything has been drawn closer to the life. Pedestrians will be more realistic as they will sit on benches, smoke cigarettes, read books and generally act like any real pedestrian would in the middle of a street. Even the police will make its presence felt in this draw of the game. Many crime experts were consulted in the making of the game and being a criminal will be harder this time around as it is in real life.
The insistence on reality will also reflect in the voice over of the game as this time around Rockstar hasn’t hired just big names, but have actually gone for hiring the voices that will suit the characters and their temperaments. Even the OST is not going to be a collection of namedropping of the big names. The music will be suiting the Liberty City of 2007 in all its glory. Now one wonders what will we have on the radios this time..!!
The game is being developed as a multiplayer but it wont be on a massive scale. Also Rockstar is going to launch a special edition of GTA IV on October 16 in North America and October 19 in Europe, the same day as the regular edition of Grand Theft Auto IV. The special edition will be presented in a customized Grand Theft Auto metal safety deposit box. The box will contain the Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system or the PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, both with special packaging. Then there will be the Grand Theft Auto IV Art Book, featuring never-before-seen production artwork from the game. A selected soundtrack CD from Grand Theft Auto IV, featuring new material from top artists will also be there along with an exclusive Rockstar keychain for the safety deposit box keys. And all this will come packed in a limited edition Rockstar duffel bag. The Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition is available for pre-orders today and will retail for $89.99 in North America.
While people will be getting their safety boxes, I’ll be more then happy if I could just get the game in India on time… There are many screenshots of the game available on net which make you go jump around in the room and here are some links for you:
Grand Theft Auto IV Preview [1UP]
Grand Theft Auto IV First Look [Gamespot]
GTA IV: An Introduction to Liberty City [IGN]
Source: [GTAIV.net]
It doesn’t matter how small it is, but how you use it that matters - or at least that’s what most of our girlfriends would have us believe. But the truth is, that line just about perfectly defines demoscenes - content that packs quite a visual punch in ridiculously small filesizes. Made extremely popular among geeks and gamers by the 96kB FPS called .kkrieger, the demoscene, err, scene, has expanded to lots of crazy coders trying to find more ways to pull off the gaming equivalent of squeezing Kirstie Alley into Calista Flockhart’s bikini.
So who better to show off their new stuff at Breakpoint 2007 than the guys who gave us .kkrieger in the first place? Showing off the latest in the Farbrausch line - fr-041: Debris, the produkkt team showed how much DX9.0-like visual quality you can squeeze into a 177kB file. Although Debris isn’t playable, the flyby that it generates takes you on a magical carpet ride through a mindbogglingly beautiful 3D cityscape, complete with GTA IV-esque train rides and F.E.A.R.-like underground railway stations. Never mind the fact that the demo made mincemeat out of my AMD64 3000+/X800 XT PE/1GB RAM system at 1024×768/HQ/2x MSAA and how you’d probably be needing an Intel QX6700/8800GTX SLI system to get this to look it’s best, but I just can’t wait to see if some game developer will actually use this method of dynamic content generation in lieu of shipping next-generation titles on multiple DVDs. Heck, with so much processing power available on the PS3, wouldn’t it just make more sense to pepper their game design with such design methods to ensure we don’t really need that BluRay player? At least that way, I’ll be able to afford a PS3, now that I’ve sold my soul and gotten an Xbox 360?
…and different they are. It’s not like you daily get to see a half an hour long trailer for a game on national television…that too with just the logo of the game and a countdown clock…and have people watch it…and record and upload it on YouTube for millions of others to watch it.
This is the kind of excitement that a GTA game evokes and rightly so. Rockstar has virtually booked its place in the annals of gaming history with the GTA series. With seven GTA games and an expansion, this series shows no signs of slowing down. Instead it has gone from strength to strength, right from the ground breaking GTA III to the mind boggling GTA: San Andreas.
So it did not come as a surprise when the release of the debut trailer for the next-gen GTA IV brought down the Rockstar server on it’s knees with millions of people logging in to be the first to catch a glimpse of the new GTA in action, yours truly included. So after staying awake for the better part of the night and having to contend with numerous Time Out errors, everyone would ask the same question: Was it worth it?
And the answer would be a resounding “Yes”! Never have I been so excited at 4 O’ clock in the morning. Anyone who has witnessed the trailer in its 720p High Definition glory will be lying if he says that the trailer didn’t give him goose bumps. Rockstar had promised that “Things Will Be Different” and they most definitely are.
The 63 seconds long trailer gives us the first insight into the world of the next generation of GTA and never has it looked so real. Dynamic lighting will have shadows flit across your screen as the sun coasts over the horizon. Light filtering through corrugated metal sheets and stained glass will give Half Life 2 a run for its money. The lighting effect will sear through your mind long before you even start to notice what’s going on in the trailer. The water effect is also something that will have you spell bound. I can’t wait to get in game and go out for a swim, it’s that inviting! The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) powering it certainly has some aces up its sleeve. No pre-rendered shit here. Everything was rendered in real time. There have been unconfimed reports about Rockstar having employed the Euphoria engine for the NPC actions . If that’s the case, then it will boost up the mojo many notches up.
Prepared to be even more surprised at what the game has in store for you. This time around the good ol’
If all this hasn’t burdened your senses already, be prepared for more. GTA IV promises to take NPC interaction to new limits. The trailer shows off NPC drivers adjusting their rear-view mirrors as they coast along the road. Peds are going around doing their daily work and not like the previous installments where all they did was roam on the streets aimlessly just waiting to be mowed down by you. Of course their fate is all the same in GTA IV as well but at least they will have some dignity in death. Keen observers have spotted cops drinking on duty and a child (gasp!). Some of them have sparked an intense debate as to how far can Rockstar really stretch it. Add to that a setting like NY and you start to wonder if Rockstar has the guts to go ahead and put the
If you have noticed, I still haven’t mentioned the lead character of the game. After having given us such memorable characters as Fido/The Guy/Claude, Tommy and CJ, Rockstar springs yet another surprise on us in form of a character who seems to be of Russian origin seeking a new life in the
The game is scheduled to have a simultaneous launch on both PS3 and Xbox 360, which is a first for a GTA game. Episodic content has also been promised for both the consoles though its debatable whether it will be the same or different for both the consoles. Speculation is also rife as to whether the game will support multiplayer for the first time. The possibility seems high though if you consider the multiplayer aspect in the PSP versions of GTA to be a dry run for bigger and better things. Our fingers are crossed.
It’s really amazing how much speculation and debate 63 second of game play footage can generate. Then again, considering the pedigree of the game, it comes as no surprise. One can’t help but wonder what the level of hype will be in the following days as more and more information trickles out. With the release just months away, the excitement is bound to touch new heights. Jack Thompson….eat your heart out!