Chris Livingston has already extolled the virtues of Grand Theft Auto 4's amazing #WatchDogsIV mod. For the uninitiated, it brings Watch Dogs style environment hacking into GTA's Liberty City. For a full round-up of what it enables, head on over to Chris's Mod of the Week post. For a small look into the type of chaos it supports, stay right here.

Being a child, the first thing I did on loading the game was to start a traffic jam:



So far, so Watch Dogs. But the Traffic Lights prompt reappears quickly after. I wonder...



Yup. Multiple prompts means multiple pile-ups, meaning I can stack this thing right up. Time to do that. Everybody, welcome to the jam.



What makes this so funny other than the obvious is that the cars in the crash accelerate every time I hit the prompt, pushing them deeper and deeper into the ultra-jam. Also, as you can see from the picture above, a man has spontaneously combusted.

That's probably not a good sign.



Nope, definitely not a good sign. We have reached peak jam. It is jam-a-geddon.





Perhaps unsurprisingly, this tanked the game's framerate. My rig battled on regardless to bring you this dramatic re-enactment.



You can download #WatchDogsIV from here, and you probably should.

Like me, you've probably spent dozens of hours in Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City, but often wish there was some way to cause a little destruction and mayhem. Finally, there is! The #WatchDogsIV mod summons the sullen Aiden Pearce from Watch Dogs, and more importantly, brings along Aiden's awesome Phone of Hacking +4. Traffic lights, payphones, ATMs, security cameras, and those poles that shoot up out of the street: they're now yours for the hacking! The once utterly peaceful Liberty City is about to get flip-turned upside down.

Just about all the tricks up Aiden's futuristic trenchcoat sleeve are now at your disposal as you prowl the streets of Liberty City. Walk within range of a hackable object, and you'll get a little icon on your screen. Hold down the 'E' key, and the icon will be outlined. It works pretty much exactly as it does in Watch Dogs, right down to the little electrical tendrils that spread from Aiden's phone when he hacks something.

That public phone exploded! Thank god no one was using it for the last 10 years!

Naturally, triggering traffic lights is great fun, and dare I say it, causes even bigger and badder accidents than it does in Watch Dogs. You can also blow things up, though instead of steam fittings and electrical junctions, it's Liberty City's payphones that explode. (I know what you're thinking. Exploding payphones? That's utterly ridiculous: payphones don't even exist.) Those poles that pop out of the street work most of the time, and are great for keeping the cops off your tail when they come to investigate why everything is suddenly exploding.

Oh, LCPD. Will your humiliations ever end?

Speaking of the po-po, it seems like the entire Chicago policing system has been ported over from Watch Dogs. Commit a crime, and a nearby citizen may call the police on you. You'll hear the call taking place, and the eyewitness will be highlighted with an icon, allowing you to interfere before the 9-1-1 call is complete. If the call goes through, the police will be dispatched and your radar will show ctOS scanning for your location. The mod even has options to make the police better drivers and more accurate shooters, if you want to make things harder on yourself.

No more smashing cars yourself. There's an app for that.

There's more phone-foolery! You can now remotely activate car alarms like Aiden, though in Watch Dogs that was used to distract guards, and now it's mainly just useful for startling pedestrians. You can jump into security cameras, and use them to jump into other cameras, and set off other hackable objects while peering through the lens from a safe distance. And, while you can stop the trains, just like in Watch Dogs, there's not much point in doing so, just like in Watch Dogs. But, who needs to have a point? You have some new ways to terrorize the citizens of Liberty City, and that's its own reward.

Stop the train! No reason. Just wanted to see if I could do it. I could.

The mod makes you move like Aiden as well. When you walk, you'll stuff your hands in your pockets and keep your head down, which is the best way to avoid suspicion when you're a famous vigilante the entire city is after. There are new animations for giving you Aiden's awkward sprint, as well as his patented truncheon takedowns which can be performed on anyone you're standing near. There's also a blood-round-the-edges screen effect for when you take damage, which I guess was in Watch Dogs. I'm not sure. I was so good at that game I never took damage.

Beating you up for reasons that are unclear even to me!

I'm told that hacking an ATM will cause money to spray out of it, which will cause citizens to run over to collect it, which will naturally cause a huge fist-fight, which sounds quite amusing. I have to say, though, I drove around for ages and never spotted even a single ATM. You can also cause light fixtures to explode, scaring people, and overload soda machines, spilling cans everywhere. Basically, the mod lets you be a huge, destructive jerk in new and exciting ways, and that's what any good GTA IV mod should do.

Installation: Here's the page to download the mod, with a description of all its features and the control scheme. You'll need to use OpenIV to get the mod working, naturally. And, while the mod makes you run and act like Aiden, it doesn't make you look like Aiden. If you want his goofy trench coat and hat, you'll need to install a separate skin for it (I used this one).

 

Every week, we publish a classic PC Gamer review from the '90s or early 2000s. This week, Ben Griffin provides context and commentary followed by the full, original text of our GTA: San Andreas review, published in the July 2005 issue of PC Gamer UK. More classic reviews here.

We're enjoying the height of summer now, but as temperatures plummet and skies darken, Rockstar promise respite from Autumnal misery: GTA 5 on PC. With improved framerates. And increased resolution. And cats! It took no time at all for resident GTA enthusiast, Andy Kelly, to go all CSI on its launch trailer (hammerhead sharks: confirmed).

In light of that, I've decided to delve almost a decade into the past and unearth PC Gamer's San Andreas review. At 94%, it's our highest-rated Grand Theft Auto ever, beating out Vice City by a whole 1%. Why? How? Well, as our reviewer Ross Atherton puts it, the game is, "at once a giant, living playground and a smoothly contoured story. San Andreas still manages to be coherent despite giving the player the opportunity to ditch and pick up the storyline at will."

Pouring over these admittedly rough screens, I'm reminded of a time when a sprawling playing space meant necessary compromise. It was accepted back then look at Morrowind and True Crime. Open world? You'll have a blast, sure, but expect glitches and graphical issues. Since San Andreas the bar's been raised. Even in a game as mind-bogglingly massive as GTA V, we don't expect so much as a stretched texture. And, thanks to Euphoria, we're treated to some of the most convincing physics of any videogame, open world or otherwise.

Nine years on, San Andreas doesn't have great graphics. It doesn't have great physics. It doesn't even have cats. What it does have, though, is a sublime silly streak. It's a bouncing playground filled with sights and delights, whether that's bombing through Red Country on a jet-pack, crop dusting with Guns 'N Roses on the radio, or pumping iron at the local gym. With a staggering amount to see and do, wrapped in in Rockstar's trademark cultural satire, we strongly recommended it then and we strongly recommend it now.
GTA: San Andreas review
Welcome to GTA as it was always meant to be.

Forget the fact that GTA San Andreas started life as a PlayStation 2 game. The ugly caterpillar has become a beautiful (if foul-mouthed) butterfly. The fifth in a series that since its 2D birth on PC (back in 1997) has celebrated despicable gangsters and drive-by/-thru/-into and -over crime. San Andreas reaches new lows of depraved morality, senseless violence and alpha-male aggression. But it s the fact that it s one of the best games ever made that has already propelled it to console ultra-success.

GTA 3 struggled to make the technical leap to PC with its code intact, but months of finger-crossing and animal sacrifices to nameless gods have paid off. San Andreas runs like a dream, with the excellent mouse and keyboard control system of Vice City, extended visual range and atmospheric effects.

Like its two more recent predecessors, San Andreas puts you in the shoes of a central character about to embark on a life of crime. However, CJ aka Carl Johnson is no career mobster in the mould of Vice City s Tommy Vercetti. In fact, he s been away from the hood for five years to try and escape the gang violence endemic in his home city of Los Santos. He s brought back by his mother s untimely death. Hooking up with his brother Sweet and old friends, CJ is inevitably drawn back into the world he had left behind; a world of guns, drugs, territory, casual violence and respect .

Respect is actually a measured factor which is raised by performing notorious criminal acts. High respect means you can reinforce CJ with extra gang members when attempting to take over enemy territory. Although, initially, CJ doesn t even get respect from his brother. It s a good system, which draws you further into the game. As you complete missions, you start to gain the grudging respect of those around you. Eventually they adore you. San Andreas is no conventional RPG, but there s a definite feeling of character progression in this game.


Or is it an RPG? CJ has several other stats which have subtle but noticeable effects on the game. Driving, cycling, stamina, motorcycling, flying, pistol, rifle... every mode of transport and every type of weapon has an associated skill which increases as you employ it.

Better gun skills mean more accuracy with that weapon, while a higher motorbike skill means you won t fall off as easily if you nick a car or lamp-post. There are even scales for fat, muscle and sex appeal, variously dictated by what and how much you eat; your work in the gym; what you wear; your haircut and your tattoos. Some of this is frippery, but it ll also affect whether you can attract girlfriends (and their subsequent side missions), how much damage you withstand (fatties can take more lead, apparently) and some people s responses to you. Like so much in San Andreas, these statistics are carefully woven into the game s structure.

If you thought that Vice City s twin islands offered a huge playground, prepare your mind for a boggling. San Andreas offers a whole new world of largeness. There are three cities: Los Santos, a version of Los Angeles and your home town; San Fierro, standing in for San Francisco; and Las Venturas, a dusty, neon-bright Las Vegas squatting in the desert. Not only is each vast in its own right, but the intervening space is expansive and packed. After the first ten hours or so, you re encouraged out of Los Santos and introduced to a world of hicks, country music, tractors and remote, winding roads. The game s sense of place is so distinct that, as black CJ, you actually feel out of place in the small towns that dot the countryside.

As you get sucked further into the nefarious scheming of the corrupt cops excellently voiced by Samuel L Jackson and Chris Penn, you re dragged through the rolling countryside and north into San Fierro, all the time meeting and working for bizarre and intriguing characters. With a much more memorable layout than the first city, it s an even more exciting place to be, and you ll be rushing back and forth between the cities too, through the countryside. Eventually you ll progress to Las Venturas and then back to Los Santos to tie up the loose ends of the story.


Throughout the game, the variety of the 100-plus missions never fails to delight. Steal a combine harvester. Infiltrate a secret army base. Chase down thieves on quad bikes. Rob a bank. Shoot down remote-controlled planes with a minigun. Rescue a bunch of stoned English rockers from the desert. Fly a plane to Liberty City to carry out a hit. From the simple to the devilish, from the grimly criminal to the comedic, from the sublime to the ridiculous, San Andreas retains the power to surprise and entertain throughout its lengthy structure.

Not just in terms of the missions, either: you ll be infiltrating, burgling, flying, following, swimming, and shooting as a passenger as well as the more usual shooting and driving. My only quibble is that CJ never questions the reasoning behind the hundreds of casualties he s asked to inflict. Kill that man? Aiight, sums up his usual response, and at times it s hard to empathise with such a cold-blooded hero.

As in the previous two GTA games, you can invest your cash in properties, some of which will provide an income once you ve established a business there, and others which just act as new save points. These special locations often require you to complete a series of missions, offering yet another avenue to pursue. At any given time you ll have between one and half a dozen mission paths on offer, for you to take up in any order you want, or ignore completely in favour of a spot of pimping, exploring, police-baiting, male grooming or just riding around.

At once a giant, living playground and a smoothly contoured story, San Andreas still manages to be coherent despite giving the player the opportunity to ditch and pick up the storyline at will. The world doesn t have to depend on cutscenes for consistency, because there s always something going on, even if just in the background, to provide colour, life and atmosphere. The radio stations, legendary in GTA 3 and Vice City, are back with a dozen to choose from. As ever, Rockstar s cultural references are spot-on, and anyone older than their mid-20s will be powerfully reminded of their youth with the likes of Public Enemy, Primal Scream and Guns N Roses. The interludes and chat shows are superbly scripted, if not quite as bizarrely hilarious as Vice City s. Again, the PC version enables us to supply MP3s and have them played on a dedicated radio channel.


San Andreas does the simple things well. Just stand on any given street, and within seconds you ll see little tableaux developing. Pedestrians bump into each other, pass comments at you and others, and get run over. If you re in an unfriendly hood, thugs wearing enemy gang colours will swagger up, offering threats, and eventually attack.

Just existing is more gripping than before. Your wanted level is again represented by stars, but here just one star will have the cops shooting and crashing cars like their doughnuts depended on it. Wanted stars are harder to get rid of, and even civilians will react angrily if you nudge their cars. As a result, you can t afford to be too carefree while cruising the streets. This, combined in particular with Los Santos gritty, often run-down atmosphere, makes the overall experience quite different to Vice City s cartoon world. Actions have consequences seems to be the moral message.

That s not to say that San Andreas is humourless: quite the opposite. From the missions and cutscenes, to incidental dialogue and even tiny signs in obscure shops, you ll see Rockstar s trademark comedy style, ranging from the juvenile to the very explicit. San Andreas isn t afraid to say anything. Minor graphical scars left from its painful transformation into a PC game do nothing to dull San Andreas inner beauty. The best of the series, and already a contender for game of the year.

Hordes of postmen fill the street, armies of retail staff scurry through their fluorescent aisles, and the world's console-owning population have simultaneously phoned in a variety of minor ailments. Grand Theft Auto V has launched and, by all reports, it's A Big Deal. Unless you own a PC, that is, in which case, it's a Tuesday.

What hope do we have of joining GTA 5's triumvirate of crims and, more importantly, when? Rockstar's sandbox of car chases and petty violence began its life on PC, but without an official announcement, is it safe to assume that we'll ever have a chance to holiday in the latest Los Santos? Let's delve into the murky lake of internet rumour, and fish out any facts we can find.



Leaky Lists

A publisher can use its own roving bands of guerilla PRs to whip employees into a cowed silence. The same isn't true of external partners and retailers. All sorts of GTA 5 info has oozed from the retail counters, from an early look at the map, to copies of the game itself. That may lend credibility to a number of online retail listings for a PC release.

Amazon France kicked things off at the start of the year, by taking taking pre-orders for a boxed PC copy. Then, in May, German retailers sprang to action, with both Amazon Germany and GamesOnly posting their own speculative PC pre-orders. Interestingly, GamesOnly briefly posted early details of the console versions' special edition. They were right on the money.

Does that validate the listings? Not really. Sometimes it's less about responding to information, as it is about anticipating that information. Yes, retailers will often have forewarning of announcements, but that's not the only reason they'd promote an unannounced game. Right now, Amazon UK has a landing page for Grand Theft Auto 5 PC. It quietly exists on their website, collecting the email addresses of potential customers and soaking up lovely SEO points. The need to be in the best position if/when a PC version is announced skews how much we can extrapolate from their actions.



Immoral Code

Here's the most recent piece of 'evidence'. A config file has appeared that, allegedly, was taken from a pirated copy of GTA 5's Xbox 360 version. The XML code makes reference to both PC and Orbis, the PS4's operating system. The full file is up on PasteBin, but here are the relevant PC mentions:

Image source: DualShockers

Config code found within the game? On the surface it seems like a solid lead, but it assumes that every line of every file is created from scratch. It seems more likely that this is a standard template, which would of course contain references to a PC build - along with any other platforms Rockstar might be internally experimenting on. Moreover, the presence of a PC build isn't in and of itself confirmation of a PC release. It's just an indicator that, as with most games, PCs were used as part of the game's development.

That's not to say this discovery is completely without merit. But, as above, there are too many possible caveats for it to be a firm indicator of Rockstar's release strategy.



Unreliable Informant

Last month, Chris Evans, the senior director of investor relations at Nvidia, said the following during an earnings call:

"The PC market is evolving. As entry level laptops face pressure from tablets. Yet sales of specialty PCs like gaming systems and work stations continue to grow. The disparity reflects how consumers use these different classes of PCs. Many consumers look for PC as a general purpose device they can use for browsing, email, social media video. But much of this can be better served by a tablet. In contrast, gamers are preparing their systems for a strong roster of games coming this fall, including blockbuster franchises, such as Call of Duty: Ghosts, Grand Theft Auto V and Assassin’s Creed IV."

The need to prepare driver updates and tailor hardware profiles means that GPU manufacturers like Nvidia can forge strong relationships with developers. If GTA 5 is heading to PC, they'd likely know about it. And here we have a senior director directly linking the game's Autumn release with the need to 'prepare systems'. It seemed like solid intel.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. Nvidia's senior PR manager Bryan Del Rizzo later released a statement, clarifying what Evans said:

“Please note, during our Thursday’s earnings call, our investor relations team provided a list of important games that gamers are looking forward to on PC this fall, and included Grand Theft Auto V on that list. This statement was made with the intent of expressing enthusiasm for the games industry in general, and was not intended to represent specific knowledge possessed by NVIDIA. NVIDIA does not have information on any possible PC version release of Grand Theft Auto or its availability. We deeply regret the error.”

Even if you're the suspicious type, and assume the latter statement was the company covering its tracks, the timetable doesn't make sense. It's too close to today's console release, and too soon for the Rockstar marketing train to leave its station. At best, we can anticipate an announcement before the end of the year. But if the game is coming, it'll be 2014 at the earliest.

On the next page: promising leads, historical trends, and direct information from Rockstar. Why GTA 5 is almost certainly coming to PC.




One Last Job

Back in July, Rockstar Leeds advertised for a new Graphic Programmer. The job description should be of particular interest:

"Rockstar Leeds are currently looking for a talented graphics programmer to help bring our latest titles to the PC platform. Working together with the other Rockstar studios, you will be responsible for maintaining the studio’s uncompromising quality bar, delivering the highest quality PC experience possible."

The phrase "help bring our latest titles to the PC platform" sounds pretty unambiguous. While there's an outside chance it refers to new games from existing series, Rockstar Leeds have form in taking on porting duties on older games. Their last project was was the PC version of LA Noire.

GTA 4, incidentally, was ported by Rockstar Toronto, who also collaborated with Rockstar Vancouver on Max Payne 3 before the two studios were merged. If this new plus-sized Toronto has shifted towards development of new games, Leeds would be the natural choice for heading up the company's PC porting duties. What "latest title" will they be working on? GTA 5 seems the only sensible choice.



Strength in Numbers

While we're making assumptions about Rockstar's internal workings, let's talk about its history. One of the strongest indicators of a post-console PC version is that the GTA series keeps doing them. As T.J. methodically charted, the gap between the launch console and PC release has stayed relatively stable, hovering at just over the 6 month mark. The gap between announcements is less consistent: in fact, it's growing. GTA is trending towards keeping PC - and potentially next-gen console owners - in the dark for longer. It's almost as if delaying the reveal of a more powerful version is a good way of maximising profits across multiple platforms... is what a cynic might say.

There's a chance you spent the entirety of that last paragraph shouting "RED DEAD REDEMPTION" at the screen. Fair enough, the outstanding recreation of the last days of the wild west is unusual among Rockstar titles of similar scope and scale in that it never came to PC. It is, however, the exception rather than the rule. Both LA Noire and Max Payne 3 found their way to us, proving that despite RDR's absence, there's no institutional shift away from the platform within Rockstar.

During a 2011 community Q&A post on Rockstar's Newswire, they hinted at why that particular game didn't cross over, and also used their subsequent PC ports as evidence that "we can finally put to rest any misconceptions that we’ve ‘abandoned the PC platform'." The post went on to state:

"We do know that, yes, there is just one title absent from our PC release plans – that game of course being Red Dead Redemption, and of course we’re well aware that some fans have been asking for it. All we can say is that whenever it is viable (technically, developmentally and business-wise) for us to release a game for PC (or any other particular platform) – we will and we usually do; unfortunately, that is just not the case 100% of the time for all platforms."

Layers of corporate obfuscation aside, it suggests that RDR was held back because of a specific issue with the Rockstar San Diego game. Whether it was technical, developmental, or business-wise-al, none of those factors are likely to apply to the publisher's most successful series from their flagship development team.



Lasting Infamy

While I'm quoting Rockstar, let's take a look at an understated line from CVG's giant interview with Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies on the subject of GTA Online. When asked if there was a definitive end to the game's online portion, he said, "probably not. Because we want it to last forever."

"We'll stop when we've simulated life - and then that will be the end! No, people have to keep going. There should never be an, "Oh, I've reached the end." We've got to have goals, and we've got to have stepping stones, but there should never really be an end."



GTA Online is a persistent, updating, 16-player version of GTA 5. Given that, and Rockstar's stated commitment to make it a lasting experience, why would you restrict it to the tail-end of a console's life-cycle? It seems natural that Rockstar are going to want it to live on in a more stable, long-term environment. Yes, that could apply to next-gen consoles, too. But it's a description that fits the PC like a glove.

Later on in the interview, Benzies states, "we'll get the current gen version out first and see what happens in the future." Which, if nothing else, proves that you don't get to be the president of a major developer without being able to coyly dodge questions about an unannounced release.

There's the evidence, all that remains is how you interpret it. What do you think of GTA 5's PC release chances?

Y'know what's cool about PC gaming? Besides the absurd graphics and the pinpoint accuracy afforded to us by our peripherals and, well, everything? It's the fact that even games never intended for PC eventually make their way to us anyway. That's what's happened with the formerly PlayStation-only Vice City Stories, which is today playable by PC folks thanks to a new mod, currently in beta testing.

The mod, codenamed "Blue Hesper," aims to transplant the entire game into a PC install of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They're not quite there yet, but a lot of engine tweaks have been made, and most of the first chapter is available for completion.

The 768 MB of nostalgia-stirrer's now downloadable at ModDB. All you'll need is a clean, modless install of San Andreas on your system. Let us know if you give this a try—I'd like to know how my boy Vic Vance is doing.

An emerging theme in the games industry is developers engaging the idea that games may be disproportionately violent or too derivative. Deus Ex creator Warren Spector spoke out about the latter recently, launching off the reveal trailer for the new Wolfenstein: A New Order. Joining the conversation now is Jeremy Pope, a veteran of Rockstar Games and former production manager for Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and Max Payne. In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Pope explains why he will never work on a violent game again.
“I would always kind of defend the games we were making and I was pretty proud of being involved,” he said, “but then when I would visit my grandmother in highly religious Alabama and have to explain what I do for a living, I didn't feel so great about explaining to them that I was a part of 'that game' they've been hearing about."
Pope says his decision to avoid violent games is about working on projects he can "feel a bit better about," but doesn't disparage Rockstar's accomplishments.
"I definitely want to make a point of saying that I actually love Rockstar's games," he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Pope discusses the perception of games in the mainstream news media and how gaming is so often used as a convenient scapegoat for political topics like gun violence.
“We had the same problem 10 years ago and it still persists today,” Pope says about the NRA blaming games for high-profile gun violence. “We don't really have a great ambassador, if you will… And then you see the NRA has one guy who goes up on a podium and gives a talk, and whether you agree with it or not there is a clear single voice and something to react to.”
Check out the full interview here.

After the release of the new GTA 5 trailer, we became conspicuously aware, once again, of the absent PC release date for Rockstar's next open world fiasco. So we reached our hands into the mists of Grand Theft Autos past, crunched some numbers, and came up with the best possible estimate of when the game will be announced and released for the PC.

If we look at all games in the Grand Theft Auto series since Vice City, we can see that it's about 462 days, on average, between the announcement of the game and the announcement (not release) of the PC version. It's a slightly more reasonable 212 days between the first console release and the PC release. You can see a game-by-game breakdown in this handy chart:



If we take the average time between console and PC announcement and add it to GTA 5's original announcement date of October 13, 2011, that should have put the PC release date announcement around January 17, 2013. No such luck. Assuming they're going to make us wait just as stupidly long as they did for GTA 4 (821 days from the first E3 tease, for the record), we'll be hearing about a PC release date around January 11, 2014. Every main series entry since Vice City has failed to announce a PC ship date until after the first console version shipped.

In terms of when we might actually be able to play it, the gap between console and PC release has been consistent(ly frustrating) at around 212 days, without the kind of crazy deviation we see in the release date announcement window. 212 days after the currently listed ship date for GTA 5 on the consoles would be April 17, 2014. If the gap is as long as it was for San Andreas, we would have it by April 30 instead.

On the off chance that Rockstar makes us wait as long for a PC announcement as they did on GTA 4, and as long between PC announcement and PC release as they did on San Andreas, we've been shoved back to July 4, 2014. Not to say that they couldn't try to annoy us further by breaking their own records, but that's our official prediction for the most distant date to reasonably expect the game on PC.

There you have it: by our highly scientific reckoning, you'll probably be loading up GTA 5 just in time for the 238th anniversary of America's independence. As to when we may be free from the tyranny of waiting months for our Grand Theft Auto ports (we still haven't forgotten about Red Dead Redemption, by the way), we don't have enough data to speculate. At least we always get the best version. We're willing to wait for the ability to mod in stuff like this.

The creator of the Iron Man mod for Grand Theft Auto IV returns with a sequel: the Iron Man IV mod. It adds several different incarnations of Iron Man's suits and complements your hand and chest repulsors with new weapons like micro-missiles, shoulder darts, and a minigun. Once again, you can streak through the skies over Liberty City as Iron man, battling cops and choppers, causing millions of dollars in property damage, and terrifying citizens. And who wouldn't want to do that?

Well, Iron Man, for one. He's a hero. He'd want to protect Liberty City, not destroy it. And that's how I decided to play the mod: as a crime-fighter.

Why does Batman take the time to climb up here? You can't see ANYTHING.

I begin my new job as protector of Liberty City in typical superhero fashion: by perching atop a tall building and gazing down with steely determination. I will defend this city from crime! I vow with determined steeliness. Of course, I can't actually see any crime from up here, so I fly down to street level, hoping to pull off a trademark Iron Man landing: one knee down, head bowed, palm flat on the street of the city I love, nearby citizens awed at the sight of their new champion.

Hello, ladies! Hope I'm not interrupNGHHUH

That doesn't quite work out. At least the women I land next to don't notice my faceplant, and continue their conversation about urinary tract infections. I fly back up and try again, this time sticking the landing but still not drawing so much as a curious look. That's fine! I need to prove myself to them by fighting crime. After all, who is going to be impressed by a miraculously flying metal superhero unless he's established himself as a crime fighter?

I fly around a bit, looking for crime. It's tricky. If I fly too high, I can't really see if there's any crime going on, and if I fly too low, I dong my head into lampposts and knock them into the street, causing traffic accidents and panic. I can walk, but then I just feel like some random Iron Man cosplayer who got lost on the way to the convention center. I eventually manage to find a way to hover slowly through the city at a height of about six feet. Beware, crime!

Stand back. I'm reaching speeds of nearly eight miles per hour.

Crime is definitely be-waring, because I'm still not seeing any of it. Eventually, I spot two men standing on the street, having a discussion. Are they plotting something? Something like a CRIME? I swoop in and land awesomely, but sort of on top of them, sending them sprawling. One rolls around on the ground in pain, the other sails face-first into a building, smearing it with his blood, then gets up and flees in terror. I feel confident they won't plan a crime together again anytime soon if that's what they were maybe doing!

The best time to stop crime: before it starts.

After a full day of slowly hovering around the city, drifting into people with my feet, and occasionally interrupting suspicious conversations, I head back to a safehouse to rest. Though I'm hit by a car at one point, I was sort of jaywalking, so I don't take any further action against the driver. This time. You're just lucky I was committing a crime when you committed your crime.

Ohhhh, there go my premiums.

The next day, I leave the downtown area and head to the projects, hoping to find a whole bunch of crime. It's the projects, after all. I've seen The Wire. Shortly after I land, I witness a taxi cut a corner and knock over a pedestrian. The pedestrian seems unhurt: he gets up and chases the cab angrily, but the cab doesn't stop. Hit and run! That's a CRIME! Now, to FIGHT IT!

The best way to hail a cab: with BLASTY PALMS

I blast the taxi with my repulsor ray, figuring the cab will stop, allowing me to then punch the driver in the face. Only then will justice be served. The cab bursts into flames and two people jump out, screaming, and run off together. Whoops! Didn't even consider there might be a passenger in the taxi, and now I'm not sure which is which and who to justice-punch. I decide instead to just completely destroy the cab with another blast. That will be a lesson to whoever the driver is. A lesson... ABOUT CRIME.

Just as I'm blasting the cab, an SUV drives in front of me, taking most of the blast. It too catches fire. Then the cab explodes. Then the SUV explodes. There may have been some other cars nearby. They explode. The police show up, presumably to thank me, but I fly off. I'm not in this for gratitude, fellas! I'm just here to protect the city. As the boys in blue fire their guns excitedly into the air (to show their support, I'm sure) I fly off to find more crime.

I think I made my point.

I'm on the waterfront, eying everyone suspiciously while they completely ignore the shiny metallic man slowly hovering around with flames shooting out of his boots. I notice a man in a suit has dropped a shopping bag, possibly because someone bumped into him, possibly a shiny metallic man who can't control his hovering very well.

It's not even a recyclable bag. This guy is just asking for it.

He apologizes to me, which is nice, but then he walks off, leaving the bag on the ground. That's littering. That's a crime. Now, how to fight it? Missiles? I'm thinking missiles. I blast the man, as well as someone standing near him (an accomplice!) and they careen off into the air. They won't be littering again, unless you count their charred bodies falling in crispy chunks all over the city (I don't count that). As the police arrive-- too late to help, AGAIN!-- I fly off, once again modestly refusing their thanks, even as some of their thanks ricochets off my legs and back.

This is how a HERO takes out the trash.

I head to the docks. Gotta be some crime at the docks, right? I've seen The Wire. There, I spot some workers, but they're not working. This might be one of those things the mafia does, where they give jobs to mob goons, but the goons don't have to do any work and yet still draw a paycheck. I've seen The Sopranos. I target two of the "workers" and fire darts into their heads. As they die, they drop giant stacks of manicured, banded bills. Yup. Mafia goons. Normal citizens wouldn't be carrying giant stacks of cash like that. Looks like I made the right call by shooting them in the brain with murder-darts. I dart a couple other people who also happen to be standing around, just to be safe. Safe from CRIME. Also, shooting darts into people is hilarious. Their hats fly off and they die!

Break time is over! Would have been clever to say. Didn't think of it until now.

The next day, I fly over to the airport to give some airline passengers a thrill as I fly by the windows of their plane, superhero style, only I crash into the plane and the cops show up with helicopters and start shooting at me. Looks like I've gone from hero to anti-hero. I get it. The cops need someone to blame, someone to take the fall. I've seen The Dark Knight. Fine. I will shoulder that burden. Because I can take it.

I was just waving and my hand went off.

A few minutes later, someone honks at me as I cross a street. That's probably a crime, right? At the very least, it's rude. After I blow up the car, the police arrive again. Rather than fly off, I decide to go ahead and take them on. This is what happens with heroes. Sometimes, they fight each other. It happens in the comics all the time and the heroes have a spectacular battle with each other. It gives them a chance to flex their muscles, and no one really gets hurt. This is a little different because I kill, like, fourteen cops. Choppers arrive and I start shooting them out of the air while flying, which is awesome. Then some hovering robot drones added by the mod come flying over, and they blast me out of the sky. Then I'm dead.

Hopefully, Ben Kingsley was in that chopper.

I won't lie, this mod is a bit buggy. Sometimes my ears and hair show through the sides of the helmet, and sometimes the powers stop working, but re-equipping the armor seems to fix that. The mod is also a lot of fun, even if you decide to just blow things up instead of being a responsible hero like me.

Installation: I won't lie, the installation is not a breeze. You have to download and install OpenIV and then download the mod and do a lot of file-backups and pull things from folders and drop them in other folders and edit files and it sort of takes a while. It's well worth it, though, and the Read Me included with the mod download is detailed and easy to follow.

Video game music is occasionally labeled as "just a bunch of bleep and bloops." But if there's a company that's demonstrated how well music and games gel together, it's Rockstar. Bully, Grand Theft Auto, L.A. Noire, and Red Dead Redemption all exemplify the company's discerning musical taste—a group founded by the sons of the owner of a famous British jazz club, coincidentally.

It's with that in mind, the Rockstar has taken the tunes from Grand Theft Auto's many in-game radio stations and slapped them onto Spotify and iTunes. Most of the music from GTA IV, San Andreas, Vice City, GTA III, Liberty and Vice City Stories, and Chinatown Wars has been collected neatly there, so go give it a listen if you're feeling a bit nostalgic, or if you just want some background jams for a thrilling police chase through the streets of your favorite American City.

Electro-Choc carries my highest recommendation, probably because I like listening to dance music when I type. It makes my fingers feel like they're tearing it up at a club, but saying that out loud makes me think I should be getting out more.

My pathetic social life aside, I'm hoping these stations get popular enough to add the soundtracks from Bully and L.A. Noire. I've been looking for some good tracks for my skateboarding adventures and drug ring busts.

From the "people are still talking about this?" files today comes an interview by The Guardian with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser that touched upon Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' Hot Coffee scandal. The ensuing media scrutiny and negative pressure wound up "draining and upsetting" company members facing "a tough time" keeping relationships with the press civil.

"The massive social decay that we were supposed to induce hasn't happened," Houser said. "So, in that regard, a lot of those debates that used to go on, they're not such a big deal now. We never felt that we were being attacked for the content, we were being attacked for the medium, which felt a little unfair. If all of this stuff had been put into a book or a movie, people wouldn't have blinked an eye. And there are far bigger issues to worry about in society than this."

Hackers rooting among San Andreas' files unearthed an abandoned yet mostly intact minigame where main character CJ would have sex with his girlfriend at the prompting of certain...er, "movement" commands. The resulting outcry involved the Federal Trade Commission investigating Houser and the rest of Rockstar's staff. The ordeal was recently documented in detail in a book by David Kushner titled Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto. Kushner is also the author of the excellent Masters of Doom.

While Rockstar may simply be biding its time until the appropriate moment to unleash its fomented armageddon of entropy, its current efforts on Grand Theft Auto V look extremely promising, though a PC version lingers in uncomfortable "consideration" territory for now.