Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Using the wonders of the personal computer, the team at GTAVTV went out and recreated the Grand Theft Auto V trailer, shot-for-shot, only instead of being set in Los Santos it's in GTAIV's Liberty City.


You can catch the original below for comparison's sake.



GTA 5 Trailer Remade in Liberty City [GTAVTV, via VG247]



You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

An Example of Sexual Harassment? Grand Theft AutoSexual harassment is awful. Many people—often politicians, it seems—say things or create situations that make others uncomfortable. So Bolt insurance agency created a chart explaining "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace".


Specific examples include: "Constant and repeated requests for a date or unwanted flirting", "Unwanted jokes, gestures, comments and repartee", and "Displaying sexually suggestive objects, pictures or posters in the workplace" as well as "Playing sexual suggestive movies, music, games or video clips in the workplace".


In that last example, Grand Theft Auto IV's iconic art is pictured on a laptop. Look for Bolt's follow-up chart, "Using Intellectual Property without Permission".


Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Infographic [Bolt via BusinessInsider Thanks, Anthony!]



You can contact Brian Ashcraft, the author of this post, at bashcraft@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Grand Theft Auto V is official. And while it's not set in Liberty City, what better way to honor the game's announcement than by pounding the iconic digital city's virtual pavement.


YouTube user GermanScientistTV and pal Scotty decided to tour Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City on foot. The ensuing result (and footage) is hypnotic, amazing, and over six minutes long.


Thanks, Viktor for the tip!



You can contact Brian Ashcraft, the author of this post, at bashcraft@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Seagulls, Cool Jazz, and Megadeth: 5 Favorite Tunes From Grand Theft AutoWith Rockstar about to announce the release of Grand Theft Auto V, we're all abuzz theorizing, postulating, and prognosticating about things that the game will or won't have. Totilo's looked at what systems the game might be on, Crecente guessed about possible settings. And then, Stephen got a tip that the game will indeed be set in L.A. and may even feature multiple protagonists.


I wanted to take a second to look back at the thing that has always defined GTA for me: The sweet, sweet music.


When we talk about great video game soundtracks, we're often talking about video game original scores—it's a category that GTA games don't quite sit comfortably in. But it must be said that taken as a whole, GTAoffers some of the most pleasurable musical experiences in gaming. Hell, these guys were cool enough to score a trailer with music by Philip Glass, so it's not surprising that their musical choices are always top-notch.


The way the game's soundtrack melds with the game world is something special—it's basically diegetic, in that the only music that plays is the music on the radio in vehicles. Cutscenes, too, are accompanied by music from radios in the background playing tunes from the various game's radio stations. It's remarkably organic, and as a result, a frantic car chase might be scored by Miles Davis or Guns 'n Roses… or both, if you're a channel surfer.


Given Grand Theft Auto IV's penchant for off-the-beaten-path music, I'm very much looking forward to hearing more about the radio stations, DJs, and playlists of GTA V.


In the meantime, I though I'd put together five of my favorite tracks from Grand Theft Auto games past. This list sure as hell isn't definitive—it's just five tunes that I love, and that I will always associate with my time playing Rockstar's games. Click on, and rock out.



You can contact Kirk Hamilton, the author of this post, at kirk@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.


Fascination - David Bowie


I think it's a sax thing, but few songs conjure GTA IV for me like David Bowie's "Fascination." It always seems to come on in the evening, slinky wah-wah sax (David Sanborn, ladies and gentlemen) accompanying me as I drive across the Broker bridge into Algonquin. Bonus points to Rockstar for having Liberty Rock Radio come on every time a player hops into a helicopter. Clearly Liberty City's pilots know what they're doing.



Miles Davis - Move


I was so flippin stoked that GTA IV had a jazz station… and not just some weird approximation of 1940's b-sides or Squirrel Nut Zippers tunes, but a damned well put-together, legit playlist that focused mostly on hard-bop from the 1950's. Impossible for me to choose a favorite among them (I mean, Sonny Rollins on "St. Thomas" is one of my favorite tenor solos of all time, as of course is Trane on "Giant Steps"), but whenever Miles Davis's "Move" (from his classic "Birth of the Cool" record) comes on, I'm impressed that a tune this hip is featured in a video game. Listen for Lee Konitz's breezy alto sax solo—dude biffs the time in his first phrase. Heh.



Megadeth - Peace Sells


I don't listen to enough metal. It's a thing, like… there's just not enough time to amass the knowledge of some of my metal-head friends, so I wind up missing out on a lot of good stuff. Fortunately, Grand Theft Auto games are super good at metal. GTA IV's DLC chapter The Lost and The Damned put together a killer mix of hardcore and metal, but this Megadeth track from Vice City remains probably my favorite guitar chugger of them all. This tune just screams "blow off your next objective and go start running people over on the beach!"



Heart - Barracuda - KDST in San Andreas


I loved how eclectic San Andreas's soundtrack was—any game that features setting-appropriate gangster rap one minute, followed by a country music backwoods dirtbike race the next is cool by me. But I think that Heart's "Barracuda" is (maybe?) my favorite song from the entire game. The tune is such a "driving song," not in that it has a driving beat, but in that it's perfect for driving. The chuga-chuga guitar buildup, the sinister vibe, and of course, the fact that it's by Heart, and therefore is inarguably, objectively awesome.



Flock of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away)


Well, this one pretty much had to be in here, didn't it? Not for nothing: not only was it featured in the famous trailer for Vice City, "I Ran So Far" just about perfectly captures the neon-lit, pastel glitz of Vice City, which still stands as arguably the most iconic Grand Theft Auto of them all. (Note: This song is not to be confused with Loney Island's excellent tribute to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "Iran so Far." Hopping into a speedboat and riding into the sunset while Flock of Seagulls plays will always be a peak Grand Theft Auto moment.


Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Zumba Fitness, Grand Theft Auto IV, and CyberBike are three of the mismatched titles on sale today during Amazon's latest video game Gold Box extravaganza. Don't miss out!


Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Impressive Grand Theft Auto IV mods are nothing new, but this one—which turns the fictional Liberty City into a very real, very beautiful New York City—is really impressive.


OK, so here's what it does: First up, it replaces advertising and store signs with ones you'd actually find in the Big Apple. But it also greatly improves the game's visuals in just about every respect.


The mod's creator, Gionight, says that it's "just a beast visually" and yet doesn't "eat much resources at the same time".


If you've got GTAIV on PC, you can download it from the link below.


Gionights's Best ENB Final [GTA-MODS, via Edge]



You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

You've Been Playing GTA IV WrongWhen Grand Theft Auto IV came out, I was swept away. The scope, depth, and scale of the game were almost too much to take in. It seemed like a game in which anything was possible, like a parallel reality, re-created.


Three years, two expansions, and countless hours of vehicular manslaughter have provided some much-needed perspective. These days criticisms abound, from sluggish controls and a finicky camera to inconsistent characterization and bloated plotting. But of all of Grand Theft Auto (and indeed, Red Dead Redemption)'s issues, one is perhaps the most overlooked: The crummy, distracting mini-map.


That icon-strewn circle in the lower-left corner of the screen is a Rockstar perennial; one could even call it a defining feature of their games. In the real world, have you ever walked down an unfamiliar street while consulting your phone's GPS? You're wandering along, intently following the progress of the little blue arrow on the screen, until you trip over a curb and finally look around, at long last getting a sense of where you are actually standing. Hey, there's a world out here!


You've Been Playing GTA IV WrongReturning to GTA IV after a few months away, I realized that more often than not, my eyes were all but glued to that circle in the corner of the screen. I'd be driving through Broker and would find myself following the colored lines on the mini-map so carefully that I wasn't even looking where I was going. A high-speed chase would be difficult not only because of flying pedestrians and hairpin turns, but also because of the intense eyeball-acrobatics required to quickly move between the mini-map to the road.


The mini-map's effect on combat is even more pronounced. Enemies turn up as large red dots, and what would have been a tense standoff becomes more of an exercise in dot-removal whack-a-mole. How many enemies are left? Hmm, why not just check my map! Oh, there are three! Blam. Blam. Two down! Hmm, I see the last guy must be hiding in that airplane hangar! Better go kill him. Blam.


Don't get me wrong—I had plenty of fun with GTA IV's cover-based combat. But imagine if the (vastly superior, I would argue) combat in shooters like Gears of War or Far Cry 2 had been aided by a mini-map that helpfully pinpointed every enemy's location. The tense thrill of combat would be neutered, and the game would suffer hugely as a result.


My eyes were open, my ears perked. A GTA IV shootout had me genuinely engaged for the first time in ages.

As an experiment, I tried loading up GTA IV and turning off the HUD and mini-map completely. I found that it made the game significantly more immersive, engaging, difficult, and fun. It didn't quite feel "optimal," and at times the shift was pretty extreme, but all the same I recommend that fans of GTA IV give it a shot.


The first thing I noticed was that without the map, I was forced to learn my way around Liberty City. But what I also found was that doing so wasn't actually that hard! Whenever I'd get in a car to head to a new destination, I'd check the map in the pause menu. "Hmm, okay, I have to get to the upper west-side of Algonquin, near the Tw@." (Side note: Yes, these are sorts of sentences this game encourages us to speak aloud.) Once I knew my destination, I drove as I would in a real city—following familiar routes in the general direction of my goal.


Liberty City is laid out with such artfulness that it's easy to discern one's location simply by looking around. There's always a landmark, bridge, or body of water visible, and after spending an hour or so getting my bearings in each new neighborhood, I found that I could very easily get around. And while doing so, I was able to get my eyes up and really take in the game's strongest feature: its brilliant setting.


Another thing I noticed was that the talking GPS included in many of GTA IV's higher-end cars actually became useful. With the mini-map turned on, that computer-y "At the next intersection, turn right" notification always felt woefully behind-the-times and almost entirely useless. But with the mini-map off, I actually found the GPS system to be a huge help and eventually came to rely on it to get me where I was going. I found myself hunting down cars that I knew would have a GPS, which added an enjoyable layer to GTA IV's carjackings. Decisions, decisions…


L.A. Noire actually implemented a similar mechanic into its partner system; it was possible to have my partner call out the turns I needed to make, freeing me up to take in the sights and sounds of the game's meticulously re-created Los Angeles. Whether that was Rockstar or Team Bondi's influence, it's a promising development.


You've Been Playing GTA IV WrongMore striking was how much more exciting combat became: wildly intense, visceral, and a bit terrifying. With no map and no HUD, the game's first large-scale shootout in Vlad's bar was as intense as the culminating sequence of a big-budget crime film. Walking into Comrade's, I felt as wired as Michael Corleone sitting down at the restaurant table on that fateful night in The Godfather. When Niko drew down, gunfire erupted with great chaos and bloodshed. In the immediate aftermath, Niko crouched behind a table as I wondered if the coast was clear. Was the armed bartender still crouching back there, waiting? Had I taken him out, or only clipped him?


My eyes were open, my ears perked. A GTA IV shootout had me genuinely engaged for the first time in ages. Suddenly, the goon popped up from behind the bar and let off a few rounds, and with a roar, Niko ripped a few shotgun blasts into his chest, dissolving a section of the bar into a cloud of blood-stained, broken glass. The coast looked clear, but I could hear another thug waiting for me outside the door. Shotgun at the ready, I slowly made my way to the door, pulse racing, bracing for what was on the other side.


Had I played through that section with the mini-map turned on, the entire thing would have been a mechanical exercise: checking the screen, seeing where the enemies are, fearlessly clearing them out one at a time. Turning off the map and HUD evoked nothing so much as the flawed yet underrated Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days. Despite a raft of frustrating design decisions and some spectacularly grating lead characters, that game recreated the visceral, chaotic thrill of urban combat in a way I'd previously never encountered.


I'll admit that wiping out all of GTA IV's on-screen prompts is a bit extreme. It makes the game much more difficult, particularly in later missions—as it turns out, clearing an entire apartment complex of drug dealers and then escaping a three-star wanted level is pretty difficult without any mini-map advantages! The approach also took some discipline—I'd been hard-wired to expect to play a GTA game a certain way, and it took a few hours to break free of that conditioning.


Create an entirely different kind of Liberty City Experience. Pause the game. In the Display menu, set the Subtitles, Radar, and HUD to "Off." In the Controls menu, set Auto-Aiming to "Off." Back in the game, press the back/select button until the camera is zoomed all the way up to Niko's shoulder. Continue your adventures in Liberty City distraction-free. (it's particularly cool to start a brand-new game with this approach.)


Since GTA IV's launch in 2008, many games have experimented with eliminating HUD-clutter, often with successful results. One of Dead Space's most interesting design decisions was the elimination of the HUD, a trick that made the game much more immersive and terrifying than the comparatively cluttered Resident Evil 5. And Rockstar's own Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars showed that it was possible to overlay a GPS route directly into the game without interfering with a player's view, finally eliminating the need to go back and forth from the mini-map to the game screen. Something similar could certainly work in a 3D Grand Theft Auto.


As Rockstar works on Grand Theft Auto V, they would do well to further re-tool their onscreen interface. The best solution would involve a high degree of customizability; perhaps a thumbstick that can bring up the mini-map for only a moment, or the option to turn off enemy locations on the map. With a more organic, less-intrusive system in place, GTA V's open world (rumored to be Los Santos) will become far more immersive. And perhaps more vitally, combat will be much closer to the third-person cover-shooters that GTA IV is emulating.


Other changes would be necessary as well, starting with an overhaul of GTA IV's sluggish, much-derided on-foot controls. Given the sharp gameplay improvements that Rockstar San Diego's Red Dead Redemption showed over GTA IV, it seems safe to say that Rockstar North will be making further refinements to their next mega-release.


But it'll be a little while before GTA V comes out. In the meantime, try firing up Niko's big adventure, turning off the mini-map, and losing yourself in Liberty City all over again.



You can contact Kirk Hamilton, the author of this post, at kirk@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Superman Returns (to Liberty City)Once again showcasing the fact the world of modding PC games is a weird and wonderful place, witness these videos of Superman buzzing around the skies of Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City.


You'll need a long laundry list of mods and files to get this up and running, but as the vids below show, combining super-powers and the game's physics engine is worth the trouble.


For the full instructions on everything you need to send the Man of Steel on a Superman III-esque rampage, hit the link below.


Fly through Liberty City using this incredible GTA 4 Superman mod [PC Gamer]





You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

Turning Screenshots Into PhotographsBrazilian artist Leonardo Sang has started up a project called VRP, or "Virtual Reality Photography". The aim is to use "video games as platforms for everyday photography".


Using Grand Theft Auto IV as his foundation, Sang has taken a number of screenshots from the game and composed them so they look more like actual photographs.


Why? He wants to show that modern games possess the "full visual capacity and complexity to create a proper photographic ambient", as well as "show how photography can be applied in many ways."


The gallery above shows the finished "photographs". You can see the original screenshots at the link below.


Virtual Reality Photography [Leonardo Sang]


Turning Screenshots Into Photographs
Turning Screenshots Into Photographs
Turning Screenshots Into Photographs
Turning Screenshots Into Photographs


Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

We've seen a teaser of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City imported into Grand Theft Auto IV's visual and physics engine, RAGE. Another mod team is hard at work on the same conversion for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.


At work since December, the team hopes to release a public beta this fall. Above is about 20 minutes of footage from what they've built so far, beginning at the Bone County Airport and plane graveyard, flying over San Fierro and the Gant Bridge, touring Las Venturas at night, plunging from atop Mount Chiliad, and much more.


Vehicle conversions and many other details still need work, but if you are intimately familiar with the San Andreas map, this is a mesmerizing trip down memory lane.


The mod's official site is here, and you can read much more about its work in progress, with more videos and screenshots in this thread on GTA Forums (begins at the most recent post.)


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