There's some debate as to whether the 1980s-set, neon-flecked entry in Rockstar's crime series is the best one. But it's hard to debate that the visuals for the upcoming mobile release look very impressive.
A seedy underground of Russian criminals has gotten so brazen it's taken to posting advertisements offering the services of its expert "bank robbers".
These crims, who mostly employ "cyberheists and tax fraud" to lift money from US banks, even go into detail about the kind of things they can offer prospective employers, as listed on the site of security expert Brian Krebs:
We provide convenient service to our partners:
Unique administrative interface – fast response
We will react momentarily to any new task
Adapt every action of a money mule to client's requirements
Timely payments via WebMoney/Liberty Reserve/Western Union, cash conversion with WU/MG
Cashout of tax return, D + P (dump & PIN, cashout of debit cards stolen via skimming)
Receive over mail or expensive merchandise pick up in a store
Mules are available for other interesting transactions
We work only by reference.
Amazing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the background and field these guys are "working" in (and I guess the fact Eastern European crooks gotta stick together?), what do they use as the enormous illustration on the ad? Some Grand Theft Auto IV fan art, of course, by none other than internet-famous Rockstar fan artist Patrick Brown.
Online Service Offers Bank Robbers for Hire [Krebs on Security, via Boing Boing]
The neon-soaked streets of Vice City have never looked as good as they do in next week's 10th Anniversary Edition for iOS and Android. The fingers are still fused together, but the bodies attached to them are better than ever.
When I first watched this trailer I was a little shocked. This is not how I remembered Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The Vice City I played on the PlayStation 2 was perfect. The characters were shockingly life-like; the animations smooth and silky.
Then I checked out the original trailer.
Wow. It's amazing how fond memories color one's recollections, isn't it? I take this as proof that graphics don't matter as long as you're having a good time.
And we'll be having a damn good time when the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 10th Anniversary Edition hits iTunes and Google Play on December 6.
We saw the first Grand Theft Auto V trailer recreated in the original San Andreas (GTA: San Andreas, to be exact). Then someone set it in Grand Theft Auto IV. So, with the second trailer's release earlier this week, it's natural we get that one rebuilt inside IV as well. This is by YouTube user underage117.
If you want to compare it to the original, it's embedded below. Or watch them side-by-side here (might want to mute the volume on one.) My suspicion is that this won't stop until Grand Theft Auto V is recreated in Grand Theft Auto IV, which will be a hell of a trick considering its map is, at most, about 1/7th the size of what GTA V's is said to be.
GTA V Trailer #2 remade in GTA IV uploaded by underage117 [h/t Adriaan V.]
When Grand Theft Auto: Vice City disappeared from Steam's marketplace a few days ago, some suspected it was because of the game's upcoming release for iOS devices. Instead, what appears to be a lapsed license for one of the songs appearing in the game has forced the takedown, until the matter is resolved.
Gaming Blend reports that the song in question is appropriately enough, "Wanna Be Startin' Something" by Michael Jackson, to which Sony Music Entertainment owns the rights. Rockstar Games, in a post on Steam's North American forums, didn't specify the song but did say music licensing was involved and "we'll make it available again as soon as possible."
Those who bought Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for PC via Steam may still redownload and install the game.
GTA: Vice City No Longer On Steam Due To RIAA Copyright Claim [Gaming Blend]
Who would go through such a painstaking process to recreate the poses and action of some of Grand Theft Auto V's screenshots, courtesy of Game Informer? RomanBOY123 would, apparently.
He put GTA IV on max settings on his PC (1920x1080 resolution, with HD tree mods) and came up with some amazingly accurate screenshots to match those of GTA V's. Check out one of them above by using the slider the reveal more of each. GTA IV is on the left, while GTA V is on the right.
Be sure to hit the GTA forums to see the rest of them, because they're truly well done.
GTA IV vs GTA V graphics comparision [GTA Forums via Reddit]
This is like some kind of stunt porn from The Fast and the Furious, but it's still impressive to watch a guy get past a cop car and a SWAT roadblock, on a bridge entrance, without a scratch.
I might get the alignment checked after a drive like this, but damn. Fine work. Somewhere an action-movie screenwriter is writing a note to himself.
YouTube video uploaded by ddnewman
The Smoothest Police Evasion in GTA History [Dorkly]
There's this small problem I'm having with Assassin's Creed III. It's nothing to do with the game itself, actually, and everything to do with me. The problem is this:
Assassin's Creed III is turning me into a kind of obnoxious person.
I've developed this running commentary while the game goes on. It has nothing to do with the game's themes, or characters. It's unrelated to the gameplay and more or less completely unconnected to anything meaningful inside the game. It sounds like this:
"I used to work about a block away from there."
"They haven't changed out those cobblestones since 1773 and they're murder on nice shoes."
"That hill is the Back Bay now."
"That river is the Back Bay now. They put the hill in it."
"Lexington Common looks different when it's full of cows."
"A beacon? On Beacon Hill? I didn't see that one coming."
I grew up in and around Boston, making my home well inside of Route 128 from birth until striking out down the coast for New York City shortly before turning 25. While previous Assassin's Creed games have claimed high fidelity in recreating Damascus, Rome, and Istanbul, the basic fact of the matter is that those cities aren't my home. Boston is.
AC3 certainly doesn't represent the Boston or New England of the 21st century, of course. But the late 18th century setting of the game, a scant 230-odd years in the past, retains much more immediacy than the Italian Renaissance or the Crusades. The creatively imagined Boston-that-was is close enough to my Boston-that-is to give me a sense of familiarity both comprehensible and misplaced.
Games occupy this strange place in memory, where we so clearly go places and explore worlds that never actually existed. Experiences like To the Moon explicitly address this dissonance, but it's true of every game. I can remember how to get around a space station as well as I can remember how to get around my local mall, but my body's only been to one of the two. The mall is real; the Citadel is not.
When game spaces represent real-world spaces, the strange sense of memory gets ever-stranger. I moved to Washington, DC the year that Fallout 3 came out. Controversial advertising sprang up through the city's Metro system depicting a post-apocalyptic Capital, but it wasn't until after the game came out that I felt the full weight of investigating my own ruined city.
The general size and scale of the virtual DC is of course a mismatch to the real one—spaces in games were ever thus—but the details are devilishly familiar. In particular, the ruined Metro that provides the Lone Wanderer a route for getting around a city full of toppled buildings, nuclear waste, and super mutants is uncannily, frighteningly similar to the Metro that federal commuters use every day.
At first, while playing Fallout 3, I'd wander through the game comparing its locations to ones I knew from daily life. But after fifty or so hours of Fallout, a funny thing happened. Instead of comparing game-play time to real-world experience, I began to relate the other way around. While waiting to change trains at Metro Center in the mornings, I'd see a bench in the shadows and think, "That's good cover for avoiding the super mutants," or I'd see a door and think, "Didn't I pick that lock yesterday?"
Two Kotaku colleagues not based in New York reflected that the Grand Theft Auto games had inspired similar deja vu in them. They had played the games first, and then visited the city. On visiting, they handily identified and remembered places they hadn't actually been. As someone who lived a block away from Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza the first time she came to the neighborhood around Outlook Park in-game, I could sympathize. On that memorable occasion, I'd blurted aloud, "I can see my house from here!"
I can, of course, visit the real Boston—or New York, or Washington DC—at more or less any time, weather and cost permitting. I don't need to see them in a game in order to explore them to their fullest—and even when I do use a game, it's not the kind I can put in the PS3. Exploring a real space, and digitally navigating an imagined space, are never the same thing.
Sometimes, though... sometimes, when game spaces represent real spaces, the uncanny and the real cross over in a very strange way. Through the games I've played, I remember the cities of my heart as places I've never actually known them to be. The tall ships of Connor's era are long since replaced with ugly motorboats, but the next time I stand on Long Wharf, part of me will remember seeing Haytham sail in on the Providence even so.
It's true that the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has given birth to some truly inspired mods. But not many of them totally re-paint Liberty City in as spectacular fashion as this one does.
Modder Quechus13 re-skins GTA IV's open world with the iconic, neon stripes of the Tron movies and throws in loads of ramps for leaping up into the darkened skies. Sure is pretty, but I wish that Niko was done up in glowing cyberwarrior gear, too.
The news that GTA V will be bigger than Red Dead Redemption, San Andreas, and GTA IV combined is impressive. It makes on think back to the vast expanses of GTA III, the game that pioneered huge open-world experiences. People spent weeks on that game, trying to complete every last side quest and find every package. In the vaults of the Speed Demos Archive, John "Silmaranza" Breedon shows off how he managed to do that feat in 6.5 hours. The whole thing took about a year to do but is impressive nonetheless. Who knows how long GTA V will be? It'll be a challenge for the speedrunners of the world, that's for sure.
