Wouldn't it be awesome to be Batman? I mean, without all of the angst, perhaps. And without the years of training. And the constant threat of bodily harm. And the... hmm. Okay, you know what? Forget being Batman. I just want the cool parts of being Batman. The Batmobile and the suit and the jumping and, most especially, the not getting caught.
One Redditor felt the same way. And after an excursion to see The Dark Knight Rises, he came home feeling that Arkham City wasn't quite doing it for him. He needed something a little more... San Andreas. And lo, the newest Batman-themed mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was born. As the poster explains:
I kinda got obsessed with it over the last week and collected heaps of different Batman mods from all over the internet. It was hard, because most of the projects are dead and the links were all down, but I ended up putting together a pretty fully featured pack, using a mod called "The Dark Knight Begins" as a base.
There are way worse ways to be Batman. And should you happen to have grabbed San Andreas at any point, you can be Batman too. Or you can browse through the full gallery of Batman's annotated adventures in Gotham San Andreas.
The only Batman simulator I'll ever need [Reddit]
Later this week, Grand Theft Auto III is being released on the PlayStation Network. It's going to be hard to get very excited about it when you look how well this little project is coming along.
GTA III Rage is an attempt to recreate Grand Theft Auto III using Grand Theft Auto IV's newer, fancier engine. We first took a look at the fan project back in March, but the team have since released this trailer, which does a pretty good job of showing you it's the same old city, only now it's got helicopters.
Promise, last one. We've had our fun. From R2-D2 (to his Skyrim-themed friend) to the Portal 2 multiplayer robots, we can only take so much of seeing cartoon or comic-relief characters going on a mass-murder rampage in Liberty City. For Sonic the Hedgehog—even if he looks like a little more like a blue Shadow the Hedgehog—we'll make an exception.
Because really, if someone asked if you wanted to see Sonic force-push a dozen Prius taxis three blocks, and then whip out a submachine gun and spray everyone with lead, you'd probably say yes. From Taltigolt, the guy who brought you all the rest.
You talk about love at first sight. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City had me at its opening credit screens: the LOAD "*",8,1, multicolored flashing logo and rudimentary MIDI theme took me straight back to 1986, and all the days I spent parked in front of my Commodore 64. When I showed it to my brother—not a gamer, but a C64 lifer—he flipped out.
YouTube 1980s nostalgia mavens Mijami Hiroz have now flipped the script and animated the game's final mission, "Keep Your Friends Close," in the style of a Commodore 64 de-make. Rockstar Games discovered the video yesterday and favorited it, even.
This slow-paced video, with text-only dialogue, is strangely engrossing—for those who have completed the game, I suppose. So that means there's a big spoiler alert here. But then, nearly 10 years after the game's freaking release, the statute of limitations has to have expired on that by now.
Weird that this brings back 10-year-old memories of 18-year-old memories. It's fun to remember all the same.
Found on YouTube: Vice City on Commodore 64? [Rockstar Newswire]
This montage of Portal 2's ATLAS and P-body raising hell in Liberty City comes to you from the same guy who commissioned the insane death-dealing R2-D2 mod for Grand Theft Auto IV. It is outstanding. Just sit back and enjoy.
Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic has some hard choices to make in his Liberty City adventure. Well, you have to make the choices for him.
But what would Niko have done?
That's what a fan of Rockstar Games' 2008 epic asked the company in a recent Q&A on Rockstar's website. With enough spoiler filibustering out of the way, let's get to what they said.
SPOILER ALERT - "Kill or spare Ivan Bytchkov? Kill or spare Cherise Glover? Kill Playboy X or Dwayne Forge? Kill or spare Clarance Little? Kill Francis McReary or Derrick McReary? Kill or spare Darko Brevic?
Take the deal or get revenge? I know what I'd do but I wanna know what [Niko] would do. You designed him so you know him better than I do." – Mike Sean Clifton
Rockstar: That's a very interesting question. The choices that you make in Grand Theft Auto IV while in the shoes of Niko Bellic are completely down to personal preference. Your conscience and curiosity help Niko to make decisions throughout the game, so we really don't have a straight and true path for how the Niko ‘character' would react in life or death situations – it's all down to the individual who plays him, and our hope was to have a fairly even split in all of the choices, so they seemed like real dilemmas. In terms of outcomes (something Niko would not know at the time) there is a ‘best pathway' which is the sort of thing we reveal when we do a tips post, but that is from a pure game design / mechanics perspective as some choices give you more advantages than others, not from the choices Niko might make at the time. Those are up to you.
I killed Playboy. I can't remember what I did with the other choices. What do I think Niko would have done? Not had a care in the world. That guy was a cold-blooded killer and not much fun at comedy clubs.
Asked & Answered: Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V [Rockstar Games official site]
Then, he seemed to realize that he needed new wheels and carjacked another vehicle. Police apprehended him shortly thereafter—game over. That's what you get for not checking your Wanted Level!
Drunk Man Hijacks Two Cars, Does Not Get Far [Beijing Cream]
Rockstar games slyly released two new screenshots for Grand Theft Auto V today, tucking them within an engaging Q&A posted on the development studio's official site.
You want more?
It's not clear when we're getting more. Here's what Rockstar says [emphasis added by Kotaku]:
"What is going on with GTAV?" – received via Mouthoff
We are very busy working on the game! Everything is going well, but the game is a huge project. We should have more information and some new assets for you soon.
"Why don't you give us more news?" – received via Mouthoff
As we have said before, we have often had long gaps between asset releases on previous games and will continue to do so in the future. We are sorry if you find this frustrating, but please understand, we don't do this because we ‘don't care about our fans' 'don't respect our fans' 'hate GTA fans etc' – precisely the opposite! We do it because we want to make sure we only release 100% correct information, and because we want to keep plenty back for the actual game release so there are still lots of surprises when you play it. The only things we care about are that you enjoy the experience of actually playing the game and that we release accurate information. We just have not been in a position to show more of the game than the trailer and will not be for a while yet. We did, however, manage to sneak a quick screenshot out for you… it's not much, but we thought it was pretty fun.
....We will try and get some more screens for you soon and then another trailer when we are ready.
UPDATE: One more tidbit from Rockstar's Q&A confirms what the game's first trailer implied. We'll be flying planes in GTA V. In response to a question about the omission of planes from GTA IV, Rockstar said: "... we simply could not make an environment big enough for planes to work properly. Fear not, they are returning in what is our biggest open world game to date."
Asked & Answered: Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V [Official Rockstar Games website]
While much of the fashion ideas in the "PonPonPon" or in Kyary (or rather, "Carrie" as she sometimes writes) were muted after going viral, the impact was undeniable. And the fashion blogger, who only a year earlier, was appearing in Grand Theft Auto viral vids, became a star. Her lippy snarl and grotesque cuteness were fresh and different. Whenever attractive people hit it big in Japan, they can count on calls from corporate sponsors. Pamyu Pamyu started appearing in an array of ads—from shampoo to pudding.
And whenever attractive people hit it big, they can pretty much count on something else: porno parodies. Rule 34, in full effect.
Seeming to take a page from the viral launch of "PonPonPon", the adult video starring a Pamyu Pamyu doppelganger also kicked off with a viral campaign. (And no, the film is not titled "OhOhOh".) A few weeks ago, a Twitter account for "Catherine Harajuku" started tweeting work safe photos of the self-styled Catherine Harajuku, who appeared to be a nod to Kyary (or "Carrie") and Harajuku, the area of Tokyo where the popstar earned her famous stripes.
Catherine Harajuku did resemble Kyary Pamyu Pamyu somewhat, and the video claimed to be Catherine's debut—something that led Japanese internet sleuths to ask who the heck this Catherine Harajuku lady was? Some quick googling revealed that she's actually an established adult actress who was posting photos of herself dressed as Kyary this past spring.
Those who don't look at the "PonPonPon" video as a fashion manifesto can easily reduce the singer's look to mere artifice. Still, Kyary's popularity does bring Harajuku fashion to a larger audience, even if said audience doesn't get her look, and videos like this are an unsavory marker of her fame and fashion. And this parody means Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has truly made it. So, um, congrats?
Twitterで話題!きゃさりんはらじゅくって誰? [Naver]
It's a proud part of American mythology that people from all over the world get to come here and pursue their dreams. Navid Khonsari has one of those stories. The Iranian-American used to work at Rockstar Games as cinematic director, where he helped steer the vision on games like The Warriors, Midnight Club II and Bully.
However, for all the best-selling, critically acclaimed games Khonsari worked on, it wasn't until he went back to the Middle East that he really saw the surprising cultural impact of video games.
Khonsari spoke at this week's Games for Change conference about 1979, the real-world political action game that he's making through his iNKstories development studio. That game's set in Iran during the infamous hostage crisis that followed a violent regime change in that country. Part of that game's inspration comes directly from his resume.
During a visit to his homeland six months after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released, Khonsari found himself mobbed by teenagers in the small villager of Gombad after word spread that he'd worked on the PS2 hit.
There's not much retail infrastructure in Iran but that wasn't really an obstacle with regard to getting games. "Iran has no copyright laws," Khonsari explains. "It's all black market. So you can buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto for $1. You can buy anything for $1. And Iranians are hardcore gamers. It's a huge gaming community. What's amazing is that it's not gender-specific. I was talking to girls like 16 years olds who were throwing lines back at me from San Andreas."
It's a given that gamers in Gombad—a small community in Iran's northeast region near the Turkmenistan border—would seize on the opportunity to peer at American culture through the PC version of GTA: SA. But it was the things they enjoyed most that surprised Khonsari.
"What was amazing was they weren't necessarily drawn to what the media and the critics always attacked about GTA games. The sex, nudity or the violence… none of that stuff was a big deal to them," he relates. Instead, it was the more mundane parts of San Andreas that resonated.
"They said it was a great venue for them to just listen to music, which is harder for them to do. And they can't just hop into a car and go places, either," he continues. "So they were like, "I just drive around in my car and listen to music. And it's wonderful." They really got into the everyday kind of things you could do in the game, like being able to go and get your hair cut. We put these things in the game because we believe that these are part of our activities in our daily lives. We take for granted that these are part of our activities in our daily lives."
When I mentioned that such a level of personal freedom must seem like a fantasy to players like the ones he met in Gombad, Khonsari agreed. "For them, it's a hyper version of kids who live in the suburbs and what they think the city's like. In this particular situation these guys are going, 'I get to make choices.' And, on top of that, look at the power and strength I have as a woman playing as this character. It's not gender-specific. It's not limited by who I am. It's my journey because I get to control that journey. I might be the shell of this person that I'm playing, which is CJ. But my desire is what's shaping this experience."
"The fact that CJ was black had a huge implication over there, too," offers Khonsari. "Because it wasn't the white character that's being pushed forward. And they're like, "Wow, there's a sense of openness. They've taken their main character and they've made him black. That's amazing."
Khonsari says that his experience in Gombad drove home something he always knew in his gut, which is that games can make foreign countries and cultures feel alive in a way that other mediums can't achieve. I'll have more about how he hopes to do just that for Iran with 1979 tomorrow.