Grand Theft Auto IV modder H1Vltg3 has built this incredibleIron Man mod for the PC version of the game, which does so much more than just reskin the main character.
The mod also contains a script which dramatically alters the way you can play the game, giving him proper hand repulsor beam effects and the ability to fly that has its own animation and sound effects. As you can see above, he even has the three-point landing.
Rockstar's 2002 classic Vice City remains so popular today as much for its bottling of mid-80s culture and excess as it does the actual game.
The game's soundtrack rightly gets a lot of credit for this, as does the colour palette, but have you ever wondered which movies served as the inspiration for the neon-infused Vice City itself? I mean, beyond Scarface?
Well, here you go. Rockstar has shared thirteen films it says "served as perfect inspiration for the stories, characters and scenery that drove the world and vibe of Vice City".
The link below contains explanations just why they inspired the development team, while the gallery above features the thirteen films and their trailers.
Over the weekend, Rockstar collected every piece of promotional art so far made available for Grand Theft Auto V, cleaned them up, made sure each had a nice big background behind them then then scaled them to wallpaper size.
Some feature the game's main protagonists, some don't. Some give us a good look at locations that'll be in the game, some don't. What they all have in common, though, is that like pretty much everything else that comes out of a Rockstar game on the creative side of things, the art here is incredible.
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they're big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".
Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!
You'd think the horse stealing the car would be the funniest bit. But no. I like the dude's obvious disappointment at the overall outcome at the very end.
"aaww".
For more horse-in-Grand-Theft-Auto-IV madness, see here.
Thanks to a dedicated community, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has been continually polished and upgraded since its release all those years ago. To the point where, now, it looks like something from the future.
The iCEnhancer series of mods, which we've featured before, are being updated to 2.5 (this is an alpha preview), and the results are amazing.
This looks as good as a quality first-person shooter. The fact that this kind of fidelity can be applied to an open world game the size of Liberty City is just mind-boggling.
Despite the ease of Steam and the comfort of my couch, I still own physical copies of both Vice City and San Andreas on PC. Why? Because of the maps.
It's long been a tradition with Rockstar's open world games, right through to GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption, to include physical maps of the game world, something older gamers appreciate in an era of on-disc manuals and guides.
Recognising, though, that in 2012 a lot of people are getting their games digitally, and thus missing out on that stuff, Rockstar has made available image files for the three PS2-era GTA games, complete with their fake ads.
Sadly, they're one-sided, meaning you're missing out on the amazing Vice City poster you got on the reverse, but hey, they're free, try not to complain.
Lazlow Jones co-wrote the radio scripts for all the Grand Theft Auto games (save Chinatown Wars, of course) going back to III, and appears as a radio personality in all of the games. He also, evidently, has all of the master copies of the recordings. In his home. Which is on Long Island. Or, well, a barrier island off Long Island.
Ordinarily this isn't much of a problem. but it was as Hurricane Sandy came barreling in late October, and Long Island was whomped particularly bad by the stormacane, or whatever it was at that stage. In a visit to the Opie & Anthony Show last week, where Lazlow's a regular guest, he related what his priorities were as the storm came barreling in.
1. Get the GTA III master recording.
2. Get the GTA: Vice City master recording.
3. Get the GTA: San Andreas master recording.
4. You get the idea.
"My studio is on the ground floor," he said on the show. "That's where GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas, all those masters like the full recordings with Axl Rose and everything. I mean, all this stuff," he said. "I started freaking out and grabbing, just boxes of masters and putting it up on the second floor. Cause I was like 'I'm not going to let this stuff get ruined.'"
Asked if he was storing the recordings elsewhere, Lazlow said he'd learned he shouldn't "keep a lot of amazing masters from some epic video games on the ground floor near a sand bar."
If you're curious if he said anything about Grand Theft Auto V, he did, but only to say the game was due in the coming spring.
The bathysphere, scuba gear and colossal frikkin' shark in these new screens hint that you're also going to diving into some deep underwater hijinks, too. And, hey, dog is your co-pilot, too! How cool does that Rottweiler look in that ride? Cooler than that Fable 2 mutt, that's for sure.
Names such as Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto are longtime punching bags in an often-clueless discussion of violent video games in the mainstream. So it was no surprise to hear Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, invoke them in a rambling attempt to deflect blame from the assault weapons that gunned down 20 six- and seven-year-old children last week, to a culture he alleges inspired such acts.
Here's an examination of those two games and the three others that Wayne LaPierre mentioned, and their relevance—or lack thereof—to the neverending scapegoating of video games in America.
Publisher: Electronic Arts Released: Feb. 22, 2011 (North America)
Bulletstorm is a science-fiction action story about a space pirate marooned on a paradise world overrun by mutants and horrible monsters. Humanoid victims die in gruesome ways, but the violence is largely self-satirical.
Bulletstorm's most gratuitously objectionable content wasn't necessarily the blood and gore. Game critics chided Bulletstorm for frathouse dialogue saturated with references to male genitalia. The tone spilled over into in-game scoring combinations with titles like "gang bang" or "topless." A psychologist was quoted out of context in an outrageous Fox News report saying this language encouraged gamers to commit sexual violence, or desensitized them to it.
Bulletstormsold poorly and Epic Games' then-boss Mike Capps said the series was unlikely to get a sequel.
ESRB Rating: M, for "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol."
ESRB Rating Summary:This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of a space pirate who must escape a planet populated by mutant cannibals. Players use futuristic machine guns, shotguns, magnum revolvers, assault rifles, and chain guns to perform over-the-top kills that dismember and decapitate foes. Injured enemies emit large sprays of blood that stain the ground and surrounding walls. Specialty kills (i.e., Skillshots) represent the most intense instances of violence: enemies can be dismembered with explosives; impaled on spikes; and drilled into walls, resulting in body parts breaking into pieces.
During the course of the game, players can consume alcohol and kill enemies in order to receive an Intoxicated Skillshot; the screen turns blurry during these sequences. The dialogue contains numerous jokes and comments that reference sexual acts, venereal diseases, and having sex with one's mother (e.g., 'Guess I know where the ol' gal got that limp.'). The names of some Skillshots are infused with sexual innuendo (e.g., Gag Reflex, Rear Entry, Drilldo, Mile High Club); one Skillshot (i.e., Fire in the Hole) allows players to shoot at enemies' exposed buttocks. Language such as 'f**k,' 'sh*t,' 'p*ssy,' and 'c*ck' can be heard in dialogue.
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Series Began: 1992. Latest Release Published:Mortal Kombat, April 19, 2011.
Mortal Kombat is a fighting game series known for its graphic finishing moves, announced with an emphatic "fatality!" from the game's narrator. When it was introduced to arcades in 1992, it was distinctive for its use of blood spray, which inspired a wave of exploitation games adding blood and gore to their visuals. Mortal Kombat is commonly associated with the violent video games controversy that began in the early 1990s, which led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
The last Mortal Kombat release by Midway was 2008's Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, which scrubbed out much of the blood and gore in order to receive the T rating expected of a comic-book tie in. A sequence in which The Joker finished a match by firing his pistol's Bang! flag into his foe's temple was removed for this reason. Mortal Kombat returned in 2011 under Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and likewise returned to its roots as a no-holds-barred violent video game. Certain strikes and finishers sent the game into a slow-motion x-ray camera, showing visceral internal damage to bones and organs.
Mortal Kombat was refused classification in Australia, effectively banning it from sale. Warner Bros. was unsuccessful in appealing the decision. Germany and South Korea also refused to permit its sale.
ESRB Rating: M, for "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language."
ESRB Rating Summary:This is a fighting game in which players engage in one-on-one battles against characters from the fantasy-based Mortal Kombat universe. Players compete in a series of combative rounds in order to advance to different matches throughout the game. Players use swords, guns, chains, spikes, and supernatural attacks (e.g., fire, ice, lightning) to defeat a cast of human-like characters. After an opponent is defeated at the end of a match, players have the option to perform finishing moves called 'Fatalities.'
Many of these finishing moves depict over-the-top instances of violence: impalement, bone-crushing body snaps, execution-style gunshots to the head; large blood-splatter effects occur during these sequences, staining characters' bodies and the ground. Several of these exaggerated finishing moves depict characters getting dismembered, ripped or sliced in half, stabbed, set on fire, or set to explode. During the course of the game, female characters sometimes wear revealing outfits that expose large amounts of cleavage; one female fighter is depicted partially nude, covered by a costume of thin cloth strips. Language such as 'f**k' occasionally appears in the dialogue.
Publisher: Rockstar Games Series Began: 1997 (2001 in its modern incarnation.) Latest Release Published:Grand Theft Auto IV, April 29, 2008.
Grand Theft Auto is, without a doubt, the series most referenced in mainstream media discussion of violent video games and the psychological or sociological impacts attributed to them. It originated as a driving game navigating a map from a top-down perspective. Grand Theft Auto III introduced the series as it is currently known, an enormous city that players explore at their leisure, either completing missions stringing together the game's dark, antiheroic main story or causing mayhem at random. That includes violence against innocent bystanders, including, most notoriously, the prostitutes working the game's street corners. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas even included optional missions in which the main character acts as their pimp. All of these depictions have been chastised as glamorizing a criminal lifestyle and encouraging teenagers and young adults to live out violent fantasies in real life.
Though the series has no shortage of defenders, its lowest point was inarguably in 2005, when a user discovered code left inside the game's PC version that showed a minigame in which the protagonist had sex with any of several girlfriends he could date in the game. Though this content was not surfaced in the main game it could be accessed through a modification. Its presence was enough to trigger the ESRB's AO rating, an extreme label rarely applied, much less to any mainstream game. Copies of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had to be recalled while Rockstar re-released a version of the game with the objectionable content removed. Dan Houser, Rockstar's co-founder considers the controversy more of an attack on the medium of video games, still considered kids' stuff in the mainstream. "The massive social decay that we were supposed to induce hasn't happened," he told The Guardian last month.
Grand Theft Auto V will arrive in the spring of 2013, returning the series to its fictionalized West Coast. For all of the controversy it engenders, the series is an enormous best seller and financial analysts frequently point to its release in analyzing the health of parent company Take-Two Interactive. It is one of the flagship brands of modern video gaming.
ESRB Rating: M, for "Intense Violence, Blood, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Partial Nudity, Use of Drugs and Alcohol."
Predating Mortal Kombat but far less known, Splatterhouse began as a sidescrolling beat-em-up inspired by American slasher flicks like Friday the 13th (its protagonist wears the "Terror Mask," which resembles the hockey mask worn by Friday the 13th's antagonist.) The game had one arcade release before it was ported to home consoles in the early 1990s. Its first console port, for the TurboGrafx-16, carried a tongue-in-cheek warning saying the game was inappropriate for children, "and cowards."
Before 2010, Splatterhouse's most recent console release was Splatterhouse 3 in 1993. A version was released on the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007. Splatterhouse has never reviewed well, making its mention by LaPierre somewhat amusing to knowledgeable gamers.
Splatterhouse's 2010 release, which we called a "massive disappointment," and a "violent, excessively gory brawler," was roundly panned on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. There has been no mention of any sequel or reboot for this series.
ESRB Rating M, for "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language."
ESRB Rating Summary:This is an action game in which players help a college student named Rick Taylor rescue his kidnapped girlfriend from a deranged doctor. As players explore a haunted mansion, they engage in constant melee-style combat; players use cleavers, chainsaws, machetes, and Rick's bare hands to kill and dismember enemies (e.g., zombies, monsters, demons). Players can also use severed arms and limbs as weapons to attack enemy creatures; injured enemies emit large sprays of blood that stain the ground, surrounding walls, and Rick's body.
Finishing moves represent the most intense instances of violence: Rick tears monsters' limbs and heads from their bodies-accompanied by a gushing sound effect; Rick sometimes reaches into creatures' torsos to remove various organs. Along the way, players can pick up photo fragments that depict topless images of a female character. Completed photos, viewable from the menu screen, are accompanied by suggestive voice-over clips (e.g., 'Just for you, Rick-o. I'm yours and no-one else's' and 'R Rating? When we get home, let's you and I put on our own private NC-17 show.'). Dialogue also contains sexual innuendo (e.g., 'Tell me; how many guys can you beat off at the same time?') and language such as 'a*shole,' 'sh*t,' and 'f**k.'
The wildcard entry in Wayne LaPierre's tirade, Kindergarten Killer is said to have been available online as a flash game for at least 10 years. It last made news in 2008 when a Finnish web site removed the game in response to a mass shooting at a school in that country. Its creator is said to be Gary Short, an 18-year-old from the U.K. at the time. The site where it was originally launched has been inactive since 2005.
The game is a crude, point-and-click target shooter depicting a janitor gone on a shotgun rampage inside a school. Angry cartoon children fire back with firearms of their own, and their wounds spurt blood until they are shot dead.
"It's called Kindergarten Killers," LaPierre said, mistakenly pluralizing the title. "It's been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it, and all of yours couldn't ... or didn't want anyone to know you had found it?" Possibly because it was a throwaway experience, not even rising to the level of the much more provocative and much more memorable Super Columbine Massacre. How come video gamers can still find something like that, and all of the NRA's research staff couldn't?
Kindergarten Killer's almost total obscurity, to say nothing of the fact it is a flash game lumped in with four longstanding console series, makes it the most laughable inclusion in the NRA's strange news conference today, severely weakening the NRA's claim that all video games are purposefully and callously violent. As the work of a bored teenager, it is by no means representative of the "shadow industry" LaPierre condemned. Sure, it's awful, and easily accessed by children over a web browser; so is most anything violent, pornographic, or shocking to the conscience.
That is not to say that the games Wayne LaPierre mentioned are wholesome entertainment that can be discussed in polite company. But neither can many of the R-rated action or science-fiction movies and crime thrillers whose themes continue to inspire the most popular video game series.
Holden Miller contributed reporting to this story.
You'd think the horse stealing the car would be the funniest bit. But no. I like the dude's obvious disappointment at the overall outcome at the very end.
