Now you can cruise the seedy streets of Grand Theft Auto IV's take on Liberty City from the comfort and safety of your web browser, thanks to the efforts of GTA's most dedicated fans and some 80,000 screen shots.

The folks who run GTA4.net added an impressive new feature to their interactive GTA IV Google Map earlier this month, letting you revisit the boroughs of Liberty City from a Niko's eye view.

"All roads are covered, except for a few on/off-ramps that weren't very interesting," writes Adam from GTA4.net. "There's around 3,000 separate panoramas which were stitched together from almost 80,000 in-game screenshots (captured with a script) and the final set of tiles consist of over a million images."

Zip around town if you'd like, because we're told there are some hidden Easter Eggs scattered throughout the city.

Liberty City Map [GTAIV.net]

Remember the time you gunned down all of those terrifying, pasty monks? Or when that unhinged fella with the chainsaw chased you down the alleyway? Man, that was really fun.

This trailer for Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D for the 3DS put me in mind of a late night spent marathoning Resident Evil 4, or some of the terrific co-op times I had with RE5. This newest trailer introduces us to the eight franchise favorites who are due to kick some zombie ass late next month. We've got chesty Chris Redfield and sister Claire. Jill Valentine can be spotted breaking necks with her hips. There's Barry Burton and masked HUNK, demure Rebecca and the opposite-of-demure Krauser. And last but not least, "I wear sunglasses at night" Albert Wesker.

The title, which is contains remastered stages from installments 4 and 5 of the series, is due to hit shelves on June 28, exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS.

Okabu is a game about happy little clouds and cheery environmentalism. And as you'll have pounded into your head by the above video, it's amazingly cute. Who would expect anything less from a developer named HandCircus, creators of Rolando?

Okabu is coming to the PlayStation 3 this summer as a downloadable game, bringing with it a "hyper-tactile toybox world filled with a huge number of puzzles, playthings, adorable creatures and devious machines spread across an epic co-op campaign."

Read our impressions of the game from this year's Game Developers Conference when you recover from the sweetness of Okabu's latest gameplay trailer.

TOYS | Darius Mason protects my den table from a Red Faction Armageddon invasion. (Photo by Crecente)

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: The Kotaku Review

The stench hits me first. Before the gurgle and hiss, the skittering of twisted claws against bare stone, the stale air of the abandoned mine delivers a stomach-churning whiff of the creatures' breath, the miasmal scent of spoiled flesh between rotting teeth. More »

Hydro Thunder Go is Definitely a Must-Have Windows Phone 7 Game

After launching out of the starting gate with an impressive collection of titles the release of quality Xbox Live-enabled games for the Windows Phone 7 slowed to a trickle. More »

In The Virtual World, His Fiancée Never Died

"Obviously, I can't bring people back to life," Jon Jacobs recently told me. Obviously.
It was morning when he told me that. He was on his way to work in Los Angeles, chatting with me on his cell phone. More »

It's Nice to See Mortal Kombat Putting Skin On for Once

As reported yesterday, the new Mortal Kombat's first dose of downloadable content delivers new skins for the game's wacky human ninja crew, in honor of the early 90's law of ninja costume conservation. More »

Controlling the Breath of a God with From Dust

Being a god in Ubisoft's From Dust ain't easy. Though you can manipulate the elements of this world, you'll sometimes feel less like an all-powerful deity than you might a hopeful local politician, a cog in a powerful, sluggish, bureaucratic machine.
You may feel as powerful as a child on a beach,... More »

The Miami Heat Appear To Have Messed Up the Gears of War 3 Hype Train

LeBron James, first you upset the people of Cleveland by abandoning their basketball team. Now you've helped the Miami Heat beat the Chicago Bulls in five games, closing the series out last night with an 83-80 victory. More »

It's only 45 seconds long, but you may still want to sit down.

What's happened in the business of video games this past week...

QUOTE | "Put the screws to Sony in next console war." - Panoptic Management Consultants analyst Asif Khan's thinking that Microsoft may gain the upper hand against a PlayStation 4 next round.

TWIST | Modern Warfare 3's big reveal came and went this week and the response from critics was surprisingly muted, suggesting that Infinity Ward may indeed have been weakened and Call of Duty may have jumped the shark.

QUOTE | "A significant part of the landscape." - id programming genius John Carmack talks up the potential of cloud gaming in a personal 'Better Know' Q&A feature.

QUOTE | "Definitely still in the conversation." - Irrational's Ken Levine remains a believer in the BioShock movie idea and continues to have talks with interested parties.

QUOTE | "I'm not sure they will ever get it right." - Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter on the sorry state of Nintendo's online strategy in a discussion about whether or not Nintendo will embrace DLC.

QUOTE | "There are no system sellers anymore." - Billy Pidgeon of M2 Research asserts that having a new Mario game at launch of Project Cafe won't make or break the system, which could see third-party exclusives.

QUOTE | "Soften the difficulty a smidge when you return." - Epic's Cliff Bleszinski espousing a special dynamic difficulty setting to ease gamers back into titles they haven't touched in a while.

QUOTE | "Reinvent themselves." - Remedy Entertainment (Alan Wake) executive Aki Järvilehto on the growing threat of smartphones and how Sony and Nintendo will be challenged.

QUOTE | "A reasonable bet." - Arvind Bhatia of Sterne Agee on the chances that Take-Two will be bought out by another major publisher.

QUOTE | "Will not adapt." - Kabam executive Chris Carvalho asserts that "at least one major Western publisher" will fail to adjust to the evolving digital and social space and will disappear.

STAT | 49 percent – Take-Two's revenue growth in a non-GTA year as the publisher continues to make progress with other IP like L.A. Noire which saw an "exceedingly strong response."

Looks like I might be up to my eyeballs in lens flare this weekend if I play some Dungeon Siege III, as I intend to do. There's an Xbox 360 build I haven't gotten to yet, which I shall correct.

I also need to spend a lot more time with L.A. Noire. Good thing this is a three day weekend for Kotaku, or at least those of us who enjoy U.S. citizenship. While I'd like to wrap up L.A. Noire to keep myself spoiler-free, I just don't see the credits rolling any time soon.

There's really nothing else on the menu this weekend, as it's already busy with other obligations.

What about you? Got some gaming going on this Memorial Day weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Ah, Monaco. A charming Principality, famous for its azure harbors, Grace Kelly and...car rallies. Lots and lots of car rallies. The folks over at Codemasters would like to invite you to this car-racing paradise in their newest gameplay trailer for Dirt 3, giving a glimpse of the title's Rallycross, Gymkhana and Head 2 Head stages.

It's unlikely I'll ever make it to Monte Carlo in this lifetime, so my thanks to Dirt 3 for this virtual substitution.

The already-extraordinary X-Men have gained a new ability: the mutant power to dispense loot. Players of social game Mafia Wars can look out for "loot to heighten your defenses like Magneto and strengthen your attack like Beast!" thanks to X-Men: First Class. [Mafia Wars]

Well, it's so far (officially) unannounced, but quick mention of Heroes of Ruin and a single piece of artwork from the game appeared on the developer's Facebook page earlier today. That developer would be Orlando-based n-Space.

That's the development team behind Gamecube game Geist and numerous Nintendo DS games based on the Call of Duty, James Bond and Star Wars franchises. They posted (and rather quickly pulled) the artwork below, which was spotted by Tiny Cartridge. Heroes of Ruin was listed for the Nintendo 3DS and obviously features guns, swords, polearms, midriff-bearing warrior ladies and lots of angry faces.

It's a reasonably safe bet to expect eye-melting stereoscopic 3D action and weapons hitting things or people. Informative, I know.

Here's the artwork in full:

I'm getting an action-RPG vibe, thanks in no small part to Square Enix's fondness for publishing gobs of role-playing games for Nintendo handhelds.

Is this an E3 2011 reveal revealed just a bit too early?

Heroes of Ruin, a new game coming to 3DS from Square Enix and n-Space [Tiny Cartridge]