Pursuent to Darrin’s post about GTAIV’s “ladies of the night”, I got to thinking. Personally I think that this is going too far. Having sex with a hooker, following her out of the car, and shooting her in the head. It offends the sensibilities, and I’m not ashamed to say I won’t be buying the game.

That’s not to say it’s otherwise not a good game. And this poll is not asking you about whether or not GTAIV is a good game, or whether you enjoy it. I want to know what you think about how it’s pushing the boundaries. For some reason, society thinks that pushing the boundaries is always a good thing, no matter what the boundaries are. Personally I feel that some boundaries are just best left alone.

Vote in the sidebar, as always.

Last Poll’s Results:

What do you think of in-game messaging on the PS3?

* Very important - must have both voice and text.: 62% (269)
* Very important, but just text is good enough.: 14% (61)
* Not important to me.: 13% (56)
* Somewhat important.: 11% (46)

Total Votes : 432

The reviews for GTA 4 are starting to come out. IGN hasn’t given a score this high in ten years! Wow!

Back in 2004, just before the release of San Andreas, Dan Houser said this in an interview:

The danger is currently the storage medium (DVD), and one we thing we’re all praying for in the next round of hardware is that they don’t just go, ‘It’s DVD again’.

That would sound like blatant console-wars flame-bait if said today, but back in 2004, it was a little more innocent.

Suprisingly, the same Dan Houser recently made more comments along those lines in another interview:

When you only had a CD as opposed to DVD, you could put like 10 songs and eight lines of dialogue and that was your entire game. We were lovingly casting all our actors in “GTA 2” to be DJs on radio stations, but they probably said three things each. The big technological advance was when things moved to DVD, almost more than the power of Playstation 2. It was the storage unit. You could suddenly put on a lot of audio a lot more animation and a lot more content in a world. That then gave us the opportunity of making that content interesting.

Regardless of tech and platform issues, this game sounds absolutely amazing.

UPDATE: Rockstar Games founder, Sam Houser, was even more blunt in an interview with 1UP:

One of the problems with the 360, and it affects games like Grand Theft Auto if you think about how much content we put in the actual machine, is the fact that they don’t have a significantly larger storage medium than the previous systems. It’s a slightly bigger DVD disc.

gtagaming is reporting that a Swedish retailer revealed a GTA IV and PS3 bundle. Supposedly it would go for sale for the same price as the GT5 Prologue bundle which launched a week ago.

This is a great idea on Sony’s part. Lots of people who bought PS2’s bought it just for GTA. And when they see a GTA IV and PS3 bundle in the stores, they might think that’s it’s probably time to move up to the current generation.

Hopefully North America will see a similar bundle.

GTA IV PS3 Bundle Coming to Europe

PS I posted this article from Flock, what may become my replacement for Firefox. I checked it out a while ago and it wasn’t so good back then. But I tried it again today, and it’s great! It integrates a lot things I do together in one easy to use place.

Check out the final trailer of what will surely be the biggest selling game of 2008 (that’s GTA IV in case you were wondering):

*watches in HD*

It’s not the best trailer, not by a long way, but it still has me excited about playing GTA IV come April 29th!

Final GTA IV Trailer

There’s some info about the multi-player side of GTA IV courtesy of Spanish PSM, via GTAForums.com:

* There are 15 multiplayer game modes in GTA IV. PSM had an opportunity to play 7 of them. The rules of each game are determined by the host.

* Multiplayer supports upto 16 players.

* Your online character is fully customizable. You can alter his race, sex, hair, clothing etc.

* The game modes featured are as follows:
1. Hangman’s NOOSE
2. Car Jack City
3. Bomb da Base
4. Bomb da Base II
5. Mafia Work
6. Team Mafia Work
7. Deathmatch
8. Team Deathmatch
9. Turf War
10. Cops N Crooks
11. Race
12. GTA Race
13. Deal Breaker
14. Free Mode
15. Car Jack City

* In Race and GTA Race, the host gets to decide which vehicles are involved, and the number of laps to be played. You can shoot and throw molotovs from the window, and even steal your rivals’ car.

* In Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, the host gets to decide the number of pedestrians, the amount of traffic, the intervention of police (or not), and the type of weapons.

* In Cops N Crooks, one team play as cops and the other play as criminals. The cops must stop the criminals from escaping. They can monitor the locations of the criminals on their GPS systems, while the criminals don’t know where the cops are.

* In Mafia Work and Team Mafia Work, you play as one of Kenny Petrovic’s mafia henchmen. You must complete hits ordered by the boss (via the cellphone) before your rivals are able to do so.

* The map used in multi-player is the same map that is used for single player.

* A single-player mission called “Hangman’s NOOSE” features co-op. You and your friends will be able to escort a mobster, while being pursued by a SWAT team.

AWESOME!!

I may not play another game for the rest of the year (until Resistance 2 comes out ).

I’ve booked two weeks off work for the games release.