So yeah, we got a copy of The DOG Island for the Wii in the mail today. Apparently it’s pretty good.

So I saw this on Joystiq this morning, but after clicking through all of the “we saw this on this other site” links it traces back to a UK game site called DarkZero, who apparently did some actual listening during Activision’s quarterly earnings call and discovered that the company is giving Tony Hawk the year off.

Some people are taking this opportunity to mention EA’s Skate, which was able to enter the skateboarding genre and clean up in its first year, while the Tony Hawk series has been shambling on like a zombie for awhile now. Personally, my first reaction was one of abject stokedness, which isn’t even a word!

As a longtime Tony Hawk player, I’ve thought that the series has needed some more-serious changes for awhile now. I don’t think any of the games have been bad, but every year certain things just started to feel more and more tired. Sure, the game delivered a large, mostly-new world to skate in every year, but the handful of new mechanics introduced every year always fall a little flat. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Nail the Trick, but the last huge and 100% successful game-changing thing to happen to Tony Hawk was the addition of the revert. And that was added in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.

Hopefully giving Neversoft an additional year will return the series to its former glory. Also, hopefully Neversoft isn’t just looking at EA’s game and thinking of ways to emulate it. I thought Skate was a good first entry that provided a different take on skateboarding, but it’d be a shame to see the leader-to-follower transition happen that fast.

I think I already know the answer to this question, but do you still care about Tony Hawk? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one left.

In some weird alternate dimension, arcades still matter in North America and the classic quarter-sucking games of the 80s and 90s are still absolving us of our pocket change while simultaneously keeping us out of the house under the guise of “going out and doing stuff.” In that reality, Target: Terror came out and was lovingly received by a gaming public that still cares about things like full-motion video and light-gun games.

Here in our dimension, though, Target: Terror came out to today’s arcades: empty, lifeless places full of the damned and people who just don’t know any better. There’s probably some sales chart somewhere that pegs this game, which you might as well call “Area 51: Dudes With Shirts Over Their Faces Instead Of Aliens… Gold,” as a success in today’s arcade market. Someone somewhere probably considers it “a real earner” in their bowling alley or laundromat or wherever it is that people are hiding arcade games in this day and age. But then Konami somehow decided to pick up a Wii port of the game. And it’s, you know, bad?

Or maybe Target: Terror is great. At the very least, it looks like it was a lot of fun to make. The game is mostly comprised of dated-looking pre-rendered environments that scroll around on a track as a piece of full-motion video in the background. Terrorists and civilians are superimposed on this footage, and you need to shoot (or not shoot, in the case of innocents) them before they shoot you. If your gun is empty, you reload by firing while pointed off the screen. The part that looks like fun is that all of the people you can shoot are digitized humans, who go through a little animation routine, switch into another one if shot, and make their way off screen. My favorite is “guy with dynamite under his jacket,” who pops up close to the screen when you aren’t paying attention and rips his shirt open with a zest for living that I haven’t had in decades. Actually, my favorite is the girl who plays the newscaster at the beginning of each level. They shot her against a green screen, as well, but apparently they didn’t have any actual microphones, so she’s just reading fake news in some echoey room, probably using whatever mic was built into whatever camera they were using. This game feels super low-budget across the board, but in a sort-of-funny way.

But being hella budget doesn’t excuse Target: Terror. It’s way pixelated, the Wii Remote doesn’t do a great job of simulating a light gun, it doesn’t even run in 480p, and as a game meant to extract as many quarters from your pockets as possible, it’s jittery and fast, making it really tough to avoid damage as you work through the game’s scenes. Someone, somewhere is able to play the arcade version of this on one quarter. If you encounter him, do not take this gentleman on his up offer to give you a ride home! It will only end in tears, several years of forced servitude, and a shallow grave near mile marker 117.

You’re given 30 continues on your first attempt, and when you discover that isn’t enough, the game lets you start over with 40 continues on your second attempt. That probably won’t be enough, either, but by that point you’ll have played way more Target: Terror than you should have played, whether you’re playing alone or with a friend.

As I played Target: Terror, the thing I realized is that I’d rather be watching a “making of” video for all of the terrorists. I have a feeling it involved a lot of people hanging out near a green screen, slapping on sunglasses, tossing on a bubble vest, wrapping a T-shirt around a head or two, and acting like lunatics in front of a video camera. Instead of spending the $40 on Target: Terror, I recommend you wrap a T-shirt around your head and film yourself pretending to be a ninja, a terrorist, or a ninja terrorist. Then post it online and send it to your friends.

During my time with Mario Kart Wii, the theory was proposed to me that Nintendo has ceased trying to evolve its franchises, opting instead to simply remake their trademark games for each new generation of players, and I think the Mario Kart franchise serves as a powerful Exhibit A for this argument. In my experience, if people have a favorite Mario Kart game, it’s usually the first one they played. Mario Kart Wii is by no means bad, but it seems built for first-timers, and those looking to recapture what it felt like to be a first-timer. It delivers just about everything you expect from a Mario Kart game, both good and bad, making for an experience that can be fun, but never surprising.

So expect to see your usual roster of Mushroom Kingdom denizens power-sliding their way around serpentine courses peppered with jumps, boost pads, and crazy obstacles. There have been some modifications and some additions to the stock Mario Kart experience, but these are minor refinements, not evolutionary jumps. There’s a whole host of different control schemes, including a motion-control option that makes use of the little plastic steering wheel shell that comes packed-in with the game. I could see the Wii wheel being fun if I had never actually driven a car, but the novelty doesn’t make up for the lack of precision for me. I personally found that a GameCube controller or a remote-and-nunchuk combo produced the best results, and if I didn’t have an irrational distaste for the Classic Controller, that’d probably work pretty well, too.

In addition to the different character weight classes, there are now a number of different karts and motorbikes to choose from, each with a unique handling profile that can have a very dramatic effect on how the game handles. If you run a couple grand prix races in a kart, then switch over to a bike, expect to bring up the rear for a couple races. Both bikes and karts can perform stunts in mid-air, resulting in a little shot of boost when you hit the ground. Bikes are essentially two-wheeled karts, though when you’re on a bike you can pop a wheelie for extra speed on a straightaway, and bikes don’t get the second level of yellow sparks that karts can get by holding an extra-long power-slide. Despite all these variables, the basic Mario Kart rule of “Always Be Drifting, Except When You Shouldn’t” still applies across the board.

The structure of the game is predictably familiar. Single-player revolves around grand prix races that come in 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc varieties, though you can also run time trials, create custom races, or partake in the consistently tedious battle mode. I found the grand prix stuff fun, right up until I got to the 150cc level, at which point my Mario Kart skills buckled under the crushing force of random chance. With inherently solid controls, Mario Kart Wii, and by extension, every other Mario Kart game, could be an accessible, skill-based racing game, if it weren’t for all those goddamn power-ups, and the game’s serial habit of giving the most potent power-ups to last-place players. What’s the fun in skillfully outmaneuvering 11 opponents for three laps only to wind up in 12th following a barrage of blue shells, POW blocks, and thunderheads in the final stretch? It’s always been frustrating, and it remains frustrating.

The multiplayer options are bolstered by the inclusion of online play, which kind of alleviates the sad fate of playing Mario Kart all by yourself, albeit in the silent, heavily insulated world of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, where it’s difficult to play with friends and strangers at the same time. Maybe I’m just jaded, but it’s 2008 y’all, the simple inclusion of online play is no longer enough to set my world on fire. I’m also a little bothered by the track selection in Mario Kart Wii. There are 32 different tracks here, a full half of which are straight-up remakes of tracks from past Mario Kart games. To be fair, a number of the new tracks are fun and inventive, and I understand why some people would be excited about the inclusion of so many tracks from past Mario Kart games, but for me it just reinforced the feeling that, yup, I’ve totally already played this game before.

Mario Kart Wii is a good game stunted by its audience’s apparently insatiable appetite for the exact same thing, over and over again. The addition of online play and motion controls are good, but they’re also the most predictable choices possible. Personally, I’m completely tired of getting exactly what I expect.

We found this WORLD EXCLUSIVE footage of Fight Night Round 4’s all-new Classic Interview mode… OK, whatever, I can’t keep up the lame joke. This amazing Mike Tyson footage speaks for itself. But keep in mind that it frequently speaks in shocking slurs and filthy curses before you hit play on it.

So, given that this is how most people see Mike Tyson now, don’t you think EA’s press release, which opens with…

The Champ Is Back! EA Announces EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 4
Mike Tyson Featured in First Boxing Videogame in Nearly a Decade

…is a little crazy? I guess you could argue that by “champ” it’s referring to the Fight Night series, which is the best (and only) boxing series around. Anyway, Fight Night Round 4 is being developed in Vancouver right now for PS3 and 360, and it’ll feature Tyson, Ali, and an “all-new physics-based animation system.” That sounds hot, but hey, I was already pulling my wallet out at “dude, we’re making a new Fight Night.” It’ll be available in 2009, at which time I will eat all of your children, impregnate you, fornicate, and probably get a great face tattoo all at the same time.

Some portions of the Internet are ablaze today, as the news of how the protection schemes used to stop people from bootlegging Mass Effect and Spore on the PC will work has come out. Most of the reporting sites are tracing the news back to Derek French, a technical producer at BioWare, who posted the info on EA’s plans to use SecuROM in both releases.

Here’s what French had to say back on May 3:

“Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.

After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez’d and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn’t become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can’t contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.”

So not only will you need to be online to activate your copy of the game, you’ll also have be online at least once every ten days to prevent your copy from deactivating. Now, I’m sure most of you out there planning to play either game will probably be doing it on machines that are always connected to to the internet, so it’s probably not going to be a hassle for most players. But that doesn’t exactly make it right, either.

Personally, I’d feel a lot better about protection plans like this if they actually worked. But these days, that stuff doesn’t even seem to slow down the cadre of shady dudes looking to crack software and set it free for the bootleggin’ masses. So the pirates still win, and all we’re left with is a protection scheme that annoys legitimate users. Well… at least they aren’t using Starforce, right?

So I put it to you, the people out there actually playing PC games in 2008. You’re always complaining when consoles get games first, or bitching about how PC games are getting dumbed down for “the console kids.” But can you really blame developers for turning to consoles, when putting out a PC version isn’t much different from just releasing your game for free, and your effort to protect your investments with a protection scheme is met with forum posts about how dudes are going to boycott your game?

What would you do to reverse this? How much over-your-shoulder spying are you willing to put up with to stop pirates from torrenting the market for single-player PC games out of existence?

My solution: Everyone who purchases the game must submit a photo containing the person who purchased the game, one photo ID for said person, the receipt for the game, and a newspaper with today’s date on it. Every five days. Oh, wait, that’s right, I wanted you to try to make this easier. Never mind.

We hit the redline with the latest from Sony, a treatise on Card Sharks, free Rock Band songs, modular solutions for virtual modern living, the future of X-COM, Dr. Dre Kart Racing, and plenty of GTA4. That’s how you play the game!

In your first several hours with Grand Theft Auto IV, it’s easy to want to approach it with a checklist of expectations and start comparing it to what you think a “next-generation” Grand Theft Auto game should be.

- New carjacking animations? Check.
- Improved gunplay? Check.
- GPS on the map? Check.
- Corny-yet-still-somehow-funny jokes? Check.

It’s natural to want to take that sort of clinical approach to a sequel, but as I moved through Liberty City and became more entrenched in its story, that stuff simply ceased to matter. At that point, and for the rest of the game, the only thing that mattered to me was Niko Bellic, the game’s protagonist. Is he going to survive this time? Are his new-found friends going to make it out alive? Will he ever find what he’s looking for, and will finding “that special someone” bring him the inner peace he needs? How did every single person he encounters end up so psychologically damaged?

That psychological side to the game translates into characters talking about how they feel, and about what they’re going through. It’s extremely well-written and made a serious impact on me. This isn’t the carefree killing-and-carjacking romp you might have expected. The way the characters act made each life harder and harder to take until I found myself rooting for Niko, hoping that he’d find what he was looking for and finally get some peace. Of course, once you’ve gone on a crime-spree that has you working for just about every different criminal in Liberty City, getting out unscathed simply isn’t an option.

To say too much more about the specifics of the story would start to detract from your own personal enjoyment of discovering it for yourself. It made a serious personal impact on me, and there were some plot twists that simply made me stop playing for a few hours because it started to hit a little too close to home and started reminding me of people in my own life. Seeing these virtual lives getting torn apart by heroin addiction, depression, or forces beyond anyone’s control made an emotional dent on me that no other game has done before. That makes being the man in charge of who lives and who dies even tougher. Later in the game, you’ll start to make very tough decisions, where you’ll have to kill one of the people you’ve been working for at the request of the other. By that time, I was so invested in these characters that the choice felt like much more than pushing a button on a game controller.

Though you’ll make choices at critical points in the game, the impact on the overall plot is mostly minimal. One choice you make near the game’s conclusion makes the most impact of any of Niko’s decisions, and the choice you make here determines how some of the final missions go, leading to one of two possible endings.

One last thing about the way the story and characters play out: unlike most GTA leads, Niko is no pushover. He’s got a sharp, sarcastic tongue and he doesn’t just mindlessly follow whoever is giving the orders. This helps acknowledge the insanity that’s going on around him and makes him a likable character. Yes, he’s out there doing horrible things, but he’s not doing it to run some Tommy Vercetti-like empire. He’s doing it to survive and to hopefully find some closure along the way.

So if you’ve read this far, you’ve probably figured out that this is a much darker game than the previous GTA games. Though the tone borders on nihilistic at points, the game is still filled with a bunch of lighthearted humor that exists at the periphery. The game still has a bevy of radio stations, each with its own DJs and commercials that make all kinds of jokes at the expense of American society or the culture of New York City. You can also watch TV in many of your safehouses, and there’s a collection of shows there that also provide the same type of humor. News is delivered by the Fox News-like Weazel News, which provides a slanted view of the things happening around town, calling almost everything that occurs a “terrorist threat.” The tone of the humor is exactly what you’d expect from the series, though the modern setting makes that humor feel a little more biting. Either way, this time around it also serves the purpose of preventing things from getting too dark and serious. It makes for a nice balance.

The majority of things you associate with Grand Theft Auto’s gameplay haven’t changed too much in GTA IV, though many of the familiar things you expect to see in a GTA game have been refined a bit. Combat, both armed and unarmed, is probably the biggest overhaul. When unarmed, you have two punches and a kick, as well as the ability to block and counter when necessary. But more often than not, you’re going to be strapped with a melee weapon or a gun of some kind. The game now has a cover system, letting you stick to walls and other objects, blind fire, and pop out to take a few aimed shots before getting back behind cover. This addition alone makes shooting much easier to deal with than it’s been in the past. The game’s lock-on targetting has also been tweaked. Overall, most of the people who have had serious complaints about the way GTA handles shooting shouldn’t find much to complain about this time around. If anything, it makes things a little too easy, as popping off headshots is a breeze now.

The bulk of the story is spent with you approaching mission start points, which triggers a cutscene to set up the mission. Then you’re off on your task. The things you do in GTA IV aren’t dramatically different from what you’ve seen in previous games, but it feels a lot more grounded in reality this time. You aren’t learning how to use a jetpack, or helping someone take over the music biz or anything like that. Instead, you’re overseeing diamond heists, shaking down people for protection money, or following gangsters back to their bosses so you can clean them all out at the same time. Throw in some dirty cops, some New York crime families, a shadowy government agent, and a whole lot of Russian mobsters, and you’ve got a lot of work to do. Failing missions is no big deal, either, because you can easily warp back to the start of a mission after you fail, die, or get arrested. Also, you don’t lose all your weapons when you fail, so the time it takes to get going again is pretty minimal.

But what if you need some more firepower before taking on the next mission? You’re given access to underground gun shops, but it’s even easier to get in good with Little Jacob, the friendly neighborhood rasta/dope dealer/gun seller. If you’re friendly with him, you can give him a ring on your cell phone and he’ll roll through with a trunk full of toys at discounted prices. That’s one of the many benefits of maintaining friendships in GTA IV.

While you can date girls with mostly-predictable results, you can also cultivate friendships with a handful of the guys you meet throughout the game. You’ll occasionally get phone calls from them, wanting to hang out, or you can initiate a play date with your dudes with a call of your own. You can visit strip clubs, go out drinking, play darts, go bowling, take in a set at the local comedy club, play pool, and so on. Getting to know these characters a bit more makes them seem a little more human, and you get some real insight into some of the characters’ stories, as well. Or maybe you just want to keep hanging out with Brucie, the genetically jacked steroid monkey who loves cars, VIPs, staying alpha, and “putting bitches to the sword.” If you and Brucie become close buds, he’ll hook you up with a helicopter. The other bonuses, such as being able to call a cab that will take you anywhere in the city for free, or the ability to rig cars with explosives, certainly make things easier for you.

In addition to all the single-player stuff you can do, the game also has an online side that lets up to 16 players join in a variety of modes. Most of them seem fairly standard, like team deathmatch, a pair of racing modes, and an objective-based mode where one team of thugs tries to escape while a team of cops tries to take them down. There are also a few co-op modes for up to four players, but calling these “modes” is a bit of a stretch. They’re more like individual missions that you can play again and again. They’re fun, but they feel like a tease because there are only a few of them and they don’t change much, so once you get good at them, they’re a breeze. All they do is make me wish that the game had a larger co-operative component to it, because they’re probably the most interesting part of the multiplayer mode. There’s also a free mode that lets you and 15 other players run around the city with no real objective, which can be fun if you just want to screw around.

Getting into and out of the multiplayer mode is done via your in-game cell phone. It’s a pretty slick integration, but it’s not without its issues. For example, if you run into any network trouble and can’t join a match, you’re kicked back to your single-player game, where you have to pull up the phone and try again. If you set up a game and realize you want to change modes, you have to quit all the way back to your single-player game and try again. Switching to some kind of multiplayer menu once you get into the multiplayer side of the game would work better.

All of this stuff is put together into a great-looking package. Liberty City really comes alive in GTA IV, thanks to some terrific building design. The environment looks rich and realistic, and makes the GTA III-era Liberty City look like a bunch of flat facades by comparison. The visual quality also really helps in the cutscenes, because the facial expressions of the characters can effectively convey emotion as they deliver lines, which helps give the story its impact. Animation-wise, the characters move well and there are lots of little touches, such as the over-the-top stumbling that Niko and friends do when they’ve been drinking, that help make the game look great. The frame rate is mostly stable and it runs at a playable speed, provided you aren’t getting too crazy. When piling cars together in an attempt to make a huge explosion, I managed to get the frame rate down into what looked like single digits. Also, the game doesn’t always convey a great sense of speed. When you’re in the faster cars, the whole game seems to skip along, rather than giving you a fast, smooth look at the world. It never gets so choppy that you can’t handle your vehicle, but it’s very noticeable, especially on the 360.

The game is backed by some terrific audio, from character voices to the soundtrack, to the sounds around you. Niko’s footsteps are especially well-done. They’ll echo off nearby buildings if you’re running across a quiet street, and they’ll generally reflect the surface you’re running on–like the metal walkways of a cargo ship, for example–really well. The gunfire sounds great, car engines are appropriate, and plenty of pedestrian dialogue helps make the city feel complete.

The soundtrack is, once again, all over the place, with enough variety to keep you hearing new things for quite a long time, provided you’re open to scanning around the radio dial a bit. At some point during my time with the game, I discovered that I sort of like dance hall. Weird! The DJs, commercials, and talk radio stations are great, and deliver the perfect level of ridiculous satire mixed with dick jokes.

This is the first time in a long time that a GTA game has debuted on multiple platforms, and of course, people are going bananas trying to dissect every little difference they can. From my time with both versions, I found the PS3 version to run a little smoother, though neither version is immune to drops in the frame rate when things get crazy. The PS3 version installs up front and seems to load and stream a little better as a result. The 360 version’s loading and streaming is entirely dependent on the quality of your hardware’s DVD drive. On one system, I had no problems, the loading seemed perfectly snappy, and it generally wasn’t a thing. On the Xbox 360 Elite I have at home, though, I could hear the disc thrashing about as it tried to load, and occasionally objects and roads would appear a second or two too late, causing me to ram my car into invisible objects, in one case. Thankfully, I had another 360 at my disposal, but if your drive is already a little iffy, just know that you might run into some occasional streaming issues.

Of course, the 360 version has achievements and will apparently have downloadable content down the line, so if I were choosing, that’s the direction I’d lean in. But the story is just as great on both platforms, and you really can’t lose either way.

It was difficult to anticipate how Grand Theft Auto IV would turn out, given the way that the whole “open-world game” thing is being done to death across as many different games and settings as possible. Rather than try to out-do the Crackdowns and the Saints Rows of the world with bigger land masses and more missions, Rockstar went the other way, and managed to craft an amazingly impactful story and weave it into an open-world game in an incredibly meaningful way–all without losing the heart and soul of what makes Grand Theft Auto so popular in the first place. The end result is absolutely masterful and absolutely worth your time and money.

The things about Polyphony Digital’s driving simulation series that have kept me at bay over the years–the self-serious tone, the unapologetic driving model–seem to have been softened up a little bit with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, at least enough to allow me to appreciate the painstaking detail that goes into making what is essentially a car commercial in motion. As a taste of what the full version of Gran Turismo 5 will offer, GT5 Prologue is successful–I’m now more excited about the release of Gran Turismo 5 than I’ve been for any other Gran Turismo release. The thing is, Sony’s charging $39.99 for what is essentially an elaborate demo. As pretty as everything in GT5 Prologue is, there’s just not a whole lot to it.

The game includes six race tracks, featuring well-known real-world locations such as Suzuka and Daytona, and around 70 cars provided by a host of different manufacturers. From Daihatsu to Ferrari, there’s a pretty good cross-section of car-makers represented here, but don’t expect to find much depth to any individual manufacturer’s lineup, as most feature only one or two cars. The cars look absolutely stunning, easily some of the most detailed and realistic-looking cars I’ve seen in any game. The tracks all look great when you’re in motion, though if you come to a complete stop you might notice some blurry textures or cheap-looking onlookers. The rough edges only stands out, though, because the majority of the visuals here are so neat and tidy, so impossibly idyllic. With such an apparent obsession with creating clean-looking visuals, I now kind of understand why Polyphony Digital has shied away from including car damage in a Gran Turismo game.

There’s still no damage model in GT5 Prologue, though the gameplay seems to have been made much more accessible since the last time I checked out a Gran Turismo game. The driving line is now always on by default, and it can change color on the fly to let you know when you need to slow down in order to maintain an ideal line, but perhaps more importantly, the handling just seems more forgiving. It still requires a certain type of smart, technical driving, so you’re not going to be drifting your way through every corner, but first-timers are less likely to end up in a spin at the first bend in the road. As welcome as these adjustments are, the Gran Turismo driver AI is still pretty dull, and when combined with the lack of car damage, it’s very easy to use the other cars as cushions and just bang your way around corners, effectively stripping away the game’s realistic veneer.

The single-player progression helps to ease you into things with class-based challenges that start you off with slower, more manageable cars. Each of the three classes consists of ten different challenges, most of which simply require you to finish a quick race with bronze or better, though there are also a few challenges that task you with going from worst to first in a single lap, or achieve a specific lap time against a rolling field of drivers. You’ll regularly find restrictions on the cars you can use, whether it be based on performance, region of manufacture, or on a specific model of car, often forcing you to spend some of the money you’ve earned competing in races on the right car. This can lead to situations where you have to repeatedly replay past events in order to raise the money you need in order to buy the car you need in order to advance to the next challenge.

Even with alternate versions of the six tracks included in the game, track repetition is a big problem in GT5 Prologue, and the fact that these are mostly tracks that you’ve probably already played in numerous other racing games doesn’t help. The thing that probably has Gran Turismo fans most excited about GT5 Prologue is the inclusion of online multiplayer, a first for the series. It’s functional, but unless you’re specifically excited about being able to play Gran Turismo over the Internet, there’s not much particularly unique or exciting about it.

Generally speaking, though, I like what Gran Turismo 5 Prologue offers, I just don’t care for the decision to monetize it. Gran Turismo 4 featured more than 50 tracks and more than 700 cars, so if $39.99 buys you just six tracks and 70 cars in 2008, I don’t even want to imagine how much Gran Turismo 5 will cost.

29 hours, 46 minutes, and 17 seconds later, and I’m finished with Grand Theft Auto IV. Well, the main story, anyway. I’ve barely played any multiplayer, and of course my game progress is 64.67%. So there’s more to do, more to see. That’s always the way, isn’t it? I doubt I’ll try to see it all, to reach that 100% mark. Hunting down 199 pigeons doesn’t sound like too much fun to me.

The story is what I came to see. And I’m having trouble putting my feelings for this game’s story into words right now. I’ll spare you the fumbling and just say that it’s probably the greatest game story of all time, both in content and how it’s integrated into the rest of the game.

All those early reviews, where everyone tossed out the highest score they could give, left me scratching my head a bit in the game’s early hours. But I get it now. I understand.