I have a prediction: we are in 2007 going to have a news article about some parent upset that their child was looking at porn on the Wii. With the release of the Opera browser on Wii, this is actually trivial, as you can just point the web browser at a porn site. Anything that connects to the Internet for web surfing has this risk. What’s sad is that rather than take parental responsibility in this matter, news will pick up on this issue because the terms “Wii” and “porn” were used together, in a manner similar to when “PSP” and “porn” were used together in a sentence. Then Jack Thompson or another conservative anti-gaming group will come in denouncing gaming anew. The standard cycle.

I have another prediction: there will be an adult site targeted specifically to the Wii Internet browser. It’s only a matter of time. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) mature-themed sites have always maintained a cutting edge nature, so moving into this new medium is just a natural expansion. Look at porn specifically for PSP or iPod. This will happen.

This makes me sad in some ways, because it’s just yet another way to slander gamers and the game industry for news ratings. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just remember: parents should take responsibility for their children. Would you really want a game company responsible for your child anyway?

Most folks remember that talk during high school driver’s ed: drinking and driving is a bad combination. Drinking alcohol, after all, will impair your vision, reactions, and judgment, all a recipe for disaster when flying down the road in a couple tons of steel. However, how many actually get to see the effects of drinking on your driving? Thanks to the wonderful world of video games, now you can do so without fear of death, injury, or incarceration! Ingredients for this experiment:

• 1x Need For Speed: Underground
• 1x bottle of 18 year old Glenfiddich scotch
• 1x Person willing to drink and drive a virtual car

Fortunately, I was able to procure all of these items from the contents of my home. Need For Speed: Underground is an interesting choice, because it involves racing at high speeds through city streets. Granted, if drunk, I would hope that racing through the streets at high speeds wouldn’t be first on my mind, but what can you do. 18 year old Glenfiddich scotch was selected because a) I’m not particularly fond of Glenfiddich — it’s okay, but not my usual scotch; and b) I have two bottles of it. Dosage will be in one shot increments. Let the experiment begin!

No Shots

Wow, I have a little trouble navigating the roads at high speeds even when sober. It takes me several tries to finish some of the races. I ponder how short my career as an underground street racer would be in real life. Bonus tips: apparently, I can race pretty well, if I can slam into walls to lose some speed. Oh, and apparently, no matter how bad a smash up I may have, my car will emerge unscathed. They apparently must be making cars a lot better than they used to.

One Shot

The shot is warm going down, and I start to feel a little light-headed. Did someone turn on the heater? I start a race, and I’m the man. I’m reading the terrain in advance, and corning like a pro. When I power slide around a tight turn, I begin to think that I actually know how my car handles.

Two Shots

The second shot goes down easier than the first. Scotch, you say? I start wondering if I should turn on the ceiling fan. My racing isn’t as slick as after the first shot, but I can power through it. The nitro button makes my car do things I don’t like it to do. Mental note: if I’m ever drunk and driving (God forbid), do not I repeat do not engage the nitrous oxide system — it won’t end well.

Three Shots

It’s a little hard to stomach the third shot, as I feel the first two still settling in. My car has an affinity for trees, for some reason. Why do they keep jumping out in front of my car? It’s annoying to be cruising down a street at 90 MPH, only to suddenly be at 0 MPH in front of a tree. The other racers don’t seem to have this problem. Stupid cheating computer.

Four Shots

Hmm, why did the game makers make the screen all blurry? Is it to emphasize speed? Then I realize it’s not the game that’s blurry. I’m thanking the game makers for putting in the hard edges to the race track, or God knows where my car would be right now. Probably heading to a Denny’s.

Five Shots

If I’m getting into the underground racing scene, do I really want to be driving a Civic? Clearly not. I trade in my car for a Mazda Miata, which proves that I still have motor function enough to work menus — good news for late night food runs. Bad news for random eBay purchasing. The Miata has much more speed and acceleration than the Civic, which I’m starting to regret in my condition. I get out of my chair and sit closer to the TV. I don’t think that would be possible in a real car — the seat will only move so far forward.

Six Shots

There are a lot of colors on the screen. I hope none of them are ambulances. I’m pretty sure I saw a squirrel run by. Screw driving, I’m going to bed.

So there you have it, a cautionary tale in action. Drinking and driving is verifiably bad. No real news here, but I encourage you to try virtual drunk driving yourself to see how bad. Just watch out for the next morning, because though you may have only been virtually driving, you’ll feel like you’ve been in a real accident. I’m going to find a quiet place now.

When it first came out, I lamented the PSP’s use of UMD format. After all, it was a proprietary format, tightly controlled by Sony, and seeing how well both minidiscs and memory sticks worked out, I didn’t see it as entirely viable. Now, I read everywhere about how the UMD format is officially dead. It was doomed as a platform on which movie studios could release films; why in the world would anyone want to pay full price for a movie that 1) was lower quality than a DVD, and 2) could only play on a PSP handheld? There was no way Sony could leverage itself into the portable multimedia market to such a saturation as to make it a viable platform in that regard, when working with proprietary formats. Even viewing video clips on the PSP is difficult — you have to convert them to the right aspect ratio and format before they’ll even work. What about a tie-in with Apple or other online music sources? There were so many holes in that plan that yes, it was doomed to fail. (I like the PSP as a gaming platform, mind you. The other extras are nice, but definitely not user-friendly.)

Why does UMD have to just die? The bigger question is why Sony is abandoning this format altogether. It’s not hopeless. Some quick ideas off the top of my head:

• Release a UMD reader / writer. This opens up the PC market, and possibly the home theater market. If you’re going to have a proprietary format, you might as well make it easy for people to actually use it. (They’ll never do this because they worry about piracy of UMD media, such as PSP games.)
• Use UMD as a value-added addition to DVD releases. Why would I want to buy a movie in UMD format, only to buy it again in DVD format? Give it to me for free when I buy the movie, or for a nominal, additional fee. I can see myself buying a UMD if it was for, say, a dollar or two more above a DVD’s purchase price.
• Build a promotional base and use UMDs for promotional materials. They’re already trying to build distribution points for PSP media; why not build a customer postal mailing list, and provide promotions through the mail on UMD?

Of all these suggestions, the first has the most power, and yet, is the one they’re least likely to do. Oh well, at least it’ll be a lesson to Sony, which they never seem to learn: stop cramming proprietary formats down the throats of your customers!

There’s a fascinating article over at Next Generation on The Ten Greatest Years In Gaming (as well as an interesting discussion thread over at Slashdot. As an avid gamer, reading over the highlights definitely brought back memories of gameplay past, which led me to ask, what’s my history of gaming? I think it’d go something like this:

• 1982: My family gets its first Atari (clone?). Space Invaders and Pac Man are the games of the day. Amusement to no end was had when a sibling was playing a game, as you would switch their control from joystick to paddle during gameplay. Worst game ever: ET. Even in those low expectation times it was bad.
• 1986: My family gets a NES, because everyone was getting a NES. Well, first we start by renting systems from the video store, but eventually we cave in. The video store became my new hangout. My favorite game: Metal Gear. Why? I still don’t know.
• 1992: My cousin shows me Wolfenstein 3D on his PC. 3D immersive graphics and no real plot? I’m there!
• 1993: What’s this Doom you speak of? It runs on Silicon Graphics computers and I can download it for free? Sweet, I can play this in the computing lab when it’s dead. Also, a friend of mine gets Myst, which is the first blockbuster but last successful point and click adventure title.
• 1994: I discover MUDs, and make friends in Singapore. I start uttering the phrase “wa lau eh” whenever my character is in trouble.
• 1995: The SNES will be rented many times, but only two games are ever played: Chrono Trigger and F-Zero.
• 1996: Network lab filled with Macs + free download of Marathon II = great stress relief. You can jump! And use two handguns at once! OMFG! I also discover Warlords for Mac, which, aside from word processing, becomes its only purpose.
• 1997: The original Civilization makes time magically disappear. “The peasants are revolting!” They sure are. Just get me gunpowder, and I’ll show them.
• 1998: One of the benefits to having a networked group of computers at the workplace? Quake 2. The term “fragging” enters my lexicon.
• 1999: The original PlayStation is gifted to me. Much fun was had, but I primarily remember Xenogears (cementing my love for RPGs), Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill (showing how games can be narrative and a form of storytelling / new entertainment medium), and Final Fantasy VIII (showing me what a collosal waste of time RPGs can be). Resident Evil 2 defined the survival-horror genre. (Yes, the second one, not the first.) Oh, and Tetris Plus — I still play that game.
• 2000: I get PlayStation 2. I have to send it back because it doesn’t work. I get another. I have to send it back. I get another, and, lo, I saw that it was good. Games, unfortunately, were not. Sega Dreamwhat? I look with longing at Mario Tennis on N64.
• 2001: A little game named Grand Theft Auto III appeared on the scene. I don’t know how the above linked article didn’t mention this game.
• 2003: Yeah, I’d like to play Eternal Darkness, what with me being a survival-horror fan, but hold myself back from buying a GameCube. Even Resident Evil 4 couldn’t bring me over to that camp.
• 2004: Time for retro: Doom 3 is released, which emboldens me to build a new PC. It’s good for a few levels, then you just get bored of the same thing over and over. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the best game I’ve ever played.
• 2005: Ooh, Half Life 2 offers an ultra-realistic physics engine and further justification for building a PC. Unfortunately, it makes me nauseated to play. God of War is crowned the new best game I’ve ever played. I get a PSP and wonder where the games are.
• 2006: I buy my wife Civilization 4, and proceed to play it ad nauseum.

Oh, the memories. It’s amazing to think that I’ve been playing video games for twenty-four years. At this point, I think it’d be hard to picture a world without them. Video games are for kids? Ha! It’s no surprise that the average age of a gamer is 33 years of age (according to the ESA).

Ah, another wonderful opus from director Uwe Boll. BloodRayne is the latest video game conversion from this director known for bad video game conversions, and given that this is showing up as #43 on IMDB’s bottom 100 films, this movie looked to be meeting the same fate. I was practically salivating at the chance to watch this movie, because I wanted to see a bad movie. Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

First off, I loved playing BloodRayne 2. That game was sexy, violent, dark, and funny. You got the chance to enjoy the main character because she had a sense of humor. She had sass and humor, which really added a sort of lighthearted element to an otherwise quite dark and morbid game. For example, this quote:

Minion: The Master, I mean, Mr. Zerenski, would prefer that all guests remain downstairs, madam.
Rayne:The Master can blow me, monkey suit.

I still remember cracking up when one of the non-player characters commented something to the effect of, “Ooh, I’m going make you make me a sandwich!” There was an interesting blend of acrobatics, intense action, dark environments, humor, and sex appeal.

Then, we have this movie purportedly based on the game. First, let’s address the sex appeal straightaway:

Image on right: sexy. Image on left: not sexy. This is rather tragic, because the image on the left is of a real, living, breathing woman, while the one on the right is of a computer generated character. Further driving the tragedy is the fact that the real woman, Kritianna Loken, is sexy, though you wouldn’t really know it from this movie aside from its one awkward, unnecessary, and unsexy sex scene. It says something when the game is sexier than the movie.

Let’s take a look at some other highlights of this spectacular failure of a movie…

• Casting: How exactly did they cast the roles for this movie? Throw darts at a dart board? Who thought that Ben Kingsley would make a good Kagan? The addition of Michael Madsen, Billy Zane, and Michelle Rodriguez seemed rather non sequitorial choices as well. Speaking of odd choices…Meatloaf? Really?
• Acting: If you thought Kingsley and Madsen would add a little gravitas to the acting in this movie, think again. I could swear that Madsen got his lines thirty seconds before they shot each scene. It felt at times like I was watching a high school play, except that the lines are delivered in a high school play with more drama. Oddly enough, Michelle Rodriguez did an acceptable job. Everyone else appeared to be just waiting for the checks to clear.
• Story: There is a storyline to this movie. It’s consistent as a standard story in that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s about the end of the positive feedback. Did Uwe Boll even play the games? Have someone get him an executive summary? You could say that this movie was a prequel since it took place hundreds of years ago, while the games took place in the 1930s and current time, except it contradicts events in the games. So, it’s a completely made up plot. It’s written horribly.
• Cinematography: Fight scenes were shot in jerky fashion — if Boll was going for the disoriented feel, then he got that. Some shots were quite beautifully done, though these tended to just slow down the movie. People are here for the action, right? Sadly, it’s the action scenes that were shot the worst.
• Choreography: By this I mean the fight scenes. This is definitely supposed to be one of the selling points of this movie. Unfortunately, they were bad. Really bad. Yuen Wu Ping this is not. The game had excellent acrobatic moves, but you don’t even get to see Rayne moving quickly until about the end of the film, and even that’s disappointing. Horribly developed, terrible action, terrible form — do not see this movie for the fight scenes.
• Special Effects: The game was gory, so the movie had to try to match that…and failed. Special effects have come a long way, so perhaps I’m a bit jaded, but I haven’t seen effects this bad in a long, long time. They were almost Army of Darkness bad. Really. Even the blood didn’t look real, which is unfortunate for a movie called BloodRayne.

I’m not even sure where to begin on this movie with so many problems. Scenes were shot and placed haphazardly and without purpose. Characters did out-of-character things. (Note: if you’re part of an ultra secret organization that’s fighting vampires, you probably shouldn’t bring one back to your secret lair if you’ve just met.) Bad action for an action movie. Failure to be consistent with the game on which the movie was based. (You can’t kill Kagan hundreds of years before he comes back in both the 30s and current day. It just doesn’t work that way.) Failure to be consistent in any way, shape or form to the characters of the game.

You can’t make a video game to movie conversion and just toss out the game altogether. That defeats the purpose of doing the video game to movie conversion in the first place. The highlights of the game included acrobatics, guns (!), fighting, dark environments, strong-willed but funny main character, and sex appeal. The movie failed on every count.

However, this has come to be expected of Uwe Boll, and this film failed spectacularly. I’ve never seen acting so bad, nor gore so poorly done in a current big budget movie in a long, long time. I had thought this would be bad, but I was wrong: this is really, really, really bad. Almost cult classic bad. Almost. I’m still trying to figure out how he got Ben Kingsley to handicap himself out of any acting ability whatsoever for this project. He may have had to reshoot scenes where he was acting too much or something.

And there you have the paradox of Ewe Boll: on the one hand, he’s responsible for actually getting popular video games converted to movies. On the other, he will absolutely butcher the project. If you are familiar with a game that Boll is converting, you will find the movie to be that much worse. The more you like the game, the more you will hate the movie. If you don’t like the game, you’ll just think it’s a bad movie. It’s a lose-lose situation, but somehow, Boll makes it work.

So add BloodRayne to the list: it really is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I actually feel dumber for having watched it. Yet, I have no one to blame but myself for that. Even Meatloaf Aday couldn’t save this one.

FOX9 Investigators recently reported on kids accessing porn at schools from their PSPs. Slow down there, buddy. Take a deep breath, because there are a lot of trigger words there. This is basically the definition of a sensationalistic story: talk about kids and porn, link it to schools and gaming, and bam! Instant news story.

I’m all for exposing serious issues with porn in schools or kids unnecessarily exposed to violence or sex in gaming, but this is ridiculous. PSPs are just appliances, like a toaster. What makes them different is that they’re Internet-enabled appliances. (Unless you have one of those new fangled Internet toasters.) Can you access porn on PSP? Yep. Just as you can on a laptop or cell phone. The key here is to note that porn is on the Internet, not on the PSP.

Fox9 really went all out on this, including calling up a PSP porn site and asking them if they were targeting kids. Porn sites are out there for one reason: to make money. There is no money in providing porn to kids. They don’t have credit cards. So why would they want to target kids? New cradle-to-grave marketing methodologies?

My favorite bit was this excerpt:

Sony, the maker of the PSP, told us that parents should be responsible for monitoring the content their children are viewing. But David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family, says game makers have a responsibility too. They should let parents know that their product could give a kid easy access to pornography.

Mr. Walsh, this has nothing to do with gamemakers. This has everything to do with the Internet. Such restrictions apply to all Internet-enabled electronics. Does your child have a laptop? How about a PDA? Do they have a cell phone? Have your laptop provider, PDA provider, and cell phone provider noted that you might be able to access porn on them? Identifying this issue with gaming is asinine. Think first, and identify the real problem.

Should the porn site have better age restriction checks? Possibly. Should the school network have better restrictions (considering that’s how the student was getting online in the first place)? Definitely. This has nothing to do with gaming, and everything to do with how minors access porn on the Internet. Parents: stop blaming the games, and start parenting.

Gamespot reports that a Corpous Christi rancher, Star Locke, is proposing a series of radical proposals in the gubernatorial race. With an eye to eliminating property tax, he proposes the following:

• $10,000 per abortion tax paid by medical clinics.
• 50% tax on “violent video games (to manufacturers)
• 10% sugar-filled soda tax

(Figures above as reported by Amarillo Globe News; Gamespot reports 100% tax on games and 50% tax on soda.)

If this is true, then apparently, Star Locke isn’t familiar with basic economics. Here’s why.

$10,000 per abortion

This doesn’t change user behavior per se, and is geared towards causing medical providers to stop doing them. Either a) they will stop doing them, and people will start seeking abortions out of state, or b) they will continue doing them, and drive up the cost of health care, as this always gets passed down in expenses. After all, there’s no reason they would pass these costs directly to the people getting abortions. You might not pay this amount in property tax, but you would in health. Hope you don’t get sick in Texas!

Incidentally, if this is sufficient to reduce the number of abortions performed, then it may have other interesting effects. Steven D. Levitt made an interesting case in the book Freakonomics, which examined the link between crime rates and abortion. Statistics back up his findings, meaning that if such a policy were enacted, we might see a rather nasty Texas in twenty years — it’s a good thing they can get guns. They’ll need them. Think New York in the eighties.(Read the book for the rather compelling argument.)

50% violent video game tax

If this measure succeeded, then it would have the benefit of having violent video game publishers reduce or stop sales to Texas. On the face of it, this seems like a good thing. However, again, it’s not hard to obtain games from out-of-state sources. I imagine the surrounding states and online stores would be able to pull in a little extra revenue from this. However, this is revenue that would have gone to Texas-based stores. I.e., your cutting down on violent video games being sold in state, but you’re doing so by cutting out sales in your state. I hope Locke was putting that estimated lost sales tax revenue into his calculations! Less sales tax, less revenue for stores, and no effective curbing of behavior — it’s a lose-lose-lose proposal.

10% soda tax

I’m not sure if this is directed at manufacturers or end users, but in either case, the same arguments as for violent video games holds true. Plus, this would probably increase the sales of sugary juices, which aren’t exactly better. Like the abortion tax, these costs would filter down to the end user in terms of pricing. So, it’s much the same as taxing end users. You don’t pay property tax, but you pay it on the soda! However, if people could easily switch from soda to other sugary drinks, then this won’t be very effective anyway. I’m also skeptical that eliminating soda would help fight obesity — it’s a diet change and the addition of exercise that will foster change. Soda will only help so much. If you really want to make a difference, go after the high carb-based foods — those turn directly into sugar, and are probably the bigger problem in people’s diets.

It’s simply far too easy to get out of state to make these measures effective. (Yes, I know Texas is a really big state.) There are fundamental problems with each of the assertions he’s listed, and it doesn’t take a genius to pick these out. Anyone with a freshman course in economics could see these weren’t effective ideas.

Plus, Locke is ignoring the rule: The greater the success in the former, the less the success in the latter. Let’s say he’s successful in curbing all of these things: abortion, soda consumption, and violent video game sales are all reduced. The tax revenues from these things would also be reduced. With no property tax and little revenue from these new taxes, how is the government going to be funded?

However, the more likely scenario is a blend of the above: the measures themselves would only marginally affect things, and not enough revenue would be generated. Marginal changes in human behavior and no money — it doesn’t sound like Locke can eliminate property taxes this way. I recommend Locke hire a fiscal policy advisor for his campaign — he can probably take a tax deduction on it.

MediaWise recently released their 2005 Video Game Report Card, in which they lambast the ESRB for their ratings system. What a bunch of hooey. They argue that the video game industry keeps getting stronger, while underage children continue to get violent or sexually explicit games.

Let’s take a deep breath, and look at their report:

• Ratings Education: C+
• Retailers’ Policies: B
• Retailers’ Enforcement: D-
• Ratings Accuracy: F
• Arcade Survey: B-

Some thoughts on this. First, they conclude that Ratings Education is passable — a C+. They even say that retailer policies are decent, at a B. However, they say retailers have issues when it comes to enforcement. Why? This is a retailer problem, not an industry problem. Why aren’t the retailers enforcing this? That’s more an indictment of retailers than the gaming industry.

The next point, Ratings Accuracy, is very strange. What is so wrong with the ratings accuracy? Presumably, this is a reflection of this year’s Hot Coffee issue. Aside from this, from what I can see, the ESRB has been doing a great job of tagging their games. They keep developers in line, rate games fairly, dealt with the Hot Coffee issue appropriately, and otherwise provided a way to quickly and easily determine the appropriateness of a game. Considering their eleven year history of doing this, with only one notable issue, I would say they’re doing a quite acceptable job with ratings.

As to the Arcade Survey, who cares. Arcades are dying. MediaWise is correct in that home gaming has grown extensively, and as such, arcades are fading into history. Why go to an arcade when you have a perfectly good video game experience, right from the comfort of home?

One of the more interesting yet disturbing results from the MediaWise report is the bit about how only 40% of respondents understand the game rating symbols. I’m wondering how this survey actually worked, because I’m looking at an M-rated label right now. It says right on it: Mature 17+. What’s not to understand? What’s more, if I flip the game over, I see the same symbol, along with an explanation of what this symbol means (in this case, Blood and Gore, Mature Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence). Apparently, by “not understanding”, what we mean is “can’t read”.

Interestingly enough, MediaWise presented a list of games that they said to avoid, and those to buy. All of the buy list games were rated E, while all but one of the avoid list games were rated M. That seems like an effective rating system to me. (The one game that didn’t rate an M, Urban Reign, is a scrolling fighter, a la Double Dragon back in the day. I’d avoid this one too, and not because it’s on this list. It just sucks.)

Let’s be clear about this: this furor is all about how a group of parents do not like violent or sexually explicit games, but aren’t able to monitor it for themselves. That, and folks who wish to use this as a political platform to present a “family-friendly” view. The ratings system is pretty straightforward. Even if they overhaul the system, people are still not going to read what’s presented to them. Retailers are reluctant to go overboard on the enforcement, because this means less sales for them. Game companies are unlikely to change their model, because the average age of a gamer today is thirty years old.

The only real issue here is this: parents need to monitor what they buy for their children. That’s the entire deal. No need for revised ratings, panels, and focus groups. No need for governmental intervention. No need to sanction video game companies. Parents just need to take an active role in what their child sees. Period.

It’s finally here. The rumors were true. Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PSP, and PSP owners around the world rejoice.

There’s a lot of reason to celebrate. Though the PSP has been out for several months now, games (not surprisingly) have been somewhat lacking. Sure, solid gameplay can be found in Wipeout, Metal Gear: Acid, and Lumines, but none of them have been the must have game for handhelds. (Well, Lumines was pretty close, with its flashy graphics, great music, and addictive fast-paced gameplay.) Enter Rockstar with currently the most desired handheld game on the market, the next in the Grand Theft Auto line.

No game bolstered the sale of PS2s so much as the Grand Theft Auto line, which makes it a fitting addition to the PSP line. How does it compare? Is it everything you’d expect and hope? Will it make the PSP a viable gaming platform?

In a word, yes. This game is a joy to start up. Grand Theft Auto, portable. The first time you hear someone drop an F-bomb, you’ll know Rockstar isn’t pulling their punches. Plus, with the PSP’s sleep feature, you can move a little in the real world, play a little GTA, then just put your PSP to sleep; come back later, and pick up right where you left off. The quick run down:

• Graphics: Very good. Those already familiar with GTA-styled graphics should feel right at home. My first impression was wow — these graphics were as good as on GTA 3. I did see some tearing in animations, but overall, quite good. It’s obviously not quite as good as on the PS2, but hey — it’s handheld. The GTA engine translated quite nicely to the PSP platform.
• Music: Good. ten stations are provided for your listening enjoyment, ranging from gangsta rap of The Liberty City Jam (my personal favorite right now), to the strangely nebulous alternative selection on Lips, and, of course, the talk radio station. The Liberty City Jam appears to be the only one with actual names pulled from popular albums, oddly enough. I was kind of surprised to be playing, and suddenly thought, “Wait, is that DMX?” Welcome to 1998, baby! Also interesting: looking for a little listening music? Pull up the pause menu, go to audio, and you can listen to the stations at your leisure! Great as a soundtrack to your workday, or to listen to on the commute. I would have liked more popular licensed music, but what they provided was decent. You can also upload your own MP3s, for your own station mix.
• Controls: Okay. What can you do with the limited control set of the PSP? There are two fewer shoulder buttons, one less analog stick, and the one analog stick that was provided is a little nub, making fine tuned adjustments difficult. Rockstar obviously has no control over what buttons are available, and make good use of what they have. I found myself doing all the taxi missions just to get used to driving with the analog stick. They definitely made some compromises here, and while it mostly works, some of it, like camera control, just remains cludgy at best.
• Plot: Okay. You’ve done this sort of thing before: enter the city as a low level punk, and work your way up the criminal organization. Expect the normal back and forth, playing multiple sides, etc. The cast of characters is varied and detailed, so you’ll be entertained, nonetheless.
• Voice Acting: Good. Rockstar has always done a decent job at voicing the GTA line, and this game is no exception. Decent, believable character actors run their lines well.
• Gameplay: Good. Solid GTA-style action carries you through. Though the controls take a little bit to get used to, you can quickly pick this up and get right into the action.

Being that this game takes place a few years before GTA 3, it’s interesting to see what changes they made to the city. Driving through this city is a nostalgic activity; those who played GTA 3 will recognize all these streets. They’re all there. Sadly, so are the spike strips that made their appearance in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. One of the missions early on will have you cursing those spike strips as you try to take a Banshee through the city while being chased.

The old game modes of vigilante, taxi driver, and ambulance missions return this round. I didn’t find the firetruck, though, which makes sense, because you can’t really aim a firehose nozzle with just one analog stick.

New game modes also make an appearance here. Try the car selling minigame, where you have to try to drive in the style that the customer appreciates. Do the driveby shooting mission off the back of a motorcycle.

This game is eminently familiar, quite good in terms of gameplay, and just the thing to get in your rampaging fix of action while on the go. I had the odd experience of walking through a convenience store, looking through the aisles while simultaneously trying to drive a car through the GTA city.

Multiplayer modes are also a new addition. That’s right, I said multiplayer. Through ad hoc mode, you can get together with a group of friends and play against each other in a few different scenarios. Liberty City Survivor is a lot like any other deatch match. Protection Racket has you by turns attacking then defending four limos. Get Stretch is a capture the flag style game where you try to steal the opposing team’s limo, while defending your own. Tanks For the Memories has you trying to survive while in the tank, while others try to take you down. The Hit List has all players try to take down one player in all against one action. Street Rage let’s you do checkpoint-style racing through the city against others. The Wedding List is a car theft game, where you compete against each other to steal dream cars. Provided you have friends with PSPs and GTA, you can extend your gameplay of this long after you’re done with the single player for quite a while.

This game is a healthy blend of old and new, under a new control scheme, but definitely provides the GTA experience in good, portable form. Now you can act out on those violent tendencies while in public and not get arrested!

One hopes that this is a sign of a new age of handheld games. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is a must-have game for the PSP. Rockstar just raised the bar on handheld games, and hopefully other game developers will take notice. Portable GTA is here, and shows that there’s a lot of power in the PSP. Let’s hope other developers take advantage of it and give Rockstar a run for their money.

I’ve had enough of all the buzz about the hot coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Enough already. Some smart hacker figured out that there was a “sex” option in dating in this game, and provided instructions for how to unlock it. If you’ve watched the example video in the above link, you’ll be struck by how uninteresting this actually is.

Nonetheless, this has people up in storm. Even Hillary Clinton joined the fray, stating, “The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder.” Really. Because otherwise, GTA: SA would make a fine game for a child. The pimping, crime lording, drug running, killing, and racial stereotyping were acceptable — it’s the sex that’s abhorrent. There is something really, really wrong with that prioritization.

Let’s look at the technical aspects of this. The game itself does not provide this scene in the game by default. In fact, you have to mess around with the files, which no average gamer does, in order to even enable the thing. So, in terms of presentation to the public, the game doesn’t even really have this functionality, unless you’re messing around with the game getting it to do something it wasn’t meant to do as released. Yes, the functionality was there. But broken. This is technically different than, say, releasing a nude mod to a game (which has been around since at least Doom days), because the publisher created the functionality, not some random hormone-rampant horny third party indy developer. However, for most, the actual steps taken are much the same: download a patch from a third party on the Internet, install, and wow, boobies.

The legal aspect of this is also strange: it centers around the Entertainment Software Rating Board’s rating system. GTA: SA was released with an M (mature) rating, while the talk is that this game should have been released with an AO (adults only) rating. Supposedly. After all, M games, by ESRB definition, “have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language.” AO games “have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.” So the argument is for the difference between sexual content and graphic sexual content with nudity.

When I think of games that might make the AO list, one game pops up in my head: Manhunt. This was, interestingly enough, a Rockstar game as well. In it, you stalk victims to kill, and the better you do, the more graphic the death. The game was all about intense violence — that was all the game was for. Yet, the ESRB rating for that game is M. I guess they have to go a little stronger on the violence, or maybe be a little more realistic. Better luck next time, Rockstar! How about nudity? God Of War had nudity, yet only gained an M rating. Fine, fine, but what about graphic sex scenes? Did you miss the intense, detailed, and high resolution sex scene in Gothic II? Plus, in all of the above, the content wasn’t locked away: it was in the basic gameplay. Historically, the ESRB didn’t blink an eye at things like this. Perhaps it’s a flaw in the ESRB. It is hard to give a good rating to games, as they come out, and find all possible content within a game — especially content that’s locked away from all but hackers.

So, why now? Did the strip clubs in the games not bother them before? Have they seen Duke Nukem? Did the extra approximately 0.3% of gameplay here (presuming 10 minutes in a 50 hour game) really make all the difference?

You can’t even argue that this should send a message to Rockstar. I’m betting sales of this game increase on all this buzz. Certainly, Rockstar can appreciate free publicity. (Which makes you wonder if someone on the inside intentionally leaked the mod, but I digress.)

Perhaps it’s just politically profitable to go after an easy target like Rockstar, to boost your image as one who maintains conservative family values. Nah, that would make too much sense. They’d never try that in New York.

Update: As if that weren’t enough, the ESRB is revising its rating on the current version of GTA: SA to ‘AO’. This seems to me at best a knee jerk reaction. Hey, this is getting lots of press! Let’s join in!

What gamer in their right mind would choose an ‘M’ title over ‘AO’, anyway? That’s like getting an album with ‘Clean’ lyrics instead of the ‘Uncensored’ — it just feels like I’m cheating myself out of the full experience.