Chris

I suspected as much but I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The first two games have almost nothing in common with GTA3 and Vice City, except for the basic organized crime plot element and the gameplay of stealing cars and causing mayhem. Try out Vice City or something. It's not necessary to complete the games, that's not really the point as much as it is with other games. I never completed Vice City but it's so open-ended that I still had a blast with it.

Are you a big fan of skateboarding or something?

Why?

It's an easter egg!

They better be.

Meh.

It says something like "So you have 100 bucks to spend this month, we'll tell you how to spend it" then it has a list of current releases (games, movies, whatever, also usually wacky items like Mexican candy or something) that add up to $100.

Things like game brokers are unnecessary now that we have global services like Ebay. It's understandable that they exist but they're no longer actually providing a service that benefits anyone except themselves. EDIT: I suppose there's one benefit to buyers in that game brokers actually plan on selling their games, whereas if all the old games were owned by casual collectors there wouldn't be as much of a market.

Thank you, Kingzjester, also known as S. Zivandadznedavec, thank you for your vote of confidence in regards to my ability to concisely convey my thoughts over the internet. I appreciate this newfound respect I seem to have earned despite past suggestions that I construct messages that are far too unnecessarily long, resulting in extraneous redundancy and an overall lack of clarity. I salute you, Kingzjester. I salute you for showing capacity to salute.

Over my dead fucking body.

Because we're awesome.

Yes, like pirates. But the thing about monkeys is that they've been overplayed beyond any remaining shred of amusement to me.

Lame.

Yeah, actually right after I posted that I read a press release describing a ludicrous 8-CD GTA:SA soundtrack boxed set containing all the radio stations from the game. I'm newsing it at the moment. EDIT: I guess the 8-CD thing was actually announced a few days ago, but nobody seemed to really emphasize it, instead focusing on the less ostentatious 2-CD version that will be released the same day. No news posting then I guess.

Right, so that could be like what I described, the "second cheapest" phenomenon.

It's possible I suppose. Either way it's in a style that isn't really fitting to the setting but rather seems to be what the guy sort of stereotypically associates with being ethnic and/or hardcore.

If you want to point out where I indicated that would be a reason not to like the game, I'd be obliged. I think it's a fairly decent reason to not like the artistic director, though.

I'm honestly not worried about San Andreas improving upon Rockstar's current formula. In a worst-case scenario and all they do is make it "bigger and better", I will not be disappointed. Vice City-like interactions in an environment that's potentially three times the size sounds pretty appealing to me, especially since we already know for a fact that there will be plenty of new interactions. If nothing else, it will clearly be more of a step forward than GTA3 was to Vice City, and I don't think many people had a problem with that transition. I do agree with Walter that it would be something of a shame if Rockstar has gone overboard with making the game even more egregiously violent and extreme, mainly because I don't want to feel like gratuitous exploitation of violence really does sell games. Despite the so-called "freedom" of the GTA series, you're really only free to just have different ways of committing violent acts. Of course, I've been a big fan of GTA since the first game (and by the "first game" I mean GTA, not GTA3, which seems to be what many people consider the first one...) so I have no problem with its basic gameplay mechanics but I just hope that they don't get too caught up in that aspect and take it to ludicrous extremes. Also, in a completely separate point, I hope the soundtrack is pretty diverse and not as rap/hip-hop centric as the existing promotional materials have indicated. Without making any value judgments, I'm not a big fan of rap, west coast/gansta in particular, and I worry that's going to impair my enjoyment of the game, despite the occasional bizarre instance of Sinatra and Willie Nelson that have popped up in the track list.

It's actually a common phenomenon not just in the games industry but in retail in general. With the obvious exception of people on a specific budget, many consumers will be wary of buying the brand of a product that is the absolute cheapest, and in many cases the second-cheapest sells the best. Of course, as a college student with a severely limited money flow, this approach could not be more foreign to me, but it definitely exists.

I think it's pretty dumb that monkeys have become the de facto "hilarious animal" when they're not in actuality very funny, but are rather scary as shit. It seems like whenever someone wants to get a cheap laugh they can simply throw in some kind of monkey reference and inevitably someone will think it's funny for some reason. (LAME)

including the hardcore multiplayer mode, Xtreme Clawhammer Challenge!

Yeah, it's pretty terrible. The camera does this extreme close up to his arm (several times over the course of the interview, I should add) and then switchse to a view of the Prince's arm, which sports the exact same not-Persian design.

The fact that he gave the character the same tattoos he himself has indicates that regardless of language he is clearly some degree of a wanker.

Hi Jake sorry I'm retarded. It is completely crappy but games aren't actually increasing in price nearly as quickly as pretty much any other entertainment product. Again, it's still lame.