Grand Theft Auto IV
*****
Rated M
Rockstar
Xbox 360
In recent years, video games have delivered some astonishingly immersive virtual worlds. In The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, non-player characters had their own daily schedules, and you could set your watch by them. In Fable, you could buy your dream cottage, get married and even consummate that marriage (to either a woman or another man) in the land of Albion. In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the drive from Los Santos to Las Venturas was uncannily similar to the drive from LA to Las Vegas, right up to the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Venturas” sign that introduced you to the Strip. But none of these worlds can compare to Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV.
It’s not that GTA IV’s approximation of the Big Apple is photorealistic. It isn’t. Occasional aliasing and a few muddy textures ensure that the visuals don’t hold up to close scrutiny. But what GTA lacks in cutting-edge graphics it makes up for in authenticity. This feels like a living, breathing metropolis, especially when the sun sets and the city lights up. You can walk the crowded sidewalks for hours without running into the same NPC design twice. The weather, the progression of time, even the flow of traffic all seem true to life. It’s New York City with the satirical twist you’ve come to expect from GTA.
Liberty City seems even bigger than the last game’s entire state of San Andreas, and whether you’re getting drunk to go bowling, stopping for a few lap dances or blasting pigeons into feathery clouds (my favorite new mini-game, personally), the city is filled with myriad diversions designed to fuel the franchise’s trademark morality controversies. Additionally, the gunplay is improved (embracing the trend in recent shooters of utilizing cover), the story is the best so far, and the addition of multiplayer functionality adds virtually unlimited replay value. But no matter what GTA IV gives us to do, as long as we’re doing it in this unparalleled game environment, we, like Liberty City’s population of pigeons, are perpetually blown away. This is easily one of the greatest games of all time.
Speed Racer
***
Rated E
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Wii
The advantage that Speed Racer has over normal movie-to-video game tie-ins is that, with no story mode to weigh it down, it can purely be a racing game. And it is just that, inducing players to salivate over what a Wii version of F-Zero might be. The drawback is that, for all of Speed Racer’s neon splendor, it doesn’t have the depth of an F-Zero. And for all of the Mario Kart-style thrills that come from decimating players with “car-fu,” the lack of online multiplayer mode (or even split-screen for more than two players) is unforgivable.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness
* 1/2
Rated E
Nintendo
Nintendo DS
Where’s the mystery to the dungeon when the exit randomly appears in the same room as the entrance half the time? I hate randomly generated dungeons almost as much as I hate the laziness of the Pokemon brand. No other DS game (especially published by Nintendo) would try to get away with Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance caliber graphics at full price. But here, we get two games (Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness) with virtually no differences, trying to get us to pay twice for the same rock, paper, scissors combat we’ve seen in every other Pokemon rip-off.
The World Ends With You
****
Rated T
Square Enix
Nintendo DS
I used to consider fashion sense one of humanity’s more shallow qualities, but the latest RPG from Square imbues metrosexuality with brain-cramping depth. Of course, when the popularity of brand-name fashions affects how powerful you are when fighting monsters from another dimension, it pays to know what’s trendy. As if that doesn’t make things complicated enough, this game also challenges you to fight two separate battles simultaneously on both screens of the DS. Lovers of multi-tasking can kick ass and look good doing it.