GTA IV

[Herzeg Dva]

Grant Theft Auto Retrospective

So, it's close now. Any day in fact. Are you affected by the hype? I must admit I am, but I'm not terribly excited. However, with the consistent disappointments in existing technology and the deliveries (Did UE3 improve anything compared to 6th gen titles? Not much) GTA IV could possibly be the first true 7th gen title to exploit all the features of the multi-core hardware out there, for the benefit of gameplay of course.

The PC conversion will take up to a year from the looks of it, by which time the bling will have died down and Mafia 2 will probably have already wowed PC gamers beyond GTA IV could ever do. But it's an enticing time for console owners nonetheless!

[Atebash]

Since I am a PC gamer I dont give a damn for another year

[DeadMeat]

I'm buying it.

[Anomonous Guy]

I might buy a PS3 or an X Box 360 just for this game...


nah...

[Access]

We all know Metal Gear Solid is the only series worth playing

[Anomonous Guy]

its shit

[Red Lightning]

Ok, at the moment the only console based game that's making me want to buy one of those 2 consoles is Fable 2.  /drool.  The 360 does have quite a few other titles that really have caught my eye, but nothing that was enough for me to go out of my way to invest in a console.

GTA IV does look fan-fucking-tastic, always has done, and the appeal of the game is something still with a long way to go.  San Andreas became a bit too micro-managey for my taste in a GTA game.  But, that said, I've always preferred playing GTA on PC. 

In other news, as with every GTA game since GTA3 - Australia is getting a "Diet" version of the game (go the Australian gaming market WOOO - fuck this, somebody send my ass to Canada NOW kthx).  The exact details of what is being cut for the Australian market have not been released and I doubt there will ever be an official press release of what we're having removed from us.  In the previous history, GTA3 had the prostitutes de-activated.  They'd walk around, you could shoot them etc, but you could never hire them.

Funny thing is, in my state, prostitution is legal.  There is even a brothel "chain" thats become Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) Listed.   Granted street prostitution is illegal, but the concept of going up and paying for a root is not something our state disagrees with.

[Anomonous Guy]

Pretty stupid really, it seems to me that these politicians and 'busy bodies' are the ones who can't tell the difference between reality and virtuality...

No wonder you Aussies download so much...

[Red Lightning]

its not surprising we WANT to download so much, but we've been officially rated as one of the top 5 worlds highest overpriced broadband nations in the world, and top 5 worst equipped broadband nations in the world.  One of the election campaigns from our new prime minister late last year was that he would be looking to change that. 

For example, for $56 USD per month I get to download no more that 12gb in the calendar month or my net gets slowed down to 64kbps, not that the starting speed was that good to begin with, and a ping of www.bhlegend.com brings up the following for me:
Pinging www.bhlegend.com [88.198.164.243] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 88.198.164.243: bytes=32 time=523ms TTL=46
Reply from 88.198.164.243: bytes=32 time=365ms TTL=46
Reply from 88.198.164.243: bytes=32 time=360ms TTL=46
Reply from 88.198.164.243: bytes=32 time=361ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 88.198.164.243:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 360ms, Maximum = 523ms, Average = 402ms

and thats at an offpeak time on the provider that provides the entirety of the infrastructure for our landline phones and broadband internet. 

[Anomonous Guy]

that really sucks

Ive spoken to Access about this before, usually when I'm moaning that my unlimited 8 meg connection is only going at 4 meg... lol... u make me feel better

[Red Lightning]

4 meg---- /drool.

[Access]

Im on a $69 for 150 gig per month on a 8meg line.

180ms pings.

http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ <= You might be able to find a better plan for your exchange.


And yes, us with no R rating means all adult games are censored. Of course to be fair, the equivalent rating in the united states, "AO" is never put on games. Because Wallmart refuse to sell AO products (understand they sell a massive chunk of the market). So video games that get rated as AO get self censored in America. However usually they make games specifically for the US ESRB rating system.

I know thats not the same thing as banning AO games completely like we do, but im just saying in practice America dont have R rated games either.

[Atebash]

And I thought we had bad internet offers here

Well, I get 9GB Download/month for 25 Euros. It's bad but it's not the worst ever

[Anomonous Guy]

i dont think this house could live on less than a gig a day (and that wud b pushing it!), with the amount of youtubing, radio streaming, emuling and torrenting that goes on across the network!

[Herzeg Dva]

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/40052521/gta+review?tab=summary

Internet embargo is going to be lifted this Sunday at seventeen hundred hours Greenwich meantime.. However we can see through the hype that this game is so far from perfect.. Hype sucks doesn't it? PC version then it is. 7th gen is so disappointing.