Thank you Escapist Magazine. Thank you for delivering some sense.
Boys who dont play video games at greater risk.

Ok, I know that I have not updated my blog in some time. Partly because of uni, partly because of work , however mostly because I have been playing GTA IV ridiculously much since I got it and I have been enjoying every minute of it, which in my mind counts as a valid excuse.

Firstly, some back story, as many are aware as it has been the topic of many of my rants, is that Australia does not have an R18+ rating for videos games and I was forced to acquire Dark Sector which has not been classified in this country from NZ. I attempted to do the same for GTA IV but I was thwarted as they would receive the same version as Australia. In desperation I sought to import from the UK in which they received the unrestricted version. This plan has turned into a great success for me. I picked up the Collector edition of GTA IV from my local EB Games store and played that whilst waiting for my UK copy. Once the UK copy arrived, I traded back the game which came with the CE edition, fortunately its just random stuff that came with the CE like a bag and lockbox, which on a side note is now being used as my change collection tin. Anyway, I traded back the game in for full game price since it was less than a week after purchase and bought two other games with the cash. The best part is that I paid about $30 less for a CE copy than normal due to importing it from the UK. So now I have an unrestricted CE copy of GTA IV. Hurrah and screw you Australian Govt.

Now onto the game, straight from the get go, you can tell the game is different. The original GTA games have always leaned on the side of toony, if that may be the best word to describe the visuals, this however has taken a move onto realism and I think its absolutely brilliant. Rockstar have really taken advantage of the power than the next gen consoles have to offer and polished the graphics to the best they can. I have been informed that the PS3 have slightly better graphics, but I really do not care as it still looks fantastic. The best part I have found are the water effects. Swimming and driving a boat out on the ocean or on the river looks brilliant. It's probably what he have come to expect from games but I never thought they would go to such lengths for GTA. What is probably even better is the rain effects. Driving through the streets of Liberty City when it is raining, takes your breath away, I really cannot phrase it any other way. The explosion effects are brilliant, blood splatters onto your screen when you kill someone up close and personal, and the cars are nicely polished until you crash into a wall at which point they are still nicely polished, just very crumpled and you have flown through the window and left some blood along the way.

The game has stuck to its traditional GTA formula, character with a shady past makes his way up through the ranks of criminal society doing any job as long as cash is involved. IV has taken this formula and added more bits to it, some for better, some for worse. One of the worse inclusions is going out and having fun with your friends. Every so often you get a new acquaintance and they get added to your cell phone. Call them up and you can go out and have a good time by picking them up, driving them to some random location, having some fun and then driving all the way to drop them off. Great in theory, but despite the offer of having something special such as being to call one of them up to get a cheap taxi, its something that annoyed the crap out of me and as such I didn't bother to do it. There was no real encouragement to do it either, you can say no to them as many times as you like and they will still treat you like best mates next times you see them. Dating is similar in how that operates, call them up, organise, pick them up etc , etc. This was much more interesting as not only does sex become involved but also I was testing how long it would take the three women I was dating to realise I was not being faithful. I have completed the game and neither of them have any idea which is hilariously entertaining for me. It is good to know that the GTA take on morality applies to dating as well.

A change that I am not sure of is how it is determined that you get away from the cops. In GTA you will always eventually do something that the police will not like and you have to get away somehow, in previous games by usually running to the nearest pay and spray. Rockstar has added the brilliant rule with the pay and spray in which you can not go into the thing if the cops see you do it. No more driving into a spray shop at the last minute and despite the cop practically kissing the arse of your car, you get away. However in balance they have made it so that when you get the cops involved, they only care about you as long as you are in a circle indicated on the HUD. Outside of this circle, as long as you do not do something stupid like running down three prostitutes and Jack Thompson (which should not be a crime really), they will not touch you and eventually go away. The idea works great when you have at least three stars on you but anything less than that and it becomes too easy to get away. I was driving onto the airport runway just to get four stars and see how long it would take for the idiots to start scratching their nuts and wonder where the fuck I had gone.

The gun play in this game is absolutely brilliant. I was always annoyed in previously games that no matter how long you kept shooting for, bullets went in a straight line and always hit the target; in this, aiming take some skill and I love it. The covering system is also very good, can be annoying at times but mostly you will be praising the fact that you can shooting around the corner without offering your head as a target. The cars are excellent as they always are, but I was disappointed by the fact that the handbrake now makes you do a 180, 360, or 540 degree turn depending on how fast you were going, instead of the beautiful Hollywood power slides that the previous games offered. However that is just some nit picking and by the end you do not care.

Summary? GTA is brilliant. It is one of the few games that I have been truly addicted to and I will forever treasure the game; largely because I cannot trade it in when the XBOX 720 comes out as it has a big fat R sticker on it.

In the time period between me starting GTA IV and me finishing it, nothing much has changed. Australia still has no R18+ rating, little children talking on TV still annoys me and idiots are still populating at least 99 percent of the world. However one difference that I am pleased to note now is that I have finished Dark Sector and ready to spout forth my opinion of the game.

Dark Sector is a third person shooter game developed by Digital Extremes and follows the tale of some guy in some random location in which he is infected with a virus and suddenly has the ability to spawn and throw a glaive from his right arm. I can't really tell you much other than that in regards to the plot because to be perfectly blunt, it is paper thin.

Now I would like to heap praise on the game, I really would. When first hearing about it and seeing the game play; I was overjoyed. I was excited enough about it that when it was banned in Australia, and you have heard this before, I had to import it from NZ. Having finished the game, I do not think I am better off for playing it. Yes the glaive is awesome and being able to throw it around and decapitate people is absolutely brilliant. This is improved by the ability to give the glaive an elemental flavour by throwing it into sparks, fire or ice. Unfortunately any benefit this brings to the game is weighed down by some truly horrible game play issues.

As this is a shooter, you do get to wonder around with your traditional assortments of pistols, shotguns and semi-automatics but for some perverse reason, the makers decided to go with the idea that you are not allowed to use the ammo or weapons of the enemies you kill. Instead ammo is acquired from boxes which are scattered around the levels and new guns are purchased; no this is not a typo. You actually need to PURCHASE them from some man living in a sewer, and since money in the game is about as common as a fluorescent chicken, buying some of the high end weapons proves to be quite a challenge by the end of the game. The whole idea seems like a desperate push by the makers to keep the glaive as the key weapon of the game; great in theory, but communism works in theory and in this case the whole idea comes off as very irritating. And despite their push to have you use the glaive, they only focused on it as a ranged weapon because attempting to use it as a melee weapon is fucking pointless. I admit there are finishing moves in which, if you can get close to the enemy without them noticing, you can slit their throat or snap their arm before cutting it off which in my mind is totally fucking sweet, although this is probably the main reason why the game was not given a rating in Australia. But outside of that, the glaive is useless as a melee weapon, which pissed me off to no end. The glaive also seems to be a little in accurate in how much damage it should be causing. In my mind if a glaive goes through clean through the body of an individual, it should not be able to move afterwards. Experiments performed on Paris Hilton who I have chained in my basement as a service to society seem to confirm this however, the game believes that slicing a creature in half only disables its Wolverine like healing ability and then the second slice in half will kill the bloody thing. I am sorry but when I slice something down the middle the first time, the game shouldn't be treating it like a practise shot. The difficulty curve in this game also seems to go up and down all throughout which makes it frustrating to play continuously. It is also a very dark game and trying to see a creature that would fit in with Goths is irritating to say the least.

All in all, the game is ok, not great but good enough to keep my interest in going until the end. Now it is going forever become a part of my game collection because no store is going to accept it for its big fat R rating.

There are very few games in my mind that have true replay value. Most games I will play through once and then leave it at that, however there are a few gems that come along. Allow me to list some of them

• Mass Effect - Just started playing this one again, loving it just as much as the first time.
• Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - This game is legendary, the best game created on the N64 and always fun.
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - Yes, I know this game was not considered the best out of the trilogy but it's one of my favourites and have played it though multiple times
• Knights of the Old Republic - Another Bioware, these games were great, just had to play through again and again
• Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn - I was addicted to this game for so long, playing it so many times. Favourite class? The Sorcerer, i loved it so.
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - What can I say, this was just fun, and you have to play the light and the dark at the very least.
• Half Life Series - Do I really need to say anything about this one?

And there it is. Now I should point out that my list had some specific criteria. Firstly the game had to be single player, and secondly it couldn't be something that could be played again by design, i.e Goldeneye with slightly harder difficulty each time or diablo series, same reason.

Let us talk Naruto. Now I am a huge fan of the series. I started by watching the anime which I enjoyed immensely. I then sat myself down and read the manga from start til finished and have read new episodes every week. And it just keeps getting better and better. Every Friday I sit down at my computer and get the new pages from Mangashare and each time I finish I am CRAVING and eagerly awaiting the next one. It is like I am constantly receiving delicious mouth water appetisers and never getting my hands on the main course. Torturous yes but still, they are always delicious.

Then you have the anime, which I feared, has decided to abandon the manga storyline, hopefully temporarily, and do its own little sub story for some absolutly stupid reason. Do not get me wrong, I am still enjoying it immensely but I have a far greater interest in seeing the manga play out rather than some random story line. Please hurry up and finish this tangent, so that we can get back to the manga story goodness.