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I got my R-Type Command and R-9 statuette from Amazon today. Can’t wait to start playing this weekend!

I took some photos of my Drawn to Life Game & posted them to Flickr. This is the first of the set. Click it to go to flickr, then keep clicking back a photo to see them all.

When I first arrived in Liberty City I felt the same amazement and wonder that my digital cohort, Niko, did. I thrilled at the subtleties of my first cab ride and marveled at the way the populace hops back and forth across the uncanny valley; one minute seemingly real, the next lodged facefirst into a wall. But Liberty City is a rough town and that childlike innocence wore off after just a few days.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is gorgeous and the distractions are expertly designed and integrated into the world in such a way that it really feels right. Using your cellphone to access friends, contacts, and amenities is at once a great way to simplify the menus and a poignant jab at today’s society. But at its very core GTA4 is a story-driven action game and here is where I part ways with the glowing reviews that call it an example of perfect-ten, straight A’s wunder-gaming.

I have no issues with the story, so far. It weaves the modern day crimeland archetypes like a comfy sweater, letting you slip in nice and easy and feeling so good that you rarely take it off for long. The only problem may be that amidst the action some of the more important dialog gets lost and you’ll wonder why you just gunned down a troupe of thugs.

What I do take offense to is how little the actual gameplay has changed in all these years of 3D Grand Theft Auto games. I was promised an innovative, groundbreaking new GTA experience, yet here I am still retrying missions over and over until I finally figure out what to do, where to go, and who to kill. There’s also surprisingly little time for interpretation and usually a mysteriously undefined time limit that really throttles my wilder “sandbox” dreams. I can’t get too far away from a fleeing target even if my detour would line me up for an interception. I can’t set up vehicles in advance since they all disappear once a scripted event happens during a mission.

Yes, it’s much easier to restart a failed mission but many of them have numerous stages, all of which must be repeated just to get to where you screwed up the last time. It’s not like I just suck either, Rockstar even recorded unique dialog for repeated attempts and after several tries they turn the talking off altogether. As far as I’m concerned, this is the biggest mission innovation they could come up with (seeing that the other improvements are borrowed from other games).

The action itself is great and benefits wonderfully from the cover system and GPS navigation but it takes so much passive talking and driving to get to it that it feels like a fraction of any given mission. A few minutes of enthralling gunplay and a run from the cops and you’re finished… or you’re dead and restarting the whole thing all over… again.

But this isn’t Gears of War or even Max Payne. This isn’t a battle against an invading army or an alien race, this is everyday violence that’s quick and sloppy and over before it starts. It’s that compelling mimicry of real life that’s echoed by the citizens, the cellphones, every aspect of Liberty City that eases my disappointments and frustrations, and keeps me yearning to get back on the streets. Like Niko writing an e-mail to his mother, I promise to write again soon.

When last I wrote about the game I was still plodding through the opening chapters. Now, having seen it through I can say without a doubt that there’s no finer action game on the DS and that anyone hoping to compare should bow with respect and shamelessly copy this game.

As I expected there aren’t any other weapons besides the upgradeable dragon sword, some explosive arrows, and a handful of ninpo magic attacks, but the gameplay remained mostly solid and rewarding throughout. The difficulty didn’t ramp up too much but the game starts throwing more and more enemies at you, along with environmental hazards, which leads to plenty of cheap jabs to your health bar. It didn’t lead to many outright deaths, and it’s really just a nagging complaint, but it definitely made me feel very un-ninja-y.

The boss battles also leave a lot for a master ninja to desire. With a few end-of-game exceptions they don’t feel as epic as the console versions and the attack patterns come slow and easy to avoid. Not even the final showdown felt as harrowing as the original game’s battle against Alma, which is a moment of horror that is forever ingrained in my mind. In Dragon Sword her evil Fiend sisters feel about as scary as being confronted by a Renaissance Festival player who dresses up and pretends it really is 1459.

Ryu’s lightning fast attacks may also contribute to how easy the whole adventure is. With few misinterpretations by the touch screen it’s easy to stay airborne while slicing and dashing through a dozen enemies, landing with just enough time to charge up your even-more-powerful Essence attack. Should you get in a jam you can almost always rely on your ninpo magic to level the field and even conjure up a spell that refills your health.

I’m sure the game is much more challenging on the next difficulty setting but I’m not the sort to trudge back through a game just to make it harder. Nor am I the type to play through all difficulty settings just to find hidden items, which is the only way to collect all of those pesky wooden amulets. The reward? You can rewatch the cutscenes, see character bios, and read diary entries. The diaries are entertaining, especially for the villains, but definitely not worth that kind of commitment.

The magic’s still here. Team Ninja has once again retooled their original 2004 adventure and I’ve once again trounced my way through it, living the rockstar ninja lifestyle and loving every bit of it. Now can we please get on with Ninja Gaiden 2 and another four years of remakes and updates?

Last week, Codemasters slipped out a demo to their newest racing franchise, GRID. Marketed as an “exciting” alternative to more stagnant racers like Gran Turismo and Forza, GRID is meant to make racing games “fun” again. Judging from the trailers, GRID certainly looked exciting. The graphics looked better than Gran Turismo, the physics looked more… physical than Forza. The trailers made the game look like it would have the realism of the sim racers, with the excitement of the arcade racers. Did Codemasters pull that off and make the perfect Frankenstein racer? Not quite…

This game was made with the same graphics engine as the company’s previous racer, DIRT. From the outset, the graphics are very reminiscent of that game. This game is prettier, and there’s a lot more cars on the track at once than what DIRT could handle (without any dips in framerate, amazingly). The framerate never hits 60fps, but it runs at a rock solid 30fps. In addition to the nice visuals and art design, the game, like DIRT, provides plenty of nice amenities, like cockpit view, vehicle damage, and force feedback steering wheel support. Technically, the game is very solid.

Where it falls apart for me is in the actual gameplay. This game is very definitely not a simulation, despite the visuals which try to indicate otherwise. GRID is akin to ye old school of racing games. It has much more in common with Ridge Racer and the PGR games than the simulation style racers. Typical races start out with 20 cars, yours in last place, naturally. You have X number of laps to get from last to first. The other cars are incredibly slow compared to yours. They’re not there to compete with you, they only exist as a moving obstacle between you and the finish line. With all of the default driving assists and difficulty settings, the game is a breeze. Despite multiple crashes, of which there are many (crashes are “exciting!”), I managed to get 2nd place on my first race.

All in all, it’s not a terrible game, it’s just not terribly interesting to me now. Maybe when I was 16, this game would have been more to my liking. To be fair, it definitely nails the “excitement” vibe in a way no other racer has managed to pull off. The replays in particular are very interesting to watch. Much emphasis was put on the most optimal camera angles for maximum excitement-ness. The music, likewise, is very fast and heart-rate pumping during the replays. It’s just sad to me when the replay is far more fun to watch than the game actually is to play. I would recommend buying it to people who only like Need for Speed games, as it easily bests the latest in that franchise. For everyone else, just rent it or stick with the demo.

NOTICE: Roll over the Image for the Answer

Every Tuesday we’ll post a cryptically cropped image from a game. Take a guess, roll over the image for the answer and leave a comment about the game. Did you like it? Hate it? Ever finish it? Purchase a rare mint, boxed copy? C’mon, let’s reminisce.

Play. It’s a simple concept, one that conjures up happy images in anyones mind that can range from a memorable round of four-square on the playground to an exhilarating bout in Call of Duty 4. In our case, the concept of finally playing on our Xbox 360 is one that’s much harder to force into reality. We’ve come a long ways in just a few weeks from having returned a defective factory-sealed Xbox for an Elite in place of my original, to the horrible mistake that was the 512mb Memory Unit to finally sending away for a Data Migration Kit.

The kit arrived last week, and then the one that Maxx vowed to send us arrived, and oddly enough, a third one arrived from Microsoft. Anyone need a kit of their own? As I’m sure you can tell from the image above, all did not go well with the transfer. I’m not sure what was corrupted or left behind (since the process formats the original drive) but I can tell you what does and doesn’t work.

As expected, the new drive is much faster than the old one. Our game library loads up near-instantaneously and the Guide zips onto the screen with no lag at all. I swear, and this may just be wishful thinking, that Grand Theft Auto IV runs faster too. But I’d trade all that to have access to our Xbox Live Arcade games. Thanks to the way the games are signed to the hardware they’re first downloaded onto we’ve each lost the ability to play games that the other purchased (or punched in a code for).

I can no longer play Carcassonne, Robotron, Uno, or a handful of other games and Shang Xiang can’t access the myriad of games I’ve purchased. The process of deleting and then redownloading the games didn’t sort things out either. We may have purchased them as a couple but Microsoft has segregated us in the name of DRM. The only solution (solution = punishment) I can see is to purchase the games all over again. I’ve contacted customer support in hopes that they’ll fix everything, but it’s just a pipe dream; the infantile hope that if I believe strongly enough in something - no matter how impossible it may seem - that it must come true.

And so Sordid continues. Yes, I’m glad to be off of that worrisome 20gb drive with all our game saves intact but I’m also crushed at not being able to play some of my favorite go-to games like Carcassonne and Feeding Frenzy. I’ll give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and let things go for a week while I wait for a response and then I’ll finally wrap up this lingering feature of sadness.

Blow off the week’s stress with our Friday rant posts! What happens in RantPost, stays in RantPost so feel free to vent your frustrations at the topic of choice without fear of (too much) persecution. Lay on the sarcasm, ignite your mild concerns, fan the flames of your fandom! I’ll start but please don’t just reply to me.

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I just noticed that the new PlayStation Network Store puts up a little red shopping bag icon if you’ve already downloaded a file.

It feels a little disarming to think friends may spot that I’ve gone out of my way to download that horrendous Snakeball or the Sports theme. What I do with my PlayStation 3 is my own business right?

If you haven’t already downloaded Beats for your PSP, do it! Yes, it grows old after a few months but it’s cheap and fun and I’m doing my part to keep things fresh with new music posts. I filmed this to add to the Beats Go On page as a visual tutorial and figured I’d post it on the site too.

Just a quick post to introduce you to Viddler. They rock and I plan on using their site to post and share my videos. You can comment right in the video, just click on the progress icon. Check it out, I’ll have more up soon… I hope.

I just installed a super simple Add This plugin for WordPress. It sticks a little Bookmark button below each post so you can easily (and Web 2.0-y) share any post we make here on GameLuv across all your favorite social bookmarking sites! Digg, Delicious, Google, Facebook, StumbleUpon. I want to make my own button for the side bar but both of my hands are aching right now so coding is more annoying than usual. and fiddling with code commences! In the meanwhile, just wait a little longer!

[UPDATE!] An hour or so off messing around and I’ve got the fairly slick button to the left of each post, just below the date. Check it out, mouse over it and a whole world of social web linkage is at your mousetips! Should be working juuuuust right. I’ve also updated the RSS feed so you should see an ‘Add This!’ link there as well which replaces the Digg and Delicious ones, streamlining our feed. Yay! I’m still not too thrilled about the icon but at 29×27 pixels what more can I ask for? Just remember it’s there and use it liberally.

The game is a lot easier than its console counterparts but it still feels good to see Master Ninja pop up at the end of a stage.

Lair, orange box and more ps3 games on clearance at target! 30 bucks or less.

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