It’s the little things that make life worth living. Today’s little blessing comes courtesy of GamesRadar: Grand Theft Auto 4 gameplay footage modified in the style of the roaming Naked Gun movie intros.

Yahtzee’s review of Grand Theft Auto IV officially puts him in an interesting position: It affirms that he doesn’t care for the wai-wai technocolour of Japanese-produced games, but neither is he firm and erect over brown-and-grey gaming.

So I guess he’s a moderate? Balderdash. Who has time to sit on the fence these days.

He brings up a great point about the trees in GTA IV. My family used to vacation on a beach; every time we had a small thunderstorm (mommy said thunder was God was flushing His toilet), the native poplar trees would lie flat on the ground in terrified surrender.

Grand Theft Auto 4 has received great praise from fans and critics for its realism (just feel that femur give way before my bat, mmm what a crisp sound for a fine mornin’), but all is not well in Liberty City. VideoGamer.com has published a rant about Rockstar’s latest, which perhaps borders on being too realistic. Nico’s nicked cars are no longer ignorant to the demands of physics, for example, and cops will bust you for firing warning shots at slow pedestrians. But these touches are not necessarily welcome for every fan:

“It’s a sandbox game which is no longer a sandbox. It’s more like a very small steel box. You can’t break any rules. People playing GTA 4 without wanting to break the rules can probably have a good time, but for me this isn’t GTA any more.”

I’m sort of glad that I just rely on the likes of Mario and Cloud for my fantasy gaming.

(Image copyright Rockstar Games)

Ah ha ha, that title is the height of clever.

Once again, Sony’s half-baked attempt to coup the Wii with SixAxis motion controls crashes and burns…quite literally. Kotaku reports that SixAxis controls bring absolutely nothing to Grand Theft Auto 4 except “frustration and burning helicopter chassis.”

Brian Crecente says:

When Mike told me that he didn’t like the SIXAXIS controls for the game, and wasn’t even able to complete the tutorial, I chalked it up to some innate hatred of the PS3’s motion controls on his part.

(…)

After playing through GTA4 on the Xbox 360, I swapped seats with Mike and settled down to get to the bottom of his SIXAXIS hatred. A few minutes into the tutorial I figured out what the problem was. The special SIXAXIS controls for this particular game suck, they’re absolutely abysmal.

The good news is that you do not need motion controls to rock Grand Theft Auto 4. Might’ve been neat if they actually worked, though.

(SixAxis image courtesy of Sony. Dead person scribble courtesy of me.)

Sony has announced that Europe will receive a fetching Playstation 3 / Grand Theft Auto 4 bundle.

From the combined powers of Kombo.com and a press release comes the official statement:

The bundle, available on April 29, 2008, will consist of a PLAYSTATION®3 40GB model, a SIXAXIS™ wireless controller and a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest title in the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto franchise, all for just £319.99 (RRP).

It’s a nice hefty box, isn’t it? Good, solid build. Try chucking it through a car window and be on your way to playing Grand Theft Auto for reals.*

*Disclaimer: Don’t do this.

(Image is copyright Rockstar Games and Sony Entertainment)

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