Blurred Productions

The New York Times reviews Grand Theft Auto IV (via the Beat)

Niko Bellic is the player-controlled protagonist this time, and he is one of the most fully realized characters video games have yet produced. A veteran of the Balkan wars and a former human trafficker in the Adriatic, he arrives in Liberty City’s rendition of Brighton Beach at the start of the game to move in with his affable if naïve cousin Roman. Niko expects to find fortune and, just maybe, track down someone who betrayed him long ago. Over the course of the story line he discovers that revenge is not always what one expects.

Besides the nuanced Niko the game is populated by a winsome procession of grifters, hustlers, drug peddlers and other gloriously unrepentant lowlifes, each a caricature less politically correct than the last.

Hardly a demographic escapes skewering. In addition to various Italian and Irish crime families, there are venal Russian gangsters, black crack slingers, argyle-sporting Jamaican potheads, Puerto Rican hoodlums, a corrupt police commissioner, a steroid-addled Brooklyn knucklehead named Brucie Kibbutz and a former Eastern European soldier who has become a twee Upper West Side metrosexual.

Here’s Gamespot:

Stepping off a boat in the shoes of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City at the start of Grand Theft Auto IV, you can tell immediately that Rockstar North’s latest offering is something quite special. Yes, this is another GTA game in which you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time stealing cars and gunning down cops and criminals, but it’s also much more than that. GTAIV is a game with a compelling and nonlinear storyline, a game with a great protagonist who you can’t help but like, and a game that boasts a plethora of online multiplayer features in addition to its lengthy story mode. It’s not without some flaws, but GTAIV is undoubtedly the best Grand Theft Auto yet.

…

GTAIV’s Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you’d only ever look at accidentally or when you know there’s no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There’s plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the “TW@” Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

I’m pretty sure that, just like every GTA game since the second, this one will be impossible for me to beat.

The GTA series is, of course, now the king of Video Games. Arguably the only thing bigger is Halo.

UPDATE: Really Penny-Arcade explains it all…

Grand Theft Auto has had another problem, or rather, we have had a problem that intersects with what the game offers: the raw, virtually limitless opportunity presented is paralyzing, a sheer face with no purchase. We’re always impressed by each world’s livingness, but historically the story structure - the obvious thread that we can grip and pull ourselves along - is hung about the neck with frustrating, repetitive gameplay. We end up burning out on free roaming in a couple days, taking random missions or sitting in a parking lot listening to the radio. I feel guilty, because there’s probably no game more “important” globally than Grand Theft Auto. I certainly feel like I’m looking in on what I consider my own community. It never seemed to bother anyone else that the core of the game wasn’t much fun, so mostly the whole thing just makes me feel like a crazy person.

(Via Penny-Arcade)

How did I miss this?!?! MASS EFFECT updates!

A batarian extremist group has hijacked a mobile asteroid station in the Asgard system, setting it on a collision course with the nearby colony world of Terra Nova. Only you, and the hand-picked crew of the Normandy, can save the millions of innocent civilians before the asteroid completes its deadly descent.

This first downloadable content pack further expands the Mass Effect universe and continues the adventures of Commander Shepard and the Normandy crew.

Must download… must download now!

I know that’s a lame title for our second link-blogging entry but I couldn’t think about anything else.

Here is a bunch of great stuff from the internets:

• @ Edge of the American West: Because I can’t get enough of Ari and Eric, here’s a great piece on MLK and another on the history of the Federal Reserve
• @ Blog@Newsarama one learns that Garth Ennis’ The Boys is up for a GLAAD award, for reasons I can not understand or comprehend. Wasn’t the lesbian member of their Teen Titians send-up very stereotypical & treated very poorly?
• @ Matthew Yglesias: Can History hesitate?
• Via Penny-Arcade: Perhaps the funniest thing I’ve read in years.
• @ Club Jade: Look for a Indy 4 Trailer next month
• @ Progressive Ruin: Is the Flash a man-whore? The answer is clearly yes.
• Very interesting (and tense! for a Stewart interview) A Daily Show with Jon Stewart Interview with Jonah Goldberg. That’s a mouth (brain?) full of a sentence.

One day I am going to have something clever to put at the end this feature.

(Via Club Jade) 

Today is a very Star Wars day. 

Yoda will be in the 360 version of Soulcaliber IV.

Damn you Lucas and your damn merchandising department!

Before it became too uncool to do a “best of 2007″ list/retrospective I thought I’d get my completely arbitrary list of things I most enjoyed in the last 12 months.

Then I remembered that I have a shitty memory and I can’t clearly remember what exactly I read/watched/listened to in 2007 that came out in 2007. It all blurs together.

But I decided to fuck it, this is blogging, who needs a perfect memory?  So below is my picks for the best of the best from last year.

Books

2007 was a great year for new books. The obvious choice for BOOK OF THE YEAR is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have go reason against the grain chose something that isn’t obvious. Unlike many, I enjoyed the hell out of HP7 and my enjoyment has increased with repeated readings.

This was also a great year for Star Wars books. All four (or was it three?) Legacy of the Force novels released this year were very enjoyable. The best, of course, was Sacrifice a great emotional wrecking ball of a Star Wars book.

I read a lot of history books this year (inside and outside of class)  but the only one I read that was published in 2007 was John Ferling’s Almost A Miracle, which was a solid if unexciting narrative of the Revolutionary War. A good book, but not nearly as impressive as Adams v. Jefferson, the last Ferling book I read.

 Comics

Now here is where my memory really starts effecting things. I read a lot of shit this year and its hard to remember what exactly came out this year and what didn’t. Plus, I’m pretty disgusted with the state of superhero comicdom at this point, so most of my judgments are pretty clouded.

The easiest pick is BEST OGN for is Scott Pilgrim vol. 4. Again I go for an obvious pick (especially for those who know my reading habits well) but it really was the book I enjoyed the most this year. Will O’Malley get volume 5 out in 2008? Hmmm…

For monthly, ongoing series I’m not entirely sure what was good… all of the shit released this year tends to weigh heavily on my memory.

Here is a list of the ongoing series I enjoyed most this year (in no particular order)

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight
• Runaways (pre-Whedon)
• Daredevil
• All-Star Superman
• Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane

MINI-SERIES OF THE YEAR was easily Dr. Strange: The Oath. No explaination is required, me thinks.

Movies

MOVIE OF THE YEAR was easily Superbad, the closest thing we will ever get to a progressive, dare I say feminist (?), male driven teen sex comedy. It is nearly impossible to put into words how much I enjoyed that film. It immediately jumped into my all-time favorites list. Repeated watches have not diminished its quality.

Only other movie I remember seeing in theaters this year and really enjoying was the fifth Harry Potter film.

Music

Tito has a better list than I could ever come up with. As I commented on Tito’s list, Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (was there more Ga?) was easily ALBUM OF THE YEAR. Followed closely by They Might Be Giant’s newest offering, The Else.

Of course that may be because those are the only two new albums I bought this year.

TV

There was no TV SHOW OF THE YEAR for 2007 for me… honestly I barely watched any new TV this year. Heroes was mostly terrible &/or boring… I gave up on the Sopranos years and years ago…

Thinking about it… it’s kind of distressing considering how much new TV I used to watch.

I did watch a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine reruns this year. Can that count?

Video Games

I didn’t play many new games this past year except Mass Effect, which was fantastic. It was so fantastic that I bought an X-Box 360 just to play it. So yeah, Mass Effect gets GAME OF THE YEAR.

I did play and enjoy BioShock too.

(last but not least) Blogs & other Internets stuff

Here are the blogs I enjoyed most in the last year (in no particular order)

• Matthew Yglesias
• Progressive Ruin
• Blog@Newsarama
• Pretty, Fizzy Paradise
• Written World
• Edge of the American West
• Altercation
• Savage Critic(s)
• Comics Should Be Good!
• When Fangirls Attack!
• Occasional Superheroine

WEBCOMIC OF THE YEAR is Questionable Content. It’s been relatively consistantly good all year and deserves kudos for being able to pull that off.

Though this isn’t not a good thing to note, 2007 was the year I finally gave up on PvP in disgust. Honestly it was like when I quit smoking, it was quite the relief.

Well, that’s all for 2007. It looks like 2008 is going to be a great year for pop culture, especially movies (new Batman, Potter, and Indy flicks coming out soon).  But of course, we will have to wait and see.

Blizzard and Activision merge.

Activision, the publishing powerhouse behind the Call of Duty and Tony Hawk series; and Vivendi Games, owner of Blizzard Entertainment, which you probably don’t need us to tell you is behind the Warcraft and Starcraft series, are coming together to form “the world’s most profitable games business,” cleverly named Activision Blizzard.

The reports we’ve read so far seem to confuse the matter of Vivendi’s role in the merger, and who will be “wearing the pants” in the relationship, so to speak. As we understand it, Vivendi and Activision will be the ones who are merging, despite Blizzard’s name being in the company’s new moniker. Vivendi will own approximately 52% of the ownership stake in Activision Blizzard

Submitted with utterly horror and a tad bit of confusion.

First EA buys Bioware, then this. What’s next?

Mass Effect goes gold.

Smith Micheals losing his job, his girlfriend dumping him, his flunking out of school to follow.

(This is our 275 post)

The Big N had some great announcements from E3 and the upcoming fourth Quarter.

New Wii Channels, new Wii peripherals, and new Wii games!

Probably the most exciting news is a date for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. DECEMBER 3rd!

Other games coming out -

Super Mario Galaxy

Metroid Prime

Fire Emblem

Umbrella Chronicles

Wii Fit

Wii Zapper ( a gun)

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Plus up to 100 other games due out later this year.

I really enjoyed Lego: Star Wars so this is great news to hear.

Well, everybody else was posting videos… Also I haven’t really posted much for awhile.