It's okay to buy, PAL? Grand Theft Auto IV

(tags game, Xbox 360, Grand Theft Auto, shmup, purchase, failure)

Today I ran out of stockpiled food so I headed out. I walked all the way to Kobe Mosaic/Harborland and now my feet and calves hurt. I intended to break in these new shoes but perhaps this was a little extreme.

So I wasn't expecting Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 to be at the store, but there it was for 6000 yen. 20 plus copies. Yea Sofmap. Yea Kobe Sofmap. They almost never have foreign games at this location. Well, ok, they have Postal, sitting there looking unwanted.

Except it had the PAL designation! I wasn't sure that I could use a PAL game on my NTSC-J system, since PAL always meant PAL-only, or so I thought. So I left without it. Rather, I am committed to playing Vice City and San Andreas before this, ok ok ok ok. Acutally, there was Dark Sector for 4000 yen and also Raiden Fighters for 4000 yen but I passed on them as well.

Now researching this topic with the power of Internet search, I find Play Asia claims this "Asia" version is NTSC-J and PAL. Huh. I hope my legs are out of commission, at least long enough to not go back to the store during this vacation. Must resist.

Still waiting for the Famitsu review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Vice City

(tags game, Grand Theft Auto, Windows)

The condensed meta-review of Grand Theft Auto IV by Kotaku and the perfect 100 picture from Metacritic distills the hype. Yes I want to play this game, but not enough to go to an importer and buy it. Perhaps if Famitsu reviewed it and it got a 40, I would consider it. I'm just saying that to get it off my mind. ;-)

I'm currently I'm trying to ignore it with Vice City. But Vice City isn't so great. I got past the previously mentioned hurdle but now I don't know what to do. I mean, the obvious story-pushing events don't seem to show up on my map no more. Sure I could start buying up properties but I still fear that would make me a dead man on the streets. I already get that kind of reception in Little Havana. And the sky is so blue. It's like Duck Hunt blue, its so annoying.

That said, this PC gaming with Vice City makes me put off my ideas to upgrade my PC. It's been four years since Project Sugar, and it is still serving me well (knock on wood).

I hope I have enough stamina to finish this so I can jump to San Andreas.

Can't make it as a thug

(tags Grand Theft Auto, game, Windows)

Uh oh, GTA Vice City is getting difficult. There's the part where you buy properties, kinda like Monopoly, but it unlocks missions. The costlier the land, the harder the mission. I didn't know that at first. I bought most expensive one first, and then tried to pass the mission like a bunch of times, but with BUSTED FAIL or WASTED FAIL.

So I've been lowering my purchases and trying them out. Maybe I should buy all the cheap shops first.

I yearn to sandbox: Grand Theft Auto Vice City

(tags game, Windows, Grand Theft Auto)

Some of the coverage on the latest Grand Theft Auto game, GTA 4, pulls me back to my mini-game taxi driving fun. Then I remembered I haven't completed GTA 3, or installed Vice City or San Andreas. My exursion into GTA 3 was probably cut down because I did the side missions at the same time as main story, which made some areas of the map very hard to traverse. I think I stopped when the third part of the world opened up. I have the game saves backed up somewhere.

Anyway, I probably have 5 years of game-time entertainment yet unlocked in my room, so I decided to chip away at that, starting with GTA Vice City.

At first, I mistakenly thought that GTA was available on Steam. I did a search inside of the Steam client but nothing showed up. While writing this post, I searched the Internet again but was surprised that "Rockstar Catalog Hits Steam" (2008-01-04), etc, but not available here. So is it purchase region locked on Steam? :-(

I am surprised at myself that the first thing I thought of was Steam, when I already have the PC version. Guess I am totally lazy. I installed this two CD-ROM set. It's been a long time since I've put a "Play" disc in my PC and already I want a no-cd for this one.

I am now 9 missions complete. I set the graphics to 1024 x 768 x 32, and its no problem. Then again this game was made in 2003. The controls are jittery sometimes. I hate my PC gaming because of this type of stuttering. Disabling some noisy gadgets like my wallpaper changer helped. Still, here I am IRC-ing, running Ubuntu on a VMWare on my other monitor, downloading torrents, and playing this 3d game on my primary. PCs have power, heh.

I like the voice acting in this series. Actually I've been English starved for a while, but still these lines don't seem over-the-top.

Okay, I'm going to try to finish this game, really.