GTA IV: Special Edition Announced!

Earlier Today, Rockstar Games was proud to announce that Grand Theft Auto IV would be recieving a duluxe version to go along side the usual packaging. The special edition will be released the same day as the regular edition too. Heres what you’ll get:

The Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition will be presented in a customized Grand Theft Auto metal safety deposit box. The box will contain:–Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system or the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, both with special packaging–

The Grand Theft Auto IV Art Book, featuring never-before-seen production artwork from Grand Theft Auto IV–Selected soundtrack CD from Grand Theft Auto IV, featuring new material from top artists, only available on this release–

An exclusive Rockstar keychain for the safety deposit box keys

–Completing the collection is a limited edition Rockstar duffel bagAll of the items have been created with the utmost attention to detail to create a unique Grand Theft Auto IV experience for any fan of the series. The Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition is available for pre-orders today and will retail for $89.99 in
North America.

Europe are also expecting to recieve the SE although no price was mentioned. Well, I know which version i’m getting, and it’s gonna cause me to dig deeper into my pocket.

Finally, a Manhunt 2 preview for Wii

IGN have just done a podcast including a Manhunt 2 preview, but not with the same ol’ PS2 version, but the hyped Wii one. Although, they did state that they could not say too much, but they said the Wii version is still on track to be released on day 1 with both the PS2 and PSP copies. This is what they had to say:

 Sadly, we can’t talk a ton about any details on it, but we can tell you that it’s very very fun and that we had a blast with it when it came. It’s pretty good looking for a Wii game, id say it’s one of the prettier games on Wii, certainly the blood effects are really nice.We can’t really talk about details yet but we will have some coverage this coming week and you can look forward to that but in the mean time we can say that your going to want the Wii version absolutely, there’s absolutely no reason to get the PS2 version, your going to see why, were going to explain why, but um there are several major i’d say really kind of fundamentally important reasons you would want the Wii version.

Ah we went hands on with this game for a long time, yeah it was like 4 hours. Yeah it’s the first time I’ve played a Wii game and when they took it away i was like don’t, don’t, aside from Zelda seriously, i love this game.

For me it’s like you know they announce a game like this and you know in the back of my mind I’m like uwwwh i hope this isn’t going to be a stupid port, you know with like tacked on Wii controls, it doesn’t feel that way at all, can’t talk about why of course. People are now learning that Manhunt 2 is going to be good on Wii.

So, looks like the Wii will be getting the best version out of all three but we will have to wait and see over the next few weeks.

Download the Podcast here

Cool new GTA IV artwork

This new artwork done by Makotron is absolutley amazing! It really does actually look like a piece of art that Rockstar would do. Check it out!

Rockstar, maybe you should consider hiring this guy…

Midnight Club 4 Announced!

Today Rockstar Games announced to the world that the next installment for Midnight Club would be titled; Midnight Club: Los Angeles and is arriving early 2008 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and the developers Rockstar San Diego will be returning to the trone again to create another Midnight racer.

“On prior consoles, the Midnight Club franchise continually raised the bar for racing games, evolving from being the first ever street racing game to setting the defining standard for credibly integrating street racing culture with an intense racing experience,” said Jay Panek, Producer of the Midnight Club series. “With Midnight Club: Los Angeles, our goal is to evolve on all possible levels and stay true to the hardcore gaming experience the series is known for, while making it accessible to casual gamers and car enthusiasts.”Consistently the most innovative, highest-rated street racing franchise, Midnight Club set the standard of what an open-world racing game can be. Midnight Club: Los Angeles will deliver a truly immersive next-generation racing experience that is second to none.Stay tuned in the coming weeks as more info is released.

New GTA Info Surfaced

The German edition of GamePro has been the next in line to do a GTA IV preview and yet again it features mainly already known facts. But there are a couple of new info that they managed to spill, here they are:

• There will be several different animation sets for breaking into a car, so far we know one of them includes Niko breaking the glass of the window with his elbow, then starting the car using the injection cables. We know there probably isn’t a lot of different other ways Niko can do this, but we suspect it will involve dynamic animations, and for instance Niko sometimes becoming suspicious in the middle of hotwiring a car, looking around to see if anyone suspects what he’s doing, then continuing. Rockstar previously said they want the animations to look less “canned”, so this would fit well with that goal.

• According to the article, Rockstar are using less non-realistic elements than previous GTA games, such as arrows and markers assisting and indicating things to the player. We already know the in-game mobile phone will play a big part in replacing some of these things, so perhaps we might see other helpful gadgets such a GPS system, though that is just speculation.

• One of the ideas going into development is to give every street in the game a name, which could be displayed on-screen when you enter it by foot or car. This feature is yet to be decided on, along with the previously revealed information piece about Rockstar still deciding whether the entire city will be accessible from the start, or if different areas will be inaccessible by way of cordoning off bridges and such.

• When R*’s Dan Houser was asked about the differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, he replied saying that it is their goal to have none, and that there are no platform preferences, both are difficult to develop on. For now, we take this as to have nothing to do with the extra downloadable content.

• Speaking of which, he further says that they’re not sure what exactly will be offered through additional content downloads. He says that maybe some things will be free, and others offered at a price.

GTA IV’s Achievments – Your ideas?

Earlier today I was on my 360 playing C&C 3 looking at the achievments when suddenly it hit me; What achievments will GTA IV have? I thought about it for quite a while when I decided I would show you what I think would be good ideas for GTA IV achievments:

GTA Master - 100% Completion [100G]
No Life – Play for over 100 hours [30G]
Story Teller – Complete all story missions [50G]
Hotrider – Steal every vehicle at least once [25G]
Liberty City Massacre – Kill over 5000 people [50G]

So they’re just a few of my ideas but I’d like to hear some of yours so if you want to share them with other GTA players around the globe then be sure to email them to me and I will post them in a couple of days with all the other ones I have recieved.

 Email me with your suggestions

Why Liberty City?

Vice President, Dan Houser has said why GTA IV is set in the city of Liberty. “We’ve always wanted to do New York properly,” he said in the latest issue of the Official Xbox Magazine. “With GTA III we were dealing with so many technical issues that we didn’t really think trying to make somewhere like a real place was important at the time and then we discovered later that gave an added element of content to the place.”

He continued saying; “We’ve got a full time team of researchers and photographers in the office in New York who get emails from the artists in Scotland saying, ‘hey can you find out that this building’s like, or what the traffic flow’s like around here?’ or the designers want to find out how the law systems work. We wouldn’t be as confident doing a next-gen game the way we wanted, somewhere we didn’t have a base.”

So that explains why, well I think it was a great idea to set it in Liberty City!

Australian GTA IV Preview

Within the last couple of days, the world as been introduced to quite a few GTA IV previews, which can only be described as a good thing. Here is some new info from down under:

During the demo, when Niko passed an ATM machine a message appeared on the screen indicating a button to press in order to access his funds. Nothing more official is discussed about this, though it would appear that you’ll likely be able to deposit and withdraw money from the various ATM machines across the game.

As part of GTA IV’s new physics, you’ll be able to hear/feel the base of vehicles passing by with their radio turned on.

Rockstar says that the usual GTA driving controls have been tremendously tweaked and enhanced.

When selecting a contact on your mobile phone, a list of several commands are made available to the player, such as “meet me here” etc.

Playing the single player game through co-operative mode is not possible, however there will be a co-op mode in addition to all the other unknown multiplayer modes.

According to Dan Houser, VP of Creative for Rockstar Games, they haven’t yet figured out if GTA IV is going to spark off another set of GTA games connected to it, and they’re currently just focusing on this single game. He does say he “would have a certain confidence” setting GTA outside the United States, such as England in the future.

When asked about a San Andreas Stories for the PSP, he replies saying that they don’t have any plans for that at the moment, suggesting that they likely haven’t started at all on another GTA PSP title

So co-op has been confirmed as one of the multi-player game modes although it won’t be releated to single player at all. But it is still good news!

Another new GTA IV preview

Well, looks like another GTA IV preview has come about. This time from the Italian Official Playstation Magazine.  Here is the new info:

- It is possible to view the bus schedule at bus stops in the game. You will most likely be able to ride the bus around the city for a small fee.
-When the main character, Niko Bellic, pulls out a weapon in the game, the camera positions itself over the shoulder and a crosshair appears at the center of the screen. The translation claims that it is possible to remain locked on to a target and strafe left or right to avoid shots.
- Niko, the main character, will not be able to get in a car and immediately start driving like in previous games in the series. You will have to perhaps “hot wire” the car. You might also have to sneak up to the car and break the window. These are sketchy details, though, so don’t go around thinking this as complete factual information.
- Niko can freely climb several things such as telephone poles and fire escapes. No word if you will be able to climb walls like in San Andreas, though.
- If you were looking closely in the trailer, you could see down into the grating of a sidewalk panel. Light will shine down into these areas, and the subway or sewer is most likely below.
- Though the translation for this next bullet point might have been bad, people are claiming that Philip Glass, the composer of the music heard in the first trailer, will be involved in the production of the game soundtrack

New GTA IV Preview

The latest preview for GTA IV has come from the Official Xbox Magazine in the UK. The best bit about it is that it contains some new info. Here they are:

According to the magazine, GTA IV is currently 66% complete.

When Niko pulls out a pistol, a crosshair with a simple black cross within a circle shows up on the screen. This could be an indication of manual aiming being available in the game.

Rockstar’s humorous take on the number 69 makes an appearance yet again in GTA IV, the editors of the magazine saw a sign for a “69th Street Diner”. Another building called “Twitchins”, the GTA version of Brooklyn’s Domino’s Sugar Factory, is in the game.

Niko will be able to climb and descend exterior fire escapes and some meetings will take place high in the office buildings of skyscrapers. It’s said that from on top of them you’ll be able to throw people off.

Hand to hand combat is also being reworked on for GTA IV, and will feel “much more natural” than before.

One of the radio stations includes an “Eastern European-sounding” dancing station.

Players will be able to change their camera views whilst in a car according to their needs. This however is said to still being experimented on, and that Rockstar want to give better control and “immediacy” to players.

When selecting your mobile phone, a zoomed-in version of the mobile screen pops up in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, where you can use its address book to pitch for “jobs” with gang contacts among other things.

One of the things that makes it easier for Rockstar setting GTA in a fictional New York is that they sometimes get a call from the developers at Rockstar North in Scotland, wanting to know more about a specific building or traffic flow in a certain area, for instance, and using their in-house researchers in NYC they can easily assist the guys back at R* North.

Dan Houser is quoted saying that the Liberty City in GTA IV is bigger than any single city they’ve done before, giving a more clear indication of the physical size of the game. He continues saying that the “detail” of the game is the big thing.

He also confirms Central Park to be in the game, though it’s fictional name is still unknown to us.

Dan says that they’re “certainly evolving the way the radio works”. He says the same for police behaviour and their reaction to crimes. Nothing further is said about this…

For confirmation, boats will be making a return and the handling is “really nice”

“Fun ridiculous” weapons is said to be in the game, because R* is not going too “naturalistic”

Man, I can’t wait! Stay tuned for some new GTA IV previews in the coming weeks