Posted: March 23rd, 2007 | Author:Simon | Filed under:Journal | Comments Off
At least if you live in Copenhagen, Denmark. And may you all have a very nice weekend.
Monday morning I’m doing my defense of my master thesis at the IT-University of Copenhagen so postings might be a little sporadic the next few days depending on how it goes.
It’s a really strange period of my life, to finally have completed my last education and now must venture out into the The Real World™. This is it… see you on the flip side.
Posted: March 13th, 2007 | Author:Simon | Filed under:Clippings | Comments Off
So I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories on the PlayStation 2 for some hours now and it really fells like returning to your hometown after having been away for some years.
The story is very lame and very lowbrow. It might very well be the worst story of any GTA game to date. It is vulgar, sadistic and just not funny. But as you all know the story is only a very little part of what make the GTA games great.
The combat system is better (it could only improve). Close combat has improved and the lock-on aiming system is better or at least just as good as it was in GTA: San Andreas.
The car handling in Vice City Stories is changed; some cars for the better but unfortunately a lot of cars for the worse. For example the Blista Compact that used to have the best handling of any car now is rather hard to drive.
A lot of the locations have been changed, some minor changes here and there but it all adds up to a Vice City that is a bit uncanny. And even though I know that Vice City Stories takes place some years before GTA: Vice City I have a strong urge to pull over my car and stop the first pedestrian walking past and utter something like “Young man, did you know that when I was your age there used to be a good car dealership right here, and just behind that building over there you could buy some very good ice cream”. But I better not, they might take it the wrong way.
All that said it is still a Grand Theft Auto game, and for that it already has a very special place in my game collection. It might not be that best GTA game, but it is still miles and miles ahead of the swarm of clones that are flooding the market.
I’m currently working with the legal department from IO Interactive to be able to host a portion (hopefully all) of the thesis on this website once they comped it through the NDA.
