A certain game came out six days ago and it’s probably the biggest gaming event this console generation. I won’t go in to details telling you how awesome this game is because you’ve probably been playing it this whole week or reading the reviews telling you how great it is. I’ll mostly be touching on the tiny things that annoy me, because when a game is as good as this, you can’t but help to find the smallest of things to pick on.

Grand Theft Auto IV’s the name of the game obviously and if you don’t know anything about the franchise I don’t really understand what rock you’ve been living under. Now, I didn’t think Rockstar could top GTA III with Vice City nor did I think they could top Vice City with San Andreas but they just keep on improving everything about the games and with the latest iteration they pretty much nailed it, fixing all of the problems people didn’t like about the previous games (mainly the aiming) and improved everything about the overall product.

So now that I’ve got that out of the way, let us talk about autoaim. Rockstar has finally crafted some modern gameplay in to the game and it feels like most shooters these days with the over-the-shoulder view and smooth aiming, the sensitivity and acceleration is just about right. Yet, somehow they’ve decided to leave the autoaiming in the game and I don’t understand why.

Most people who play shooters on consoles these days are used to blowing stuff up without having the game automatically fixing the crosshair on enemy targets, this is 2008, not 1999. It’s not newbie friendly in any way, it’s something for those who can’t be bothered to learn how to aim properly. Keeping something like that when you’re moving on to the next generation of consoles for the first time almost forces you to use it on the upcoming games.

I wouldn’t have had a problem with this if the game only was single player, but when you can allow or disallow autoaim on servers it creates a barrier between those who don’t want to use it and those who do, which brings me on to my next point.

Why can’t I filter server options? This is one of the most basic functions of all multiplayer games, being able to decide whether or not you want to play on a server that uses autoaim, reticule health, blips and so on. In GTA IV you constantly have to jump in and out of servers to get what you want, and it’s just stupid. Further more, the one who hosts the game shouldn’t be able to change some of the core variables in the middle of the game since this just makes it even more confusing when you’re trying to find something you like.

The cover system definitely needs some tweaking, the crosshair keeps popping back and you can’t reload your weapon when you’re moving or are about to back up against some cover.

Some people have been reporting freezing issues but none of that has occurred to me, the game has been running smooth, with some fps drops, on my brand new PlayStation 3. So that’s it for my complains, initially I had some trouble getting used to the rather slow walking and running pace as well as how the vehicles controlled, but that’s just something I needed to get used and now I really like it.

On a side note, I sold my Xbox 360 some three weeks ago and bought the GTA IV / PlayStation 3 bundle. Now, obviously the question is going to come up, “Why did you do this? there’ll be exclusive DLC on Xbox Live!”, but the simple fact of the matter is that none of that has been announced yet and no one knows what the 360 users will get. Further more, with my usual luck my 360 would’ve gotten a RRoD and died on me.

Pretty much everyone who watched cartoons from the eighties as kid look upon today’s series as a bunch of crap, and then when you’re up for some nostalgia and watch some old series you realize how lame most of the shows where. Take my advice and never do that, what you can do however, is start watching this.

Since I’ve been reading Marvel comics for a while now I caught up on the most recent Spider-Man cartoon, named Spectacular Spider-Man. And oh man, it’s awesome. This series has got every little thing you want from a good superhero / action cartoon, obviously the series aimed towards kids but it has got all of the myths surrounding Spider-Man that we all know and love.

We all know the basic premise for Spider-Man by now so I won’t go in to that. The way the writers portray the double life of Peter Parker / Spider-Man and his relationship with his friends Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn is beyond most things I’ve seen in recent cartoons these days or in most anime for that matter. He is almost always given the choice between helping his friends or fighting crime and making money (I’m assuming you know he’s a photographer) for his aunt, this doesn’t seem like much but it always adds up the tension between him and the ones close to him. It is arguably the best thing about this cartoon imho.

While the villains in the series haven’t been as impressive as what I’ve just talked about, they’ve always been fun to watch in action when fighting Spidey on the streets and the dialogue between them and him is great. We’ve got Eddie Brock set up in the series as a close friend of Peter Parker and recently we’ve seen Tombstone as a major crime lord who seems untouchable for Spider-Man.

As far as animation goes, it’s all good. While the character designs aren’t that impressive, they follow the oh so popular Bruce Trimm designs (Batman and other DC animated series), in that they’re rather simple but very clean and nice. The action scenes are very well done.

I can’t wait to see where this series go later on with more love interests (Black Cat) and other big name villains (Venom), not only that but the theme song has really gotten in my head recently.

Time for an update (or whatever you choose to call it), I havn’t been updating this blog for about a year or more so I figured I should write something. I’m not sure what I want to do with this little site yet but maybe I’ll think of something in the future, I decided to write in english as well so that’s why I erased all of the previous posts.

I’ve made a name change, got the name from the lyrics to a Pillows song (namely the ending credits to FLCL) - sounded fun so there it is. I’m currently posting gaming related news here (in swedish) from time to time, when I see something I like.

Again, not decided what I want to with this blog but I’m sure there’ll be something here in the future. So till next time, see ya!