On the seventh day of Christmas, A Gamer Forever Voyaging gave to me... seven Grand Theft Autos.

OK, as giveaways go, this one is pretty epic. Seven Grand Theft Autos? How much game is that? Enough to last you until next Christmas, if you're so inclined...

So, what the fuck is in this fucking Grand Theft Fucking Auto giveaway, then? Here's what you can win:


You'll never catch me, coppers! Oh, wait...

Grand Theft Auto (the first one ever!).
Grand Theft Auto 2.
Grand Theft Auto III.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Grand Theft Auto IV.
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City (GTA IV add-on comprising of The Lost & The Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony).

See how fucking nice I am? Giving someone all that lot? That's not just a pile of fucking videogames, it's a fucking history lesson. And for nothing, too. Well, almost nothing... all it costs is a bit of spamming of this blog, somewhere on that there internet, and a post in the comments telling me where you've posted it. Easy. Oh, and you'll need Steam, too.


You're looking very earnest there. What?

I haven't played a lot of Grand Theft Auto, myself. I played the first one when it came out... I enjoyed the APB-style viewpoint, but I can't say I ever played it properly, instead finding great delight in just running people over. After that, I never really saw the appeal. I left GTA2 alone altogether. GTAIII, I bought on the PC. I did have a reasonable go at that, enjoying the free-roaming aspect of the city and the amusing radio stations.

Then came the real game-changer... Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Seller of eleventy-billion copies, everyone's played it. Except me... I rented it from Blockbuster when I lived in the States, but the disc was scratched, and I only got five minutes into the game. They didn't have any more copies in when I took it back, and I've never bothered with it since. Sacrilege!


I'll be honest, I have no idea what's going on here. But I like it.

Not only that, but I've never played San Andreas at all. I think just about every friend I have has raved about it, but it's never appealed to me at all. Someone's going to have to try and talk me into it at some point, but nothing about that game grabs me. I'm really selling this giveaway, aren't I?

When GTA IV came out, I took the day off work. I got an early bus to town, stood outside Woolworths with a couple of other likely fellows, and bought it as soon as the shop opened. I savoured the opening sequence, took time to familiarise myself with the controls and the city, sat in my apartment watching the telly (hilarious stuff).


I love a bit of California Games...

Once I started to actually play, I did really enjoy it... it was worth taking the day off for. Until the point where I missed a mission trigger, that is. Then, I spent three hours wandering around with nothing happening. And you know what? Those three hours killed the game for me. Once I realised what had happened, my enthusiasm for the game had gone, and it didn't come back. What a shame.

Still, it's an epic, alright. And with two highly-rated add-on packs coming with it (highly-rated by one of my mates, anyway... he loved them), there's a ton of gaming to be had. I actually own those add-ons on the 360... I do feel like getting back into GTA IV.


Shefki Kuqi was growing increasingly frustrated at his lack of first-team opportunities.

I can't imagine there are many people out there that don't own at least one Grand Theft Auto game. So the chances are that if you enter this giveaway, you're going to be duplicating something. Not to worry though... when you're getting it gratis, that's a nice problem to have. Want a shot at winning? Just post a link to this blog entry somewhere, then post in the comments, letting me know where. Make sure it's a gaming-related place where you plug it though (or Twitter)... there's not much point putting it on Alan Titchmarsh's forum. Cheers, and good luck!

Post 250. It's a Red Dead Letter Day.

I took the day off on Friday for the sole purpose of playing a videogame while my nine-year-old was at school. It's not something I do very often... but when the game was Red Dead Redemption, I expected it would be well worth it.

Now, Red Dead Redemption is a Rockstar game. I'm not really a fan of Rockstar games, generally... nothing to do with the subject matters, I just find myself getting bored and wondering what to do next. I know there are storylines to follow, but it seems that for most people, the biggest joy of their games (and I'm talking Grand Theft Auto here) is going off the main path and finding little side quests. I'm not good with that (and yet I love Fallout 3, which does a similar thing).

I did, however, love Red Dead Revolver. And I like the old West setting. And Clint Eastwood movies. I'm not saying I like cowboys. Don't take that the wrong way.


Hehe. They won't even know what hit 'em.

Red Dead Redemption has been on my radar for a long time now. Not just because it's the follow up to Red Dead Revolver, but also because every screenshot and video released over the last few months has made the game look better and more interesting.

Typically, my Friday saw me unable to start the game until after 11am... not really how I'd hoped my day off would go. Still, that gave me four hours of uninterrupted yee-hawing to start with. Having said that, the last time I took the day off for gaming was on the release day for Grand Theft Auto IV, suprisingly enough. And after about an hour in that game, I was wandering around in circles with nothing to do. I did that for hours, before finally noticing that the next trigger point for a mission was just around the corner, and I'd missed it for that whole time. Kind of ruined my experience, and my day.


A grizzled old marshall. That's not his "pleased to see you" face.

I haven't had any such problems with RDR. The story has flowed really well, and I've been able to break from it to do my own thing (which has mostly involved playing poker) and pick back up where I left off without any problems. As for that story, well... so far, it seems like a pretty good Western tale to me. The voice acting is very good, as are the animations of the characters while talking. This is usually something where games fall down... the characters could be spouting the finest prose written by man, but it looks like they're going "Blaaaahhhh... blaaaahhhhh... blaaaaaahhhhhh...". Here, they actually look pretty much like they're talking.

I've spent a good chunk of the weekend with the game, and I reckon that Rockstar have got a hell of a lot right with it. It looks phenomenal... sweeping vistas and dusty plains are the order of the day. At one point, I was sitting on my horse on the edge of a cliff, looking miles into the distance with the sun beating down and a heat haze obscuring my view... I could have sat like that for hours. The sound, too, is really good, with little western snippets striking up at appropriate moments, and the incidental sounds all hitting the right notes.


Dead or alive, you're coming with me. Just your skin and meat if you're dead, though.

But it's the gameplay that's the main part of any game, obviously, and this just feels great to play. And I'm not just talking about the gunfighting... a lot of the old West was rather mundane, but Rockstar have made even the mundane exciting. I've just spent some time rounding up a herd of frightened cattle in a thunderstorm... an everyday job a hundred years ago, but it felt important in the game, and there was a real sense of achievement at seeing them all safely home.

There's a lot left for me to do in Red Dead Redemption, and I'm looking forward to every minute of it. Whether it's sticking to the storyline, breaking off for a game of poker with the boys or just heading off with my horse for a mosey across the desert, it's an experience I'm planning to savour.

Yakuza (PS2)

Cash Converters comes up trumps again! Although I'd heard of the Yakuza series, I really knew nothing about it, other than it was popular and pretty highly regarded. I had no clue about the gameplay, or anything. But it was £1.99. Perfect blog fodder, so I snapped it up.


If I'd known this was a golf game, I mightn't have bothered.

Yakuza puts you right in the heart of the Japanese underworld... in fact, it puts you in the shoes of an enforcer, with aspirations of starting his own "family". Trusted and respected by bosses, and with money, you're in prime position to go it on your own. Until your girlfriend is kidnapped, that is... and a chain of events is set in place that leads to you taking the rap for the murder of your own family's boss.

The first section of a game sees you playing this scenario out, and it serves to get you really involved in the story, as well as being a deent tutorial. You'll learn how to beat up large groups of thugs, which is what the majority of this game is about.


Just the seven of you? You couldn't make it more difficult than that?

The combat system is fairly straightforward. Punches are the order of the day... you can string together some pretty vicious combinations that will leave most thugs struggling to breathe. You're also able to put some other moves in there... a throw can scatter a few guys at once, while a suitably subdued bad guy can be slammed against a wall for maximum damage. And if all else fails, you can reach for the nearest chair or blunt instrument and beat the crap out of them with that.

Once you get out of jail, ten years later (game time, naturally!), the game becomes a more open-world affair. So when you're not on a mission, you have some freedom to explore. In doing so, you'll find a range of mini-games, which involve some daft games or (of course) more fights. Wandering the city is fun, as it's based on a real area of Tokyo. Pity, then, that it's often rendered Resident Evil-style, with fixed-camera views making you hobble around in a confused fashion.


This is what you get for fucking around with Yakuza! Go home to your mother!

Other than that, though, I found Yakuza an interesting and involved game. The gameplay itself is not especially stunning and in fact gets a bit repetitive, but the storyline and setting were enough to get me hooked. I can easily see why the series is up to a fourth game... it's not a world we generally have much access to, and it's sufficiently different to Grand Theft Auto to make it worth sticking with.