The Mike Abundo Effect

With Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, and Vice City Stories all after Grand Theft Auto III, I was starting to think Rockstar Games couldn’t count to four. Fortunately, we’re going back to Liberty City on October 16 with Grand Theft Auto IV.

The trailer is about 1:03 in length, and it reveals that the game takes place (at least partially) in Liberty City, a fictionalized New York City, and an immigrant with a heavy Russian accent, who appears to be the main character. The character has a brief monologue: “Life is complicated; I killed people, smuggled people, sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different.” Then the trailer ends with the “IV” logo.

The trailer features many familiar New York City landmarks, including a location resembling Times Square and the “GetaLife Building,” a parody of the MetLife Building. All of the cars and buildings seem to indicate a present-day setting. The trailer uses a similar cinematic style to Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi as it used Philip Glass’s original music from the film (a section of the track “Pruitt-Igoe”) as well as emulated time-lapsed filming.

Rockstar also revealed that all the trailer’s footage is generated real-time via the game’s engine RAGE, running on an actual game console, and that it was not pre-rendered. Whether the footage is running on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 has yet to be specified.

Yup, you read that right: this is real-time game footage, not some pre-rendered mockup. Looks like things will be different.

(Via Wikipedia.)

Fresh from legendary game Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto at the ongoing Game Developers Conference in San Francisco comes a dazzling new trailer for Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii, set for release this year.

Yes, the dizzying in-the-round platforms of this expansive colorfest have driven me to dramatically long sentences.

Check out the latest trailer for Tekken 6 from AOU 2007, featuring actual gameplay footage along with new characters Leo and Zafina.

With Dead or Alive 5 already announced and Virtua Fighter 5 already in stores, the fighting game scene heats up in time for a new generation of consoles.

(Via Matt Leone.)