Ground Control to Major Problems

We are crazy and stupid.

Of course, we've never been the types to play it smart or safe, so it's with open, buggy arms that I welcome you to the new-ish GR. Take a look around, click on links, get cozy, and try not to stare at the chipped paint. We're on the case, sort of, and trust that you'll see hundreds of changes and tweaks every second of every day as we frantically slap lipstick on this pig. You can read more about the whole shebang here.

Rather than dwell on the obvious, though, I wanted to publicly applaud legendary game designer and affable personality Warren Spector (Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock), who recently made some interesting remarks about how the GTA series is simultaneously awesome and terrible.

Spector applauds Rockstar for their brilliant design, and then backhands them for not doing anything nice with it. At first I disagreed, but it's actually a good point. Their obsession with the dark, seedy side of life tends to overwhelm the sheer technical brilliance of their games, sensationalizing something so good it doesn't need to be sensationalized. Does that mean I want a PG-rated GTA? Not remotely, but I sure would like a game world as fully-realized as San Andreas that didn't just require me to act like a mindless killing machine the whole time. I play video games to escape reality, you know.