Ready, Aye, Ready

Link: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/05/gamesfrontiers_0506

A couple of weeks ago I found a review of a new game that sounded like a sure thing for our periodic weekend PC gaming sessions:

"There are 15 different modes of online play, most of which are pretty good. One clear winner is [...] Race, which blends car racing with combat: You can assault one another's vehicles, and even carjack one another. The result is exquisite madness, with drivers jumping out of wrecked compact cars and in 18-wheel trucks, then tearing off down crowded sidewalks while followed by lowriders hurling Molotov cocktails. If, like me, you're a subpar driver, you can simply abandon the goal and become a machine of revenge -- setting up a roadblock, waiting for other drivers to approach, then blasting them to pieces. This is food for the soul.

In previous years, we'd been addicted to racing games like "Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed" and Microsoft's unparalleled "Midtown Madness". Both are unfortunately rather long in the tooth but we've never found anything to replace them for sheer multiplayer fun.

When I saw the review, I figured we had a winner. The game described above is of course Grand Theft Auto IV, and I went out the following day to pick up a copy. What I hadn't thought of -- given the game's heritage -- was that it was yet another console-only release.

Oh well. Guess I'll still have to keeping looking for that next one game, although maybe the parameters of the search may well be changing...