I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but we’ve been plugging Grand Theft Auto IV pretty hard this week. Some of you have probably been wondering how much free shit Rockstar has been giving us, how many sacks with dollar signs we’ve had to haul to the bank in the last week. Before today I would’ve dismissed such insinuations with a wave of my hand. “No, no - you’ve got it all wrong,” I’d say. “We’re plugging the game because we’re fans, not for material gain.”

Or at least that’s what I would’ve said before I saw this trailer for 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Although if you caught me right after I saw it, I probably still would’ve said something like that because, you know, I thought it was a joke. But if you caught me a few minutes later, after I’d googled it and confirmed that it was a REAL video game about 50 Cent killing terrorists, well, I’d probably say something different. You know - something like “Fuck GTA IV - this is going to be the greatest video game of all time.”

The plot of the game goes something like this: 50 Cent and G-Unit play a concert in the Middle East for some reason, the promoter pays them with Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God” (retail price: $100 million), and then some bad guys steal it and 50 has to try to get it back. It’s important to note that, according to the game’s Wikipedia entry, “much of the game is spent following 50 Cent when he is without the skull.”

Thanks, Wikipedia.

It’s been almost seven years since that whole 9/11 thing happened. (See? We TOLD YOU we’d never forget!). Why in the name of God has it taken SEVEN YEARS to start seeing video games where our favorite rappers roam the Middle East killing terrorists?! If you’re reading this, video game industry, please make a game where you play as Biggie and have to chase Bin Laden through the caves of Afghanistan… on GO KARTS. Or how about one where you’re Snoop Dogg and you have to find weed to buy in Fallujah? (Snoop LOVES weed.) Wait, no! Make one where you have to keep P. Diddy’s fancy clothes clean in the middle of war-torn Baghdad! You could call it Super Keep-Diddy’s-Clothes-Clean Man or something. Whatever - it’s a working title. If you hire me, video game industry, I promise I’ll come up with a better one. Although you should probably just hire me regardless. See all those ideas? I just made those up in like 10 seconds.

Please hire me.

Note: Today’s Nooner is being written immediately after purchasing Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360. It is sitting unopened on my coffee table right now, and yet here I am, 100% focused on writing, not thinking about Grand Theft Auto IV at all.

My greatest regret isn’t a girl that got away, skipping my high school prom, or not getting to say goodbye to a loved one before they passed away. It isn’t running away from a problem, missing a career opportunity, or getting that tattoo of the kanji symbol for “two-car garage” that the tattoo guy told me meant “strength.” Yes, I’ve done all of those things, and sure, not a moment goes by that I’m not ashamed of every single one of them, but that’s all eclipsed by my greatest regret:

Why the fuck didn’t I commit more crimes when I was young enough to get away with it?

Sure, I broke some bottles and lit some fires when I was younger, and yeah, one time in junior high we stole my friend’s mom’s car (it wasn’t our fault - “Welcome To The Jungle” came on the radio and we got all pumped up), but we only made like two houses down an alley before we crashed into some rubber garbage cans at about 5 mph, and then we ran away and hid until the cops came. On a scale of one to “cool” that ranks somewhere between a two and a “suck.”

Why didn’t we go on a crazy crosstown rampage like this kid did? Maybe we were better behaved, more respectful and fearful of authority. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because this was the pre-Grand Theft Auto era and we just didn’t know how. Not that a rampage in GTA involving two mailboxes and two parked cars would be very impressive, but for a real life 7-year-old? That’s nothing to shake a stick at - particularly considering he couldn’t even see over the steering wheel.

Come to think of it, this might just be some crazy viral advertisement for GTA IV or something. One that, based on my ability to focus intently on writing this Nooner without thinking about GTA IV, is clearly having no effect on me. Which reminds me - I have to go now for a completely unrelated reason.

Concerned parents of America, a blight has infected our children with perversion and bloodlust, and it is our duty to stand against it. No, not gang violence, or street drugs. I’m talking about the digitized filth of video gaming, and particularly the latest travesty in a series of affronts to family values.

That’s right; I’m talking about Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm.

Now, I know many of you grew up in the era when video games didn’t fill the player with an insatiable urge to hump and kill things, all the while “tripping on balls.”

There was a time when the worst you could expect was to see a frog get crushed by a truck, and after watching this year’s crop of toads destroy my wife’s herb garden, I wouldn’t be too unhappy if kids imitated those games.

But today games aren’t all PacMoon and Man Patrol. Today, games like Deadliest Catch (I believe a reference to Herpes Simplex II) teach our kids to drink hot blood and put their penises into holes God never meant there to be penises in. Like mouths.

Some of my detractors have said that I have no right to judge a game before playing it. Well let me tell you something: I can judge whatever I want. You’re a heathen. See? I did it right there.

And there’s no way in Heck you’re going to use your devil-logic to trick me into actually playing one of these monuments to pagan impulse. I don’t want to end up baying naked in a field, manually pleasuring myself while my friend chokes me with a controller cable.

Which is exactly what your son or daughter will do if you let them even see the cover of this game. In fact, if you’re under 18, do yourself a favor and DON’T look immediately to the right of this text. Otherwise you risk killing your family and making love to the still-warm corpses.

And that includes the game title; don’t read it! If you ask me, even the words themselves are unfit for children. Alaskan Storm? Why not just call the game Deadliest Catch: Bukkake and be done with it?

This game is all that is wrong with the world. How do I know without playing? Simple; I observe. I watch the news. I see the world around me get worse and worse, school shootings rise and rise, kids having sex younger and younger, my own children calling me things like “out of touch” and “fear mongering.”

And at the same time—the same exact time—I see that video games are also being made and distributed. How long would you ask me to ignore the plain facts?!

Violence. Sex. And video games. All existing simultaneously, by sheer coincidence? I doubt it! It’s called correlation, and it’s science.

Not to mention the first-hand evidence I get every day listening to my own children! I made the grave error of allowing my 16-year-old to go to a friend’s house without my full supervision (last time I make that mistake!), and lo and behold he comes home saying things like “you wouldn’t believe how many crabs I got today” and “a hook, right to the mouth. That’s how you get them.”

I can only imagine he’s describing making love to a prostitute, then killing her with a massive meat hook. And if that’s the kind of “virtual experience” Deadliest Catch is delivering to our youngsters, you can count me out!

It’s time for parents to band together, crush these filth mongers, and reclaim our kids! Let’s take a page from President Bush’s playbook and preemptively strike! Judge before playing, condemn before understanding, and be afraid of things that you think may be happening. It’s the way our country’s been run for the last eight years, and if you ask me it’s the only way to keep our daughters from injecting crack into their nipples.

In the meantime, I’ll be confining my children’s video gaming to good, wholesome religious games like this Halo I’ve been hearing about.

Yours truly,

Jack Thompson

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael tries to catch up on episodes of Peep Show as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

So by the time you’re reading this, you may very well have been playing the just-released Grand Theft Auto IV for 8 straight hours, and in that time, formed some pretty firm opinions on the game to go along with the magnificent odor you’ve also probably developed. Sadly I can’t count myself amongst your number, as having both a job and a girlfriend, I have certain non-optional sleep and odor-maintenance regimes. Consequently I haven’t played a bit of the game, so were I actually to attempt a review here, I’d be making a mockery of the journalistic standards that Cracked magazine has long stood for.

Instead, I’m going to recap some of the absolute favorite things I enjoyed about the past GTA games, which should be a good way for me to fill out a blog post, and also not get too stinky.

My Favorite Things about Grand Theft Auto:

Reverse 180’s. In some cars like the taxi or police car, these are so easy to do, it’s delicious. I think I pulled one of these accidentally about 5 minutes into the original GTA III. As I recall, after my eyes resocketed themselves, I stood up and exclaimed “Holy Crap, I’m awesome!” It’s such a small thing, but making the player feel like the Golden God of All Things On Wheels is one thing that makes this series so great.

Creating a whole logjam of cars and then blowing them up in a chain reaction. Once you realized that multiple gunshots could destroy cars, tell me within minutes you weren’t piling up cars in an intersection like a lunatic valet?

This one time in Vigilante mode. This mode seemed kind of lame at first - mostly just chasing crooks down, smacking their rear quarter panel and shooting the hell out of them with an uzi. But there was one criminal who I couldn’t pin down at all, and as the clock was running out, in an act of desperation I slammed him off the side of a bridge and into the ocean. One of my favorite gaming moments ever, and it hopefully sent a message to everyone else in Liberty City who had four outstanding parking tickets: there was a new sheriff in town.

Big dirty handbrake turns through intersections. Drifting used to be so cool before the Japanese ritualized it and turned it into something incomprehensible. They did the same thing with sex, and I’m still pissed off about it.

The Sentinel. I find that all the love in this series goes to the street bikes or the sports cars, but for my money the Sentinel and it’s variants are the best cars in the game. Not over-awingly fast, but just so unflappable in bumps, hard turns and under braking. I can’t count the number of times I lost the handle on a Cheetah while traveling at top speed and spun out into three prostitutes, snuffing out their already tragic lives. But that almost never happened in the Sentinel. This goes back to that whole “feeling like a Driving God” thing I spoke of earlier.

Motorcycle assisted BASE jumping. Just like watching a Vin Diesel movie, except you don’t feel embarrassed talking about it afterward.

On that subject, check out some guy’s hilariously ruined Quad Bike BASE jump:

__

Harrier dogfights. San Andreas had such a retarded amount of unlockable content, that this probably shouldn’t have surprised me when it happened, but it did. Sure, the dogfighting was actually pretty terrible, but it boggled my mind that it was even in there, and again, allowed me to relive some favorite movie moments.

My roommate: “What’s going on in here? Why are you screaming ‘Goose’ over and over again?”

Me: “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!”

Turning the turret in the tank around 180 degrees and repeatedly firing the cannon to accelerate forward. You almost never see tanks do this in real life, and I’ve always wondered why.

Running over Crockett and Tubbs in their own Ferrari. In Vice City when you achieved a certain wanted level, a Cheetah with two cops in pastel suits will come after you, just like Miami Vice. However unlike Miami Vice, they were about as hard to kill as a baby duck. Which I found perfectly delightful. “People who hate and want to murder Don Johnson” have been a curiously under served gaming demographic for a long time.

__

And while we’re all sitting here,

My Least Favorite Things about Grand Theft Auto:

Molotov Cocktails. Fuck those things. I don’t think I’ve ever used one of these things that didn’t end up with me in a heap, a polyester suit permanently fused to me corpse.

Eating. In San Andreas you had to eat food periodically otherwise your character would bitch and moan at you. Who’s great idea was a video game that simulates eating? Fucking Taco Bell? The whole point of video games is letting the player do stuff they can’t do normally, i.e. drive a firetruck at full speed off a ramp, and into a fountain where they’d earlier parked two helicopters.

Stuff appearing and disappearing when you turn your head. The game wasn’t too bad about spawning stuff when you were driving, although it was far from perfect. But when you’re on foot, cars and swarms of gangster would appear or disappear as soon as you turned around. It was really disorienting and unsettling, and I’m guessing it’s exactly how old people feel all the time.

__

So what were some of your favorite GTA moments? And who’s got GTA IV? Is it any good? Can you send me your copy? Why not? What’s your problem, dick?

Rarely does a Cracked blogger get to break a news story that’s guaranteed to excite and enthrall the readership. Today, I have been blessed with the opportunity to drop the knowledge bomb that is destined to leave your synapses flame-scoured and quivering, and your brain-villages nothing but smoldering piles of memories of rubble.

Activision, the visionary game studio that unleashed the rock with Guitar Hero III, have announced that the next installment of the game will have…wait for it…more instruments!

It’s the kind of genius development idea so clearly brilliant, you wonder how it hasn’t been thought of before. But I guess it took the big, juicy brains at Activision to make that dream a reality.

While they’re still nailing down which instruments to implement—may I suggest recorder, tambourine and harmonica?—the smart money is that they’ll end up using the four cardinal rock instruments: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. Groundbreaking.

I mean, think about it! Anyone who’s ever picked up a bass knows it’s identical to guitar in every way, so the hardware’s already there! Throw in a mic and drum set, and you’re ready to form some sort of Rock Band!

But the brain train don’t stop there (toot toot!); they’ve already got their future developments sewn up as well. Stop tying up the phone lines at the patent office, people, Activision has already purchased the rights to the titles “Guitar Villain” and “Drum Villain.”

What’s more, early Internet buzz describes Drum Villain as a game so evil, every sinister strike of the high-hat embezzles money from a third world aid organization, and each malevolent thud of the kick-drum rapes a nun. G-damn, am I into that.

I’ve got to say, I am stoked about the fresh, fresh, fresh gameplay being offered here, and especially Activision’s promise to include a lot more “local bands” in the line-up.

Why the hell would I want to play a Radiohead or AC/DC song when I can rock out to The Hip Thrusters’ latest garage-recorded powerhouse “Light this shit up?” Why, I ask?!

I wouldn’t is the answer. I would not.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m hard at work on a rhythm game I hope to sell to Activision as soon as I’ve worked out the bugs. It’s called Boogie Boogie Uprising, and it’s so fresh you’d think it was the Prince of Bel Air.

When not blogging for Cracked, Michael drowns in a thick layer of his own sarcasm as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

Sonic Metal

It happens to all of us every once in a while: You’re doing something completely irrelevant - sitting in your office, working on your car, maybe just playing some Sonic the Hedgehog - when all of the sudden you get hit with a sudden urge. It sneaks up on you at first, just a faint hint of a suggestion, but then you can’t stop thinking about it. You try to ignore it, but the truth is you can no longer help yourself.

You must build a guitar out of an old Sega Genesis.

So you pull the Genesis out of storage in your parents’ basement - which is convenient, because that’s where you live - and you get to work, but then your girlfriend walks in and she’s like, “What the hell are you doing?” and you’re like, “Wait a minte - I don’t have a girlfriend. Who the hell are you?” and she’s like, “Oh, wait - I think I have the wrong house. I’m looking for Donny,” and you’re like, “Yeah, Donny lives a block over. On Kendall Avenue. This is KenDALE Avenue.” Then she’s like, “Oh, weird - his house looks exactly like this one,” and you’re like “Yeah, I know,” and then she looks at the Sega Genesis and severed guitar neck on your workbench and is like, “Uhh… yeah. Good luck with that.”

A few days later you’ll be done building your Sega Genesis guitar, but you’ll still be thinking about Donny’s girlfriend. You’ll read the Wikipedia entry for “Courtship”, hoping to glean something about the art of seduction, racking your brain to come up with a way to win her affections, and then you’ll decide to impress her the only way you know how: by making a video of yourself wailing on your Sega Genesis guitar in front of some Sonic the Hedgehog levels and putting it up on YouTube. Then you’ll sit back and wait for her to blow you up with her digits in the comments, but then your mom will be like, “DINNER!!!” and you’ll have to turn off the computer and go upstairs.

A few days later Donny will kick your ass and steal your Sega Genesis guitar, which he will then proceed to sell on eBay for $101. Good times.

If You Seriously Still Haven’t Gotten Enough Of Guitar Hero, Here’s A Slightly Shittier Version Of It That You Can Play ANYWHERE YOU WANT

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick of being chained to my television when I want to play Guitar Hero. The wireless controller was a nice attempt, but it still kept me stuck in my living room. I want complete and total freedom of movement when I rock out, you know? I’m sick of looking like a total fucking douchebag playing Guitar Hero in the privacy of my own home. If only there was a way that I could play Guitar Hero… IN PUBLIC! On the train, in the food court at the mall, in the office break room; If possible, I’d like to be able to look like a prick anywhere I go.

That used to be just a pipe dream, but come Summer 2008 that pipe dream will finally become a pipe reality!

And what better way to announce the coming Guitar Hero DS revolution than with what may possibly be the most instantly-dated commercial I’ve ever seen. Look at that guy and that girl. They are ready to ROCK! You can tell because they brought their Nintendo DS’s and copies of Guitar Hero onto that rooftop, and they’re totally rocking out in front of… what skyline is that? San Antonio, Texas? Yeah - they’re totally rocking out in front of the San Antonio skyline. If that isn’t enough to convince you that Guitar Hero DS is the premiere game of Summer 2008, then I don’t what will.

If I didn’t know the product was brand spankin’ new I would assume that this commercial was made in 1992. The only explanation I can come up with is that Guitar Hero DS is early 90s themed and features hits by Spin Doctors and Counting Crows. Oh well - at least it works on rooftops!

Well, it’s been on the minds and in the sweaty, chapped-from-manual-stimulation hands of most of this blog’s readers for nearly four days now, so let’s discuss it. The Brawl, what with the Donkeys and the Squirtles. What do we think? Well, since they pay me to, I’ll tell you what I think, and we’ll move forward from there.

There’s a lot of them, so that’s good. They didn’t lose anyone I loved, and it’s a Genesis-boy’s wet dream to see Sonic tearing up Green Hill Zone on a next-gen system. I mean for the love of Prower, why the hell did Sega ever abandon the sure-fire “Sonic moves quickly to the right” scenario?

Some of the newbies are pretty pathetic in my hands (Pokemon trainer, don’t quit your day job at the Evergrande City Starbucks). But as my buddy Steve routinely handing me my ass with the Ice Climbers and Jigglypuff proves, Smash is a game where enough practice can allow you to piss off your friends with nearly any character.

And now, watch me garner the combined hatred of thousands of Internet fanboys with no more than two syllables: Snake? Meh.

Maybe it’s because at my house we play with items turned off (and the loser has to spend the night outside; we’re pretty intense), but fuck Nintendogs. Little motorcycle guys, you’re cool.

As for the rest, let’s not kid ourselves: they’re basically Pokeballs. Which isn’t bad, it’s just surprising that Nintendo found a way to cram even more first-party characters into what is essentially a huge circle jerk. A circle jerk with, you know, fighting and stuff. Like High School gym.

In case you hadn’t gathered, I used a forged doctor’s note to get out of High School gym.

(more…)

Left Behind: Eternal Forces

As we’ve learned this week on the Cracked Blog, video games generally don’t make very good movies. Nor do most TV shows, cartoons or - God help us all - board games, but here’s one we clearly missed: Can apocalyptic Christian literature be turned into a sweet video game?

My gut instinct tells me “no.” As far as I know, the coolest Christian-approved video game to date was Bible Adventures, and you know what? It really wasn’t all that great. If you’re not Christian, Christian entertainment generally doesn’t have much allure. There are exceptions to this rule, of course: The Passion of The Christ, Christian rock music and videos of Christians talking about bananas can all be enjoyed ironically, but can we really expect them to make a decent video game? That might be asking too much.

Then I watch this trailer and think to myself, “Wow - that actually looks pretty fucking sweet.” Apocalypse lends itself well to the video game medium, and this could actually be a pretty fun game if it was done well. You know when you get bored playing Grand Theft Auto and just start murdering everyone and blowing shit up to see how long you can survive? Well that’s pretty much what the apocalypse would be like, isn’t it? GTA isn’t very Christian, but it could be with a few tweaks. Throw some scripture into the loading screens, add a little more blood, and BAM - you’ve got yourself a certified Christian video game! Based on the trailer, it kind of seems like that’s what this game is like, and you know what? That would be kind of awesome and I would totally play it.

Oh, wait. According to the game’s website:

Contrary to misinformation on the web, this game does not include references to any other religion. Also, there is NO killing in the name of God, and NO convert or die missions. All content has been reviewed and approved by Tyndale House Publishers prior to publication.

Conduct warfare using the power of PRAYER and WORSHIP as more powerful weapons than guns.

Nevermind.

Awesome Video Of The Day

Homemade Halo Suit

I know what you’re thinking. You’re watching this video¹ of this kid in his homemade Halo suit, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow - what a total badass.” I would agree with you, but having made more than my share of homemade Halo suit videos in my day, my trained eye sees all the telltale signs of an amateur here. I can relate, though: in my first homemade Halo suit video, I was wearing a tinfoil shirt and a pair Levi’s. I knew it kind of sucked, but I thought maybe the fog machine and strobe light would still make it look cool. No dice.

Anyway, the cardinal rule of making a Halo suit video: always make sure your mom is out of the shot. I know how it goes when mom’s cooking dinner and the lighting looks best right near the kitchen, but you know what? It’s called “self-control.” Wait until she’s done cooking you dinner and THEN make the video. Think about it like this: What would Master Chief do?² I’ll tell you what he’d do: he’d crouch in the corner, reload and wait for a more opportune moment to flex in his new homemade cardboard armor. Are you Master Chief material? Yeah? Better start acting like it, then.

I know that might sound needlessly harsh considering he’s just a kid or whatever, but I’m not apologizing - that “kid” got like 30 headshots off me last night.

¹ Not to be confused with this video, or this video, or anything associated with this website.

² WWMCD?