I ordered Tales of Eternia today.

It was Sunday yesterday, retards roam the streets on Sundays, getting ice creams with their over-empathetic carers. There's nothing genuine about those 'caring' guys either. Socks with sandals, beige shirts, it's all an elaborate ruse, a disguise worn whilst out taking the handicapped for their weekly airing. Needless to say that balloons get lost, ice creams get dropped and wet-wipe manufacturers are kept in business. People say it takes a certain type of person to care for another person, I agree, it's the same type of person who stands on a street corner and holds a sign up indicating the direction of the nearest macdonalds.

I didn't post yesterday because I was too busy wondering about the use of a sentient sign-post in this day and age. Especially since most high-street outlets are adorned with a perfectly efficient means of advertising themselves. It's usually about 12ft above street level, projecting out at a 90 degree angle with shop-specific information (usually a name) printed on it.

It doesn't matter now though, because it's the day after yesterday.


I've been playing a lot of GTA4 recently, especially if two days of consecutive game time qualifies as 'a lot'. I'm gonna make a little list of things I enjoy doing in the game, I'll see if i can add bullet-points, if I can't then I'll use some sort of numeric ordering. Although ideally, I'd like you to think the numbers are bullet-points, because I think numbered lists are quite tacky.


1. Riding the subway. It's weird, when blitzing along the road in some Ferrari look-a-like, Liberty City can actually feel pretty compact. It doesn't really feel like a very big step-up from GTA3 with all 14 of its major roads. I think it's a speed thing, some cars in GTA4 seem to bend and distort space when traveling at speeds in excess of 60mph. Not only does the map become unreadable, but Liberty City itself morphs from a sprawling metropolis into a cul de sac with a co-op and maybe a few competing hairdressers that you can't go into...
It's not until you take things a bit slower, walk places and most importantly use the public transport, that the real scale of the game kicks in. GTA4 has a badass train network, it's got like 8 different lines that all interchange at Easton station. Catching the train on the A8 line from the subway nearest to the apartment in algonquin...and then riding it all the way through broker and back into Easton is outstanding. The sheer size of the game is amazing.
pro-tip: pushing people in front of incoming trains is hilarious, especially when they're on the phone. Or old.

2. Taking a brick into a strip club. There's a strip-club in Bohan with a buggered wall, it provides the devious with an ample supply of masonry that can be used as flak in over-arm projections. I often take my brick into the strip-club and pummel the bouncer with it. The strippers tend to flee at this point, I tend to follow them.
It rained on one occasion, so I followed the semi-naked girl as she jogged along the road. She eventually summoned an umbrella, in my attempt to seek sanctuary with her under the umbrella's protective spread, I knocked her slightly and she stumbled into a motorbike.

3. Running the Gauntlet. There are a few busy roads out and about, I like traversing them with the camera facing away from the approaching traffic. It's quite scary, especially when a its an ambulance that ends up side-shafting you at some ungodly speed. One particular occasion saw me attempting to cross a 3-laner near a junction. An unseen car knocked me a good 50 yards into the path of a Futo which proceeded to mangle Niko horribly.

4. Quelling illicit activity with gravity aided water immersion. I take back what I said about vigilantism, I can see the attraction to it. I like swimming up to groups of people on piers and going all out Namor on them, breaking up any potential drug-deal by pushing them all in the water. This works especially well at the heli-tours place, there's a good 20ft drop to enjoy before they hit the drink there.

5. Using a coffee-cup to beat someone into submission. The pick-up and throw shit idea was inspired, I've scarcely had more fun than picking up a coffee-cup and using it to drop a business man 20ft away. This is great when people are walking down the stairs and their attempts to fight back are only met with further coffee-cups. They die eventually, though, which is a shame. Kudos to Rockstar for filling coffee-cups with lead soup.

6. Pinching pedestrians between precariously positioned parked cars. There's a lot of fun to be had nipping people between bits of the environment and the front of a car. There's also an art to it, you have to nudge the pedestrians just right to have them sliding on the bonnet of the car and then maneuver your vehicle into position without losing the beached git on the hood. This is best done accidentally, after having botched a stunt jump.

I could think of more but this blog post is already quite sizable.