This was a tricky week, as two of our finest, McWhertor and Fahey, were off to Comic-Con and working odd hours because of it. So I wrote more posts and therefore did a little less reporting and left less on the cutting room floor. But still, here are some scraps...

A Rare Studio Visit: You might think that an experienced video game reporter like myself would have visited a lot of game development studios. Unfortunately, I haven't. Blame my being based in the studio-light New York or not barging into enough development company offices or whatever. When I stepped into the Gameloft studio in New York on Tuesday, where I witnessed games actually being developed, well, that was unusual. (I was there to play Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, a GTA-like iPhone game.) I've covered games full-time for a little over four years and my visit to an active game development part of Gameloft adds to a short list that includes a visit at Retro in Austin, Midway's recently-shuttered Austin studio, the recently-shuttered Gamelab in New York, Yukes in Yokohama, EA in Redwood Shores and Double Fine in San Francisco. That's it, though I think having Kenta Cho show me stuff on his laptop counts too. I've been in meeting-room areas at Rockstar (NYC), Nintendo of America (Redwood Shores), Tecmo (Tokyo), Sony (Tokyo), Sega (San Francisco), Konami (San Francisco), EA (Los Angeles) and probably a few others. But if we're talking strictly visits to places where people are at computers developing stuff, it's just that short list.

MotionPlus Calibration Needs Still A Question: Chatting with Nintendo reps in Times Square on Thursday did not help answer one lingering question from my fun time playing Wii Sports Resort on Saturday: Why does the game ask for the controller to be re-calibrated - sometimes by having it placed upside down on a table — before any new mini-game is played? (EDIT: As readers noted below, what I wrote was a little bit of overstatement. Based on my experience and others' the re-calibration is needed several times an hour, of you're playing lots of different sports in the game — but it doesn't need to be re-set for each and very switch. Apologies for not being more clear about that. I phrased the question properly to the Nintendo folks but over-simplified it in this article.) Nintendo's corporate affairs v.p Denise Kaigler referred me to the company's product expert Bill Trinen. He said that he believed the designers required that in order to ensure that each of the diverse sports in Wii Sports Resort can be controlled with fine and accurate motions. But I wondered if this signaled a limitation for the MotionPlus. Could it be used without any interruption for re-calibration, in longer, continuous games that might mix up motion styles? It's a hypothetical question and one Trinen couldn't address at the moment. He sounded confident in the technology, but, as I suggested to him, it's something I guess we'll have to wait and see about, when games that try to do what I'm talking about, come along. Maybe Red Steel 2 will be a test case.

Nutcracker Notes: Finally, I guess it pays to mention in Twitter the games you are playing for review. While I know some reviewers don't like to read other reviews for fear of being prematurely influenced, I appreciated the e-mail from a reader this week who saw that I was playing Little King's Story and sent me some information about it. His note expanded my understanding of how the game's developers were influenced by things like the Nutcracker Suite. I can't say I caught all that on my own, and I'm a fan of learning this extra stuff to make what I do more informed. That added info may not make it into a post or even my review, but it's good stuff to know. Makes me feel smarter. That review was supposed to run today, but I haven't finished the game yet, so it bounces to next week.

That's all for today. Comic-Con madness subsides next week, I book some trips, some more embargoes lift and I get to check out the full holiday line-ups from Ubisoft and Sony, with some Majesco mixed in. Should be fun. Happy weekend, everyone.

The 42.0 station, the frequency itself a reference to marijuana, is called "Legalize It. "It's one of four radio stations of original music in the game, which models its story of Latino L.A. street crime off of the storytelling and gameplay style of the GTA games. (Here is Kotaku's preview of Gangstar: West Coast Hustle.)

A quick pot reference — not even, as far as I could see, any hint of pot use— might go unremarked in other forms of entertainment. Plenty of Hollywood actors, athletes rock stars and musicians have discussed their pot use and their desire for the drug to be legalized in the United States. It's not rare to see a character in a film casually discuss smoking pot or advocate for its use.

Drug use is less common in games, and any expression supporting drug use is virtually absent. Take gaming's most notorious series, Grand Theft Auto. In GTA: San Andreas, the pot-farmer voiced by Peter Fonda, a guy who goes by the name of The Truth, offers the game's protagonist, C.J., some pot. C.J., who, with the aid of the player has shown little hesitation to kill cops and even, late in the game, try to blow up the equivalent of Hoover Dam, turns him down. It's a line the game won't cross. In the most recent GTA, Chinatown Wars, the player can deal pot and other drugs referred to by their real name, but, as with the rest, marijuana is treated as nothing other than a money-making commodity used by characters not worthy of starring in a game.

As is the case for all the games on Apple's iPhone and iPod touch platforms, Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, won't be rated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. According to a publicist at its publisher/development studio Gameloft, it will be rated for 16 and up. The game is slated for an August release.

Word first leaked about Gangstar: West Coast Hustle earlier this month. It's another GTA-like game coming to a platform that Rockstar Games hasn't yet graced its presence with.

I played Gangstar yesterday at the New York offices of the game's publisher and developer, Gameloft. And I even found a few ways it's different than GTA.

What Is It?
Gangstar is an approximation of Grand Theft Auto game design that puts the player in the shoes of Pedro, a man recently returned from Mexico and caught up in the violence of the game's primary locale, Los Angeles. The core car-jacking and and cop-shooting elements from the 3D GTAs are in the game; sleeping with prostitutes, I was told, is not.

What We Saw
I played the game's intro missions and tried a flashback set in a prison yard. In my first mission in L.A. I had to find a pay phone, where I needed to beat up a gang member who said that my guy wasn't wearing the right colors to use a phone marked in blue. Then I jacked a couple of cars, learned to shoot at people, bought some armor at a shop called Bullet Time and ran afoul of the law. Later, I drove a limousine while a couple made love in the back (The game will be rated 16 and up, but it's violent, not risque).

How Far Along Is It?
Gangstar is set for August release, but given that it is a downloadable iPhone/iPod Touch game, that should leave plenty of time for tweaks.

What Needs Improvement?
How It's Cruder Than GTA: Sure, the game looks like GTA, but possibly due to the horsepower of Gangstar's platform, some things aren't quite as you'd expect. For example, I could drive through trees as if they weren't there. I saw a pedestrian who should have been dashing down the street. Instead, she was snagged on a park bench, running in place as if she was at a nightclub in the 90s. Any bit of polish on this kind of stuff would be great.

The Police System: Do bad things and the cops will come after you, as represented by an increasing number of badges displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. These badges would go away if I hid or if I ran/drove through the game world, picking up badges strewn across the landscape. Not bad, in theory, but in my effort to evade the cops and drive to a badge marked on my mini-map, I invariably got spotted by the cops again. I couldn't shake these guys.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Controls: This game was comfortable and easy to control. It is played with the iPhone (or iPod Touch) held horizontally. The player's left thumb controls a virtual analog stick. The right thumb can tap an action icon which will make Pedro punch, kick, shoot or whatever else suits what he's armed with. Tapping the weapons icon changes weapons. Tapping the game's mini-map enlarges it. Tapping on an enemy will lock on to them so you can attack. Driving options are varied, allowing for a virtual steering wheel under your left thumb, pedals under your right — or accelerometer-based driving if you want to tilt your phone. For the most part, these controls worked very well. I was stymied only by a third steering option involving a control stick.

How It's Different From GTA: The game's got a few things that GTA doesn't have, and more of that is to be encouraged. What gamer just wants to play a clone? As mentioned above, there is a playable flashback set in a prison, so we're experiencing a narrative told out of standard chronological order. Possibly more troubling for some people is the game's non-GTA-like rewarding of cash to players for every kill they make. It's not just that some downed enemies drop money, as in Rockstar's series. Nope. In this game, killing a cop or running over a civilian makes the player money.

How It's Similar To GTA: The fact that a game made in the style of a 3D Grand Theft Auto can run on an iPhone or iPod touch is impressive. It shows just how capable Apple's hardware is. As a test case or proof of processing prowess, it's a positive development. Musically, the game also draws inspiration from GTA, offering four in-game radio stations or — for those with 3.0 firmware — integrating music on your phone/iPod into the game.

Final Thoughts
I'm always a bit uncomfortable playing a game that so slavishly imitates another, but without having played all of Gangstar, I can't say that that is all this game is. And, if that is all it is, it's still an achievement that will probably please many who own Apple's handheld.

Is this really what Rockstar would do on an iPhone? It's hard to imagine that. But it certainly has been made to play a lot like what Rockstar has done elsewhere. A GTA wannabe on an Apple handheld. Interested?

Gangstar has players taking on the role of a gangster in a 3D recreation of what sounds to be a reconstruction of a fictional L.A. As with GTA, and iPhone's Payback, players can choose what missions to take on and when they want to just roam around.

The game will let you steal vehicles, get into gunfights, and avoid police. It also features multiple radio stations and the ability to listen to your own music in game.

Not much more is known about the game yet, but it certainly looks interesting.