You know 720P (along with 1080P) as "high definition" content. What 720P really means is that 720 lines of resolution are displayed on your television in "progressive" format—meaning all at once.

So if GTA IV is running at only 630P on the PS3, that does mean PS3 gamers are seeing 90 less lines of resolution—or quite a bit from a relative standpoint. And it's fast-approaching the Wii's standard def, 480p output.

The bottom line is that resolution does matter, but the more lines of resolution you add will depreciate in value. There's an interesting stat that always sticks in my head: From only about 10 feet away, most people cannot tell a 720p image from a 1080p image on a 42" television.

I'm not sure how well I could differentiate a 630P signal from a 720P signal from 10 feet away. But I'm sure that, given large enough televisions and sharp enough eyes, some of us could. Especially in a game context.

But what we'd be overlooking is that eyes-on reports show that Rockstar has taken the processing power formerly spent on resolution and added it to filters (and maybe even lighting). If GTA IV feels warmer or softer on PS3, that's probably why. And that's where taste triumphs numbers.

(If you're having a tough time wrapping your head around the filter concept, mess with the settings in Mass Effect.)

At the end of the day, both versions look good. But the PS3 used methods other than raw resolution to get there. Of course sharpness and detail is an important—that will be the biggest bonus of 720P. But in an era when we're past merely counting polygons on the screen to measure graphical quality, we shouldn't blow small numbers out of proportion. In short, it's not just the size of your P, but how you use it that matters.

And to see what we thought of the versions side-by-side, check out our impressions.

Neverending Upscaling/Resolutions/AA etc Thread #2 *Rules: post: #619 * [B3DForum via Eurogamer]

Our GTA IV review is going live tomorrow morning, 9 AM Pacific/12 PM Eastern in the easy-to-read Kotaku style. After that, expect a handy platform comparison, in which we talk about how GTA IV performs on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Yes, I've played both quite a bit, so I hope you'll find my nitpicking informative. See you tomorrow!

Our coverage is live:
Grand Theft Auto IV Review: Life, Liberty City And The Pursuit Of Happiness
Which Version Of GTA IV Should You Buy? We Compare The PS3 and 360 Versions
SIXAXIS Brings Nothing to GTA IV (But Frustration And Burning Helicopter Chassis)

GamesRadar has an amusing tribute to one of the most indispensable classes in the GTA franchise, the hooker. I'll have you know — this is written with as serious a face I can muster — I've never killed one. Ever. I consider it a point of pride that I never, even to see the outcome, lowered myself to the top-of-mind stereotype everyone has of a GTA gamer. Nor do I kill the cops. Unless I have 3 stars and have been separated from a burning vehicle. But I digress.

GamesRadar's beauty pageant covers the ladies of the previous three titles, complete with screengrabs and pulled quotes. Funny Bunny is tattooed on my mind from the hours spent combing VIce City for special packages. And for Contestant 10, I mean this in the nicest way, I dated a woman who had a similar hairstyle and I recall both fondly. And fondlingly.

So, here they are, Misses Liberty City, Vice City, Los Santos, Las Venturas, San Fierro, etc. ...

Grand Theft Radar: Hooker Beauty Contest

The embargo for our official review and other hands-ons, impressions, comparisons, stories and whatnots doesn't lift until Sunday (10 a.m. Crecentral), but the package of stories I wrote for the Rocky Mountain News ran this morning. The story for the paper is geared for a much more mainstream audience, so I'm not sure how much you all will get out of it, but here's how it wraps up.

In Grand Theft Auto IV the story isn't just an amalgam of cut scenes and cleverly written dialogue, it's the experiences I create, too. It's now, watching Niko stand, his shoulders slumped, that the depth of this game finally hits me.

Niko's journey, the one crafted by Rockstar, may have ended, but Niko's adventures in the story I am creating have just begun.

If you're looking for something to pass your time that is, I believe, free of any major story spoilers, than hit up the link.

I was happy to see that the story not only took over the entire front page of the feature's section, but even got a mention on the front page of the paper. Too bad they went with a headline that sorta highlights the violence of the game. I suppose they would have done the same thing for blow-out coverage of a movie like Once Upon a Time in America.

Grand Theft Auto: A Brutal New World and What the developer of Grand Theft Auto IV champions [Rocky Mountain News]

It's filled with fun, imaginative activities like word searches, coloring and a quick primer on gang signs. The Minus World, you had us at the Mouth sticker. Good times.

Grand Theft Auto IV Activity Book For Kids [The Minus World]

April 23rd 2008: Sony Computer Entertainment Australia (SCE Aust.) today confirmed the release of an official Grand Theft Auto IV bundle exclusively for PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™).The bundle, available on May 1, 2008, will consist of a PLAYSTATION®3 40GB model, a SIXAXIS™ wireless controller and a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest title in the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto franchise, all for just $749.95 (RRP).

"We are delighted to offer the millions of PS3 and GTA fans the ultimate gaming package," said David Reeves, President, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is the eleventh, upcoming installment of the best-selling Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.

We are delighted to offer the millions of PS3 and GTA fans the ultimate gaming package.

23/04/2008 10:08 Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) Confirms Official Grand Theft Auto® IV bundle Grand Theft Auto® IV to be bundled with 40GB PLAYSTATION®3

April 23rd 2008: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) today confirmed the release of an official Grand Theft Auto IV bundle exclusively for PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™).The bundle, available on April 29, 2008, will consist of a PLAYSTATION®3 40GB model, a SIXAXIS™ wireless controller and a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest title in the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto franchise, all for just €439 (RRP).

"We are delighted to offer the millions of PS3 and GTA fans the ultimate gaming package," said David Reeves, President, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is the eleventh, upcoming installment of the best-selling Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.

ENDS

If you are up for long reads check out all of our impressions of GTA IV so far:

Hands on With GTA Multiplayer: City of Chaos
GTA4 Hands-On: The World is Yours
Rockstar Experimenting with Episodic Content
GTA IV: Reinventing a World
Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV Multiplayer Fact Sheet

Supports up to 16 players in all adversarial modes except co-op, which is a maximum of 4

Players are ranked from 0-10, picking up money in multiplayer increases rank

Options in each mode are dictated by the host - among the options they can change are location of the matches (can be entire city, one borough at a time, or even small sections within the borough), types of weapons available, time of day, weather, use of auto-aim, police presence, NPC presence, and tons more.

GTA Race sees the host choosing the class of automobile, each player can choose a car within that class. Races can include helicopter and boat races as well.

Multiplayer Modes:
Team Deathmatch
Classic deathmatch done Grand Theft Auto style. Go anywhere, do anything: the whole city is yours. 16 players max, teams can be made in any configuration. Weapons on the ground can be configured by the host. Capitalism rules here: the team with the most money in the end is the winner.

GTA Race
Rockstar North's twist on the concept of a race. Host selects vehicle type (each racer selects his or her specific vehicle after that), race, number of laps, and time limit. Despite ordered checkpoints, players can go anywhere in the city at any time. Do you want a straightforward race from start to finish or do you want to create a roadblock and shoot rockets at your fellow racers? The choice is yours - each player does it slightly differently. 16 players max.

Cops N Crooks
2 teams, 2 vastly different goals. The cops can see the crooks on their radar but the the crooks can only see the escape point making this the ultimate cat and mouse situation. For the first time, players can get a chance to be on the other side of the law in a Grand Theft Auto with Cops n' Crooks. A team of "crooks" need to get their boss to safety, as the team of "cops" pulls out every trick in the book to try and stop this from happening. Again, 16 players max.

Hangman's NOOSE
Co-op in Grand theft Auto IV is a 4 person affair. Each mode is a short, story-based mission you must complete with your friends. In Hangman's NOOSE you must get crime boss to an extraction point alive. First, several of Liberty City's finest need to be dealt with and then transport must be secured. Will you take Kenny to safety in an armored car? How about a motorcycle or attack chopper? The choice is all yours.

Would this be the last GTA, I wondered. The insider was quick to say no, even after I pointed out that I had watched a chunk of the single-player campaign, which impressed me, but didn't seem to include any giant leaps forward for the franchise.

"Did you see multiplayer?"

"No."

"Just wait."

After spending a morning at Rockstar late last month, playing around with Grand Theft Auto IV's single player campaign, the guys walked me to the room next door to check out Grand Theft Auto's first real take on multiplayer.

Over the course of several hours I had a chance to check out five multiplayer modes, including a short co-op campaign, out of what is rumored to be the game's more than dozen multiplayer modes.

I was happy to find that Grand Theft Auto has most definitely not jumped the shark.

I was initially disappointed when I discovered that my expectations, no matter how unreasonable, that GTA IV would let you play through the entire campaign with a friend weren't to be met. But that was short lived.

The sheer level of customization in the game, the wild variety of play, and the unsurpassed size of the maps made the lack of a full co-op campaign seem like an afterthought.

To start playing a multiplayer game you bring up Niko's cell phone in the single player campaign and, using the in-phone menu, select multiplayer. So you can drop into one of these sessions whenever you want.

While you can't play as Nikko, the campaign's main character, you can customize your own character, creating someone by choosing male or female and then selecting among four different heads, four torsos, four legs and several types of glasses and hats.

All but one of the multiplayer modes supports up to 16 players. (The co-op missions only support up to four.) The host has an amazing array of options that they can control. While setting up a game, the host can choose to modify the routine, like re-spawn times, weapon selections and friendly fire, or the unusual, like the time of day, the weather, how heavy the traffic is or how many people are on the street. You can even control police presence in your matches.

While the game allows you to select parts of the map to play in, choosing specific boroughs, smaller neighborhoods, or areas like the airport, it doesn't prevent players from roaming the entire city during any given match. Instead the respawns and weapon drops only occur in those areas.

While the high level of customization adds a lot to the experience, I was just as wowed by some of the little things built into multiplayer, like the ability for players waiting in a lobby to turn on their radio and listen to GTA's soundtrack.

Deathmatch
My first experience with GTA 4 multiplayer was deathmatch and team deathmatch.

Instead of winning with kill counts, both of these modes look at your cash total to see who won the match. Cash is earned by killing members of the other team and you can get extra cash by darting out to collect the money they drop when they die.

The controls were solid, as I've mentioned before, but what made this deathmatch feel so different was that it felt like it was taking place in a living, breathing world. People were walking around, there were cars to be stolen. You can actually load up a car with your entire team and try to drive-by the other team mates. You could even, if you felt like it, take off to parts unknown, areas on the map nowhere near where the action was taking place.

Deathmatch was fun, and the added twist of an open world and a huge map, definitely upped the value, but it was still deathmatch.

Cops N Crooks
The next mode we played was Cops N Crooks, a variation on your typical deathmatch mode where you have to find and take out the bad guys.

The team playing as cops can see the crooks on their radar, but the the crooks can only see the escape point on the map and don't know where the cops are until it's almost too late. The mode has two derivations: In All for One you need to kill the boss, played by one of the crooks. In One for All everyone has just one life and once the crooks are dead the cops win.

There were some really nice touches to the game that made this stand out from some of the other modes I've played in shooters. For instance as the bad guys, you can give each other waypoints on the live map, allowing one player to drive and another to navigate.

We also played matches were the bad guys split up into two groups, doubling the chance for the boss to get away because we weren't sure which group he was with.

Lots of fun, plenty of potential, especially when you factor in that this all still takes place in GTA's open world.

GTA Race
This was the mode I least wanted to play, but came in as one of my favorites to mess around with. Imagine Mario Kart in a real world, with real cars. Now add machine guns, pistols, rocket launchers, Molotov cocktails, in fact every weapons in GTA. Now, let people get out of their cars and do whatever they want to win, or prevent other people from winning. Wow, just wow.

This mode lets the host choose vehicle types before a race, the race course, time limit and number of laps. Sure the game has checkpoints, and you need to hit them, or most of them, to complete a lap, but being the fastest doesn't get close to guaranteeing a win.

In our introduction to the mode, myself and Newsweek's N'gai Croal were burning around the course, which I believe took place near GTA's Central Park, when we came to a stone archway we absolutely had to go through to complete the lap. Problem was, there were cars, lots of cars blocking our way. By the time I had assessed the situation, one of the other players ran up to me and killed me at the wheel.

The race quickly devolved into a deathmatch until we realized that Croal had nosed his car through the wreckage and was burning through the laps. In another race, this one taking place at an airport complete with moving planes, I didn't bother trying to speed through the course and instead clamored on top of an airport gangway with a rocket launcher and just waited. When people came by I blew up their cars. Meanwhile Rockstar's Jeronimo Barrera was taking great pleasure trying to mow down Croal in what looked like a golf cart.

From what I played of it, GTA Race could easily be a standalone game, something that would occupy a gamer's attention for months.

Hangman's NOOSE

The final mode we played was probably the most impressive. Hangman's NOOSE is Rockstar's answer to a story-driven campaign mode. Instead of allowing players to complete chunks of the single player campaign with a friend, the developers decided to create side missions, featuring ancillary characters, that can be played as a group with a total of four people.

Rockstar declined to say how many of these co-op missions the game will ship with, but I'd think it would come with more than the one and I'd bet that the 360 DLC will be all about this mode.

The mission we played was Hangman's NOOSE. In it you're asked to rescue a crime boss from an army of police who are picking him up on the runway of the airport. The missions started out on the runway and as we shot it out with cops, two more armored SWAT trucks drove up, unloading more and more cops.

The first play through was pretty succinct, we grabbed the armored truck, got the boss in it and tore across the city to our extraction point while the city's entire police force mobilized to stop us.

The second play through didn't go nearly as well.

A Rockstar developer took the wheel of the armored car again, and another rode shotgun. Croal hopped into the back to shoot at pursuing cops. I opted to swipe a helicopter that was on the runway and followed the wagon as it entered the interstate, trying to gun down the stream of cop cars in pursuit.

Then it happened: Croal was shot. The hit didn't kill him, but it did knock him from the truck which continued to speed toward the drop off point. Soon Croal was surrounded by cops on the middle of an interstate. I turned my chopper around and told Croal I was coming for him. Landing the copter in a nearby clearing, I got out to try and find Croal, but he had snatched a car and was already out of the police infested area.

I ran back to my copter only to find its rotors had been snapped off during my crap landing next to a copse of trees. The whole thing ended with me being gunned down by a phalanx of cops as I ran down the interstate toward the distant extraction point, and the whole team losing.

The missions was actually very straight forward, lacking almost completely in narrative and pretty short, but that works in GTA IV. It works because the game, especially in the multiplayer modes, seems to be providing you a way to create your own experiences.

I could replay Hangman's NOOSE a dozen times and not get tired of it, mostly because each time through created a different experience. It's so open ended that they story you play, as with single player, often seems like your own.

I've certainly not played enough of Grand Theft Auto IV to being able to say whether the game will live up to mounting expectations, but I can certainly say that Rockstar hasn't been caught resting. This game, and it's unusual and varied take on multiplayer gaming isn't packed with obvious innovations, but it still manages to innovate where it counts most: In storytelling.

Playstation 3 Basenhet - Black 40GB - Grand Theft Auto IV (4) Bundle [Webhallen] Thanks Alex!

Tidbits after the jump:

• He completed the game in 25 hours of playing time. It doesn't sound like he 100 percented it, so this is probably a mission-only completion.

• Rob anticipates that, playing at a normal pace, you'll get 40 hours of gaming out of the missions, plus another 25 for the side missions. Others have speculated at close to 100 hours total. Whatever, it's going to be a lot.

• He did it over the span of three days (!!!) beginning March 26, going from 9 am to 10 pm. (I usually feel ... nasty after gaming that long. You?)

• The missions get rather difficult at the end. "The final couple of missions are a rock," he says. (Not sure if anyone feels the same way, but I thought the closing missions of San Andreas were almost too easy — and I wasn't using a walkthrough. Vice City however was insanely difficult at the end. Wonder if this will be a blend.)

In all, he confirms it's going to be a powerhouse game, and will thoroughly take over your schedule after April 29. Hopefully I'm moved into a new apartment by then. And have my 360 back.

He's Finished Grand Theft Auto IV! [GamesRadar]

Hopefully, our brothers and sisters south of the equator will be able to import from regions far and wide to enjoy all of the original naughtiness. For a quick history lesson on the content edited history of Grand Theft Auto in Australia, hit up the source.

GTA IV edited for Australia [Sydney Morning Herald's Screen Play - thanks, Matt!]

"Yeah, just stay there, because you're not going anywhere and now I'm not fucking going anywhere. Park right there."

He lays on the horn.

A map pops up on the video screen showing our exact location, easy to pinpoint because now we're not moving at all.

Outside the passenger window people walk by, each, seemingly, in their own world. The level of detail is amazing, the buildings, piled almost on top of one another, are all alive with activity. Wind whips down the street tossing scraps of paper in the air, it almost looks like the real thing, like Grand Theft Auto IV.

But it's just Manhattan on a crisp weekday morning, me trapped in a cab, staring at the taxi's video screen built into the seat in front of me, headed to see and play around with Rockstar's latest.

Later, inside Rockstar's nondescript offices, located next to a Best Buy in Greenwich Village, I experience Manhattan again, though now it's called Algonquin.

There's no confusing the two, reality and game. Reality is boring and drab, Algonquin is shot from spectacular cinematic angles. I suspect there's a filter involved, something that gives the world a touch of artistry.

Later, over beers at a nearby pub, Rockstar's Jeronimo Barrera tells me that Rockstar loves its filters. It helps, he says, fool the eye, masks some of the imperfections that games, no matter how next-gen, will always have.

I ask about the game's camera angles, which fascinate me. The game makes extensive use of them—and not just during cut-scenes. They seem to pop up at times during play, making you feel like you're part of a cut-scene of your own creation.

Barrerra says one of their team members has a lot of film experience and brought that to the new game.

It works. Not because it makes the game feel like you're watching a movie, but because it makes the player feel like they're making one. There are times when playing Grand Theft Auto IV that it felt less like a video game and more like an engine for experiences. Like the game was, at times, transcending what I had always thought was important about video games, having fun, and opening my eye to a new way to enjoy gaming, by creating.

It helps that the controls have been, or at least feel like they've been, totally revamped for this latest GTA. To any adept of the franchise the controls will still feel very familiar, but gone is that mushy feeling that made me struggle with previous versions of the game.

Movement is tight, backed up by Rockstar's use of the Euphoria, a game animation engine that anatomically animates character movement by simulating not just the body, but the muscles, bones and, it is said, the central nervous system. The result, the thing that matters to gamers, is a layer of movement minutia that help brings the world to life with moments like accidentally tripping a side kick, or watching someone flail as they plummet from a high rise.

What's important though is that these things don't happen as much by accident or because of bad control mechanics. GTA IV's controls do what the best control designs are meant to do, not get in the way of the experience.

Driving, too, is much improved. The times you are behind the wheel feel almost like you are playing a racer, with tight turns and the ability to really maneuver in a city that's all about making split-second decisions. Designers even added a slow-mo mode which allows you to slow time down as the camera drifts up and away to top down perspective, making it much easier to cut between cars, slip past barricades and perform bootlegger 180s.

I found myself wasting inordinate amounts of time playing keep away from the cops, just because I enjoyed the driving so much.

The biggest change in the game's controls, though, come with shooting. I'm a huge first-person shooter fan and I absolutely hated the shooting controls for previous GTAs. The problem was I always wanted to play what was essentially an action game like a shooter.

The new system allows you to do just that. Aiming has been tightened up and now includes a reticule that shows your targets current health. There's also a two stage lock-on system, allowing you to lock-on to a target, but still aim at particular body parts to perform things like headshots. Instant kill headshots. A cover system lets you pop up and fire or fire blindly at targets.

I played through a few missions during my hands-on, but it was "Harboring A Grudge" that felt most like a classic shooter. In the mission, you make your way to a warehouse rooftop near the dock of Algonquin. Down below is a sea of bad guys talking over the finer points of a prescription drug deal.

I start by sniping a guy, marveling at how much it feels like sniping in some of my favorite shooters. I toss down a few Molotov cocktails, mostly missing because, as with grenades in just about every shooter I play, I throw like a grade schooler.

Deciding to take advantage of my ridiculously robust arsenal, I switch to a rocket launcher and send a couple of rockets toward the bad guys. The first glances off the sheet metal roof in front of me, sending the rocket spiraling out of control. The second skips off a container. Finally I manage to plant one in the cement next to a cluster of bad guys. I'm rewarded with a glorious explosion and a few less enemies.

Moving down the roof, not so gracefully, I scramble to some cover and switch over to an assault rifle. The game plays fast, letting you pop off shots quickly and precisely. I take out a couple of people with the simple lock-on. Emptying bullets into the bad guys until they drop, and then I slow down and take my time with the loose lock-on, shifting my aim to focus on headshots.

Taking out the last few guys, I realize that I've just played through an entire mission of Grand Theft Auto IV as if I was in Call of Duty and it felt nice.

And the game has a lot of nice touches an awful lot of nice touches that really have nothing to do with game play. When you snag a car, sometimes the door is left unlocked and you can just hop in. Other times you have to smash in the window with an elbow.

To shoot while driving you have to smash out your window. Once, while driving around a guy who was smoking pot, I smashed out the window and within seconds billowing clouds of smoke were pouring through the busted glass.

There's almost no HUD—instead your entire communication with the game and its many options is through your cell phone. You use it to get missions, find people, even do things like play (and buy) music or take pictures in game.

One of the more memorable moments for me was almost an accidental aside. Standing near the docks one in-game evening, I noticed little white lights lifting and drifting down. Nice touch, I thought, they've included distant airplanes. As we moved toward the lights, talking about some mission or maybe the mechanics of play, I looked up and saw that those lights were now fully formed airplanes. I could actually make them out in detail.

"Oh wow, those are actually airplanes?" I said, a little surprised.

My demo team seemed just as surprised.

There is an entire airport of them, they tell me, taxiing, landing, taking off. And it's all part of the game.

It's no wonder then that when a team of game guide writers descended on Rockstar to work through Grand Theft Auto IV and write their books, they were surprised at the level of depth they found both in game and story, likening it to a Final Fantasy.

GTA IV, I'm told, is a game measured not in hours of play, but weeks. But its greatest potential, I suspect, won't be found in the traditional measures of game—graphics, sound design, mechanic—but in how these things manage to stay transparent and elusive, allowing the gamer to be the center of an experience they create.

One might also suspect that, when the game is finally release, opportunistic, fear mongering elected officials, clueless mainstream media and glory seeking attorneys may find extra content not listed, including Virtual Rape, Cop Killing, Overt Racism, Gerbil Abuse, Being On Someone's Lawn and Buggery. We're looking forward to a fun ride.

This evening's Take-Two Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2007 Results Conference Call wasn't exactly a Queens of the Stone Age concert, I know shocking right? There were some marginally interesting tidbits that floated out of the stream of fiscal data.

Here's a break-down of highlights and fun quotes, including one confirming the non-existence of Grand Theft Auto IV for the Wii:
*BioShock has shipped more than 2 million copies
*Carnival Games shipped more than 500,000 units since its debut in late August. 2K Play plans to bring the game to the DS in fiscal 08 and other platforms down the line.
*Take-Two doesn't expect missing the October release date for GTA4 will hurt sales, just spread them out more.
*GTA 4 has been rated in Australia, after the company sent the board there a reel showing off a "substantial part of the game."
*GTA 4 is still not coming to the Wii: "Right now I think, no disrespect meant for the platform, but there are other titles better suited for the Wii."

That's kinda weird, if you ask me. They didn't have any problem bringing Manhunt to the Wii, so why not Grand Theft Auto. I know Manhunt was a PS2 game, but I can't imagine that they can't rework GTA4 for the Wii somehow. I suspect they didn't expect the platform to be as popular as it has been. Come on Rockstar, I want to use my Remote to beat hookers.

Grand Theft Auto IV [microsoft]

I had heard rumors months ago about Rockstar getting into episodic content, but thought at the time it was for the Playstation Portable. It never dawned on me it might be for the Xbox 360.

According to the X06 announcement today, the content will become available "months" after the launch of the full game. Each will include "hours of entirely new gameplay" and both will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live.

The full game hits North American on Oct. 16 and Europe on Oct. 19. No release date or price has been announced yet for the episodes. Brian Crecente

How does Rockstar Games go about promoting the upcoming release (October 12) of their table tennis game in Japan? By organizing private play party tournaments throughout the month in a swank penthouse apartment in Tokyo's Ebisu district, that's how. Following the craziness that was TGS, it was off to that event on Monday night, bringing along a few friends, including my brothers in hair, your very own Mike McWhertor and Scott "I played every PS3 game at show" Spatola.

The 2-storey pad, plus rooftop deck, was decked out with more HDTV sets than should probably be legally allowed, including 2 gigantic sets on which the tournament took place, plus a DLP projector. Loads of free booze, snacks, and pizza, turned yours truly into a monster table tennis machine (or so I was told), and unfortunately the schooling I dished out before the start of the tournament couldn't propel me to the final — and we learned to fear the cute Japanese girls who cleverly hid their ping-pong prowess (yeah, we got hustled). No worries though, as we did all get consolation prizes, including some primo Table Tennis swag.

And the game? I'll be picking it up on release (and for all you expat gamers, take note that the Japanese edition is multi-lingual). Oh, and as I chatted up with one of the Rockstar representatives — for those who attended TGS, he was on hand showing people how to play Tennis Table at the 360 booth — he casually mentioned that GTA4 would own us. Jean Snow

Yeah, it's a fake. But Kotakuite Harjit M. went beyond the call of duty proving exactly why it's a fake. Why it's a fake just beyond Rockstar saying it is, we mean. Here you go, guys! A three-step process in creating your very own Grand Theft Auto 4 fake! Florian Eckhardt