EA was looking to integrate many Take-Two brands into its slate for the holiday season. EA is notorious for its quick releases, and yearly retreads (read: any of the companies sports releases, Madden, NBA etc) with little or no innovation.

EA was looking to buy at $25.74 per share. Take-Two believes EA grossly undervalued the company, and his unfortunately still open for negotiations.

Buying Take-Two would also eliminate EA Sports’ biggest competitor, the oldest trick in the book, if you can’t keep up, just buy the competition.

There were speculations that the release of the game would see an increase in consoles flying of shelves, however both saw a decrease of 28/27% in console sales from March to April.

Despite all this, GTA IV is still the fastest selling entertainment media in history. It made more money in one day then the biggest film, book, or CD release.

The previos record holder, Halo 3 brought in $300 million, but was only for Xbox 360, while GTA IV is crossplatform. Take-Two had been expecting $400 million. The previous major console effort, GTA: San Andreas, sold 21.5 million copies in its time, so GTA IV aims to beat that. According to Strauss Zelnick, executive chairman of Take-Two, this is the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and the “retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date.”

Seriously, if you haven’t picked this up. Do. Now.

Grand Theft Auto (1 & 2)

The idea of a sandbox world where a player could roam freely wasn’t something that was prevalent in video games when the first Grand Theft Auto was released in 1997. Coming from DMA Design (Now Rockstar North), Grand Theft Auto brought the player into a world of crime. Participating in deliveries, car bombings, bank roberries, assassinations, etc. The first release featured three cities, Liberty City (New York City), San Andreas (Los Angels), and Vice City (Miami). The game was popular, but slightly under the radar.

The second game was set in the future, and featured the same top down perspective, with slight improvements in game play and graphics.

Grand Theft Auto III

This was where the franchise took a big leap forward. Leaving behind the top down view, developers decided to use a 3D engine, the game was not level based like most games at the time, but mission based. The player would run around, stealing cars, and performing various tasks for different characters within Liberty City (whose look was based on New York).

For the first time, copies of GTA were flying off the shelves, and the success of the game brought on the release of GTA Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

GTA Vice City set the story in 1986, taking on the role of Tommy Vercetti, a hitman who was released from a Liberty City prison. The storyline was inspired by films like Scarface, and TV shows like Miami Vice, parodying the culture of 1980s. The gameplay and design stayed close to GTA III, adding the ability to fly vehicles, as well as buy property.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

GTA: San Andreas which was released in October of 2004 took the improvements from GTA Vice City to the next level. The story here takes place in 1992, with the games main protagonist, CJ Johnson returning to his home in Los Santos for his mother’s funeral. His family and gang in need of help, CJ steps in to bring the power of the Grove Street families back to Los Santos. Unlike the previous releases, there were no load times while in transit, and the only loading was seen when entering buildings, and for cut-scenes.

GTA: San Andreas also added many RPG features. Clothing and accessories, haircuts, tattoos, as well as the need for the character to eat healthy and workout (the effect of not doing would turn your character into an obese gangster). Also for the first time, characters could climb walls, and swim. Also a fun gameplay addition was gang wars. When rival gangs were attacked, a territory war would begin.

Though the game had been controversial since the beginning, GTA: San Andreas and Rockstar suffered a lot of bad publicity when a mod was released that allowed players to unlock an unfinished mini-game which involved CJ the main character having sexual intercourse with his girlfriend. Though this was only accessible by changing the code in the game, Take-Two was served a class action lawsuit.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Despite the advances in the games following the first 3D Grand Theft Auto, GTA IV is titled as such because it represents another leap forward in technology much like the first. Using RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine), and engine first seen in Rockstar’s ‘Table Tennis,’ GTA IV is a game unlike any other. With detail beyond belief, the game features a realistically rendered city based on the boroughs of New York City.

You now play as Niko Bellic, a Serbian immigrant who comes to Liberty City to pursue American dream. He meets his cousin Roman Bellic, an owner of a taxi company. Niko arrives to a violent city set in a modern time period.

Introducing a cover system, and new gameplay features like a fully working cell phone, Rockstar proves once again its ability to innovate a genre that has seen so many cheap imitations.

The Grand Theft Auto series built an entire genre, changing the face of gaming, so much that traditional games have taken its model and brought it into their own style of gameplay (Mario Galaxies anyone?). I could probably talk about the game for days, but unfortunately, I’m only 20% into GTA IV, so, duty calls.

The lockup has been occurring more often on the 60GB Playstation 3 then the Xbox 360, but both systems have been seeing these issues.

Should be interesting how this plays out, but, thus far, no problems in my camp, I haven’t had a life since I turned it on yesterday.

The ads were inoffensive, featuring characters from the upcoming video game in a line up similar to the film “The Usual Suspects.”

A call shame on the whole Chicago Transit Authority. There is nothing wrong with these advertisements, they paid for them, just as any Rated-R film would have. The amount of misconception about video games seriously makes me sick to my stomach on this Tuesday morning. Well city of Chicago, I’ll be sure never to support your public transportation system until you open up your viewpoints.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, GTA: Vice City Stories ads were pulled back in 2004. Also in 2003, a group called “Change the Climate,” sued the CTA for viewpoint discrimination, they won.

The difference between the Halo release is that GTA is cross-platform, appearing on both PS3, and Xbox
360. Naysayers are crazy, there is no way this game is going to flop, its downloadable content is essentially selling Xbox 360′s.

Take-Two needs a release like this to bring its stock prices back up after turning down an offer by EA to acquire them.

Their last major console release, GTA: San Andreas, is still one of the most successful video games of all time.

So what do you really need to about this game? It’s Grand Theft Auto, you’re gonna get it no matter what I say.

The makers of the game have compared the jump from the top scrolling old school GTA to GTA III to the progress made here. There is a huge difference in the world of GTA III (this includes the chapters Vice City, and San Andreas) and GTA IV. Things are more organic, the city is breathing, you can knock belongings from the hands of a pedestrian. Rather then just stepping into a car, the player must hot wire them. Also, you won’t be the only one committing crimes in the virtual world of Liberty City.

The environment in GTA IV is said to be the best from the company, the largest step forward. Clearly modeled after New York, the lighting, filter, and texture design is dynamic, fluid, and picturesque. It’s this attention to environment that set the GTA games from their clones. Rockstar and the makers of GTA set the standards for the industry.

1up.com called the main character in GTA IV the most complex lead character in the series (we’ve come a long way from the unnamed protagonist in the GTA III, and even more fleshed out then CJ from GTA San Andreas). In GTA IV you are Niko Bellic, an immigrant from Eastern Europe who has arrived to Liberty City for new opportunities. You work with your cousin Roman, running missions across the city, and rising in the ranks of the underworld.

Multiplayer? We reported the different gametypes a few weeks back. The simple fact that there wil be a fully featured multiplayer portion of the game for Xbox Live and Playstation network makes it leaps and bounds over the original. With a huge amount of gametypes, this could be the one feature I’m most looking forward to.

With improvements in story, gameplay/controls, and environment, this would definitely be my hype of the month. I’ll see you April 29th!

Rockstar announced a new feature coming with the release of GTA IV. Much like Halo, Rockstar will be hosting a GTA Social Club which is essentially an online stat tracker. Users will register their Xbox Live or Playstation Network IDs, and be able to follow things like:

-Criminal Activity via a Police Blotter
-The Story Gang, Story Leaderboard ranking tracking how far you get in the game
-The 100% Club, for those individuals who reach 100% completion (I won’t be one of those).
-The Hall of Fame: this will recognize the folks who reach the top of the various leaderboads.
-Liberty City Marathon: When reaching physical milestones, like number of miles walked, driven, swam etc. will be listed here.

It’s a neat feature, but mostly all of these, like gamer score are for bragging rights. I forsee a widget on a facebook page that will show the size of your e-weenie once more.

I can’t wait. Check out the trailer below.