Nate Lanxon
Nate Lanxon is CNET UK's Senior Editor of News and Features, and covers every aspect of technology for Crave. He also enjoys popular-science books, obscure Japanese animation and plays 'technical metal' on the drums, whatever that is.
Tuesday 6 May 2008, 12:10pm
Grand Theft Auto IV? No thanks
As Earth's videogaming minions pushed Grand Theft Auto IV into their Xbox 360s and PSTriples, I set Nirvana's harmonically indeterminate milestone album Nevermind playing, and loaded up Team Fortress 2.
Now, it's not that I don't enjoy running over prostitutes with stolen vehicles -- it was a popular pastime back when I lived near Manchester -- but I'd much rather strategically place a dozen highly explosive payloads across a bridge and watch the overweight man with a minigun splatter into 10 pieces of lummox meat.
I relate to the excitement millions felt over the release of GTA IV, because I felt it when Half Life 2, Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy VIII hit Britain's shelves. But, and call me the anti-gamer if you want, I just can't get excited over Rockstar's landmark 2008 release. I appreciate the game completely and firmly believe it sets new benchmarks for gaming. Yet I'm just not bothered about playing it, and I don't think I'm alone.
I remember when I told my girlfriend that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was to be switched on this year, and how particle physicists around the world would be eagerly anticipating the first glimpse of the Higgs boson. Her response was something along the lines of, "That's nice. Tea?" It's not that she didn't appreciate the enormity of the pending discovery after I explained its importance; she simply didn't care.
That's basically how I feel about GTA IV. It's ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting, Daily Mail reader-aggravating. But I'll be on Xbox Live, setting fire to spies, and repeatedly suppressing the urge to go out and buy the sodding thing to shut everyone up.
Articles by Nate Lanxon
HTC Smart: A smart phone that's cheap as chips -- Qualcomm chips, that is
Crave HTC has unveiled what it is claiming is a new type of smart phone, focusing on ease of use rather than advanced features, running on a platform built by chip-maker Qualcomm
Touché: UK Apple Stores to use iPod touches as credit-card readers
Crave Apple is preparing to phase out its portable credit card machines in UK Apple Stores, in favour of using iPod touches loaded with a special application and hardware adaptor
Toshiba NB300, NB305 netbooks: Snow White's a dwarf
Crave Toshiba has announced a pair of almost identical netbooks. Most such machines bore the pants off us, but these 10.1-inch models have a few interesting features
HP Slate gets face time in Microsoft keynote
Crave At Microsoft's CES keynote last night, CEO Steve Ballmer showed off HP's forthcoming tablet PC and, frankly, all we could think was, "Wow, that's a thick son of a gun"
Sennheiser RS 180: 'Lossless' wireless headphones
Crave Sennheiser's new £220 RS 180s are open-backed hi-fi cans but, unlike most, use a lossless wireless transmission system. This means CD quality audio gets to you without data being lost
Kindle DX now available in UK: It's not fat, it's big boned
Crave Amazon.com has announced it'll now ship an international version of its massive, designed-for-newspapers-and-textbooks Kindle to the UK -- but it'll cost you a fortune
Tablet PCs: Can we please calm the hype?
Crave Consumer demand is what you'd see if Ford said it was working on building a car powered by sneezes. It's not what we're seeing for tablet computers, so let's all calm down shall we?
Sony Alpha DSLR-A450: Low-end high-end
Crave Sony's dropped another almost affordable dSLR into the UK camera market -- the 14.2-megapixel A450 -- aimed at amateur photographers after something easy to use, it seems
