Wise Words for You

Snake is in for another richly cinematic, occasionally convoluted, and ultimately satisfying adventure in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the latest installment in Konami designer Hideo Kojima's long-running stealth action series. Much like its predecessors, Metal Gear Solid 3 begs to be talked about, if nothing else. After all, during the course of the game, you'll experience a story dense with detail and intrigue, one that's often presented using some of the most dramatically staged video game cut scenes to date. You'll also spend about half your time with the game just watching (or listening to) the story unfold, and for every sequence that's extremely exciting and thought-provoking, there's a part that seems needlessly drawn out. Meanwhile, the game play itself--despite an all-new setting in a Soviet jungle during the 1960s--really hasn't changed much since the last installment, and it's aged noticeably during these past few years. Consequent...

Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty sub par, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Additionally, much as was the case with Liberty City Stories' transition to the PS2, Vice City Stories loses a lot of its appeal when played on a console versus the PSP. Still, it's cheap to buy, and if you don't own a PSP or just never got around to playing it upon its original release, this isn't a bad way to go if you absolutely, positively must get your GTA fix. Vice City Stories returns to the pastel- and neon-colored excesses of the 1980's and Vice City. Modeled after '80s-era Miami, GTA: Vice City told a  Scarface -inspired tale of Tommy Vercetti, a shunned mobster who found himself sifting through the af...

The Grand Theft Auto series and the PlayStation 2 have gone hand in hand, which each game debuting on the PS2 before it travels to other consoles. That all changed with the release of last year's side story, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. This game, designed to take advantage of the PSP's hardware, was an impressive technical feat, managing to pack in a lot of what made the "big" GTA games so memorable. But it fell short in a few key spots, most notably the story, the characters, and the series' biting sense of style and satire. That stuff was easy to overlook when you could carry Liberty City around in your back pocket. But on the PS2, where you can compare it directly to the three Grand Theft Auto games that have appeared there, the whole package is significantly less interesting, even considering the PS2 port's budget price. Not much has changed, so if you've already played this on the PSP, there's not much reason to take on the ...

How do you follow up a runaway success like 2001's Grand Theft Auto III? Rockstar North responded a year later with GTA: Vice City, a game that took the game play of its predecessor and expanded it considerably. At the same time, Vice City gave the series an extensive and amazing stylistic makeover, drenching the experience in the sights, sounds, and attitude of Miami, Florida from the mid '80s. So where do you go from there? You take it statewide. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas expands the series' concept to encompass three entire cities, as well as the countryside between them. The game play similarly expands, packing in some explosive set pieces and amazing action-movie-like thrills while maintaining that same remarkably fun, freeform GTA feel. In short, Rockstar has done it again. San Andreas definitely lives up to the Grand Theft Auto name. In fact, it's arguably the best game in the series. This latest installment takes place in 1992 in the West Coast-them...