I love Halo 3, you understand. But when it came out, and people asked me to describe it, my one-liner was, "Imagine if you had all the money in the world to spend on a game but couldn't change anything." Halo, conceptually, was as complete a thing as Mario Kart. To alter it too much, to push it in another direction, would be to destroy it. So we got flashes of user-generated content, multiplayer transparency, whatever. And, in the middle, Halo sitting there unchanged.



It's not a problem Rockstar ever has to face. The joy of GTA is that it isn't a complete thing. It's endless. If the devs had all the money in the world to spend it wouldn't be enough. There's always something else which could fit in there without changing its core values. But with GTA IV, with as much money as it's about possible for a videogame company to have, we saw what they could do. While it's a step away from certain features of San Andreas, this is as maximalist as a game's ever been, in terms of production values at least. The moment when you're replaying a mission and you realise it's got a completely different, brilliantly voiced conversation between the characters in the car is when you realise you're a long way from most games' occasional barks from whoever was passing through the studio at the time.

MORE: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=322028

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PLAYING:
GTA IV (PC)
Halo 3 (X360)
COD4: MW (PC)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Prince of Persia (PC)