I’ve got a pet peeve or two. Possibly a zoo’s worth, actually, but I’m thinking of one in particular right now.

“Interactive”. Never, ever describe a game as an interactive anything. If it wasn’t interactive it’d just be a DVD.

In order to keep this from being two lines long, I’m going to take this opportunity to gripe about being sick. Lately, whenever I catch a cold, it goes straight to my throat and I sound like something found living in a box in a bad post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie. As a somewhat talkative person, this puts a crimp in my entire life, especially since I work retail and can’t sell a thing when I’m sounding only slightly better than a wheezy whisper. Headaches and coughing are part of being sick, and though I’m not fond of them I can deal with it. Losing my voice, on the other hand, really sucks.

Now playing- GTA: Vice City. Due to circumstances beyond my control I never gave it much time back in the day. It’s still the weakest in the series, thanks to a really boring city, but I’m going to play through the missions just to see the plot. It’s also much, much easier than I remember it being. Maybe because I just beat Liberty City Stories the other day.

There’s an LCS review coming up soon, once my eyeballs don’t feel like they’re trying to expand out of my sockets, but in the meantime I’ve got one comparison between it and the older games in the series. The low level of detail in LCS, thanks to its PSP roots, means that the PS2 version can push much more stuff around on screen than previous GTA games. I’d trade the higher polish and greater polygon count in Vice City for LCS’s low-poly world in a second if it meant I could have streets that didn’t feel so completely deserted. A city is a lively place, for the most part, and I’d forgotten how barren the older GTAs tended to be.

Also, a busier city means that when one car explodes, the chain reaction is a glorious thing. The only thing missing is a combo meter.