GTA IV, depression and general stuff

I have an admission. I'm bored of GTA IV. I'm about 35% in and I'm finding it really hard going.

1) Missions are all the same crap, over and over again. Pick up some people who proceed to talk shite. Steal something/kill someone. Escape from police/gang while outnumbered and accompanied by stupid companions who usually get killed. Repeat. There are no side missions to speak of other than the racing, but with those you can usually tell in the first minute or so that either you will win incredibly easily, or be completely defeated.

2) The AI is hardly improved from the older games. It seems so at first and the police are better. But you watch it when people get into your car and it's just like GTA III all over again.

3) It locks up or gives the unreadable disk error on a regular basis. Not so bad when you're just playing around but if you're trying to do a mission, it is really annoying. The only other game that has done this on my 360 was Bioshock and it didn't do it anywhere near as much as GTA IV does.

4) Once you've made a few friends, they become a real annoyance. They constantly call you and want to go out and drink or play darts or whatever. If you don't answer, they start to hate you. It is really tedious. You can switch the phone off but then you miss things.

5) It's just not fun. Primarily because of the tedious, repetitive missions and the lack of anything to do outside of the missions.

Yes, it looks incredible, the cars drive great and the animation is good and the detail of the city is truly breathtaking. But the actual game content is GTA III all over again. It was good back then, but now, no. I expected much, much more from GTA IV but it feels like a step backwards from San Andreas. To be fair, I suppose I'll keep plugging away at it, but not with the same delight that Vice City and San Andreas brought me.

Also my Xbox Live subscription has expired - not bothered about renewing it to be honest.

No blog updates for a while, had a slightly strange few days where I was feeling very down. Didn't feel like doing anything or talking to anyone. Thursday evening was spent at an Indian meal with some people from work, which was pretty decent. I tend to judge Indian restaurance on their kormas - it's easy enough to make an average spicy dish but the milder ones need to have taste, and the korma I had was pretty good.

Saturday was spent watching the end of Doctor Who Series 3 and then lots of ancient Doctor Who on Youtube. I also sanded down the headstock of the Frankencaster and lacquered a new decal on, so it's now a Bitzer Partsocaster. I've never done this before but it came out OK. Still no pickup, annoyingly. I've discovered the wiring for two pickups is actually easier than the single pickup due to less capacitors and resistors...doh.

Spent most of the day at Rob and Em's playing Boom Blox on the Wii with Will, Vicky and Andy, also eating very nice burgers and trying out Andy's chocolate fountain.

Boom Blox is a simple game but very compelling, and good fun. The various multiplayer modes are excellent. I might actually buy it, which would make it my first Wii purchase since Mario Galaxy in November. Also had a look at the Spore creature creator on Will's MacBook. It looks great fun but I don't think I've got anything that will run it. I might look into selling my Toshiba laptop and some other stuff and getting one with a graphics card. There's nothing wrong with the Toshiba other than the crappy graphics chip though, so that's annoying.

I'm going to sell my DS and PSP. I don't use them any more. I think I'll see if I can get a Phat DS though, there's still some games I'd like to play and I think the Phat suits my hands better. After I built a working Phat DS from spare parts (which I gave to Steve and Kara), I looked into the possibility of creating a hybrid Phat DS with Lite screens, but the electronics are very different unfortunately.