Who knew that Pulitzer Prize winning authors were taking their hard-earned awards and combining it with writing skill to... play Grand Theft Auto IV? It's not like they can be accused of slacking, having won a Pulitzer and all. Junot Diaz who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao spent some quality time ripping off cars and robbing his fellow Liberty City denizens, but in the end he says the game isn't worthy of the praise that's being spoon-fed to the masses.

Go ahead and Google: "Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg." Now, just imagine how different that page is going to look once news spreads that Sen. Slossberg (D) wants confirmation of the rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV. The New Haven Advocate reports that Slossberg admits she's never played GTA IV and still needs to confirm the "rumored" rape scene. Apparently, that's not going to stop her from being afraid of the game corrupting children, thus prompting her to introduce legislation requiring better warning labels.

We're not going out on a limb and saying there isn't a rape scene buried under all that code -- remember what happened last time? But Slossberg does have a serious problem. She seems a bit confused as to what to put on these warning labels, telling the newspaper: "I mean what would it say? 'This game will make you a sociopath'?"

Best of luck, Sen. Slossberg! A Google search of your name will never be the same again.

[Via GamePolitics]

The artist known as Pixeloo delivers once again with his "real" rendition of Grand Theft Auto IV antihero Niko Bellic. Thankfully, Niko's character design is that of a standard human, so we don't get the abomination of Pixeloo's not-safe-for-sanity "Real Mario."

The artist says he did the piece for Official Playstation Magazine UK's latest issue. Another impressive piece by Pixeloo, and unlike Real Mario, the Real Niko won't cause us to wake up screaming for two weeks and shudder every time we even think about the portly plumber.

This is precisely why we're not in video game marketing. If we were trying to get our open-ended gangster romp into the hands of millions, we'd be sure to have "Just like Grand Theft Auto IV!" emblazoned across not only the game's cover, but all of its magazine ads, television commercials and special edition lunch boxes. Of course, the major failure in our marketing strategy would be in its honesty -- our game, "Radical Car Nicking," really would just be Grand Theft Auto with slightly murkier textures.

That's why we're not in game design either, but we sure are good at copying and pasting quotes from THQ CEO, Brian Farrell! Like this one (via Next-Gen), from an investor meeting held on Wednesday in Chicago, where he said, "We think that we have a very differentiated product with Saints Row 2." Farrell acknowledged Rockstar's opus as "the leader in the genre," but noted that Volition's bandanna-wearing blockbuster would go in a different creative direction with "silly, over-the-top gameplay."

We've certainly seen shades of that in the most recent Saint's Row 2 trailer, what with the encouragement of public streaking and outrageous misuse of sewage. It's out -- and very differentiated -- this October.

We've been railing against the LCPD for years, so it's nice to see a more mainstream publication like The Onion finally notice what we've been saying all along: Liberty City's cops are the absolute worst. Just look at this statistic: "Since the surge in crime, which began on April 28 at midnight, more than 830,000 civilians have been murdered-nearly one-tenth of Liberty City's total population." Unacceptable.

It's even threatening to drive some people out of town! "Sure, we have excellent radio stations and an incredible range of things to see and do here," public defender Kiki Jenkins says. "But if I were younger, I'd move to Mario World in a second." We hear you Kiki, we hear you.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]

In the same conference call that gave us this head scratcher, Take-Two reps tap danced over a number of other issues, including their official reason for delaying GTA IV's hotly anticipated DLC, as well as any potential partnerships that may be lurking on the horizon.

Regarding the company's resolution to keep the GTA IV downloadable content out of players' hands until sometime between November 1 of this year and January 31, 2009, Take-Two's Strauss Zelnick calmly stated that the decision was based on "portfolio balancing," and that the delay was "not based on development issues." Even as our hearts ached for additional Liberty City shenanigans, Take-Two reps on the call remained enthusiastic, and for good reason, given that during the last quarter the GTA brand made up an impressive 78% of the firm's total publishing revenue.

With the amount of hype, advertising, positive reviews and media attention Grand Theft Auto IV has received over the past few months, we wholly expected it to remain on top of the software sales charts until our video game consoles grew sentient and attempted to purge humanity from the planet. Strangely enough, a dark horse recently overtook Rockstar's well-received crime drama in many European territories -- a horse mounted by a brawny, rippling Cimmerian.

Yes, Funcom's decapitation-rich MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures recently outsold GTA IV in a number of European locations, including Germany and Sweden. Since Rockstar's latest opus is still selling like freshly baked hotcakes in North America, we can't help but wonder if GTA's themes of living the American dream and hooker brutalization got lost in translation as the title crossed the Atlantic -- or whether Age of Conan's musclebound mascot reminds German gamers of a certain pop culture icon who is quite revered in their country.

Update: Apparently, this particular blending mystery was solved a while ago -- however, Tom Dickson promised us a free Blendtec blender if we brought it up again. We apologize for our unquenchable thirst for outrageously overpowered kitchen appliances.

Considering that Blendtec's doomsday device has already proved its ability to obliterate bricks, fake diamonds, small buildings and many large breeds of dogs, it should come as no surprise that (spoiler alert) it can chew through a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV with ease. What is surprising is host Tom Dickson's incredibly short fuse -- apparently, when something provides him with the smallest amount of displeasure, it finds itself on the business end of the appliance's screaming blades. For the sake of Tom's children (who likely have perfect grades and manners out of fear of a liquefying punishment), we remind the charismatic host that with great blending power comes great blending responsibility.

The New York Times has an interesting piece this morning about how actor Michael Hollick earned about $100,000 for playing GTA IV protagonist Niko Bellic. Had the actor done the role for almost any other medium than video games, he would have received very generous residuals and royalties off the title, which made $500 million in its first week. The piece basically explores how all the actors in GTA IV would be rolling in dough had the work not been in video games.

Of course, if the actor gets residuals, does the artist who "made" Niko get a cut? Although the actors provided voices, and apparently motion-capture, what about all the other people that worked on the creation of these characters? People aren't buying these games because of the actors, they're getting it because of the title and its associated gameplay. In time, this issue will probably come to a head (especially as the industry grows), but for now it comes off like actors whining while everyone else is getting a similarly bum deal. Maybe it's time the video game writers, artists and developers started complaining too? Union, union, union!

You can hear it right now on the MySpace page of voice actor Michael Hollick, the man who lent his larynx to Rockstar for GTA IV's lead. We'd suggest "Out of the Blue" to really complete the Niko crooning vibe. Just don't blame us when you can't take him quite as seriously when he's mowing down pedestrians.

Zero Punctuation takes on Grand Theft Auto IV this week, but if you're one of the five people who didn't buy the game and are hoping for some ZP hate-fest on par with the Super Smash Bros. Brawl review ... then you have another thing coming. Yahtzee doesn't exactly suck GTA IV's "thumb" -- like he does Valve's -- but the issues he grasps onto are relatively minor points about getting lost in the side stuff. Not really full of his trademark, hyperbolic bile then. Shockingly, he even says that after finishing the review, he went back and played the game some more. It appears Niko Bellic has found a friend in Yahtzee.

Find this week's NSFW relative non-hate review of GTA IV after the break.

We love hit web show Will It Blend?, but we're a little worried about this new iteration featuring a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV. All we're saying is that we're going to be heartbroken if a team of moms and politicians re-dub the video to turn it into anti-game violence propaganda. ("Why am I blending GTA? So my kids won't kill people!") But just remember, gang: Tom Dickson would never say that, because he is right and pure and good. So don't be confused.

Also: Of course it blends. What, are you kidding? It. Always. Blends.

[Thanks, Chris]

We talked before about the late-night media frenzy surrounding Grand Theft Auto IV's release, since it was kind of hard to miss GTA if you watch TV between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. It gave us no small satisfaction to see the game pop up on one of the late-night comedy stalwarts as Niko and Vlad (played by Bill Hader and Fred Armisen) appeared on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. You can see the clip from last Saturday above.

Now, is it ... funny, per se? Well, our ribs have been more fiercely tickled, that's for sure. But they're trying. Isn't that the important thing?

It looks like help may be on the way for those of you who are still experiencing some freezing problems with Grand Theft Auto IV on PS3. One user on the official PlayStation forums said he received an email from Take-Two stating the issue was "with the launch edition of the PS3 and this game" and that "the game was checked over and passed as 100% compatible with the current version of the PS3."

As for the fix, the alleged Take-Two staffer reportedly wrote that "Sony are aware of this difference and are looking into producing a new firmware just for the earlier version of the PS3." Wow, a whole new firmware update? For one game? We hope the swelled head doesn't affect Niko's balance when he's bludgeoning and murdering hookers.

Microsoft is apparently quite happy with the hardware sales boost it received with the release of GTA IV in Europe. GameDaily reports that a representative for Microsoft Europe said, "Today is has become clear that consumers are finding Xbox 360 the best way to experience Liberty City." Microsoft stated that Xbox 360 console sales jumped 125% in the UK, "reflecting the popularity of this franchise on the platform."

Not to rain on Microsoft's parade, but the company didn't actually reveal a sales number to go with that 125%. So, for all we know, the week before GTA IV released the company sold 10 consoles in the UK, and the following week it sold about 23. Let's put an end to the war of percentages! We know victory is 200% sweeter when fought that way ... but we believe that's true only 33% of the time.