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Spotted this off of Joystiq today and knew it was worth the repost…

Flickr user Matthew Johnston has put together a pretty sharp photoset showing key Liberty City landmarks and their real-world versions around New York City. I still haven’t spent much time at all in Grand Theft Auto IV yet but this is great stuff!

Matthew Johnston’s “Sightseeing in Liberty City” photoset

I’m in South Beach, Miami, today. I arrived late last evening to a surprisingly mild evening — for some reason I expected it to be warmer even though I should know better.

The Winter Music Conference is in town, as evidenced by many of the clubs mentioning the WMC in their marquee and by the folks I see walking around — I think. However, I’m here for work. The event I’m flew out to staff is one of the few official WMC events on Tuesday to kick off the conference. Ben, one of my colleagues has put together quite the event: Paul Oakenfold is playing with members of the Florida Classical Symphony and a three-piece band, featuring the soundtrack he did for our game, The Bourne Conspiarcy, while Cee Lo makes an appearance as a special guest. The entire thing is being streamed live on Yahoo! and you can get there from the Bourne Sessions web site.

If you happen to live in Florida, or near it, and want a guaranteed entrance to the show, enter Joystiq’s Joyswag giveaway for a chance to get in — note that entries close at 12:00 PM ET.

Word came out that the Sundance Film Festival 2008 is doing something really cool and right up my alley — they are making the short films from their festival available digitally. Some will be free to watch on the Sundance Film Festival web site and you can download up to forty-five of them via Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace, iTunes or Netflix. In short, this is simply amazing to me, especially when there are films by directors such as Leighton Pierce (Number One) — one of many favorites from my limited classes in art school — among the films to be released. I can’t wait to purchase some when they finally make their digital debut on Video Marketplace (since I don’t have a fancy new Apple TV HD).

I hope some other festivals pick up on this idea, as it makes sense — I don’t expect the Chicago Underground Film Festival to have that kind of budget or pull with the digital distribution services, but I can dream can’t I?

Hidden deep in the farthest reaches of the internet I have discovered this rare artifact of one of the greatest games never to be — Mr. T’s Adventures for the Xbox 360. Ok, so it probably never got past the mock-up of the control scheme, but who wouldn’t want an adventure game that shows how Mr. T really does pity the fool(s)? Ok, ok! So the whole control scheme was probably a joke, but that means somebody had way too much time on their hands.

Any of you fancy independent developers with experience in adventure games and humor, who think they can wrangle the greatness that is Mr. T, get in touch, this game begs to be made.

It does, but don’t contact me, I have no idea how to begin working on this and I’m busy enough as it is. Josh, that means this is your next project.

Word came out over the weekend that Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos, in a lengthy OXM interview, finally confirmed the gaming community’s fears about Rock Band on Xbox 360 — that the Special Edition bundle would not have a wireless guitar, but a wired one. Of course a wireless version of the Rock Band guitar does exist, but it will only be available as a seperate purchase for Xbox 360 owners. The salt in the wound comes from the news that the PLAYSTATION 3 version of the Special Edition would indeed bundle in a wireless guitar.

Ouch.

The reason? Joystiq quotes Rigopulos as saying, “The cost of wireless technology on the Microsoft side is higher and to be able to offer those bundles at a price point that would be reasonable for consumers it was necessary … on the 360 side we are also bundling a hub.”

The reason behind the wired guitar in the bundle is rather unfortunate. I believe this is one of the few times that Microsoft should have worked to ensure parity between the bundles across the different platforms at all costs. This is one of those times where the folks in charge of these third-party relationships and third-party accessory licensing should have been thinking about the best interests of the brand and the platform as a whole. It seems that other factors were more key — most likely not setting the precedent of reducing or subsidizing the cost of the technology for accessory makers.

I can see that being an important factor, among several others, all extremely valid. However, it’s just a shame that it provides the PLAYSTATION 3 bundle of Rock Band a competitive advantage when Microsoft should be doing everything in their power to slam the door on one of their competitors. And that is a strategy that I feel remains valid despite Microsoft’s current lead in the global marketplace versus Sony.

Like many people I had to wait until Monday to play the BioShock demo that went up on Xbox LIVE Marketplace on Sunday, but when I finally got it booted up, the demo delivered in spades. The demo clearly starts at the opening of the game and it’s clearly the most logical place to start both from a story perspective, a gameplay perspective and so you can enjoy the water porn in full effect as you are dumped into the ocean. It only gets better from there.

While the area shown in the demo feels fairly closed and linear with seemingly only one direction to go next, the experience is absolutely immersive and there were a few jump in your seat moments. It was all just enough to get the heart pounding ready to push forward until it was all over after an incredibly suspenseful interlude. The end of the demo was followed by a short attract-style video that showed the different plasmid abilities and how to use them creatively in a game that just capped off how amazing BioShock had played throughout the demo.The demo and ending video perfectly served to increase my own anticipation for the release of the game next week. I wasn’t the only one as stories of the street date being broken by a retailer sent NeoGAF into a frenzy with folks calling stores and cooking up wonderful schemes to get other stores to break the street date so they could get their copy. Of course the story made the internet rounds, hitting up a number of blogs, before retailers got wise and they stopped sales. I didn’t manage to get a copy after calling all of one store. I can wait though.

Another cause for all the excitement was the art direction in BioShock. There have been many quality games released since the last holiday season and while I can’t say I’ve played them all, like The Darkness for example, there haven’t been many I feel that have the deliberate thought and creativity that Gears of War brought to the table. BioShock is indeed one of these rarified games, art deco objectivist roots and all. This is my impression mostly just from the demo. I think 2K Boston/Australia (née Irrational Games, if you haven’t been following current news) knows this quite well and despite the fact that they couldn’t put together an art book for the collectors edition of the game, they did a great service to their fans and put an electronic version of the art book up on their Bioshock site, The Cult of Rapture.

Can I also say that I’m totally in love with the design of that site? No idea why, but I am… it’s hot.