Penny Arcade dumps GTAIV for Boom Blox

boom-blox_logo.jpgThe inevitable press lovefest that followed (and led up to) the Grand Theft Auto IV launch predictably fell off a cliff in the days after its release, and I found it amazing and un-amazing at the same time that the game filling the void was Boom Blox.

I suggest that it plays well for a tech demo, which I meant as a joke, but it is ridiculous how much entertainment there is to be had – even in two-thousand and eight – by plucking and blasting these Goddamned rectangles. […] It broke us of Grand Theft Auto, for Christ’s sake. What is the differential on developments costs, there – a hundred to one? And yet there we were – Gabe, Scott, and myself – staring at a heap of bricks. Robert, who can probably calculate the game’s physics entirely in his head, couldn’t stay away even though he likes us to think he is immune to joy. He probably wasn’t aware that his mouth hung open the entire time he was playing, the working of his mind visible beneath his temples. It’s the antithesis of Liberty City, and it’s startling that both of these things can exist in the same dimension.

Oh, and by the way, the most talked about piece of software at Amazon during the GTAIV launch week was, believe it or not, Mario Kart Wii.