San Andreas Sweeps London Awards

While the American side of the pond can't seem to attack Rockstar enough, the Londoners are a bit more sympathetic to the best-selling Grand Theft Auto series:

As well as being named Ultimate Game of Year, it won for best PlayStation 2 game, best soundtrack and best hero and villain for its main characters.

"Having achieved such popularity with gamers and spawning a whole slew of imitators, it's no surprise to see GTA: San Andreas pick up such an impressive haul of awards," said, James Ashton-Tyler of the magazine publishing group, Future.

I realized the other day that Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas are some of the few games within a franchise that I've played pretty much from beginning to end ... and an awful great deal of exploring and side missions in the middle. And that's from the day of purchase on, not picking it up later or anything. Sure, that also recently includes Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 ... but those were much shorter outings. Timewise the only other games that share that kind of attention span would be Ocarina of Time and the original Zork.

Though come to think of it ... I don't know if I ever did finish Zork...