November 2004 Archives

Judging from the "Purchased Music" playlist in my iTunes, I would guess I'm about $100 in. That's not much at all, but it's completely found money on Apple's part, because I doubt I would have bought any of that music otherwise.

121 songs. 7.4 hours. Only six full albums; the remainder all in singles. And about a dozen of those were free grabs during last year's Pepsi promotion. Most of the playlist is stuff Rhon wanted, but it also includes some They Might Be Giants rarities, some newish Weird Al... and then there was that crazy week when they first added the Disney catalog.

Being mostly isolated from current music, my impulse purchases have been sparked by video games. So listen up, marketers, getting your band's songs in DDR did pay off. Here's the songs I bought on iTunes and the games from which I know them. As far as I'm concerned, these songs don't even exist separate from the game.

Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go) by Garbage, from Amplitude (PS2)
Save Tonight by Eagle Eye Cherry, from Karaoke Revolution (PS2)
Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer, from Karaoke Revolution (PS2)
Love at First Sight by Kylie Minogue, from DDRMAX2 (PS2)
All the Small Things by Blink 182, from Donkey Konga (GC)
This Fire by Franz Ferdinand, from Burnout 3: Takedown (PS2)

Then there's the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack set, which is only partially available on iTunes. So I picked up mine on discount somewhere. I'm hoping to do the same for San Andreas even though I think the SA radio stations are worse than Vice City. Better be much cheaper. Or I could just buy L7's Pretend We're Dead on iTunes tonight and be done with it.

One of my favorite game-rock tracks isn't on iTunes, largely because I think the group is fictional... or at least some kind of techno house band related to the game's developers: Cool Baby by DJ HMX with Plural, from Amplitude (PS2). You can get the song at freq.com and I did.

And you can forget about finding j-pop on iTunes, so get your Tsukiko Amano (Chou from Fatal Frame 2) and Hikaru Utada (Simple and Clean from Kingdom Hearts) elsewhere.

Funny story about Burnout 3. I really like the one song with the girls singing "come on, come on," but I never really paid attention to the band's name. So I go looking online for a track listing, and find out that no less than three songs in Burnout 3 have a title of some variant of "come on." The Von Bondies' "C'mon, C'mon"; The D4's "Come on!"; and "C'mon" by Go Betty Go. iTunes has the two former come-on-songs, but not the Go Betty Go one... and of course that's the one I want. Come on, Betty, sign up with iTunes soon.

I'm just not ready to leave Los Santos yet.

I'm right at the mission that kidnaps you from home and leaves you for dead out in the boonies. I know this because I triggered it once already and bailed out to the last save. I decided to go back because there seemed like so much left undone in Los Santos... chiefly, pushing out the area's rival gangs.

This weekend I finished clearing out all the purple Ballas and yellow Vagos locations. Every available territory is now a jaunty Grove Street green. However, I received no hidden bonus for completing this task, which makes me think that there will be more gangbanging to come. GTA is so bonus-happy that I can't imagine a player taking the time to control the map and not receive something cool for it.

Like the 8-Track mission over in the amphitheater. Finish the Hotring (NASCAR) race in first place after twelve laps and two new vehicles become permanently available in the amphitheater parking lot: the Hotring Racer and a monster truck. The racer is a typically garish and floaty stock car, and the monster truck rolls over anything at the cost of feeling lighter-than-air.

Then there's ghetto trash Denise. As near as I call tell, achieving 100% on your Denise Progress gets you One (1) Pimp Suit and the keys to the Hustler in her driveway. From then on, it's nothing but annoying calls and repitimissions.

I checked in with Mike on his San Andreas progress. He's pretty much at the same place. He cleared out his rival gangs before I did, but I was a couple storyline missions ahead of him. Playing GTA becomes such a personal experience, and the customization options of San Andreas make your game even more individual. Your clothing, your weapons preferences, your level of fitness, the order in which you choose missions, your favorite radio station, all the sidebar stuff... it all adds up to a deep user-defined experience that ensures no two people will play it the same way. We spent about 20 minutes quizzing each other: Did you play basketball? How many tags did you spray paint? Did you bother modding your car? Did you find the 2P rampage spot in Pershing Square?

I have purchased all the available properties - except that big $120,000 rapper mansion up on the hill. And I still have $50,000 remaining, which just goes to show how fruitful those gang wars were. Ballas drop a lot of cash. I also completely lit up the northern part of the island, where all those small towns are dotted. Not much to do up there (yet), so I grabbed a chopper and went sightseeing. There's a massive brewery near Blueberry, and some kind of abandoned paintball shanty town called the Panopticon or something.

Neither Mike nor myself have been able to find a moving van. I should have paid more attention in that mission where the game tutorials you on breaking and entering. Mike says he's getting the strategy guide, so that will be the first thing I ask him to look up. I'd hit GameFAQs but I always end up reading too much and ruining the surprise for something else. In fact, my SOP for FAQ-checking is to make Rhonda do it so she can parcel out the info without giving too much away.

The ignominious expulsion from Los Santos is inevitable. I can only run taxi missions for so long before I bite down and do it. Los Santos - particularly within the Grove Street power radious - has come to feel like home. I wonder what will happen in my absence.

So Venomoths cannot learn the Fly HM? Insane. They fly, don't they? My designated Flyer is now a Fearow, an ugly bird with a nasty disposition. Well, I wanted something different than the Pidgeots and Butterfrees I've used before...

After rampaging through Sabrina's Gym (thanks to Gengar), I realized I never found the Surf HM. I did a ton of backtracking and talking, but I could not locate any clues on its whereabouts. So I did what anyone should do in that situation: I asked an eight year old. "That's in the Safari Zone," he told me. Oh, yeah, right. When you first walk in there, you read all these signs and convos about the great gift you get if you can make it all the way to the farthest corner of the Zone. I thought that was just a stupid sidequest! They even tell you the prize you get "will make getting around much easier." I was really hoping you'd get a fighter jet or something... but it's just Surf, which is completely necessary to continue in the game.

LeafGreen/FireRed has a terrible lack of optional sidequests and subgames. It really is a pale shadow of Ruby/Sapphire, and I would encourage anyone who hasn't played either to go with R/S (or the upcoming Emerald) before bothering with LG/FR. After all the berry runs, talent contests, secret bases and whatnot of Sapphire, I'm fairly bored by LeafGreen. It lacks that free-world feel. Yeah, yeah, LG/FR is just a remake, but I was expecting a full bore remake to bring this game up to the level of R/S. Maybe the special new content after the Championship at the end of the game will make up for it.

The same pal who told me where to find Surf also traded me a Growlithe, which can't be naturally found in LeafGreen. I gave him a Weepinbell in return. Not sure if that is a LeafGreen exclusive or not, so I don't know if I helped his FireRed game much. I love working with traded pokemon, because they level up so damn fast. My Growlithe came over at level 15 and I got him up to 31 in no time at all. Taught him Strength too. I'm pretty confident he will be in my Championship team.

Now that Blastoise knows Surf, I ventured south from Fuchsia City over the ocean to Seafoam Islands. Seafoam appears to be a giant roadblock on the way to Cinnabar Island, where the next Gym Leader is found. I really hate long paths like this, especially when there's no safe ground from random encounters. The road from Fuchsia to Seafoam is a longish waterway - where you get jumped by annoying level 6 Tentacools every couple steps - and then Seafoam itself is a multi-level cave puzzle maze. Ick.

I found an Articuno deep inside the Seafoam cave, but I was in no condition to battle and capture him. So I bailed out of the whole path and went back to stock up on supplies. While I'm back on the main continent, I'm going to head up towards the Power Plant. I hear tell there's a Zapdos in there, but I haven't found the right path to get there yet.

Time: 27:44
Badges: 6
Pokedex: 62 (Seen: 119)
Party: Growlithe lv31, Blastoise lv42, Katamari (Meowth) lv36, Gengar lv48, Fearow lv21, Snorlax lv43

OK, so I got one.

I wasn't planning on it, but the combination of demo units at Target and G4TechTV's bizarro DS day event forced my hand. Last week the DS kiosks began to pop up... our East End Target hid theirs in the video game accessories aisle, where it could hold court over third party memory cards and an infinite assortment of pretty GBA purses. I buzzed through the Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt offering without truly grasping the two-handed control setup. It wasn't until we left that I realized I hadn't tried out the stylus-based control scheme.

So we visited the West End Target (Yes, we have two. We're blessed.) Their DS demo was more happily located by the Locked Software Atriums... but this one did not have Metroid in it. It had nothing. But while the stylus-testing mission was scrapped, firing up a cartridge-less DS does get you into the system settings and PictoChat, so I played with that instead. I typed IMs to an empty chat room.

Today, during the Fourhman Brunch module of our day's agenda, Rhonda found G4TechTV running DS demo movies... with a larger-than-life DS graphic around them. And when that ended, they continued with regular programming... still inside the DS frame! Hah! For the first time in years, I enjoyed watching X-Play, simply because it was taking up less of my screen.

And a million channel flippers were duly confused.

Did Nintendo pay for that? Or is this G4TechTV's latest bid to pretend they're actually relevant to the gaming audience they're trying to reach? Aside from my continued brand confusion since they merged G4 and TechTV, I remain horribly annoyed when they show repeats of game review shows featuring games released two years ago.

So after staring at DS movies for an hour, we went back to East End Target so I could play with stylus Metroid. I thought it worked really well. You use the stylus for mouse-look, D-pad for movement, and the remaining buttons for usual functions. It does not take long to get the swing of it. Even more impressive is the miniaturization of GameCube's Metroid Prime. Same music, same look. Just smaller. The intro movie is obviously Nintendo's first big chance to show off the dual screens, as Samus jumps from top to bottom and then stands upright across both of them.

Target had a hundred DSs available. No shortage here. However, I'm promised to Toys R Us for all major purchases, so we hustled out there... where they had a similar huge supply. But my good ol' TRU still managed to screw it up: they had no fancy DS display or kiosk (which is probably why they also had plenty DSs to sell) and only about half of the launch titles (which were all displayed solely with the old fashioned purchase tickets; no box art, no signs, nothing.) We noted that Target had the launch games on sale, so after receiving a DS we went to West End Target for the games.

Picked up Super Mario 64DS (duh) and Feel the Magic XY XX. Feel the Magic is a total Quirky Launch Title, the type that comes out specifically to showcase the new hardware, is never seen again, and ends up bargain-binned for $15. Fantavision. PilotWings. Luigi's Mansion. But it plays like WarioWare with a dating sim plot, so it looked like a nice grab.

Super Mario got a ton of play tonight, primarily in the mini-game section. The mini-games are all designed around the touch screen / dual screen features. I actually lost control of the DS for most of an hour as Rhonda tapped her way through one of the card matching mini-games.

Watching Luigi (on the top screen) deal out cards to the bottom screen, and then watching Rhonda use the stylus to click and clear matching pairs, I couldn't help but wonder if this is as far as it will go. Will the mini-games of Super Mario 64DS and Feel the Magic represent the peak of the DS? It still reeks of gimmick, and Nintendo is going to need much more to make the DS concept feel fully realized.

Tell you what though, when you hand somebody a stylus and say "click the matching cards," that's just about the easiest video game instruction I've ever had. There's definitely something to be said for simplicity.

I love things like this (thanks lileks.com) because they showcase how fearful some groups can get... to the point where they're searching for invisible demons in everything. It used to be that we'd just attack video games for endorsing violence; now we're offended by their plotlines too.

That article suggests boycotting Halo 2 because of a quote that the storyline could be read as a "a damning condemnation of the Bush Administration�s adventure in the Middle East." Now, I don't care much for Halo. I don't own an Xbox. I don't like Microsoft. But I encourage anyone who would be interested that said article was written by an asshat and that you should totally buy Halo 2. Not that any Xboxer is going to need further convincing; the Xbox has about five good exclusive games and two of them begin with "Halo."

The crux of the complaint is that Halo 2 turns the first game's concept around and ends up showing the aliens you've been killing as misunderstood... formerly peaceful, and now riled by Earth's unexpected and unwanted military incursion.

Yeah, it does sound familiar.

Because it's been a standard sci-fi plot since the dawn of time. How many stories use that ol' classic turnaround? OMG our enemies are/is/should be our friends! Oh man, there's another Terminator! Sirius Black is actually a good guy! A planet where apes evolved from men!

Start examining the point of all those stories and you'll see why Bush folk are afraid. Because the moral is that things aren't all black and white. That situations are more complicated, more layered than that. What do you know, those ugly violent aliens were actually trying to defend their lifestyle from the human space marines. It's a conflict as old as civilization, and the only way out seems to be to marginalize the "losing" culture... or out-and-out genocide. Be honest: how many Bush voters have you heard state that we should "kill all of 'em"? One guy I know once quoted a Bible passage about the anti-Christ coming from the Middle East, and described large populations of Arab-Americans in the Detroit area as "scary."

I don't know how Halo 2 ends. I sort of doubt it ends with a big happy armistice between the humans and the aliens, because that isn't exactly going to resonate with the power-fantasy-driven young males that flock to games like Halo 2. Unfortunately, that option also doesn't resonate with much of America either.

Now for the pulled quote, because I love pulled quotes:

It begs the question: Why would a gamer or the parent of a gamer pay $50 to play a game that will force the player to shoot hundreds of "bad aliens" for hours to advance in the game and then at the end of it admonish the player for shooting the bad aliens? "These aliens weren�t really "bad"�they were just misunderstood and we awful human beings had no business ever leaving our little corner of the universe. You, and all humans like you, are violent and bad but the aliens are more highly-evolved, peaceful, caring beings that we should have respected and loved rather than murdered."

Because it's a plot (albeit not an extremely original one.) Because the Halo developers probably felt a need to prove that shooters can and should have plots worthy of movies and adventure games. If you think video games haven't progessed past Space Invaders, then I could see confusion resulting from Halo 2's storyline. Imagine you wipe out that final row of zig-zaggy bugships and then a pixel-text message pops up: "YOU HAVE KILLED ALL THE SPACE INVADERS. THEY WERE PEACEFUL AND MERELY PROTECTING THEIR UNIQUE CULTURE. SCORE: ZERO." That's how the uneducated are conceptualizing Halo 2 right at this moment, just before they mass-email that article to all their friends with young children. Please catch the irony that I said "young children," because Halo 2 is an M-rated game.

That quote at the end underscores a common right wing secret issue: They don't want anybody to be better than they are, certainly not damn dirty aliens. Because those who are "better" get to define policy, and nobody else should define policy but them. Instead of hazarding a guess that both alien and human could come together and combine their respective technologies and wisdom, the supposition (and snide language) is that the aliens are going to be shown as intrinsically better... and the humans did a terrible, thoughtless thing in persecuting them.

You know, if someday we do happen upon an alien culture with big pointy teeth, and we kill them, and we further uncover that they had hospitals and opera and the cure for cancer... well I hope we do feel like shitheads. I would hope that every human being would feel like a shithead. That seems to be the lesson of Halo 2, aside from being able to carry two weapons at once.

I've seen it done both ways in sci-fi stories. I think the best stories feature the former (the cooperation ending) rather than the Big Reveal that the aliens were "far in advance of our own society", because it avoids the trap of thinking in black and white. And the very best stories show both good and evil inside each faction, with proper explanation and examination of the motives for all viewpoints. But we're not going to apply those good writing standards to video games, no sir.

I suspect the real issue isn't based on an out-of-context quote from one guy on the Halo 2 dev team. It's simply another in a long line of knee-jerk reactions to incredible success in a media that older generations don't understand. Nobody has yet to come up with any proof that violent video games cause school shootings or date rape or anything else and they never will... because, again, it just ain't that black and white. So this particular argument is just an end-run to get at video games - and pop culture in general - by recycling the devisive fear-mongering that has become the default in modern politics.

Since Sunday night I have been in the Baltimore area for a work conference. I've been to seminars like this before - both for work and not for work - and they are all much the same. The day starts too early, the sessions run long, the lunches suck, and the ratio of good info to silly rah-rah runs far too even.

The accommodations are in nearby Towson, which is weird since they then have to shuttle our asses for an ugly congested commute to the seminar locale deep within the Baltimore Sun newspaper compound. I like the hotel setup, since I have had good time to play Pokemon on the shuttle, and the hotel adjoins the regionally famous Towson Towne Center, a mega-mall I quite like.

Although the seminar organizers today committed the egregious error of asking those of us who drove to Towson Sunday night to now drive to the newspaper building for tomorrow morning's final event day. What the fuck. So now I get the brilliant pleasure of having to navigate through Baltimore morning rush hour. Way to fuck up the whole conference for me on the last day. They'll be hearing about that on my comment card.

You know, every single one of these sort of things that I've attended has been apparently scheduled by chipmunks storing away nuts for the winter: too much crammed into one day. Every damn day, some session (whoops, the contemporary buzzword is "module") goes over and then we spend the rest of the day moaning about having to "rush through this one" and "we're going to cut this short to get back on schedule."

Just stop lining up so damn many speakers! Schedule one less session so you have time to let the group dive more deeply into the topics that need extra discussion, plus giving everybody pad time for tech difficulties, open forum Q&As, and that lunch that never ends on time.

Secret news for event organizers: People have limits to how many lessons they can glean in one day. Plus, there's something to be said for making a couple days away from work somewhat relaxing and stress-free. Even though we're there to talk about work, it would be great if felt less like work. So far, I've had to wake up in the morning between 6 and 7. The last time I saw that hour, it was because I hadn't been to bed yet.

There have been some great modules though, and despite my annoyances with the means, I will take home some good ends. This particular conference is about leadership and management and I intend the manage the piss out of my staff when I get back.

I often feel like a large portion of these social meetings are wasted on me. I'm not especially career-driven, so all the networking and businessy stuff often just bothers me. We had a "networking event" at the Baltimore Aquarium last night, which translate to a happy hour with people in suits I don't know. I don't drink, and I'm not amused by being around people who are drinking, so those activities leave me cold. They are inevitable, however; always preceded by lots of winking and giggling about "Let's wrap up this final module so we can all get to the bar ha ha ha." Ugh. I have enough trouble bonding with strangers without them all getting slowly toasted.

So I spent some time talking with the few people I already sorta knew, then spent an hour walking around the Aquarium... which was in afterhours mode so it was completely empty. That was pretty cool. By the way, the Aquarium cocktail party served salmon. So much for conservation and respect for marine life.

But I'm always up for these things. I like the travel and hotels and walking. I do genuinely want to do better at my job, because I fully intend to spend a hell of a lot more time there. So I love getting the insights and lessons... I just wish there wasn't as much stress and hoopla endemic to the concept.

And good fucking shit I should not be expected to drive my ass car through metro rush hour fuck.

One guess what I did in the hotel room every night. It starts with "Pikmin" and ends with "2".

I still feel like I'm outpacing the game a little bit, and Koga's gym was another easy go. His dojo has those famous invisible walls, but if you stare hard enough at the tiles, you can see where they are.

I actually tried to get through Sabrina's gym before heading down to Koga, but her battlers were definitely above my level. I did manage to clean out Silph Co. of the Team Rocket hostile takeover, and I grabbed a free Hitmonchan from the Fighting Club. Suckas.

I took the northward route up Cycling Road, wiping out all the bikers I could find. Not a lot of pain there, just a bunch of Weezings, mostly. At the top of Cycling Road is a Scientist with an Amulet Coin for you. Now I'm working to catch the Snorlax blocking the path east, just because I want to snag a couple of the brutes.

Wartortle evolved into a Blastoise... they do grow up fast. Since I now have some nicely fat pokemon heading my party, I decided it was time to switch in some lowlies for training. I'm leading with a Safari Zone Venonat at the moment, with the idea that his evolved form - Venomoth - will be my designated Flyer. Never worked much with a Venomoth before, so I'm looking forward to it.

Of course, the ultimate lowly is Magikarp. This is a pokemon who won't even learn a simple Tackle attack until level 15. But we all know why we bother with 'karps, don't we?

And of all the crazy things, a guy back at Silph Co. gave me a Lapras. Nice. Although I don't understand why the pokedex would still credit me as the original trainer when I received it as a gift.

Time: 22:34
Badges: 5
Pokedex: 47 (Seen: 109)
Party: Snorlax lv42, Gengar lv44, Katamari (Meowth) lv35, Blastoise lv39, Venonat lv30, Magikarp lv14

Obviously the presidential election was a disappointment. I can only remind myself of several facts: My home state Pennsylvania went for Kerry, so my vote actually did count for something. 51% of the popular vote going to Bush is hardly a mandate, regardless of what FOX News would have you believe. And lastly, damn near half the country still hates Bush.

It sucks and it hurts and it's difficult to understand how so many people can continue to be enchanted by this man, given the unacceptable spending, the thinly veiled bigotry, his persistant incoherence, and the unbelievable right turn away from al Qaeda and into Iraq. So, in memoriam, here's some quotes from other Kerry-supporting weblogs:

from Wil Wheaton:
"Apparently, my country holds a fundamentally different set of values than I thought we did, and that scares the shit out of me. I still believe that Bush is bad for America, and though I'm virtually certain that the next four years will be an absolute disaster. Not just because we have gotten four more years of the Bush agenda, but because this election has been an enthusiastic endorsement of that agenda."

from Mark Evanier:
"Presidencies have a way of not going the way we expect. No one who voted for Bush four years ago thought he'd drive up the deficit and get us deep into "nation-building" in Iraq. His second term may be equally full of surprises for all. At the very least, he's the one who got us into debt and Iraq and now, he's the one who's going to have to figure out how to get us out of both. I sure hope he succeeds."

from Margaret Cho:
"I think Bush is probably really scared, if he is smart enough to be. He should be, because he has an enormously difficult task in front of him. There is no way he will regain public popularity. All he can manage to do is not fuck up too badly, which will probably prove to be impossible, as he is the rare maestro of the fuck up."

from Peter David:
"It is amazing that Bush can make 9/11 the centerpiece of his campaign without the vast majority of Americans saying, "Hey, wait...that happened on your watch, didn't it? And the guy who did it is still out there, but we're supposed to feel safer with you in charge? What's up with THAT?" It's like the people of South Park strangely feeling safer when Officer Barbrady is running things. And yet polls show they do. Of course, a poll also showed that 75% of Bush's supporters believe Saddam had WMDs and 72% think Saddam was connected with 9/11. So you just get the feeling a lot of people aren't paying attention."

from Evan Dorkin:

Why is no one talking about the damn-near-secret two player mode in San Andreas? I must be the only person impressed by it, because I have yet to see any review - online or off - that bothers to talk about it to any detail. Even Google is turning up crap on this one.

Me and Chris checked it out the other night. And no, I'm not talking about playing 2P pool at that bar down the street... I'm talking genuine dual-GTA, albeit slightly crippled.

I've only found one 2P icon in Los Santos. I would bet there's one in each city, perhaps more. The one I found is inside a fenced up hacienda. Start at the Johnson home and drive straight out the cul-de-sac. The area I'm talking about is just past the second bridge, on the right. You have to scale some fences to get to it.

Given the closed-off location of the icon, I figured it was some kind of enclosed paintball-esque arena dealie. But it's not! Once you activate a second controller and let Player Two choose a skin, you trigger a Free Roaming mission. So climb the fence and go nuts. If either player dies, you both are sent back to the hacienda.

The good news: it's not splitscreen. Although you'll have some wonky camera getting over the fence, it soon pulls way out so both players can see themselves. Yes, this means you have to stay fairly close to each other or risk running into an invisible Gauntlet wall. You can't enter buildings or trigger plot missions, but you can both pile in the same car and drive off. And recruit friendly NPCs into a gang and stalk the streets. I forgot to see if you can trigger any of the R3 missions.

We also couldn't figure out how to have one person drive a car while the other shoots from the window. The passenger player gets a moving reticle while riding, but neither of us could get it to do anything that resembled fun. That's why I was looking for "GTA San Andreas 2 player" for help... and getting nothing. Once this blog goes live I'll probably just end up Googling myself.

L1 is a dedicated "kiss" button in 2P mode. Seems to be purely for laughs.

To me, this seems to guarantee that GTA4 (or whatever they call it) will have online multiplayer. Consider this 2P mode the first draft.

Back in the world of 1P, I've cleared out all the Grove Street homie missions... Sweet, Ryder, Big Smoke, and that annoying tool O.G. Loc. I saved the Tenpenny missions for last. I'm starting to see C.J.'s character arc develop... lately he's been gettin' all existential with the gang, asking Big Smoke "why's it gotta be like this" and stuff. It looks to me like Carl is going to turn away from gangbanging and switch from acting-violence to reacting-violence, but I'm just guessing.

One difference between SA and the previous Grand Theft Autos is how slow your money rolls in. I had just over $2,000 to my name after running through everybody's gangland missions. That's nothing in the San Andreas economy. Then I discovered pimping. Hop into a Greenwood and you can trigger the R3 pimping mission, which is really just a complicated taxi run. You'll collect a ton of cash out of it, even after all the repairs you'll need for the Greenwood. I just purchased the $10,000 apartment in the lower left corner of the city and I still have $20,000 or so remaining.

Next time I play, I'm heading to the docks to find a moving van, because I want to devote some time to the burglary missions.