'Grand Theft Auto 4' set to entertain and inflame

The latest chapter in the wildly popular and controversial criminal action franchise from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc is poised to be the biggest entertainment product of the year, with expected first-week sales of up to $400 million -- dwarfing Hollywood's biggest box-office openings.

The handiwork of Take-Two's Rockstar game studio headed by British brothers Sam and Dan Houser, "Grand Theft Auto 4," which will be launched next Tuesday, promises to crank up the thuggish drama that made previous installments the equivalent of "The Godfather" for Generation PlayStation.

"We also felt over the last few years there hadn't been a great standout gangster movie. Maybe we could do something ourselves that would live alongside that stuff," Rockstar's Dan Houser told Variety magazine in a recent interview.

The gobs of processing power provided by Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 and Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 gaming consoles allowed Rockstar to imbue even background characters with personalities and unique behaviors.

"The game just feels like a movie now. The camera angles, the little details and things you look for in a film are things they can do now," said Ricardo Torres, editor-in-chief of GameSpot, a leading gaming review Web site.

CONTROVERSY, AS ALWAYS

Of course, it would not be a "Grand Theft Auto" game without controversy.

The series that gave gamers the freedom to shoot cops and hook up with prostitutes before beating them up and stealing their money has added drunk driving and lap dances to its repertoire of vicarious thrills.

"A lot of it is done just tongue-in-cheek. It has that same sense of humor (as past games) that is very juvenile but at the same time is a parody of American culture," said Crispin Boyer, senior executive editor of video games for the 1UP Network.