At last there is light at the end of the tunnel, and beyond that a man waiting with a claw hammer, ready to crack open your skull. Rockstar has confirmed with our friends over at GamesIndustry.biz that following a long struggle with the British Board of Film Classification, Manhunt 2 for the PS2, Wii, and PSP will be in the shops on October 31st, which is some sort of a holiday, or so I'm told.

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In August, EGM said Max Payne 3 was in development, and it was in development at Rockstar Vancouver. Rockstar Vancouver being a) an internal Rockstar studio and b) the guys behind the pretty-great Warriors game on the PSP. Now, in September, Xbox World 360 are saying the same thing, a report in the latest issue of the mag saying the game's in development at, yes, Rockstar Vancouver. Provided this is going off new info, it'll be interesting to see how the series goes in the hands of somebody else (original devs Remedy still toiling away, of course, on never-actually-coming-out Alan Wake).

Rockstar's Max Payne 3 emerges again [CVG] [Image]

Need something to play this weekend? Need it on the cheap? If you're on board with this whole digital distribution through Steam thing, some classic and not-so-classic Rockstar Games titles are being sold at bargain basement prices. Ten bucks for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? Five for Manhunt? You could do a hell of a lot worse. The entire Rockstar Games Collection is just $29.99 in U.S. dollars, making corruption by video game violence a steal.

The whole thing is time limited and may very well not be offered in the country of your choosing. For the lucky bargain hunters, have at it.

Rockstar Games [Steam]

It's Rockstar Games' first Grand Theft Auto IV Live Weekend on Xbox Live, and everybody's invited! You know the basics by now...anyone who signs up and participates in an online GTA IV match between now and Sunday evening has a chance to win hourly prizes consisting of GTA IV swag like shirts, hats, hoodies, licence plates, and more, with a grand prize of an Xbox 360 Elite console and even more swag up for grabs. Rockstar is doing their part as well, with anyone checking stats or joining the Rockstar Games Social Club over the weekend will be entered in a sweepstakes to win a home entertainment package valued at more than $6000 or a runner- prize of a custom GTA IV branded 360 and even more swag.

Things are kicking off today from 3:00PM to 9:00PM Eastern with a whole slew of GTA IV devs online to play against fans of the game. Hit the jump for a list of Rockstar gamertags to add to your friends list.

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It was only a matter of time before Rockstar's Nintendo DS offering Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars fell under the scrutiny of international anti-everything groups, and what better place to start than with the "ever reputable" UK news stable, The Sun, where the news of GTA DS's drug selling mini-game isn't going over so well.

Darren Gold of charity Drugsline said: "Anything using drug-dealing as entertainment is sending out the wrong message. "Glamorisation doesn't help our work trying to educate kids of the dangers of substance misuse."

See? Now that's two things parents should be doing but don't in one statement - educating their children about drugs and keeping them from playing mature video games. I do like the little addition that The Sun reporter slipped in at the end though. "Experts predict the final edition is unlikely to feature explicit criminality. " "Experts" have apparently never played a Grand Theft Auto title.

Fury Over Drug Deal Vid Game [The Sun via GamePolitics]

Rockstar might bring GTA Chinatown Wars to the iPhone!

Well they might, who knows? Mike Hickey, analyst for Janco Partners, thinks that he does. He told Game Daily,

"We expect GTA will likely be ported to Apple's iPhone platform, leveraging the device's touch screen technology and accelerometer."

Grand Theft Auto for iPhone? [GameDaily]

Slightly disappointing! Rockstar and Microsoft have today announced that the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will be running exclusively under the Games for Windows banner. So, yeah, if you want to play multiplayer, the fact Microsoft throw the word "exclusively" around suggests you'll have to use GFW Live's sub-par system. Granted, GTA IV's release will coincide with a range of updates for GFW Live, including a new interface and the yet-to-be-named marketplace, but you'll excuse us if we take a minute to stare at the "G" section of the Steam games list, think of what could have been and sigh, just a little.

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Yup, more from the big GTA: Chinatown Wars blowout that dominates the latest issue of Nintendo Power magazine. While the Wii would seem the most obvious Nintendo system to bring the GTA franchise to, Rockstar boss Dan Houser instead says the DS was the more "natural" fit:

[The Wii] didn't feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we'd done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld-focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven't really done any concrete, major thinking about the Wii, one way or another. They're sort of separate issues.

That and the money, Dan. Don't forget the printing of money.

GTA: Chinatown Wars [Nintendo Power, via Nintendo Everything]

On Thursday, McMike slipped you a batch of details from Nintendo Power regarding Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, which will be a bona fide M-rated sandboxer for the Nintendo DS when it drops (sometime before Feb. 2009) Well, Gamekyo (formerly JeuxFrance) has the November edition of the magazine in its possession, and five screenshots. If you'll excuse the halftone screen, which fuzzes up the graphics, you can get an idea of the cel-shaded graphics and isometric camera angle. All seven are in a gallery on the jump.

UPDATE: Nintendo Everything has shit-tons more screens at better resolutions. They lead the gallery.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars -- First Screens [Gamekyo via Team Teabag]