test

Response #1

When I first played Grand Theft Auto III, the one feature that jumped out at me was the almost unrestricted freedom to explore Liberty City. The main character can go anyplace on the streets, on top of buildings, in buildings (unfortunately, only a few), and anywhere else he can conceivably get by jumping, ramping cars, and exploring hidden alleyways. There are tons of side-quests and things to do besides follow along the actual storyline, including the simple pleasures of stealing fast cars, battling police, and killing random people on the street.
The only unrealistic restrictions I can find are the inability to enter many of the buildings, and the fact that your character finds water extremely lethal. He can jump, grab people out of cars, and use a variety of destructive weapons, but the nameless protagonist of GTA 3 can't swim. Other than that though, anything goes in this revolutionary game.
The only other game I've played with freedom comparable to GTA's is Betrayal in Antara, the old RPG game put out by Sierra on PC a long time ago. In that game you could also deviate from the storyline and explore the world at your leisure, interacting with characters in towns that had nothing to do with where you were "supposed to be" according to the story.
My first experiences of GTA 3 comprised of sharing a few beers with friends while taking turns killing pedestrians, blowing up police cars, and generally causing utter mayhem in liberty city. None of us were extreme video gamers, but there was something about messing around on this game comparable to watching football. This is the first game I've heard of that preps and jocks and others who generally only play video games in private (if at all) can feel perfectly cool playing with six or seven of their friends. GTA 3 is something completely new and very successful, I'm sure games in the future will become more interactive in suit.

Response #2

Before beginning The End of Books-or Books Without End by J. Y. Douglas, I had never heard of hypertext. As the subject of her novel, Douglas presents hypertext as a new medium comparable to television and radio, although it is still in the infancy of its development. However, if the reader has never been exposed to hypertext, especially to sources like afternoon and Victory Garden, which are commonly used by Ms. Douglas, The End of Books is hard to comprehend. Unable to contain myself, I searched for free hypertext and began reading Michael Joyce's "On the Birthday of the Stranger." When I first tried to navigate this hypertext short story, I could make no sense of the seemingly random sections of text the links took me to. While the individual sections were well written, I could discern no pattern, no continuity, between one link and another. Coming back to the site after reading more of TEOB, however, I began to make sense of the links, and discovered a system of navigation where I can at least always get to a new section of text. I realized that the blocks of text are mostly scenes from different points in the day of the stranger's birthday, although every once in a while I'll read something in first person from the view of a woman, or in third person about a woman, so I still haven't figured out everything yet. Now that I have a pattern to follow, I am growing more interested in the story and finding it an enjoyable and interesting read.