Goodbye Horses

Things you won't find in the fake-New-York-City of "Grand Theft Auto IV":

• Children
• Cats
• Dogs
• Horses

Here's where my lofty expectations were not fulfilled by the GTA programmers. I was expecting to be able to do a lot more than you actually can do in their city.

In fact, you can do LESS than what you can do in previous iterations of GTA.

(For some reason, though you have access to an airport with airplanes, they won't let you fly them. I can see NO REASON why they would NOT want to enable players to fly airplanes through NYC. No reason at all.)

As for the horses, no one was really expecting them, but I was secretly hoping for them. It would make sense. It would be fun as hell to ride horses through NYC—and to be able to stab their eyes out with a knife.

Alas, in faux-NYC, it's as if horses are some sci-fi fantasy.

I guess some programmers don't like horses.

Speaking of horse-races, screenwriter Jeff Nathanson discusses his contribution to the last Indiana Jones movie.