Rockstar promotional party for Grand Theft Auto IV at Cielo in New York City 

In the run-up to the Launch of Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar Games hosted a series of intimate parties at a variety of New York City hot spots. Dubbed "Rockstar Games Presents Music From Grand Theft Auto IV," the events were pitched to us via email by Rockstar PR director Darlan Monterisi as "a rare series of intimate events representing the eclectic musical soundtrack for the upcoming epic crime drama. Each event (listed below) provides an authentic, engaging experience for you to not only experience the sounds of GTA IV first-hand in their organic format, but also an opportunity for one-on-one face time with the artists themselves and select members of the Rockstar Games team." Following a hands-on session with the game's multiplayer back in March (lovingly described in an April post by Kotaku head honcho Brian Crecente), we were given a copy of this flyer...

 

...and invited to attend any or all of the above listed parties. Now, as you all know, we would rather be at Level Up HQ working the phones and the intertubes to bring you the freshly baked scoop upon which we've built our reputation. That's what we really care about, not drinking free top shelf liquor, listening to distinctive sounds some of the world's top DJs and rubbing shoulders and shaking our bleeps with the beautiful people who populate NYC's nightspots. But upon further reflection, we collectively determined that all work and no play (well, we do play, but technically, that's work) makes the Level Up staff a group of very dull boys indeed. So we threw on our nattiest Page 110 outfits and attended two of the events being held in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, Francois K's Deep Space party at Cielo on April 14th and DJ Premier's party (also featuring DJ Eclipse) at APT last Monday.

For the Francois K event, we met up with our gaming sensei, debate club nemesis and ardent defender a.k.a. MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, having decided to take the A train from our Midtown offices down to Cielo. After doing a couple of laps through the steadily growing crowd, we sat down to people watch and talk shop. We were soon joined by Rockstar publicist Job Stauffer, as well as the aforementioned Monterisi; her recent service to her country as a U.S. Marine--including a tour of duty in Iraq--prompted many questions of the "What was it like over there?" variety, followed by a somber discussion of the war itself.

But as the life of the party, Page 110 refuses to dwell on such heavy matters--we leave that to our colleagues over at High Score--so we shifted the conversation to something far more meaningful: the multiplayer mode in Grand Theft Auto IV. In our opinion, GTA's multiplayer feels at once revolutionary (confining respawns and pickup to a smaller section of their crime-ridden faux-NYC, but leaving the rest of the world open for sandbox shenanigans) and rudimentary (while it's a hoot and a holler that will carve out its share of online gamers on Xbox Live and Playstation Network, it doesn't have the same level of refinement as does GTA's story mode, which the developer has had many years and many titles to perfect its formula). But in a strange way, that's what has us excited, because Rockstar North clearly has laid the foundation for something that has the promise of being as special as the single-player games have been. And once the Scotsmen absorb all the feedback from the millions of gamers who take the plunge into its online experience, we have no doubt that something special is in the offing.

Totilo was nowhere to be found for Event Number Two, so we rolled dolo to APT, where we took this picture:

A Rockstar minion greeted us at the door and escorted us to the bar where Ms. Monterisi was mingling with yet another urban swank crowd. We made our way over to a corner window sill, set our drinks down, took this picture...

 Rockstar promotional party for Grand Theft Auto IV at APT in New York City

...and chatted about the possibility of GTA IV being covered in the pages of Newsweek. (Stay tuned.) We were joined a short while later by Rockstar marketing boss Alex Moulle-Bertaux, who came to the company last year from TBWA/Media Arts Lab in L.A., where he'd served as the worldwide group account director on the Apple account, working on campaigns for Mac, iPod, iTunes and iPhone. Topic of conversation that we can reveal: the pulling of the GTA IV ads from Chicago city buses, conducted over sliders and vodka tonics.

Before we concluded our evening, Monterisi took us downstairs to chat with Rockstar veteran Jennifer Kolbe. Over the entirely fitting old school sounds of Public Enemy ("Fight the Power,") and Audio Two ("Top Billin' "), Kolbe compared the game's long development to the gestation of a child and declared that she and her colleagues were more than ready to give birth. A few days later one of Rockstar's shiny, reflective children would show up on the doorstep of Level Up HQ, with all kinds of instructions for its proper care and feeding. But on that night, we thanked Kolbe and company for their series of soirees, and headed back to the grind.