video games

Upcoming wastes of time

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Mentioning Midnight Club in the last post reminded me to go and find out when the next edition of the franchise is due. Midnight Club: Los Angeles is due out on March 28th (it’s also available for the PS3).

Due a month after that is Grand Theft Auto IV (again, also available for PS3, or in Special Edition packaging).

Both are products of Rockstar Games, a company not known for its socially responsible game play. One of the great joys of Midnight Club is causing mayhem and destruction amongst the humdrum commuters who get in your way. The gangster’s rise storylines of the GTA franchise are wonderfuly immoral as well. State of Emergency for the PS2, a ‘riot sim’ as one reviewer puts it, was an entertaining exercise in destruction and multiple on screen characters, but incredibly shallow for long term gameplay compared to its big brother. I had a few hours fun smashing and burning and ‘sploding until someone went and traded it in. Manhunt 2 went so far over the top that it was banned in this country until recently and I atill can’t find a listing for it on Amazon.

All of which pedigree makes it a little odd to find- nestled between the violence, gunplay and speed of the Rockstar oeuvre- Table Tennis (also available for the Wii). It just seems wrong, like finding a Hello Kitty doll in a box of hand grenades.

Pedal to the metal and finger on the trigger

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Ever since my youthful days of playing Car Wars I’ve been on the lookout for a video game that captured the joy of driving along blowing shit up that I got from the card and graph paper experience. Interstate ’76 (and its less satisfying sequel Interstate ’82), came closest, with a storyline, similar damage allocation (in ’76 anyway) and scope for customisation and level building. The Interstate series still has a loyal following and has inspired such homages as Battlefield Interstate ’82, a Battlefield 1942 mod. Sadly, I’ve long since lost my I76 and I82 disks. I may have to get myself new copies.

Full Auto isn’t a pretender to the Interstate crown- it’s more Burnout with guns- but it’s still a satisfying diversion. It combines many of the standard racing game formulae with a highly destructable environment and sets you loose with twin M60s on the bonnet and a mine layer in the boot (or other weapons combos, but that’s our favourite). The aim isn’t just to finish first. In the same way that Project Gotham has Kudos points, Full Auto doles out Wreck points for maximum carnage. The coveted Full and Semi Auto ranks usually require minimum amounts of wreck points, so you can’t just plan to get ahead and stay ahead, you have to shoot everything that moves as well.

One of the best features of the game is Unwreck, which allows you to rewind back from a cock up or destruction. We thought it was a bit of a gimmick, until we tried it. It’s been our salvation several times when we’ve found subtlety and precision haven’t quite worked.

There’s supposedly a storyline to the game- something to do with gangs of homicidal street racers trying to take over your town and the only way to stop them being to cause even more damage than they do- but I’ve yet to see evidence of it. We’ve worked our way through series for the three different classes of vehicle and now we’re moving on to themed races. Maybe they’ll provide the story, but who cares?

There’s a sequel- Full Auto 2: Battlelines, but it seems to only be available for the PS3, which is disappointing for 360 owners such as us.

Now, if we could only get Damian to let us mount shotguns on his car……..

Racing games- adding Dirt to the wishlist

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I’ve just found an addition to the big list of driving games from last month.

DIRT is the latest Colin McRae racing game, and is available for PC, XBox 360 and PS3. It moves away from pure point to point rallying and incorporates dirt tracks, trucks and hill climbs- including the legendary Pikes Peak. (It was because I was looking for a game incorporating the Peak that I found the game.) The graphics look stunning and the review I read at GameTrailers is favourable.

Now, I could see if my pc’s up to the job, or someone could be lovely and buy me a 360. Go on, you know you want to.

Get in the car and drive

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Casa Spinneyhead loves driving games. I’ve been meaning to write a group review of them for a while, so here goes.

We haven’t tried the most recent version of Gran Turismo, because we don’t have a PS3, but have played most of the others between us. There’s not a lot to be said about Gran Turismo that hasn’t been said elsewhere. It is the daddy of racing games, but it appeals more to the perfectionist than others in the genre.

GT3‘s cheat of choice was to build the most powerful car possible and use the extra horses to compensate for poor driving. With GT4 we discovered B mode, where you play as the team manager, sitting on the pit wall working out strategies and telling your driver how aggressive to be. Unlike professional drivers, they actually pay attention to you.

For beautiful graphics, realistic cars and handling and masses of tuning options, Gran Turismo is your best bet. The lack of damage, given the way we drive, is a bonus as well.

Project Gotham Racing 2 offers no tuning options, and it does have damage and less realistic handling. Which makes it much more fun, naturally. The aim is to collect Kudos, rather than credits, to progress. You don’t just get points for winning races. They’re awarded for drifts, air and other factors of style. Which suits us fine, because we have a hard time keeping our cars going in a straight line. Night time races, with damage taking out your headlights, are a special kind of challenge. Project Gotham 3 is available for the Xbox 360, but we don’t have one of those either.

Need For Speed: Carbon places great emphasis on drifting as well. There are events dedicated to it and it plays an important role in the pursuit races as a way to block the other drivers. We haven’t progressed very far on the career game, which takes you from neophyte drifter to, I guess, King of the sideways drivers. Customising your car is, of course, an important element in the game, allowing you to build the tuner of your dreams.

Body building is a big part of Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition. Our in house competition is to see how tacky our cars can be. This is our current favourite driver, to the extent that we’ve started all over again.

Rockstar aren’t famed for their socially responsible games. Whilst you can’t run anyone over the way Grand Theft Auto lets you, there’s a lot of scope for property damage. Win money racing through three cities (the Remix adds Tokyo and new cars) and modify your car for speed and style along the way. Routes are peppered with destructible architecture and jumps. Hitting a ramp at full boost can see you spending a long, long time in the air. The household’s favourite ride is the Chrysler 300C. It’s no coincidence that we started seeing so many on Manchester’s roads right after we started playing it.

The Burnout series was addictive from the start, but it wasn’t until number three that it really came through on its promise of being able to take out other racers using buildings and traffic. This makes the racing as addictive as the crashing sections, which were the highlight of the previous versions. Sadly, Burnout: Revenge screwed up a lot of features and is much less playable. There’s no tuning or purchasing of cars in these games, just make your choice based upon weight and speed and get out there and cause carnage.

We tried a Formula One game, but it just didn’t work for us. Another spin off of a real racing series- Colin McRae Rally 2005– was far better. How much better we can’t say, because the game really does take account of damage and we’re far too fond of interacting with the scenery to keep our cars intact. Damage, in multi stage rallies, can only be partially fixed by allocating time to different jobs. If we could learn to stay on the road, this could become an addiction.

There are a few also rans in the search for the perfect driving game. Forza Motorsport didn’t impress. Forza 2 might be an improvement but, again, we don’t have a 360. Ford Racing was poor, its unique- and only- selling point being the ability to drive Henry’s products. NASCAR was even worse. Midtown Madness is fun, but not as much as so many of those listed above. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit seems slow and low quality compared to later versions.

You know you want one (and if you don't, can you send it to me instead?)

This entry was posted in Playstation video games Wants XBox on by

I’m not quite rich, or enthusiastic, enough to have queued for a Playstation 3 last night, but obviously I wouldn’t refuse one if offered.

On the other hand, I can wait. The flagship Playstation game is probably Gran Turismo, and Gran Turismo 5 isn’t coming out until next year. The other must-have game, Grand Theft Auto 4, is coming out sooner but is going to be available for the XBox 360 as well.

In fact, if you can’t stretch to a PS3, I will take an XBox 360, particularly if you can throw in Project Gotham 3 and a few other games.

"I've just played two hours of Gran Turismo. Dare me to drive?"

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Playing driving games encourages people to take risks when they get in their cars. This is particularly true of young male drivers, who are already a menace to themselves and others anyway.

We play a lot of driving games in casa Spinneyhead. It’s probably for the best that two of us don’t have cars.

Our current favourite, FYI, is Midnight Club 3: DUB edition

It's all Mii, Mii, Mii

This entry was posted in Mii MySpace Wii on by

http://miieditor.blogspot.com/
The Wii Mii editor blog.  It’s been commented that my Mii is a good representation, so I was thinking of exporting it as a JPEG or GIF and using it as my picture on MySpace/ Blogger/ etc..  Maybe somewhere in the archives this blog will tell me how to do that.

http://wiisnap.com/feature/the-pc-mii-editor-guide/
Or perhaps one of the tools reviewed here will do it for me.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,,2007714,00.html
On the subject of MiiSpace, it long ago past the point where it became unassailable as the social networking site for the whole world.  The article also touches on something that annoyed me when I was looking around last night- the effective usurping of rights to material uploaded to the site.  There doesn’t seem to be a way to embed my Revver videos and MySpace pockets the advertising revenue generated if I upload stuff.  As the cast, crew and I put so much effort into Memory there’s no way we’re going to let Rupet Murdoch make money off it.  Perhaps I can put the relevant code into blog posts on the site, we’ll see.