Vehicular Robbery Five Thoughts (GTA 5 For The Idiots)

Alright man, this is a post about Grand Theft Auto 5.  I'm pretty sure a few of you have played this obscure gem of a game.  I mean it only made $800 million on first day sales (beating out Modern Warfare 3's meager $500 mil) and had more than a thousand people work on it.  But I might as well talk about it, especially since driving is a crucial part of the game which means millions of people are gonna go cruising the streets of San Andreas.  So let's get this rant out of the way now--what I liked and disliked about the game.  Please note I haven't played GTA Online yet.

DRIVING

* It's fun, I really enjoyed it.  They loosened up the handling from GTA4 so you have more control at high speeds.  It reminds me of San Francisco Rush but with normal gravity and you're less likely to spin out.  The cars is very springy and the camera shakes at high speeds which conveys a nice sense of speed.

* The car damage is well done too.  Unlike previous GTAs, simply running into stuff at normal speeds won't cause the car to ignite into a fireball.  Instead, the wheels will get jammed or pop which has a slight impact on handling, plus engine power can drop off rapidly which basically renders the vehicle useless on its own.  The cars seem tougher this time around too.  The visual damage is toned down a bit too so you car doesn't look like a total piece of crap after a wreck or two.  The only thing that irks me is that the car lights go out from even the slightest wreck which means at night, you're driving around in the dark too often.

* Love the car selection in the game--you can see pictures of each here.  Watching my brother play the first time, I watched him jack a Porsche and before the text popped up, I said "that's a Comet" and surely it was.  Jacks a Viper, "that's a Banshee."  Jacks a Lamborghini, "that's an Infernus."  I like how they gave fake names to the car manufacturers--Vapid = Ford, Bravado = Dodge, Declasse = GM, Canis = Jeep, Benefactor = Mercedes, Obey = Audi, Ubermacht = BMW, Pegassi = Lamborghini.  I kinda wish there were more definitive vintage muscle cars in the game (they're all kinda bland IMO) as well as a stock car (the Hotring Racer from previous GTAs) but you can always get a Buffalo (Dodge Charger) and put a stock car spoiler on it.  Which leads to...

* Car tuning!  You can take any standard car to Los Santos Customs and soup it up some.  Change the paint job and rims, add a few body mods, even install some performance parts.  The customization is really shallow though.  Paint jobs are still limited to basic two-tone paint jobs (no generic flames/stripe mods) and with the exception of turbo, lower ride height, and bulletproof tires, there's not much improvement you can make to the cars.  Handling and acceleration receive a boost but if you were expecting Forza or even NFS customization, you will be highly disappointed.  Which leads to another...

* One thing that really irks me about a lot of racers is the lack of a speedometer.  I mean why not?  You're cruising along and you have the GPS, ammo count, and maybe the phone, so this whole "minimal HUD = good" crap is nonsense.  So why not add a MPH/KPH counter somewhere?  It'd make cruising down the highway that much more intimidating.

* And now to the subject of actual racing (or driving really fast).  I harped on this before a while ago--how GTA city racing isn't all that great.  The "racing" is kind of tedious for one reason--it's WAY too easy to hit something and come to a dead stop.  In traditional arcade racing, if you smack into something, at least you'll still have some forward momentum.  But here, obstacles littered near the street like trees, power poles, even seemingly innocent things like metal or wooden signs cause you to immediately die and come to a dead stop.  Literally, I saw my brother drive a big Ford (errr, Vapid) truck through a volleyball net, the truck stopped, and the net was still intact.  What's the deal?  Also, are there any other street races in the game besides this one near Franklin's house?

* The camera angle while driving.  I do like how the camera pitch is close to the ground--gives it a great sense of speed and all that.  But sometimes I wish I was driving with a camera that was higher above the ground so you can see over the traffic and get a better sense of the traffic and racing line.  The primary use for this would be when the car pitch changes (you go up/down a hill).  Sure you can use the joystick to move the camera up but that can get tedious.  I can't tell you how many times I would go over the hills near Michael's house only to hit a SUV that decided to stall in the middle of the road and once I saw it, it was too late.

* Added the ability to rotate the car while airborne.  This can be insanely helpful and it's not overly sensitive like the wings from Rush 2049.  But what annoys me the most is that it only affects the pitch and roll, not the pitch and yaw (pitch = up and downhill, yaw = steer left and right, roll = flip over sideways).  It's a real mindf**k because I keep thinking I can change the yaw while airborne, plus I tend to prematurely hold the steering wheel in the direction I want to turn when I hit the ground to steer away from rolling over.  But rolling in midair just makes things more perplexing for me.

* Why isn't there an instant replay feature in this game?  When you perform a nice stunt or narrow escape--wouldn't it be nice to see it again?  Can't tell you how many times me or my brother did something YouTube-worthy only to say "crap, we'll never ever see that happen again."  Here's an example--thank God this guy was recording at the time!!

* Also seems really easy to die when riding a bike or four-wheeler.  It's hella fun to go cruising off-road on one of these but if you hit a rock or tree and stumble a moderate distance, you can die pretty quickly.  Boo!

* One last thing, it's about saving cars in the garage.  Each character has a default vehicle that even if they lose, it still appears in their driveway (Franklin = Buffalo, Michael = Tailgater, Trevor = Bodhi).  That's great and all, you can mod those vehicles and they keep 'em forever, but if I use another vehicle, sometimes it appears in your driveway or impound lot, sometimes it doesn't.  As Michael, I stole a Tornado (Chevy Belair), modded it, took it to a mission, had to leave the car behind and hop in a stupid van or something.  I return back to where I left the Tornado and it was gone.  Thankfully, I return home and the Tornado is parked in my driveway!  I then take the Tornado to another mission, leave it behind, and return home thinking the Tornado will still be there.  WRONG!  Instead, the Tornado is replaced by the daughter's Weeny Issi (Mini Cooper) convertible and the Tornado was never found again.  I really wish you could designate one or two vehicles as "yours" to permanently respawn at your house but I'm not sure you can do that.  Bummer...

* Radio stations!  Guess this belongs in the driving section.  Here's a list of all the songs in the game with YouTube links.  I wasn't too crazy about these this time around.  I'm still convinced Vice City followed by San Andreas had the best radio stations (70's/80's music FTW).  For me, there were a few gems in GTA5 that I had to add to my music collection, primarily The Trammps's Rubber Band and Foreigner's Dirty White Boy.  But a lot of it was "ehh, whatever."  It's like a bag of trail mix--some good songs I really wanted to listen to, others I had to change the channel.  The one classic rock station had some great stuff--Dirty White Boy, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, Photograph, Hollywood Nights, Radio Ga Ga, the rest was soft rock I couldn't bear.  Needs more awesome driving music!  Why no metal stations like V-Rock from Vice City?  Probably my most listened-to stations in terms of "switch to it and not change it every minute" would be Radio Los Santos (rap) and Channel-X (punk), also Vinewood Boulevard Radio (dudebro rock) though that last one gets on my nerves quickly.  FWIW, when I heard Adolescents' Amoeba on the punk station for the very first time, instant Tony Hawk 3 nostalgia came to mind and I pissed myself.

* Overall, GTA 5 is a fun driving game.  But a fun racing game?  No, not really.  Aside from one NFS/Midnite Club-style event and missions that involve keeping up with a fleeing target, there's no real "racing" in this game whatsoever.

* CHECK OUT THIS GIF I SAW ON REDDIT:

EVERYTHING ELSE

* Really nice draw distance.  Unlike previous games that would utilize fog to hide the pop-up, here you can see nearly forever.  Stand on Mount Chiliad's summit and see what I mean.  Great work for aging hardware in the twilight stage of its life.

* Shooting!  Okay, the auto-aiming is really nice since you can pop targets one at a time--it's really cheap at times, I admit.  But the problem happens when you fall out of auto-aim, you have to put the gun down, look at the guy, then put it up again just to lock on to the person.  This is tedious as hell when trying to kill people at close-quarters since you have to pivot the camera directly at him--try rotating 90-degrees only to die.  Manual aim is a bit difficult to get used to.  Games like Call of Duty have looking down sights and aim assist to lower sensitivity when aiming at people, though GTA doesn't seem to have that so it's hard to get a precise shot on anything.  Overall, if I wanted to shoot people, I'd rather play Call of Duty because in GTA, shooting people is either too easy or too hard.

* Characters!  The three characters are pretty cool.  Franklin has no backstory other than "he's a hustla trying to make it big" but I'm cool with that.  He seems really "nice" for a GTA protagonist and has the hood lingo to boot and that's fine with me ("shit I always tryin to make some paper doo").  Michael is basically Tommy Vercetti as a family man, again kind of a cool guy with a nice pair of man boobs, plus he has a deep backstory that propels the game forward.  As for Trevor...wow, he seems like the quintessential GTA protagonist.  The dude is hilarious.  He does say and do some things you'll find detestable but this is the kind of guy I can see winning a GameFAQs character contest round.  So props to Trevor and his big balls.

* Cops are too aggressive with the stars.  If you steal a car or blow something up, sometimes you'll get one star and get away easily because cops will take a while to get over to your location.  Otherwise, they just have a vendetta against you, being the protagonist of one of the most vile, disgusting games in recent history.  Shoot a pedestrian or gangster dead, get one star.  Bump into a police car, get two stars.  Gimme a break.

* Why is GTA 5's rendition of San Andreas on a big island out in the middle of the ocean?  This was also in GTA way back to 3, possibly earlier than that.  Saints Row could get away with their city being on a continent--here, being stranded on a large island just seems kinda pathetic, really.

* I beat the whole game and the missions were fair with a nice variety.  I don't feel like replaying them, particularly because of the funny shooting segments, but if you're a sucker for movie-based games that hold your hand with liberal use of checkpoints, well here you go, enjoy it.  MILD SPOILERS: The three multiple endings kinda sucked though, only one is the true rewarding ending with some badass missions to finish it off.  The other two are tacked on and don't really tie up anything other than to satisfy some vendetta against one of the other playable characters.  So you know which ending to pick, the one where everyone is happy and all the punk-ass bitches that harassed you the whole game die. :)

* I finally reached 70,000 Gamerscore cause of this game.  And yet I don't plan on getting the Xbox One so I guess my score ends there.  Playing through all these outdated sports games for the cheap achievements will definitely be worth it when I'm 90 years old.

* On the mission where Trevor works on the dock, you can crush this guy here with a crate and the mission still continues just fine.  I've done it on every playthrough, it's great.  I cried laughing over it, man I'm pathetic. :D

* This is the best cutscene glitch video I've seen and I happened to record it.  I only regret that I recorded the very end of it (couldn't find my phone soon enough).  If you get cops tailing you when you begin a cutscene, they will invade the scene and shoot you while it's playing.

Oh my gosh...I've said way too much about this game.  There's a few more things but I want to call it quits now.  Overall, great game despite my nitpicks but I didn't get the "wow, this game is awesome" vibe like I did playing Vice City or San Andreas (the PS2 one) for the first time.  Must be due to my age--I'm too cynical to enjoy games fully anymore--old games are always better than new ones.  Okay, good night everyone.

REVIEW SCORE: A crappy not-well-thought-out 8 out of 10

Things Are Looking Up For 90's Arcade Racer/Arcade Games

A recent update from the guys over at The 90's Arcade Racer.

At this point some of you may feel like we’ve been working on ‘90s Arcade Racer since the ‘90s. That’s not entirely true, while Antonis and I were indeed playing Scud Race (Super GT in the US) and Daytona USA some 20 years--that was just preparation for the game we’re developing now.

Here’s what’s been happening the last couple of months with ‘90s Arcade Racer.

Physics, physics and more physics!

In the 100+ hours I’ve spent on racetracks combined with the thousands of hours logged playing racing video games, there’s something that feels quite counterintuitive to the genre. You would think super realistic racing games would have super accurate and lifelike physics -- but that doesn't necessarily always make a better product. To really give the sensation of speed, gravity, lateral gravity, as a designer you end up removing many functions that make a vehicle simulation “real”, in the theoretical sense. A driving simulator, more often than not feels like a floaty, unresponsive boat. Part of that is because you can’t feel yourself slinking around a bucket seat, you don’t have the sensation of a vehicle’s weight shift between the four corners; there’s an entirely missing dimension in racing games.

Antonis and I are going for a fun and arcade racing feel, we’ve said that from the start. Those two descriptors are equally important to the project. Getting to the balance of an arcade feel while offering a challenging experience and still giving the car some complex real-world behaviors is where our own challenge begins.

Once you start playing a racing game, especially an arcade-style one, terminology like camber, caster, differentials, toe, torque and drivetrain are quickly forgotten. Initially I spent a lot of time trying to get an arcade feel out of a real vehicle simulation. After extensive experimentation what Antonis and I found was that it just wasn’t working.

In this case it’s much easier to build something from zero and create an experience that perfectly recreates the perception and expectation we all have of a typical arcade racer. Version 2.0 of ‘90s Arcade Racer physics is built within the expressed intention of creating a real arcade racing game. What that means is that the game is really feeling like should. The car reacts in a way that is indicative of an arcade racer, it moves and accelerates properly and now we have a really fun grip and drift mechanic within the game. Although it’s been challenging having to build physics from nothing, this has allowed us to really build the vehicles exactly how we want and how they should feel.

I’m pretty confident that we’re very much in the right direction with the physics and you’ll probably agree once you have an opportunity to play it. Antonis, has been doing great work on creating the world of ‘90s Arcade Racer. But I’ll let him do that update.

Recently, I was concerned about the progress that was made towards the car handling in the game.  I even sent them a note beforehand asking "are you going to post a new video of the car handling?  what's it going to be like?" to which they replied "we're working on it."  I get a good vibe from this recent post--that their heart's in the right place and they aren't going to half-ass the most important part of a racing game.  Visuals are great and all but if I putter around in a car that feels like something spawned from a Unity tutorial, then the whole thing is for naught!

I bolded part of the post above because it's really damn important.  I talked about it before--sense of speed in racing games.  Sense of speed is almost incompatible with realism.  As long as you're in your living room sitting on a couch, you're not going to get a sense of speed by looking at realistic car physics on screen--the "floaty, unresponsive boat" feeling--unless you're willing to break some rules and go unrealistic in some aspects (i.e. excessive vibration of the suspension at high speeds).  I'm glad they recognize this golden rule!

You know, I've programmed vehicle handling over different mediums--Unity, Unreal, and stupid OpenGL car sprites.  With Unity and Unreal, you make these "wheel colliders" that you attach to the vehicle and do all the nitty gritty physics work for you--you set the torque, braking, suspension, skidpad, etc. and let the "realistic" car handling take over.  Yet I don't think it's possible to recreate a Daytona, Scud Race, or OutRun using built-in tire physics--the power comes from the entire car itself, not the four wheels.  Since these are 15-20 year old games, I doubt they were so advanced as to use realistic tire physics anyway.

If you're confused, imagine the car is pushed forward by one big invisible wheel instead of four tiny visible wheels.  By not using wheel physics, you're simplifying the vehicle handling but it allows you to precisely program the car handling the way you want, hence giving the car some predictable effects--like being able to slide at a fixed angle or accelerate/steer normally with your tires shredded up from a wreck.   In other words, you look at the handling of a 2D game like Super Sprint that technically doesn't "recognize" wheel torque and whatnot--it's just a block sliding on the screen--nowhere in the code does it mention "suspension" or other real-life handling terms.  The tire effects are dictated by the car, not the other way around, so when the tires kick up smoke and whatnot, the tires aren't really doing "anything," it's just for show.

I really want to see how they pull it off code-wise because I'm a nerd like that, heh.  If Super Sprint has taught me anything, it's that car handling takes a LOT of iteration to get it right--you can't just skimp on it.  Sadly, me passing on realistic car handling is why I'm often confused by real-life tuning like in GT and Forza.  Oh well, it's a fair trade--would rather make fun racing games than realistic ones! :)

There's still more to do.  They really need to implement manual transmission into the game (which I don't doubt they will), plus get some great audio too.  I want to hear roaring engines and a kickass soundtrack.  Good luck trying to do so without Takenobu Mitsuyoshi or Dennis St. James.  If in doubt, then just emulate AC/DC since that's not bad at all. :)

Just an aside while we're on the topic of realistic vs. non-realstic games.  I stumbled upon a very interesting Grand Theft Auto 5 GameFAQs topic and read a very intriguing post.  Yes, something good that came out of GameFAQs, it's a miracle.  But here's a post from NeonYoshi11:

Just played san andreas 3 months ago.

It looks like crap.

any game going for "realism" will eventually looks like crap.

This is why Art Style matters more than realism.

This is why Wind Waker still looks better than most games today, even the GC version.

IF you look closely, to disguise the old tech in the PS3/Xbox360 they use art that resembles realistm mixed with cel shading.

So it's got a bit of Street Fighter 4 in it, but in a realistic way, this allows them to improve "graphics" while not taking away performance of the game.

That's dead on.  Realism is basically an always-moving bullseye.  Even if you hit it, the bullseye keeps moving without you.  It's why a lot of games which sell off realistic graphics (Forza, Madden, etc.) often go through numerous iterations and why games like Daytona USA and OutRun 2, while super-old, still stand out and look fun to play.  Sadly, I wonder if the gaming gods get the memo since they're fine and dandy with destroying console backwards compatibility and DRMs that shred old games.  Just make sure to give your game differentiators so that your game won't become GameStop used game filler ten years down the road.  Antonis and The 90's Arcade Racer have a firm understanding of this!  Okay, you get the idea, I'm done for now.

FUNNY CAR MEME IMAGE DUMP

I have a bunch of funny car/racing/Sega memes & gifs for you.  Found 'em off random websites like GameFAQs, Reddit, every terrible website out there over the years.  And since I'm too lazy to make an actual good post, this one's for you!

Because of the large number of pics, you must hit the jump to load the page.  Don't want to crash anyone's browsers here.

Multi Theft Auto: A Better GTA Than That Stupid GTA IV

This isn't meant to be a wordy post but you learn something new everyday so check it out.

Learned about a new mod today for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on the PC.  It's called "Multi Theft Auto."  It's supposed to be like Garry's Mod for GTA in that you can mess around with many other players in a single GTA world.  Obviously, the main hook for me is the massively-multiplayer racing modes.  Here's some vids and I have to tell ya, I'm stunned how much you can do:

European Pro Gamers...no doubt there are guys from The Netherlands practicing 18 hours a day.  Anyway, there's a huge amount of stunt tracks like out of San Francisco Rush.  And the OJ Simpson "chase the pink car" mode is f'n gold.

Just a traditional race.  I'm not a fan of the glowy node things but it looks great.

Another race mode with incredibly annoying music and changing vehicles (you mean like Sonic All-Stars Racing 2???  Sumo Digital are SLACKERS).

Deathmatch mode--cops vs gangsters.

Stunt movie.  OSHI--IS THAT GUNS n' ROSES???


A better version of DiCE/evil EA's Battlefield 3.

Rage face mod and some weird demolition derby/stunt map.

Driving on Rainbow Road...I still hate this music (sorry guys).

EDIT: This is just a handful of gameplay videos I found out.  It just scratches the surface.  So there's a lot more to do with this mod.

I remember playing online GTA for Vice City years ago...you picked from a couple different characters (a cop, Tommy Vercetti's gang, a bank robber, etc) who had different weapons and you ran around town shooting each other.  You could also have car races but there were no in-game rules for that--the other players had to coordinate to do this.  And yet this mod has greatly evolved since then.  I like this because it proves A. that fan mods/creations are awesome, maybe even better than the multi-million dollar studios and B. that "old" games like GTA:SA, Half-Life 1, and so forth are not down and out.

Guess it's worth checking out if you're into this sort of thing.  The community is still alive but for how long, I don't know:

MTA Main Page.

MTA on YouTube.

MTA on Steam.

Clearly we cannot bring up other racing games without bring up Sega so here's some GTA mods for that:

Initial D.

Derpy Sonic needs to get away on a snowboard!

Forza On The Horizon...(Open-World Racing!!)

I'll just cut to the chase now--my E3 "pick" for favorite game goes to Lego City.  I like it--it's colorful, happy fun and if it has vehicles in it, it'll be awesome.  Everything else was uber-violent or made by Nintendo.

There's one problem though...it's only for Wii U.  Rofl.  What am I going to play now...oh God no don't say it--

So here's Forza Horizon again.  I think my preliminary analysis was a bit harsh, but what else can you say?  That's how I genuinely felt upon seeing the news.  Forza has gone from a "serious" sim racer to a exaggerated speed festival with a bunch of things that are ripped right out the NFS formula.

Here's a Jalopnik article I will be referring to.  FYI, Jalopnik does a lot of promos with Forza--some of the DLC has the word "Jalopnik" written right on it.  So a Jalopnik blogger talks to some game boss producer or something at the Forza booth and we learn some things:


Microsoft is calling Forza Horizon an "action racing" game, and that underscores the big conceptual difference between it and Forza 4. Where Forza 4 is more of a racing simulator, this is more of an arcade-ish game.

I just think it's absurd that you need to tack on the phrase "action" to a racing game.  Isn't the racing itself action on its own?  Will this game add other action stuff like being able to get out of the car and run from cops?  Oh wait, someone did that already and it sucked.


He's the one who told me you'll be able to race a '70s Boss Mustang against a WWII P51 Mustang fighter. Sold.

Um, how can a car compete with a plane anyway?  Maybe in a drag race or a Amazing Race contest (get to the bus station locker first and win a million dollars), sure, but otherwise, the plane can just fly above the track and the car can't.  So that's fair.  You can't even pilot the plane (I assume) so what's the point?  This smells like one of those selling point story mode things that devs drop in the game to hype up interest.  Take NFS: the Run: Jack flips the police car over on the train tracks and busts out just in time.  And Jack dodges falling boulders along the mountainside.  They are story/campaign-related things that mean jack (pun intended) once you've played though it a few times.  It's cinematics & production value, that's all.  Very little to do with actual gameplay.


The lighting is dramatically more varied, with a low sun in the sky giving everything a striking golden cast, and your cars' lights actually work.

I must say that I applaud the Forza team for bringing out a lot of contrast in the environment.  That is a GOOD thing.  However, the lighting has me worried quite a bit.  Just looking at the screens (including the first one above), it looks a lot like they tweaked the hue values somewhat.  Games tend to do that nowadays, particularly the orange/teal hue in every damn action movie that's supposed to add "zing" to their visuals.  While Forza Horizon doesn't go to that extreme, it seems like they baked in too much yellow/orange lighting...enough to irk me just enough to bring this point up.

At least Forza Horizon doesn't exhibit the same dreary visuals you see from games like GRID or DiRT.  That would be terrible.

From what I saw, at times Forza Horizon seems to exhibit this phony lighting that is more obnoxious than anything.  I'll have to sit through even more gameplay first.  Wait until the game's release.  Whatever, we'll see how the game's final product looks first.

BTW, I'm glad that this game will have night driving for the first time.  Took you guys five games to get around to it, huh?  In the meantime, Gran Turismo had night driving from the start (see Special Stage Route 5).  Forza sucks.


The physics are tweaked just a bit, with your car feeling a bit more lively than in Forza 4, a bit more inclined to drama.

I think this is a good thing.  If it captures the little details that make games like Daytona or Outrun so fun to drive (responsive handling, car trembles at high speed, etc.), then that might be a saving grace.  But they said the same stuff in just about every other damn arcade racer (NFS comes to mind, again...) so I'm not holding my breath.


There's many more objects in the environment, guard rails and signs and fences, and they can all be effectively destroyed by some sloppy driving. And that's fun.

Oh noes guys, they're encouraging reckless driving!!  Weave in out and out of traffic.  Run from cops (think they would put up with these shenanigans?)  The true racing pastime.


The basic premise is you're attending a festival, and your goal is to become King of the festival by gathering fans. You do that by winning races, risky driving, stunts, special challenges and events.

Seriously, I hate this crap.  For some reason, a "festival" in the middle of Colorado reminds me of Woodstock with cars (or the original Motorstorm)--bunch of wannabe losers listening to bad dubstep, getting wasted on energy drinks and wrecking cars.  I think these things detract from the actual reason we play driving games which is TO RACE CARS.

Anyone played Need for Speed: ProStreet?  I did for the achievement points (beat every race)...it was average despite not having the open world exploration and police chases.  But the whole "race show" stuff was more of a hindrance than anything.  Plus, it has a "story mode"--your name is Ryan Cooper and you race to take down all the pro racers and become "King of the Racing Universe" presumably because your ride was stolen and/or someone pissed in your Corn Flakes.  But because you're stuck with that very name, half the race announcers affectionately call you by the nickname "Coop."  And trust me--I muted the announcer in no time.

Speaking of which, this open-world crap is a double-edged sword.  Some of my favorite games are the PS2 era Grand Theft Auto games.  I especially loved Vice City and San Andreas because they had a cool vibe, lots of cars, and a great soundtrack.

The Hotring Racer...one of my favorite cars in GTA.  I had the cheat code to spawn one memorized in the past.

Now when you're cruisin' around city/wilderness, it's kind of fun.  But the actual bonafide racing in the game SUCKED.  GTA wasn't a game built for traditional racing.  The city wasn't specifically designed to carve out race tracks.  It's like some producers dropped a few nodes across the city and said "go drive through them in order, good luck."

Even other open-world racers like Need for Speed or Burnout just aren't that great for racing.  It's like they'll carve out a path through the city and place a bunch of glowing barriers to block off roads off the beaten path--you can't go through them but the traffic can.  And the city is laden with all sorts of scenery such that it obfuscates any sort of "racing line" whatsoever so you're acting in a reactionary fashion--see some arrows just forcibly turn in that direction.  It doesn't seem well-polished for a true racing experience.  Not to mention that little "shortcuts" like side roads & ramps also take away from the experience since it becomes more of a game of memorization than one of actual skill.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Speaking of which, there's always the Little Rascals...which demonstrates how stupid urban racing can be at times.  They take a "shortcut" off the beaten path which includes driving through a grocery store parking lot (and knocking pedestrians 10 feet into the air).  Whatever, this is stupid and I can't believe I'm posting it but I don't care:

I think the game that did city racing the best was Project Gotham Racing.  Technically, you can say so since since there are modes that remove the barriers and permit free-roam around the city.  As for the artificial race courses, they are designed in a matter that makes it clearly obvious which way to go...clear visuals and signs tell you exactly where to go.  This also applies to Sega racers like Daytona & Outrun 2...


If you see it, you can drive to it. Well, maybe not some of the mountaintops, but still. You can drive into the Rockies, then look down off the side of the mountain and see the festival below. The map is full and huge and there's many miles of road to discover.

 This is also interesting as well.  Again, the entire game takes place in Colorado.  While the game exhibits forests, canyons, and lakes across limitless draw distance, that's all you really see the whole game.  Even though the game is beautiful, I think driving around in the woods can get a tad bit old after a while.  But what do I know--I need to see the final map first.  Let's hope there is more scenery like that in OutRun 2 (the definitive standard for...well...pretty much everything.

Outrun 2 doesn't showcase the fanciest lighting or textures there is (the game is now 8 years old), but it's simple, colorful style makes for good, clean fun.


There's a LOT of cars. I can't give a number now, but it's huge selection. All road cars this time, no pure race cars like in Forza. They're an eclectic mix, cars you'd take to a festival.

Damn, no Formula 1 cars.  :(  You  think by now Forza would have 'em but it's too late for that.


...BTW, one more thing.  I was looking at the comments for this Jalopnik article and the racing diehards aren't very impressed either:

BtheD19, Formula J treble World Champion
"The basic premise is you're attending a festival, and your goal is to become King of the festival by gathering fans. You do that by winning races, risky driving, stunts, special challenges and events."

And this is why I hate arcade "racing" games. Pass the GT5, I've got lap times to set.

Rattleface Blouses @BtheD19, Formula J treble World Champion
Yup, that's where I lost almost any interest in this game. It's takes after Dirt 2's brotastic environments.


Glad to see there's others out there who are a bit uneasy with this new Forza as well but the knock on arcade racers is a bit uncalled for.  But the Sega Racing Nation still exists out there cause a couple of comments later, someone says this:

Dreamcaster @BtheD19, Formula J treble World Champion

Arcade racing games, when done right, are freakin' amazing. Play any Sega racer and you'll see it. 

I love this guy.  No homo.  Though none of the sim racing aficianados have replied.  Who cares...reading the comments section of any major blog/news site is a good source of brain cancer.  Just don't do it.


...I really don't know what else to say about Forza Horizon.  It looks better than the incredibly generic Burnout--I mean Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the 2012 one).  Seriously, I don't feel like commenting on the new NFS since it looks like Burnout w/ Facebook functionality.  No use complaining anymore because A. we don't know what the final product will look like and B. it's also tailored for casuals so if you're outside the intended demographic then deal with it.  Dumb games are dumb--I'm outta here, dudes.

Yo Dawg We Heard You Like Flying Cars

How the future of racing/driving games works--just press a button and all the cars wreck themselves.  Or better yet, fly around and demolish everything.  Yeah, in the future when they invent those stupid auto-pilot cars that negate any risk, skill, or fun involved, video games will adapt and set the auto-destructors to the push of a button as well.

But hey, as long as it has Yakety Sax in the background, it's fine by me.

Need For Speed The Run--Even More Opinions

Just recently, I decided to waterboard myself by playing the Need for Speed: The Run demo off XBL.

Okay, now to tell you the truth, if you strip away all the damn cinematics, this game is not that bad.  Yes, I said it.  But let's talk about how the demo went.

Okay, so I download the friggin demo and then start it up.  Before it takes me to the menu, it requires that you create an EA online account.  Now I already had one (ages ago when I played Madden online a few times) so I figured I could just slip in there.  WRONG!  Since the EA Policy & Terms of Use had been updated, you had to go through the whole "You must accept the terms before continuing" nonsense.  Oh, and there's not just one document but two--Terms of Use AND Policy.  Two different things.

Now both these things were over twenty pages long.  And I'm like "Are you kidding me?"  Who's gonna read this whole thing?  I just want to play a game, not sell my life away to EA.  And I didn't need to read some Terms of Use to play Call of Duty or any other massive XBLA game so why do I need another one now???

I don't know ANYTHING that was in that agreement.  Basically don't pirate the game or trash talk little kids--I get it.  They could've slipped anything in there like "By agreeing to this document, you must sacrifice your first-born child to EA," or "Critiquing this game will result in a $50,000 lawsuit," or something of that nature.  Terms of Uses aren't new of course.

EA never ceases to amaze me.

So, what was I driving at here?  Okay, playing the damn game.  So there's two stages in this game.  One takes place in Death Valley (the desert).  The other takes place in Independence Pass (the snow avalanche level).  You must beat the Death Valley stage before you progress to the Independence Pass stage.  All while driving a Lamborghini Gallardo, of course.  Typical Need For Speed set of wheels.  Although you can unlock the second car, a Porsche Carerra or something, for inviting one or more friends to play the game with you.  So in other words, brainwash your friends and unlock new junk.  Once again, EA just blows my mind.

So Need for Speed: The Run does something interesting in that the AI people go from 1st to 200th position or something like that.  So you're in this massive cross-country race.  Well, duhhhhhh.  It's kind of like Sega Rally's Championship Mode where there's 50 cars and you run one lap on three consecutive courses.  Your position carries over from race to race so you can progressively move up the pack to 1st across races.  NFS: The Run doesn't really care if you smash the other cars off the road which is kind of cruel but I know the kiddies won't care.  The game offers "Clean Pass" bonuses which is good enough, I guess.

Now about the car handling.  Well...it just plain pisses me off.  Best way to explain the handling is it's like you're driving a brick on wheels.  The handling is clunky and unresponsive and it takes some time to get accommodated with although I never felt comfortable with it ever.  I think Need for Speed was aiming for realistic handling--you know, because a 600+ HP sports car shouldn't be able to turn on a dime.  But for being such a mainstream racing game, damn I was pissed.  Seriously, just try it for yourself.

Funny how much I wrecked for fun in this demo run.  First thing I did was drive off the road into the chasm below.  When that happens, the game teleports you back onto the track.  Just piss easy--it seems cheesy but whatever.  Then I smashed head first into oncoming traffic--a blue Dodge Charger or something like that.  We just sat there in the middle of the road.  We were about to get out and exchange insurance information but then I was like f*** that--this is a video game.  Funny because we know that Jack the protagonist will get his Gallardo destroyed/stolen down the line so what's the point?  Plus he's also being chased by the cops so isn't he already in hot water??

EDIT: Guess the reason I drove off-road and crashed was to see if the AI would rubber-band it up and make it easy for me to catch up but I guess not.  They just zipped to the finish line.  Oh, this game is so cruel.  And I was playing on the easiest difficulty too.

To beat the Death Valley level, you need to pass 10 cars before the finish line.  Okay, did that, although it took me three tries to do it thanks to these awkward controls.  Then I ran the Independence Pass level.  Basically, it's you vs. one other guy.  Rocks and snow fall down from the sky in your face like some Split-Second level.  Hit the rocks and your car gets totaled.  Then you respawn a few seconds back with little penalty.  Oh man, that is great.  So I won that race quite easily by about 30+ seconds.  The rocks kept falling in the same predictable locations so it required some trial and error to figure out where to go.

Then there's the multiplayer trailer which makes the game look better.  By the looks of things, there's no circuit courses--just sprints from Point A to B.  It's like Cruis'n USA all over again.  And the trailer looks rather exciting but there's nothing revolutionary about it.  It's all cinematics to me.  The way the car bobs and weaves is kind of sweet though.



Oh and while we're on cinematics, Michael Bay (yes, THAT Michael Bay of Transformers/blow s*** up fame) created a trailer for NFS: The Runs.



This game has officially SOLD OUT.  First shoes, then Dr. Pepper advertisements, then SI Swimsuit Magazines, then Hollywood actors/directors.  I give up.

Split/Second Taken Out Via Disney Powerplay!!!

Black Rock Studios, the developers behind explosive racer Split/Second, have been shut down by owners Disney. Those laid off have already formed two new studios, called Roundcube Entertainment and ShortRound Games...

SEGA VICTOLY!!!

(just pretend it is)

DISNEY!!  YOU BUNCH OF EVIL C***-SUCKING ANTI-SEMITES!!  YOU KILLED THE GREATEST RACING DEV EVAR!!  ALSO BLUR AND RED DEAD REDEMPTION STOLE SOME OF THIS GAME'S SALES!!  SHAME ON YOU ALL!!  RACING GAMES ARE AWESOME!!

Or maybe Split/Second just sucked, lol.

Well, it's still sad that people have been put out of work (albeit temporarily) over this.  That's not funny.  Seeing the demise of this game is though.

Anyway, check out the Kotaku article.  Scroll to comments and click on All (refresh if you can't see any).  I love reading all the comments that mention the words sad, sucks, or shame--as if no one has anything better to say than "dude, that sucks" or "that's sad."  I found some neat comments from this pile though, check it out (AND NO, I'M NOT GOING TO INSULT ANYONE):

Kobun

...
However, I believe you can make the argument that Grand Theft Auto 3 killed the racing genre. People still love racing games, but the simple fact is that people no longer need to buy a racing game to play a racing game. So many open world titles include vehicles and racing to a degree which satisfies the vast majority of the audience for racing games. These open world, jack-of-all-trade style games are the Wal-Marts of the industry, damaging or outright killing off once distinct genres as they absorb those gameplay elements into their blockbuster releases.

Now, there is only Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, essentially providing a singular, more realistic experience of racing on their respective consoles. GTA and its ilk do not provide this kind of realism and attention to detail, so they can exist without the implied competition arcade racers feel from these video game supermarts. Arcade racing has been turned into a boutique event, maintaining an ever shrinking footprint in an industry and all fighting for the tiniest crumbs left of the racing pie. 


See, I told you so!  Racing games are a "joke" genre nowadays.  Seriously, go into a room full of gaming nerds and declare that your favorite game/genre is a racing game.  You'll get laughed out of the room.  Like really, when I walk into FIEA for the first day of classes and everyone gathers around to hear what their favorite games are, when I say "Daytona USA," I'll get blank stares.  It already happened to me before!

I think the main problem is no one appreciates the beauty of handling a car eloquently around the turns in a non-realistic fashion...it's basically crash, crash, crash and that's all devs can do to sell racers.

And another thing--I do like Grand Theft Auto (not IV) for driving around, particularly Vice City and San Andreas, but whatever little "race modes" they have just plain suck.  Telling you to drive through the little glowy things just doesn't cut it for me.  The cop chases though can be fun...

ShimodaNexus @Kobun

Seriously. A friend used the soundtracks to get me into Ridge Racer, and I've been.....dismayed to see people only recognize the whole franchise for a bloody MEME now. Games like Ridge Racer 4 and 7 will remain some of my favorite racing memories, and I have no hate for Gran Turismo or Forza, but sometimes you just want ridiculous drifting, y'know?

I'm also upset that the next Ridge Racer is being developed by the guys who made Flatout, and I'm already turned off by the emphasis on vehicle damage. I'll give it a shot, but I'm not jumping to get it like I was for Ridge Racer 7. I even have a 3DS, and the lack of online multiplayer (since NONE OF MY FRIENDS have a 3DS at the moment, can't blame 'em) and a poor soundtrack has me not getting Ridge Racer 3D. That's just sad..

I really feel for this guy.  This guy's like me except he likes Ridge Racer instead of Daytona.  Yes, I do have sympathy for Namco...not as much as Sega, sorry.  Screw all this Burnout crap, he just want a good, clean Ridge Racer and he can't get it, especially without hearing "RIIDDGGGEE RACCCEEERRR!!" shouted in his ear every two seconds.

Tactful @el Suprehombre

I played the split/second demo and it was terrible. You press a button to make a bit of scenery fall on your opponent, brilliant.

I don't know how you can say blur had no substance; there was plenty of action within the techniques you required to win. The alt-fire on all weapons provided another dimension to easy-to-grasp-but-hard-to-master drive-and-shoot mechanics. It had a good system for levelling too. Even the menus were awesome.

Everyone I talk to didn't care for split/second, it felt like "big stunts" and disney false promises. Literally all style, no substance.

That being said I only played the demo, and I take it you only played the blur demo, and we both bought opposing games so we're both probably a bit mis-construed in our view of the other. I really don't see what's wrong with it being a "glorified Mario Kart" though, that's not in any way a bad thing. 

FINALLY.  Someone who doesn't kiss ass like everybody else...

el Suprehombre @Tactful

[in response to the above post] Sounds like you didn't even play the demo yourself, more liked watch someone else go through it. Split/Second used a lot of timing in execution of the action events in the game. 

I did play the Split/Second demo too and I totally agree with what the above guy said.  And then I go on to rip the game some more.  Blur is another story...it was good but not great IMO.

EDIT SUPER OLD: Black Rock Studio would've released a sequel to Split/Second had they not been shut down.  Oooh, dodged a powerplay there!  I guess...


That's about all I have to say here.  You might wonder why I don't reply to these guys messages, well Kotaku just plain doesn't work for me and it's easier to criticize people behind their backs (lol jk).  Well, they make good points and I'm just harping on them.  Too lazy to type them up in my own words, that's for sure...

Duke Nukem: We're All Sexists Now

I already expressed my initial opinions of Duke Nukem Forever earlier.  Obviously the game has a problem with professional reviewers.  But it goes even further than that now.  It's now a sexist, embarrassing game that society should do away with.  Strip clubs and jokes about tampons.  This was alluded to by reviews on GameSpot and Giant Bomb who called DNF's humor unfunny and distasteful.  More reviewers & columnists are opening up about this now.  Not all girls find The Duke attractive.

Anyway, after writing my initial article, I learned more information about the game and still find things offensive about it.  I'm not going to give some stupid "games are art" lecture here.  As a white, Christian male, I don't approve of the salacious lifestyle of players, pimps, hookers, and whatnot.  But Duke doesn't bother me.  Why?  Cause he's an EXAGGERATED figure living in a fictional world of ugly aliens and hot babes.  Going around in that macho voice--"Let's go get some babes..." it's comical and shouldn't be taken as an attack on the female role in society.

And Duke fights to save these babes.  As for the girls in the hive level, well, they're fubar as it is so I don't know why everyone's portraying that as the "rape" scene in the game.  EDIT: The same "pod-girls" were also in Duke Nukem 3D so this isn't new.  The alien boobs on the wall?  Stupid, but those don't belong to actual human people (I presume).

EDIT AGAIN: Okay, I forgot to mention this.  Some people are mad that the game's lighthearted tone ends once you reach the Hive level where Duke shows no emotion to the countless women whom suffer or are killed (especially the Twins).  The fact that Duke didn't show more emotion I blame the lousy writing more than anything.  Don't hate on Duke, hate on the guys who made him say "I hate valve puzzles"...

And there's games of similar nature that people have defended.  God of War with the gruesome violence, torture, the rough sex minigame?  Perfectly fine, everyone loves this game.  Mass Effect 2 with the side nudity and the Fox News reports?  Oh how dare you insult that game!  Grand Theft Auto with the innuendo, strip clubs, hot coffee and the ability to kill, run over, and torture innocent people?  Hey, you Jack Thompsons out there, it's just a game, don't insult it!  But with Duke Nukem, no...it's a terrible game and all copies should be buried out in the Nevada desert along with E.T.

Hey, don't get me wrong--the most detestable part of the game is the near-nudity of the strippers at the club.  I'm not saying this game should get off the hook because if producers want to make games then they should take all the blame for the content.  But let's not pretend that DNF is the most offensive game ever made because there's more that I've found to be more offensive.  That's my two cents.  If you are a female, well...you may not like it.  But everything's so PC nowadays, it's ridiculous so screw it.  If you want a good "target" to go after, just blame MTV and all those rap videos, those are worse because they actually deal with REAL LIFE...

Or an entirely another way to deal with the problem, say "Shut up b****, get back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich." *sarcasm*

"Not my babes! Not in my town! You alien motherf***ers are gonna pay for this!"

"Hell, I'd still hit it."

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Oh and one more fun fact about Duke Nukem...there's a lithograph in the game that's similar to Kramer's painting from Seinfeld.  Being a Seinfeld buff, I was quick to point that out...and laugh.

He is a loathsome brute...yet I cannot look away.

New Carmageddon, NNOOOOOOooooooo.... (Driver, GTA, LA Noire)

Age gates are stupid, just set the date to 1965 or something and move on.



SO BEAUTIFUL...

Stainless Games is in the early stages of designing the next instalment of the Carmageddon series; Carmageddon: Reincarnation.  As the game develops, you’ll be able to follow progress in the Blog.

Of all the racing games to get a reboot, how come Carmageddon?  Wow, I completely change my mind on Burnout and Split/Second now, those are sparkling gems on a hill compared to this.  At least those two try to keep some "professionalism" while Carma looks to shock as many soccer moms and Jack Thompsons as possible.

I'm checking out the blog and it's interesting to learn about where their inspiration came from:

When we set Stainless up, the plan was to kick things off with a relatively simple Destruction Derby game (this was before the Reflections title) to establish the company, and then go onto greater things. The Destruction Derby game – codenamed 3DDD, as ‘3D’ was actually still a buzz word back then – was born from an observation of people playing driving games. Most driving games were pretty dull (this was well before Gran Turismo changed that forever). Even the top of the pile like the original Ridge Racer were as boring as an accountant’s pillow talk (well, OK then, to me), so the less patient amongst us (well OK then, me), used to turn our cars around, race around in the other direction and try to hit our opponents head-on in order to alleviate the ennui.

...

What then happened is documented in detail elsewhere, but to cut a long story short, about two years later we were well into development of what was by then, “Carmageddon”. By this time, the concept of “being naughty and breaking the rules” had grown wings, climbed up to the roof, flown off, landed on the head of the tabloid soap-box preachers, and shat down the back of their neck.

Basically don't follow the rules of conventional racers.  Oh and check this out.  This site gives you the materials to make your own paper cars...really?  I could never make any of those paper things, I suck.

There's not much else to say.  I'm not a fan of "dark" games but they can make whatever they want.  And now you know the whole story.

------------

Cool, check this out.  I'm looking at related videos and here's a Carma 2 stunt video.  It's relatively tame compared to the actual game.  These are custom-made cars and on display, but I'm amazed at the car damage and physics...not bad.  This game came out in 1998.  I also assume this is online multiplayer.  Too bad the actual game isn't like this.



LISTEN TO THE SKA, F-YEAH

Now more these free-wheeling PC racers.  This Carma 2 footage reminds me of Driver 1 and 2 (yes, the prequels to Driv3r).  I actually did play Driver for the PC a long time ago.  It was an okay diversion.  That came out in 2000 which was two years after Carma 2.  It was developed by GT/Reflections Interactive.

This is Driver 1.  Clearly, the whole Driver series is based off of 70's car chase movies which is pretty sweet.  You can't run over pedestrians which is nice.  The cops' method of stopping you is simple--recklessly smash your car to bits without regard to anyone's (including their own) safety.  Cop chases are kind of fun, but they spawned in front of you and never, ever stopped coming so it was always a losing battle.



Now this is Driver 2 for the PS1...unlike Driver 1, you can get out and steal other cars GTA-style and that's about it.  It's entirely driving, no killing.  Also, the city actually has curves, highway on-ramps, more than just hard 90-degree turns.  Surprisingly, Driver 2 also came out in 2000.  This video's just a funny glitch.



But in the end, we all know Grand Theft Auto 3 is better.  It came out in 2001 and just shut everyone up.  I like the PS2 GTA games, but not all the violence and cursing (sorry).



Anyway, this mission is making fun of Tanner, the protagonist of the Driver games...  Rockstar had their way with the competition at the time.  Driv3r was released in 2004 and included a character called "Timmy Vermicelli," a parody of Tommy Vercetti of GTA: Vice City.  Unfortunately, Driv3r was mediocre at best.  By then, GTA became the golden standard for free-wheel drivers.

Fast forward seven years to 2011 and this LA Nwah game handles a lot like GTA 4...except that you can't kill pedestrians.  Yes, they jump out of the way so Rockstar has decided to spare peds for once, aww how kind of them.  This makes sense since you're a good cop, not a criminal (you can still "borrow" civilians' cars).  Although you CAN kill a pedestrian with a car if you use exploits.  I think the devs modded the GTA4 code but forgot to completely fool-proof it...



Only thing that really sucks about the game is that the 40's cars are obviously much slower which sucks.

LA Noire...hmm...it's like a better version of Dick Tracy for the NES.

And that's it, your history lesson for today.  I'm fairly sure there's other games like this (like, uh...Tony Hawk's Underground) but I cannot mention them all.  ADIOS.

PUSH THE BUTTONS

Check out this Super Meat Boy commercial if you haven't seen it already:



TBQH, and this is from someone who has played the demo, I'm actually quite impressed with the game.  First, these guys have a sense of humor and grasp of video game history.  No fancy plots or that crap, just straight up challenging and rewarding gameplay.



When you beat a level, you get to see a replay of every attempt and watch all the failed Meat Boys weeded out...

I would buy the game, but it's one of the hardest games out nowadays and I just don't wanna go through this crap.

------------

And, oh look, a funny Team Fortress 2 parody of Space Channel 5.  Wow, I feel like a toolbag because I always copy stuff already posted on big blogs.  Because this is a Sega blog, it might as well be seen for two seconds.



------------

Oh, and if you thought that was weird, how about Shadow the Hedgehog in his true game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  How do people come up with this stuff?  Not just shooting, also has some bike stunt parts.



------------

One more thing, just cause we're on the subject of GTA. Do you love San Andreas? Do you love Initial D too? Well here you go, an Initial D mod in San Andreas. Ooooo



For some reason, it was good until the end, then I don't know what happened there.