Rush: An Adrenaline Shot In Movie Form

When I heard there was going to be a "Rush" movie in 2013, I nearly pissed myself.  They're making a shitty movie adaptation for San Francisco Rush the game, a la Need for Speed?

Actually, no, this has nothing to do with video games, cause this is "based on a true story."  A really good story about two rival Formula 1 drivers, James Hunt (England) and Niki Lauda (Austria).  And thank you Ron Howard for being an actual petrolhead and not f***ing up this movie like Hollywood usually does (the movie cynic in me enjoys poking holes in things, like this).  88% on Rotten Tomatoes isn't bad!

As you can tell, this was in the 70's when safety was of little concern and musicians actually made decent music.  No seriously, they actually play Gimme Some Lovin' in the first racing scene which proves Ron saw Days of Thunder, or something, so tack on an extra star to the final score!  Rubbin' is racing!!!  Boogity boogity!!!

Here you have the two protagonists, Lauda and Hunt, who are Formula 3 rivals that moved up to Formula 1, and they totally contrast in personality.  James Hunt is a raw talent, a brash driver who loves to party.  He defied F1 driver tradition that a driver must behave and be treated like royalty.  Hunt loved the lady parts, as you can see right away within the first 30 seconds of the movie, Hunt is banging the nurse.  So thank you James for turning this movie into a porno.  He's also bulimic because he throws up before every race.

Mim-bo (noun) - a male bimbo.

On the other hand, Niki Lauda is the MAN.  More reserved, cool, calm, and calculated, he could tune cars like no one's business.  He has a cool-ass name and actually stayed faithful to his wife (at least for a little while).  Niki is what's great about racing.

Pictured: my new man-crush.

So quick rundown of the movie.  Hunt and Lauda are in Formula 3, Hunt wins the championship and later gets a Formula 1 ride with Hesketh, some crappy race team that thought driving a bleached white car with no sponsors is a good idea.  On the other hand, Lauda "cheated," denounced his father's boring-ass businessman lifestyle, took out a big loan, and swooned the Ferrari people by building a superior car that outdid the previous ones by several seconds.  Lauda would then later race a coupe through rural Italy to impress two fanboys and his future wife, proving that he's a baller.  At this point, the HEAT WAS ON between the two gentlemen...

Both sweet whips with that vintage 70's camera tint.  Notice the lack of #hashtags on their names (#twitterblows).

Both drivers took turns having strokes of life-changing bad luck.  Hunt was first.  Hesketh ran out of money and fired Hunt, leaving him to sit at home and watch his wife cheat on his scummy ass.  Hunt would later bang the flight attendant in the restroom to showcase his libido.  Lauda would go on to win his first championship, something that is skimmed over in the film.  The 1976 season is when Hunt gets a ride at McLaren and the two begin their duel.

Season begins in Brazil with some damn hot Carnival babes and quick 10-15 previews of each race of the season.  Lauda would take a commanding lead in the points as Hunt's car would frequently explode.  Hunt goes into Hulk mode and strikes back, winning a few races of his own, making them 1st-2nd in the points.

Later it's the German GP at Nurburgring.  Yes, THE Nurburgring Nordschleife with 154 turns.  And to make things worse, it's raining.  One racer was already hospitalized during practice.  Lauda then holds a driver's meeting and tries to call the race off as too dangerous, Hunt basically calls him a pussy, and the drivers race anyway.  Both Hunt and Lauda opt for wet tires at the start only for the track to dry up quickly and both to go to the pits for dry tires after the first lap.

And here's where Lauda's bad luck strikes.  Obviously way behind from the leader, he pushes the car so hard the suspension breaks on one turn as he goes careening into the wall in a blazing inferno as some other guy wrecks into Lauda's flaming casket.  Lauda suffers paralyzing burns and smoke inhalation while Hunt laughs his ass off as he wins races while Lauda is on the hospital bed.

This wreck seems oddly symbolic to my recent woes that I teared up in the theater.  One morning in May 2013, while racing to work on the wet pavement, I push the car harder than I should in an attempt to make up ground.  Eventually the wet pavement gets the best of me as I slide into a dumpster, smashing it up in the process.  Three days later, I would be fired from my job and sit unemployed for five months as distraught me has to watch my friend and rivals move up the career ladder without me.  My story isn't as bad as Lauda's but the similarities are there!  Fuck wet blacktop parking lots, put up a friggin sign or something.

Eventually, Lauda would go through accelerated therapy, have the junk sucked out of his lungs and the bandaids peeled from his head.  A month passed and Hunt nearly caught up to him in the points.  Lauda gets back out there (a burnt up disfigured mess, no doubt) and after giving the best "fuck you" I've ever heard to an asshole reporter, puts up a solid 4th place at Monza with fans running at his car after the race while Hunt DNF's again.  Which meant one thing...

NIKI LAUDA

IS

BACK

Final race of the season!  It's at Fuji Speedway--PREPARE TO QUALIFY!!!  Oh, and it's raining.  F1 cars can drive in the rain but in the storm that you see here?  Well...yes they could back in the 70's, when they had big balls and the rides were high enough to make wet racing possible.  After one lap of driving through dense fog, Lauda does the most admirable thing a driver can do--goes to the pits and retires from the race.  It's too dangerous, he said, it's not worth risking your lives over a stupid trophy!  Tell that to Hunt who needs to finish 3rd or better to beat Lauda for the grand prize.  It was a nailbiter for Lauda as all he could do is watch and pray Hunt doesn't win...

Obligatory F1 car in the rain shot.

SHOCKER--Hunt finishes 3rd, wins the championship, and Lauda has no regrets.  It wasn't racing, Lauda said, it was stupid of Hunt to risk his life like that.  After a bunch of TV appearances and booze, drug, and women sessions later, Hunt meets Lauda again, Lauda having taken up the hobby of flying planes.  They tip their hats to each other and the movie ends.  Lauda would go on to win two more championships and live to see the premiere of this movie (which he admired, BTW) while Hunt would go on to be a race announcer and die of a heart attack in 1993.  While Hunt turned out to be a washed-up loser who won his only championship cause his main competition was hospitalized by a near-death experience, Lauda later admitted Hunt was the only driver he was ever jealous of.  Which means a lot from the man, myth, and legend that is NIKI LAUDA.

Great movie, would see again.  Very accurate and gives you a sense of what vintage Formula 1 racing was really like  Only disappointment is that there's too much talking in the first half of the movie (come on, I wanna see some racing), plus there's no final race between Lauda and Hunt to settle the score once and for all.  But a final race would be unrealistic.  Also at no point do they play a Rush song in the movie though that would be cheesy as hell.  So I'll give you some Rush right here.

Oh well, I give this FIVE out of FOUR stars (remember the additional one cause of Gimme Some Lovin').  Just go watch the movie, seriously, right away, race in an F1 car to the theater or Redbox now.

1976, same year Fleetwood Mac would release The Chain, best F1 song ever, no question.  I WANNA GO FAST!!!

I can't tell you how many times I typed "Nikia Lauda" while writing this post, lol.

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

Rock Band Blitz: Series On Life Support

Well, I know this ain't a racing game but it's something close to my heart so let's talk about this months-old game.  Rock Band Blitz.

Rock Band Blitz is a $15 game you can buy off of Xbox Live/Playstation Network.  It does not require instruments.  Basically, you pick a song as four/five lanes of notes come at you.  You only need four buttons to play this game.  Down arrow/A to hit left/right notes in your current lane, left/right shoulder buttons to switch lanes. Hit notes in each instrument lane to max out multipliers for the greatest possible scores. You might say "hey that's Frequency/Amplitude" well, yeah it is.

This game is friggin brilliant for a few reasons:

* It is the quintessential "Programmer Game."  Basically I get up here and say "Games have too pretty graphics & cutscenes, not enough gameplay," well guess what.  Look at any generic screenshot of the game.  THIS IS THE WHOLE GAME.  There are no "characters" in the game.  You move through a seemingly endless city (a.k.a. "New Jersey" as Harmonix describes it) as buildings pulsate to the beat of the song.  The only goal of the game really is to play songs over and over again trying to get high scores.  Great game, huh.

* You take a look at every single song in Rock Band's history and there are MANY.  There are over 3,000 SONGS you can download and play in Rock Band 3.  And guess what, you can play all of those in Rock Band Blitz too.  Basically, it gives your library a little more life...you can play songs on Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals, Keys, and Rock Band Blitz which is like its own instrument.

* At the end of the day, you will have worn out your A button which is kind of cool yet sad at the same time.

* Play enough notes in a row to enter "Blitz Mode." Camera drops back a little as you start to haul ass through the city. Yet the notes stay in the same place (you still travel the same speed). Can you say SENSE OF SPEED at work here???

* On top of a new Rock Band experience, you get 25 songs to add to your library.  That's 25 songs for $15.  Usually, the average Rock Band song goes for $1 or $2.  What a super deal.

Speaking of deals, I'll tell you some great news.  If you've on the fence about buying some Rock Band DLC, then you're in luck because all pre-RB3 DLC (anything without keys/harmonies/pro guitar/pro bass, about 2000 songs in total) is half-off.  Forever.  You wanted to play some Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Boston, The Cars, Queen, Jane's Addiction, Guns n' Roses, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Tom Petty, The Who, No Doubt, Bob Marley, Weezer, Disturbed, System of a Down, The Offspring, Avenged Sevenfold (aw hell naw), well you're in luck cause they're basically giving away these songs.  Before you would have to pay about $2 per song (song packs would reduce that to about $1.50 a song).  But here, you can get songs for less than a dollar on average.  So to repeat, GO BUY SOME ROCK BAND DLC IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.  Go buy the DLC that I bought at full price.  Yeah, I'm happy dancin' right now.

But there are some problems with the game and I really don't want to get into how to play the game because you can basically download the demo which comes with the full game but only three songs unlocked (All-American Rejects, Foo Fighters, Barenaked Ladies) so you can play that and come to your own conclusions.  Here's my nitpicks:

* The "perks" are rather unbalanced.  Note, these perks are out of order.
For the first perk, just pick the instrument with the most notes (usually the guitar or bass).  Second perk, Road Rage is good for wiping out tons of notes easily but Jackpot is clearly the best (3x as long as you don't miss) for getting high scores.  Third perk, Blast Notes are the best since it hits notes from all lanes, a very useful, predictable bonus. I can't see any use into turning the purple note into anything else, especially a pinball that bounces around Breakout-style which is distracting enough when trying to fill all the lanes in the first place.  But there's on exception in which Pinball reigns supreme:

Harmonix QA, where were you?

* Playing held notes is kind of stupid.  Assume you hit a held guitar/keyboard note.  Holding a long note "fills" the lane just as much as hitting a lone note in an empty void.  Think about some crap Tier 1/2 keyboard songs where the keys' only purpose is to chime in with some weird BG noise during the chorus.  And you're trying to fill the drums lane.  Okay, now you have to sprint to the orange lane (keys) every 5 second to hit that held note, run back to green lane (drums), hit a bunch of notes, run back between the two again and again.  And because you didn't hit enough of the orange lane's notes (which had about 5 in a minute-long section), you don't raise your instrument multipliers to the max.  Aggravating as s***.

* Switching notes to another lane counts as "missing" notes if you don't play them.  So you are in Blitz Mode or have Jackpot activated.  Good luck trying to "not miss" when switching lanes since if you move to another lane while a note passes, you miss and are penalized.  It's pretty ridiculous especially when the game preaches "It's not about hitting every note, it's about getting a high score."

* A minor complaint but you can't play Rock Band 3 songs in Blitz.  You can play everything else though because it's already on your hard drive.  Yet I have RB3 installed on my hard drive too so the songs are sitting there idle yet Blitz can't play them...yeah, it's stupid programming but the option to play stuff like Caught in a Mosh and Fly Like an Eagle in Blitz would've been nice.

Review-wise, I give this game a typical 8 because it has some replay value if you have a large library.  But after a while it gets repetitive and hurts your thumbs.

This leads me to my final point and it's about Harmonix and HOW THEY ARE TRYING TO EUTHANIZE THE ROCK BAND SERIES.

I always keep track of Rock Band's weekly DLC.  DLCQuickplay is a good site to do so.  Now in case you don't know about how Rock Band DLC works, basically it's a 3-to-6 month process.  Harmonix gathers data on what songs are popular.  Then they get the rights to the song, pass them through a machine that bangs out the song charts (notes), QA them, and plan to release them some time in the future along a time table.  Great.  But the stream of new songs have gotten weaker and weaker.  Used to be that HMX was proud to release a 10-pack of some awesome band like Billy Joel or Bon Jovi every other week and we would be stoked.  Next they toned it down to 5/6-packs and we were happy.  Then they did 3-packs.  Now they do 3-packs with songs that already exist in the Rock Band library.  Sure, it's great that you would release "We are Young" or "Pumped Up Kicks" a month after I imported that garbage from Rock Band Blitz.  It's like they're trying to wean us off of the DLC rather than go cold turkey and kill us all.

Because I am such a lazy bastard and because some other guy detailed our thoughts perfectly on this DLCQuickplay site, I'm just going to copy & paste what user "Riles" said:

Nevermind the facts that Harmonix has never gone out of their way to support Wii before, or that one of the songs this week is a song Wii already has so they only get two songs this week, or that purchasing eight of the 25 songs would cost more money than just buying the pack (which doesn't include when it was on sale for $7.50), or that any songs released now will most assuredly not have retroactive pro support,

this marks the first time that no new downloadable content came out for a week, and that's huge. And it's a complete bummer. And it's asinine the way Harmonix has tried to disguise it as saying this is a result of community feedback that they're doing this, because if that were the case, these Blitz songs would be released as a supplement to regularly scheduled DLC, or as one big release week like the FIRST time they released these songs and claimed it to be DLC for that week, and not the only focus for a DLC week. There have been controversies before about whether or not the DLC streak technically ended with country packs or Green Day, but if it didn't happen before, this is the definitive broken streak. And that sucks, and it gives us every right to complain. Because none of us are complaining about the song choices this week - we're all complaining about there not being any song choices this week

If you need any hint that the Rock Band series is dying, just go to Amazon and search for a Pro Guitar, Pro Keyboard, or Drum Set.  Cheap as it ever has been.  It's a shame too since I poured a ton of money into Rock Band but if the series goes away, then at least it's understandable.  We'll still have loads of Rock Band Network songs (custom songs people submit...most of it novelty/metal trash) but if you're expecting "real" songs like these bunches of requests that I wish I could play on Pro Keys (actual fun Classic Rock songs), well...I've lost all hope.  Rock Band Blitz was basically chemo before the series' eventual death which gave us a little optimism but not much longer.

A toast to my dear Rock Band friend, thanks for keeping me sane during this racing game drought that we've been through for so long.  Who knows how much longer you'll actually be relevant?  A year, two years, three years?  You have no idea how much this sucks for me, but at least Harmonix isn't "Sega-bad" at this point so I cannot complain. They had a really good run with the series--they didn't quit and actually managed to release more DLC than Sega ever will ever.

Adios!  I rocked this song on Pro Keys.

LOL JK GUYS, we'll all wake up tomorrow and HMX will release a 16-song Muse pack and everyone will be happy, DAE believes with me???

Danica's Race Is Upon Us...Let's Go SEGA

Hello boys and girls, hope you had a fun Halloween with House of the Dead and lots of candy.  I hope and pray everyone is okay with Hurricane Sandy.

Anyway, check this out.  Today's GameFAQs poll: Which scheduled November release are you most looking forward to?

Halo 4 -- 23.36% 

Paper Mario: Sticker Star -- 12.58% 

Call of Duty: Black Ops II -- 12.17% 

Persona 4: Golden -- 11.52% 

Hitman: Absolution -- 10.71% 

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale -- 8.49% 

New Super Mario Bros. U -- 6.93% 

LEGO The Lord of the Rings -- 5.34% 

ZombiU -- 4.04%

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two -- 1.98% 

PlanetSide 2 -- 1.83%

LittleBigPlanet Karting -- 1.04% 


For me, it's Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed.  But wait....it's not on there.  But LittleBigPlanet Karting is.  What gives?  Anyone here enthusiastically waiting for Little Big Planet Karting?  Really???

But this isn't to knock LittleBigPlanet since I don't have a bone to pick with that.  It's a racing game that's not Need for Speed/Burnout/wreck 'em clone so that's a huge plus.  But Sega All-Stars Racing's absence falls in line with this Sega anti-bias that I've mentioned before.  That any game Sega puts out is somehow a joke or not to be taken seriously.  Like this Sega All-Stars Racing game is "another terrible Sonic sellout game, just a Mario Kart clone, Danica Patrick sucks, herp derp, why bother listing it in the poll."  Okay, I am probably making much to do out of nothing (maybe the poll guy just "forgot" about Sega All-Stars Racing) but look--if you're going to stiff Sega in some way, I'm going to call you out on it.  Cause if I don't, who will????

And yeah, if Sega All-Stars Racing was in the poll, it would barely scratch 1-2%, I know.  But just having the game's name on the poll would make me happy enough.

While we're on GameFAQs polls, I went back one month and looked at the poll for October: Which scheduled October release are you most looking forward to?


Assassin's Creed III -- 27.89% 

Resident Evil 6 -- 21.32% 

Pokemon Black/White Version 2 -- 21.01% 

Dishonored -- 11.21% 

XCOM: Enemy Unknown -- 5.9% 

WWE '13 -- 2.97% 

Ragnarok Odyssey -- 2.8% 

Forza Horizon -- 1.71% 

007 Legends -- 1.59%

Fable: The Journey -- 1.56%

Medal of Honor: Warfighter -- 1.31%

Skylanders Giants -- 0.72% 


I notice there is an absence of Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game (no seriously, look at the GameFAQs page, Criterion changed the f***in title at the last minute).  Can't say I'm shed any tears over it but it makes Sega All-Stars Racing's absence from the November poll a little more tolerable.  Anytime someone "takes down" the competition, I am happy. :D

I see that Forza Horizon and Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game have the same Metacritic average--an 85 out of 100 which is great but not outstanding.  In the Fantasy Zone, Sega: All-Stars Racing: Transformed could possibly rank higher than these two ( >= 86 ) but do I think that'll happen?  No.  They'll probably dump all over the game for the reasons stated earlier.  And in theme with the upcoming elections, that is why we need to turn out MORE THAN EVER in defense of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed on November 20th.  It is THAT IMPORTANT.  I mean, I've denounced "professional" reviews many, many times before, but as long as these dolts continue to piss all over our games for reasons I disagree with, my knee-jerk reaction is to hit them for it.

Stolen from this epic bread

Which leads to Danica Patrick driving the Sega Sonic the Hedgehog car at Saturday's Nationwide Race at Texas at 7 pm ET.  She finished 10th at Saturday's Nationwide race at Kansas (and dropped 14 f-bombs on RaceBuddy) and got in a tiff with Landon Cassill and spun out on Sunday's race and looked like friggin idiot on TV.  Well I am SCARED now for Danica and Sega.  Because if Danica f***s this up, then it WILL NOT help our cause any.  I'll be tracking Danica this Friday & Saturday in anxious anticipation on how she treats the Sonic car.  I mean, I know Danica doesn't give two s***s about Sega, she's overrated, she's in lousy GoDaddy ads, and she had a bad temper, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DANICA, YOU HAVE TO WIN THIS FOR US!!!!  YOU ARE SEGA'S LAST HOPE!!!!

From a Something Awful post THAT I CAN'T READ

Seriously, if Danica somehow wins (or at least passes Joey Logano in the stupid ass Forza Horizon/Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game car) then I will flip my s***, throw a damn party, buy a copy of of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed for every platform as well as this $320 1/24 scale diecast car.  Though I am only buying the stuff if Danica actually wins, she's gotta be So Good It Takes AGES for me to actually spend money:

Danica...IT CAN BE DONE!!!

EDIT, check this out:

Here's another new trailer.  Also, I would like to say this.  For the last time, people, if I have to hear one more complaint about this game over Sonic the Hedgehog, I'm going to puke.  This isn't a Sonic game, this is a SEGA RACING GAME and that's why I'm 100% behind it.  So enough of this "sonic this, sonic that," play the game to GO RACING, BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY!!!

Forza Horizon: YOLO!!!

Forza Horizon is out.  And as you'd expect, the gaming media has already proclaimed it the greatest racing game ever made.  Well, there's a few defectors who gave it less than the fabled 9/10, but a lot of people did including our beloved Giant Bomb.  Seriously, with this and the Lazily Named NFS: Most Wanted, that's it--we racing aficionados are set for life.  Sega might as well pack it in now cause they will never topple Forza Horizon and Need for Speed: Most Wanted.  Cause those are the greatest racing games ever made.  It's like the American Idol Effect...how Randy and the stupid judges always proclaim "yo dawg, you're the best singer we've ever had" to every singer and "talent-wise, this is the best season ever" every season despite the fact that ratings have been going down and the AI contestants have sold fewer albums each passing year.  That makes sense.

So what do I care what these people think.  When I think of gaming media, I think of honest intellectuals like Geoff Keighley who were not paid off or bribed in any way:

EDIT: Before I go on, check out my buddy RStyle's Forza Horizon demo opinions too.  They are much kinder than mine, lol.

So anyway, I downloaded the bigass 1.5 GB Forza Horizon demo. Let's give this a spin. After watching the wonderful cutscene full of women, energy drinks, and bad hiphop/dubstep, I enter the free-roam world of a faceless white guy driving a yellow Dodge Viper. Drive down the road to the first race and pick the Mitsubishi Lancer and go dirt racing. Wow, I've never played a racing game on dirt, groundbreaking stuff there, Forza. Then I came in first, won some credits, and drove the Viper in free-roam some more. Plowed into a PT Cruiser, both cars came to a dead stop, and eventually the Viper started nudging the PT Cruiser in reverse. It was then that I realized this game is a f***ing waste of my brain cells.

Ok, that was harsh, I admit, this is actually a good game that has some limited value.  But I'll be damned if this isn't another Need for Speed clone, minus the obligatory cop chases. You know the phrase "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it must be a duck?" Well, this is a Need for Speed game for that same reason. The car handling is old-fashioned unresponsive NFS-style as my car sort of just "floats" forward as I try to follow that stupid green line. I don't care if this is "realistic" or not--it drives me nuts that this is how every mainstream racing game handles these days.

I need a citation for this, but I believe it was Shigeru Miyamoto who said about the original Super Mario Bros., "When you press A, we wanted Mario to jump. Not 'sort-of jump'. Not 'starting to jump'. But JUMP instantly." Which probably explains why SMB is lauded as revolutionizing the platform genre. And when I press left or right on the joystick, I want the car to turn left or right, not drift in that direction with the incentive of a Lazy College Senior.

I don't think this game has manual transmission either. Maybe if I sifted through the Dirt Showdown style menus with the stupid cyan-magenta-orange burnt-in hues, then maybe I can find it but I didn't have the incentive to look. Really, right after the demo, I fired up Forza 4 and I thought the handling was more responsive in F4 (with normal cars, not fancy R1 cars). Hey, at least Forza 4 runs at friggin 60 fps while Forza Horizon settled for 30.  Yes, I know Sega All-Stars Racing runs at 30 fps too--I dealt with that enough in the past.  So I just cannot call Forza Horizon a Forza game, I'm sorry (then again, I'm not really crying over one less Forza game either...don't we have enough racing "sims" as it is).

I was thinking about the game in a nutshell. Here you are, a bunch of underground free riders breaking all sorts of laws at some "speed festival" with fridge buzz over the radio as you go free-roaming through the forest/desert dodging traffic in the same typical lineup of sports cars doing drifts for "epic points."  Why there are no cops ANYWHERE in the vicinity is beyond me.  And then it hit me--this game is a fad.  Might as well market it in Hot Topic since that's all it is.  Today's "flavor" of racing game is the Need for Speed model with meaningless stunts and bad music.  The whole game is derivative.  Seriously, what does Forza Horizon do that is revolutionary?  You race at night?  Wow, brilliant, I've never played a night racing game before.  Oh, but you can also race against the plane!  Surprise, this is a driving game, I couldn't give a crap about the plane.  By the way, both those things you could do in OutRun 2, a game that came out eight years ago.

Look at it this way.  Take Daytona USA (again).  I assume most everyone reading this blog likes this game.  Well, take note of when it came out.  1994 ('93 if you want to get picky but that was a limited Japanese release).  Daytona USA is 18 years old and we are still talking about it.  We like the handling, the music, the multiplayer.  We clamored about it enough to get emulators and official ports of it many years later!  Same thing with Crazy Taxi, OutRun 2, Sega Rally, Scud Race, Daytona 2--ports are coming and more people are getting the chance to find out about these "gems" (DAE PLAY DIS GAEM???) and they like them.  And it was because the content of these games are original.  Sure, arcade racers with drift mechanics were popular in the 90's, but I can tell you when Nagoshi-San and the AM2 sat down at the roundtable to discuss Daytona USA and others, it's apparent their first thought was "let's make a good racing game" as opposed to "let's make a marketable racing game."

Now how about Forza Horizon.  This game was released in 2012.  Let's assume that society is still intact in 2030, 18 years from now.  Do you think we're gonna give a damn about Forza Horizon then?  Or will it be another one of those derivative racing games that we got hyped up about but stopped caring a year later?  I'm willing to bet the latter.  And the same thing will happen to Need for Speed: Most Wanted too.  Hence the term "YOLO!!!"  Cause you're dead in a few years, Forza & Need for Speed.

That's why I'm hoping and praying for Sonic & Sega All-Stars: Transformed.  Cause at least it's not a total clone of its main influence (Mario Kart).  And it's why I'm sick and tired of racing games these days.  I'm done.

GRID, Dead Heat, H2Overdrive: Three Arcade Reviews

Ok guys, while on July 9th's exciting Dave & Buster's expedition (complete with Daytona USA footage), I also had the chance to play some other racing games.  And at this D&B's, there was a TON of racing games. Unfortunately, only Daytona USA and Club Kart (which I've never really talked about...it's Chuck E Cheese fodder (so is Scud Race) ) in terms of Sega racers.  So I decided to play some other racing games.  Bear in mind that each of these following games cost slightly more than Daytona USA so every time I played one of these games, that meant one less run at Daytona USA so these better damn well be worth it.  These brief reviews are only based off of one play session so take 'em with a grain of salt.

GRID

This is the arcade version of Codemasters' racing "classic," GRID.  Surprisingly, this arcade version was distributed by "Sega Amusements" as you see the Sega logo plastered all over the thing.   Now, this game is off to a bad start for me because the game's dingy "realistic" hues still turn me off.  I mean, look at the box art of the game for gosh darn's sakes:

When the Xbox 360 logo is more colorful than the rest of the game then we have a problem.  The game's format is similar to Scud Race--four cars. four tracks.  IMO, that's disappointing.  In 1996, four tracks/cars would've been okay but it's 2010 (when the game was released) and based on an existing console game so cut me some slack.  Not only that, but three of the cars are American (Mustang, Viper, Challenger) and one is Japanese (Supra) so that's a great mix there (compare to the four nationalities of Scud Race cars).  There's only six cars on the track, not eight, not twelve, which is another disappointment, seeing as this isn't some PS1 racing sim people, it's 2012, remember?

Putting all that aside, I admit the gameplay itself is not that bad.  I picked the San Francisco track and some medium-level car, I forgot which one.  Indeed I picked manual transmission--the gear stick is like that of OutRun 2 & Crazy Taxi--shift up and shift down only.  It reminds me of Project Gotham Racing but with dingier hues.  Handling is a bit drifty and I had no idea how to drift so I just cornered hard on every turn and hoped for the best.  That seemed to fair well as I moved up from 6th to 3rd just before the finish line.  Only problem is you never seem to reach OutRun/Daytona speeds of 180+ mph which is kind of a bummer.  There's also a bit of car damage (including car doors flinging wide open mid-race) so that's kind of gnarly without being Burnout-ridiculous.

Overall, you could put some time into this game since it's not shoddily made but with only four cars & tracks and limited top speeds, I only see so much worth in this game.  Better off buying the console version for cheap I suppose.  LAZY REVIEW SCORE: 7.4

Dead Heat

Check out the official Namco page.

Ah, Namco, we meet again.  I heard about Dead Heat a couple of times and I wanted to know what all the fuss is about.  It looks like a crap Fast & Furious clone with loose Ridge Racer elements plus photo booth in one slick cabinet.  And we all know that in this Facebook/Twitter/awesome Blogspot era, everyone wants to slap their mug shot all over the place so what's not to love about this game???  Well, I'll tell you...

While writing this review, I have my conflicts on whether or not I'm factually correct.  For instance, this four-player Dead Heat setup DID NOT have gear shifters available on any of the dashboards.  I don't believe I was asked at all to choose Automatic or Manual Transmission.  But the pictures/footage I looked up online show that the game does, in fact, have a four-gear stick shifter.  But in my recollection of my game, there was no stick.  I'm serious folks--I could've sworn that this version of Dead Heat didn't have Manual Transmission.  If for some reason the game did have manual, then I was never made aware of it at any time during the game. EDIT: I recall seeing a couple of Fast & Furious cabinets that didn't have a manual stick at all so I believe there may be Dead Heat cabinets without the stick too.

As an aside, I'll say this.  Aside from a few exceptions such as Mario Kart and non-traditional racers (like Super Sprint or Bang Bang Racing), if your racing game does not have manual transmission (not even a simple hi/low gear like OutRun/Crazy Taxi) then it sucks, period.  I don't care if it's a "crap" racer like Cruis'n World, you get that gear shift working or else my interest drops rapidly.  Another reason why we need to round up all copies of Burnout & Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and have a bonfire Fahrenheit 451-style.  EDIT: The way I see it, if you program different gears into to the game (to resemble an actual car, not just one long gear), then I'd better damn well be able to switch through them.  How hard is it to implement manual?  Press a button and the gear switches instead of automatically.  Wow, that was hard.

So what else is there?  Well, when choosing my car out of a lineup of generic street racers like the Corvette, Skyline, Viper, Supra, etc. I only had like, what, 9 seconds to choose a car?  So I scrolled through the cars then all of a sudden--BOOM, I was locked into the Dodge Viper.  Once again, I have a feeling that I'm inaccurate again because upon consulting other gameplay footage, they had more time with the car select.  But once again, I swear that I only had 9 seconds.  I just don't get it.  Nine seconds isn't enough time to pick a car when you offer so many cars as it is.

Then the best part of all, smile for the camera!  Now, the last thing I want the game to do is to take a picture of me and make me stare at it for 3 minutes!  God Forbid the game actually "stored" the photo in memory and used it as an AI photo for people who play the game after me!  That's probably not true but there's way too many mysterious faces in the game as it is so I don't know if they're recycling or not.  Either way, I just got up out of the seat and boom--game now has a picture of an empty seat.  Haw haw.  You can also tie your photo to your own account and come back and earn extra miles for paint jobs and stuff (remember, flame decals add 50% more horsepower) but the last thing I planned on in this moment was playing the game ever again.

Look at these people, they're demented.

Holy cow, how about the gameplay?  Well, there's for tracks--New York, San Francisco (dayum, this city is in every racing game these days), Chicago, and London.  I picked London cause...I really don't know why.  The tracks are supposedly based off of real city layouts (you mean like Project Gotham Racing???) but that doesn't excuse the fact that just four tracks is crap, I'm sorry.

Your car starts out with three NOS boosts.  Okay, nitrous in a racing game, never seen that in a racing game before so w/e, sounds neat.  Press the NOS boosts within the first 15 seconds of the race only to find out that the NOS doesn't come back.  It doesn't recharge like in other racing games so that's a bummer.

Car handling...well, it's loose in that you have to be careful while turning lest your car rubs the outside wall.  Either way, nothing about the game felt taxing at all.  The AI cars always stayed on your ass because of rubber-banding, that I know.  The landscapes were at least colorful and the sense of speed wasn't that bad (180+ mph) but that's all I got out of the main gameplay itself.  It was just mundane for me.  Taking a photo of myself wouldn't have sweetened the deal at all.

Then, as abruptly as you can imagine, the race ends.  I literally only played for 80 seconds.  Once again, this is my personal recollection and may not be accurate for other Dead Heat cabinets but I truly do remember saying, "Holy cow, that's it?"  I'm stunned that such a racing game could be so short.  I thought we moved on from crap short races like Cruis'n USA but no, nothing's changed over the last 20 years.  What a huge letdown.

This game's garbage.  Aside from the photo gimmick, nothing about this game is really any better than Fast & the Furious.  And since F&F is already terrible enough as it is, this game is truly mediocre.  Your money's better spent playing a Sega racer.  LAZY REVIEW SCORE: 4.4

H2Overdrive

Check out the official H2Overdrive page.

Oh God, another Raw Thrills racer.  This can only turn out badly.  So there was a twin cabinet setup at D&B's and I decided to give it a shot since I hate myself and want to take the hit so that the rest of you don't think about playing this lousy ass game.  EDIT: Thanks to the anonymous poster who said that this game was just published my Raw Thrills and actually not made by them.  Bonus point on the review score!

I'm just kidding with this game sucking so bad.  Anyway, I heard that NBA superstar Rajon Rondo owns his own personal H2Overdrive machine.  How do we know this?  Check it out.

Good for Rajon!  However, I have different opinions.  The game has seven tracks and nine boats.  It plays pretty much the same as Hydro Thunder.  Pick a boat, pick a track, use the handle to speed up, collect the little blue/red boost thingies, and race to the finish.

I picked the hard track "London Underground" as well as some other hard difficulty boat.  Anyway...there's really not much to say about this game.  It's practically Hydro Thunder but with different stuff.  Problem is the game didn't seem as "exciting" as Hydro Thunder was.  This H2Overdrive version felt washed up.  Hence while I was playing the London Underground level, I was driving through these dark alleyways, dodging police boats and buoys while bouncing off the walls.  I tried doing the jump trick to reach the high boosts\ but failed because they must've changed how to do it or I'm just an idiot.

The London Underground level wasn't that great.  After plowing through dreary canals and sewers for a minute, I had a sneaking suspicion that I would fall through the ground into a vat of lava/radioactive waste.  Instead, I hit a ramp and flew into a happy forest setting with a sign that reads "Ye Olde Finish Line."  That's great, Raw Thrills, after fumbling around the most depressing level ever, I finally see blue skies and a few hints at something pertaining to Renaissance England and the race is over.  It only lasted about 90 seconds which, like in Dead Heat's case, isn't great.

Like in Dead Heat and every other Raw Thrills racer, you can save your progress with a password.  I really don't know what for but it seems like another gimmick to get people to play more than once.  Overall, this game is just "meh" to me so that's what score I give it.  I'd probably take Hydro Thunder over this.  LAZY REVIEW SCORE: 6.0

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

There were a couple more racing games at D&B's such as Fast & Furious Super Cars, Fast & Furious Bikes, Dirty Drivin', Need for Speed: Carbon, Tokyo Police Cop (wtf indeed)...I mean, what's the point of playing any of these games?  Playing any of these games meant one less play at Daytona USA so why waste my time with that dreck?  It also meant I had to wrack my brain even more writing more details about these non-Sega racers.  So I went to play Daytona USA and that was the end of it.  BTW, yay Olympics.  So that began today?  Cool, back to watchin NASCAR races...

Bang Bang Racing Preview, Review, Compliments

Hi guys, so there's this Steam sale thing going on right now so let's take a look at the games.  Oh, what's this, a racing game called Bang Bang Racing, let's check it out!  Videos:

Right now, Bang Bang Racing costs 3.39 in United States Dollars.  Even if this game's a dud, can you really complain about paying that much?  Besides, from one "Indie" racing game dev to another, this one's for you.  Seriously, I'm in need of a new racing game and I'm not touching Ridge Racer: Unbounded with its $30 price tag.  And personally, I think I had more fun with this $3 game than I did with games worth ten times the price.  It's a "Bang" Racing Game for your buck.  *noshameinthatpun*

So a quick rundown about the game: There's twenty cars in four classes--five muscle cars, five GT cars, five Le-Mans cars, and five Indy/F1 cars--each with slightly different characteristics.  There's also eight tracks which spoof existing locations--Daytona, Laguna Seca, Long Beach, Monaco, Nurburgring, Bahrain, Spain, and some snow level.  Because of the game's cartoony style, the tracks have been greatly embellished to give you lots to look at, such as palm trees, Japanese cherry blossom trees, fake billboards, buildings of various sizes, overpasses, and numerous elevation changes.  In other words, it's a damn good looking game.

The thing that ultimately makes or breaks the game is the camera.  It's kind of like R.C. Pro Am except the camera actually attempts to face parallel with your vehicle at all times.  At first, turning left and right can be massively disorienting since it takes a while for the camera to catch up, leading you to blindly drive in some direction besides straight (think Grand Theft Auto's driving camera) but in all honestly, you get used to it after a while.  Sure, no close-chase/first-person cam sucks but you get a better view of the action happening all around you so that's good.

Now about the cars. There's nitrous boosts that charge up automatically over time and when you drive through the "pit stop" (PRO TIP: Hit the pit stop as often as possible even if you're not damaged just for the turbo boosts alone.).  While turbo boosts are a common racing gimmick, here they're used well because it can give you a tactical advantage.

There's also the ability to brake which becomes phenominally important at higher speeds.  You can't powerslide Sega-style but it's still good fun to sling the car around, plus it's not an easy game by any means so it is rewarding once you get a hang of it.  Left, right, gas, brake, turbo.  Five buttons is all you need.

There's also oil & water slicks that inhibit your ability to turn for a brief time as well as a few shortcuts too.  Fortunately, there's no Mario Kart weapons present so it rides the fine line of being goofy fun as well as a truly serious racer.

I should mention this game can be played with the keyboard or an Xbox 360 controller.  The keyboard controls are okay but still tough to use.  Once I plugged in that 360 controller, my skills doubled and I enjoyed it more.  So be sure to get a joystick before playing.  This goes for every PC racing game, obviously.

I think the game's great but there's three caveats that must be said:

1. Having "beaten" the game in about four hours, I'm still left wondering what to do besides time trials and racing the computer over and over again.  The CPU's tough on the harder difficulties without being broken cheap (no rubber-band AI) so that's great.  There's split-screen multiplayer but no online multiplayer which is a bummer.  I question the game's replay value but c'mon, it's just a $3 game.  Though some of you may get better mileage out of this game since I'm so "good" at racing games or something.  The first two tiers of cars may be too slow but the game picks up when you get those LeMans/F1 cars, pshyeah.

2. I think the game personally errs too much on being "cute."  While I don't mind driving Micro Machines around cartoony tracks, it would be great if they took a few cues out of Sega's playbook and made the racing more "intense," such as meaner engine sounds and car rumbling at top speeds.  But I don't know for sure if that would make it better...I'm not a game PRODUCER people, I'm just a lowly programmer who does what he's told.

3. Come on, enough with the dubstep, let's get some ROCK AND ROLL in this joint.  Something that really KICKS.  No really, the music in this game is ok but that definitely-not-autotuned lady says (I think) "moooonayyy" or something like that too much.

Kind of like Days of Thunder (now rendered null & void thanks to Daytona USA) and 3D Pixel Racing (didn't play it but gameplay looks similar), this is an Indie game that pops up out of nowhere and exceeds your expectations so PAY DA MAN for actually making a racing game that entertains me.  FUN FACT: There's about 30 people that worked on this game and almost all of them have an accent in their names.  In other words, this isn't a US-made game.  It hurts me to say this but as an American, Europe & Japan are leagues ahead of us in driving games, sorry.

I think the game is great and that you should buy it now.  You have until July 23 to buy it at such a low price so do it now.  Just do it...

REVIEW SCORE: 9.0 out of 10.  Also check out my friend Dave's post on this game too.  It predates my post by about a month so props to him too.


BTW, Super Sprint is still better.

EDIT: Also be sure to buy Renegade Ops off the Steam store for under $4 too!  Do it for Sega!  Or buy four copies (one for you, three for friends) for under $8!  Wow, ya gotta love Steam!!!

Going To The Coke Zero 400 & Playing Bad NASCAR Games

Good news!  My dad drove down to Orlando and tomorrow, we are going to the Coke Zero 400!  It's the second race at Daytona in the NASCAR season.  Anyway, not much else to say but I'm stoked.  I also won't bring that goofy Daytona sign like last time (clearly Sega doesn't give a damn).  But let's hope Aric Almirola in the navy blue #43 car wins!!!  Or Junior.  Or pretty boy Jeff Gordon.

But first, we spent Friday night checking out stuff.  So we go to everybody's favorite destination--International Drive.  And we go to the big McDonald's with the giant Play Place, arcade, and bistro.  Waited in line for 20 minutes for what--an expensive chocolate shake?

Anyway, about a year ago, I went there and played Sega Race TV.  Here's my review and it wasn't that great.  Now in Sega Race TV's place is an actual NASCAR game.  It's no Daytona but we'll make do with it.  Is it NASCAR Arcade, the "other" stock car game by Sega?  NO!  It's Global VR/Electronic Arts' new NASCAR game otherwise known as NASCAR Team Racing!!

It's clearly easy to dismiss this game since it's made by evil EA but whatever--let's plunk five bucks on this piece of crap.  You can pick from about 30 official drivers so I went with my favorite--f***in' Kurt Busch in the blue #2 Miller Lite car without the Miller Lite logos!  Then I picked JUNIYAH with his red #8 Budweiser car without the Budweiser logos!  I see what you did thar, EA.  There's six tracks--Daytona, Talladega, Charlotte, Indy, Phoenix, and Bristol.  There's other cars in "expansion packs" but those were the only six I saw for now.  You can also pick 4-gear manual transmission although you can't drift and I don't see a point other than that it's l33t somehow.

SHUT THAT DAMN DUBSTEP OFF AND PLAY SOME SOUTHERN ROCK!

So what do I think of this game.  It's like a really stripped down version of NASCAR '08.  But as you start the race, there's an obnoxious load time with the scrolling bar...something I thought I'd never seen in an arcade game ever so that's a good start.  You start in 30th place and make your way to first.  Thing is it's pretty shallow and you can bounce off other cars with reckless abandon as your momentum keeps you going forward at all times.  Handling isn't as responsive as Daytona USA 1/2 so it's kind of "flingy"--you have to muscle the wheel just to keep from veering left and right when turning.  Drafting other cars gives you a "turbo boost"--let's you drop the hammer like in Days of Thunder.  You can reach 240 mph at times.

BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY TAKE THEM PLATES OFF BOYS GO WRECK SOME CARS DALE #3 FOREVER!!!!!!!

I think the game's okay but it's pretty stupid easy just like Sega Race TV.  You get extra time by completing laps and not by moving up the pack like in Sega's version.  The sense of speed is good (not great) and the soundtrack is appropriate & rockin' but other than that, there's not much home to ring about.  The graphics are a bit plain but it's also a bit outdated so I'll let that slide.  Yet at one point, there was a huge pileup with tons of smoke and as I drove through it, the framerate hit the floor.  Pathetic, that seldom happens in Sega Racers.

I played multiplayer twice.  In single-player, the AI at least gave you a fight.  Here, the AI parts like the Red Sea as you and the other guy.  Rubber-band AI kept my dad in the game and it was the last person to get a draft boost who wins.  I won at Daytona but lost at Bristol as I ran away crying.  I now disown my father and I hate my life.  Just kidding, this game sucked so who cares.

Anyway, I can't hate this game but with only six ovals and little reason to use manual transmission, it's a "meh" game.  If you get an upgraded version, you can up the score a bit.  Also if there were endurance modes (mandatory pit stops and more competent AI) it would be cool.  Still leagues better than Fast 'n Furious, that's for sure.

Final Score: 7.1 out of 10.

I'll talk more about that NASCAR race later.  Damn I can't wait for that.  But if Kevin Harvick wins again, I'm gonna go "Nooooooooooo......"

Ridge Racer Is OVER THE LINE

Okay, so Ridge Racer: Unbounded has been out for some time and it's yet another entry in the conga line of "wreck-em-ups" that receive positive scores from the press--Burnout, Flatout, Split/Second, Need for Speed, now RR: Unbounded.

A novel twist on the racing genre!

I could pick this game apart but it's no use.  I don't have the energy for it, God's honest truth.  But really, at this stage in the game, can anyone tell me what makes these dingy, urban racers that great???  What exactly do these games do differently that makes them worthwhile?  Oh, a generic track editor.  Oh, the ability to drop obstacles in front of other peoples' cars.  Oh, the ability to drive through concrete walls.  That's outstanding.  It really makes a world of difference.

The racing genre only consists of three players: the sims (Forza, GT), the wreck-em-ups (Burnout, this), and Mario Kart.  Insert rage quotes here.

BTW, I checked out GameSpot's review score for Ridge Racer: Unbounded and it's nonetheless flattering.  A solid 8.0.  Okay, I'm sorry, GameSpot, but you went over the line there.  I can't stand your site anymore.  You mark Ridge Racer an 8, you're in a world of pain.  Has the whole world gone crazy???  Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about racing games??? (yes, I swore)

MARK IT ZERO!!!

The Big Lebowski.  And to make it worse, the "normal" Ridge Racer for PS Vita is even worse.  Abysmal scores and a small amount of rehashed content.  3.0 on GameSpot.  It's like no one's tries to make decent racing games anymore unless it falls in one of the three categories above.  I guarantee Namco will put more effort into putting Reiko Nagase in the new PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale than they will making a quality Ridge Racer.  Who cares, Namco is hardly a friend to Sega--stealing all their ideas and stuff.  Good riddance, Namco.

Oh, and one more thing.  What's with Kotaku's post on Sega's Rise of Nightmares PR document?  Basically, the game is terrible (I can't agree or disagree there), therefore Sega planned to deceive everyone with this sub-par product as described in this concealed document discovered via WikiLeaks or some laid off Sega employee's USB drive.  There's nothing conspiratorial about this at all, Kotaku, these are written all the time in the business.  Does the document say "make the game suck and rip everyone off"???  You're a general gaming blog, Kotaku, so stop with the cheap shots at Sega, it's getting old (I can though cause I'm awesome and you know I'm right).