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Archive for the ‘Racing’ Category
After the less than lukewarm response to Need for Speed: Carbon and the unmitigated disaster that was Need for Speed: ProStreet, EA and Black Box were pretty sure that they finally had a winner in their hands in form of Need for Speed: Undercover. More so when you take into consideration how long time fans of the series have been clamouring for more of NFS dipped in the same goodness that made Most Wanted so enjoyable. So, having nothing better to do than to appease the moneybags fans and gain back some of the lost ground that the series had to concede to other stellar racing titles this year, Black Box decided to throw the cops into the mix again, introduce a new “Heroic Driving Engine” (HDE) and pray to every conceivable god and set fire to little effigies and hope that this is the winning formula that will get the gamers flocking back to them again.
Whether it actually manages to do that is a pretty difficult question to answer considering how easy it is to brush off the game as another one in the succession of disasters that have rolled out of the Need for Speed camp over the last few years. The NFS series, in its later years and newer avatars, has all but stereotyped the half-breed Simulation/Arcade racing genre, completely dominating the casual and pro race-game circuits across India. Mirroring what’s in style every particular year, NFS hit on the tuner culture with Underground and its sequel, re-inventing itself with flashy cars, night-time racing across neon lit stretches blurring past the windshield at 200+ mph and the adrenaline rush that kicked into our bloodstreams every time the car got a shot of nitrous. Taking a page out of The Fast and The Furious plus clones, Most Wanted went one step further with its open world, frantic police chases, cheesy yet entertaining cut-scenes, all gelling together to make for one of the most fun games in the franchise this side of Porsche Unleashed. Undercover, in typical EA / NFS fashion is a Frankenstein created by salvaging all the best elements from the previous successful iterations, which technically, should make it the best in the series.
All you gamers in Delhi eager to check out Need For Speed Undercover at the Playstation Experience event coming your way next week, here is another chance to play the game before it hits the shelves.
EA India is inviting all Indian fans of Need For Speed series to try out the game at All Sports Bar, Connaught Place on 19th November, which is tomorrow. Be there by 12 p.m. if you don’t want to be stuck in a queue waiting for your turn.
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It seems like those of us who normally opt for a Custom Installation over a Typical one are prone to running into issues while doing so in Capcom’s latest installation of the long running superbike sim, MotoGP ‘08. Usually during installation on PC, you will have the option to go for a Typical Installation where the game will choose the directory ( “C:/Program Files/” in most cases ). In case you opt for a Custom Installation, you get the ability to choose which drive you prefer your game installation to reside in. However, with MotoGP ‘08 there seems to be some kind of an issue serious enough for Capcom to issue a press circular which you can read after the jump. In the meanwhile, stick to the default installation and wait for the promised patch.
Though a bit late, we finally managed to get our hands on FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage (FlatOut UC) after it made the jump from being a game on the Xbox 360 almost an year back to being a PC port now. Does it manage to retain all the fun the series has been synonymous with while driving down to the PC platform? We gave it a test ride to find it for ourselves.
Although we love our sims, here at The ANGRY Pixel, once in a while, we need an escape from all the reality around us. After battling miles upon miles of crazy Bangalore rush-hour, it feels strangely soothing to jump into a game that allows you to jump over cliffs and do crazy back-flips, all at the same time. There is nothing more exhilarating then to soar over the top of the trees, let go of the handle and do something stupidly amazing. So while we can’t do any of this stuff without losing a few limbs, thank God for games like Pure that allow us to escape from the reality into the world where everything, almost everything is possible.
About a week ago, Xbox 360 Fanboy reported info regarding the next Forza Motorsport – thanks to a leaked survey from Intellisponse – and that the acclaimed racing series could possibly be shipped on 2 Dual-Layered DVDs – thanks to the bevy of new stuff likely being added (400 cars! 100 tracks! Driving Assist!). Well, one of our sources – thanks to a bit of snooping around Dhruva Interactive – claims that this may not necessarily happen in the long run.
With two racers just a few feet ahead of me, the race is about to end. I plan to make a dash for the finish line on the penultimate corner. Maybe I’ll manage to squeeze in and beat them to first place. The second-last corner is looming ahead; now’s my chance. But before I can even understand what’s happening, the driver in the second position suddenly spins out of control and crashes into the side wall. As I whiz past, I look back to see him still spinning and crashing into the trailing pack of cars, leading to a satisfying pile up. I grin in amazement at how the AI racers are more realistic than the previous racing games I’ve played. No more rubber band AI. Nice touch there – AI racers that don’t always follow the perfect driving line.
With just one driver separating me from the finish line, it’s time to concentrate. In the excitement of the previous crash I failed to overtake him. The last corner is my only chance to overtake him. As I approach it with just a few feet separating us, I try to overtake him from the inside line. Much to my disappointment, I completely misjudge the turn and crash to my left. The screen goes crimson red. Front bumper crumpling in, windshield glass shattering – the car is wrecked beyond repair. It’s the end of the race for me…or is it? This is where the Flashback Feature comes to my rescue, which allows me to rewind up to the last ten seconds before my fatal crash. I can select any point from those ten seconds from which I can restart the race! I roll back to the point just before the crash, adjust my turn and shoot past my rival towards the finishing line and a thrilling victory.
All of this happened in the last twenty seconds of the race. That’s how exciting and adrenaline pumping this game can get.
Every so often, I entertain the thought of giving a licensed game a crazy whirl, preferably based on some popularly, hyped motion picture. The most common perception being that a game specifically made to use a movie brand as a backdrop will most likely reek of fungus bread drenched in spoiled-egg stew, and that the accompanying vice-versa (movie based on a game franchise) will also hold true. Which is what’s so weird about Speed Racer for the Nintendo DS; despite being tailored in mind for people interested in the current-running, heavily-stylized reinterpretation of the Japanese-animated show from the late 60s, the DS version doesn’t borrow many assets from it – especially when compared to its console-counterparts. There’s virtually no story-line to speak of, and signature facets such as the Mach 5’s many whacky gadgets are nowhere to be found (Well, except for the one that makes the car jump – but every car in this game has that!). Even more bewildering, is that it’s a capable, if somewhat derivative, arcade-racer to boot.
More after the jump.
Shortly after we previewed the PC version of Codemaster’s upcoming mix of arcade and sim racing game, Race Driver GRID, we had a chance to have a look at the Xbox 360 demo version of the game as well. Weighing in at 795 MB, the demo turned out to have more bang for the buck then other game demos that have been clogging our bandwidth but failing to deliver a gameplay experience that would justify the huge file sizes. With support for online racing in the demo via Xbox LIVE, it is pretty much ensured that this is one demo that you won’t be deleting any time soon, at least, not till the game hits the shelves coming June.
The month of May seems to have started off on a great note, what with E-Xpress Interactive playing Santa and leaving us a PC preview copy of the highly anticipated multi-platform game GRID. Knowing the rich history that Codemasters has when it comes to the racing games genre, the racing buffs in us were eager to try out the latest offering from their able-stables. Certainly then, braving the Mumbai traffic to rush back home was something that we were not really too keen upon. However, once back home and having installed the game, it just took us a couple of minutes into the game to know that all the trouble was worth it.
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