Gaming’s best kart track editor on a portable device? Damn straight we’ll have some of that. The PS3 game suffered from long load times and some miserably tight (and cheaty) AI, but here’s a chance to really push the game into a contender position.
Diving straight into the now cutscene-bare (yay!) Career mode, I was pleased to see new tracks galore. With the series having such a large focus on its impressive track editor, it would have been a shock if they had just reissued the PS3 ones.
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As the next generation of portable gaming steps forward, the WipEout series returns to its roots. 2048 is the first official season of WipEout’s familiar antigravity racing league, with a compelling intro video showing the Feisar team’s growth from traditional racing in the 1960s and through the generations and more advanced vehicles all the way up to the vicious arrowhead-shaped beasts we know and love.
Just because the game predates the others in the timeline doesn’t mean it’s particularly different. A few tracks start at street level, complete with road markings and tarmac, but it isn’t long before you’re racing up the sides of skyscrapers. The developers have featured wider sections of track in some areas to encourage combat, but in reality most of the tracks are still tight, especially when you’re coming into a corner at top speed amongst a pack of rivals. There’s a larger emphasis on skillcuts, difficult shortcuts that will give you an advantage as long as you don’t bounce wall to wall all the way through them. All the AI opponents seems to know about them and don’t blunder their way through like you will for you first dozen attempts. With no difficulty sliders available, there’s no getting around that this is one of the tougher WipEout games.
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PS3 gamers already know of Joe Danger’s brilliance and now XBLA customers finally get to see what all the fuss was about thanks to this Special Edition. For those of you not in the know, Joe Danger rocked onto PSN last year to unanimous applause, combining motorcycle stunt riding, platforming, speed runs and item collecting into one incredibly slick experience.
The game plays across 2D planes, left to right. On your way to the finish line, there are multiple objectives for each of the 100+ levels. Collect all the silver stars, beat a par time, grab coins, hidden icons, land on all targets and maintain a combo for the whole level are some of the tasks at hand. You’ll only need a couple ticked off to progress, but mastering a stage is where the fun really starts.
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Late movie tie-ins are bound to raise suspicion from any gamer, especially from a film that’s clearly one of Pixar’s poorer efforts. Unless the UMD fires out of the PSP and blinds me, this should be a better experience than the film. Maybe. The retail version isn’t yet available in the shops (next year apparently) but the PSN version is available now, albeit at an optimistic price.
After expecting a few standard races around the film’s locations, I was surprised to see that they’ve changed the racing format a little. Instead of having full steering control from a rear camera angle, you’re locked into lanes. You swap between them by flicking the analogue stick left and right. The camera sweeps around throughout the race, attempting to provide the best cinematic angles.
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After hearing Dirt 3 would be making a return to proper rallying, I couldn’t help but feel let down by the final product. So much of the game was left to the demented machinations of Ken Block; I was relieved they’d taken McRae’s name off the box. A rally car is not a BMX or a skateboard as the clumsy gymkhana sections proved.
WRC 2 lives and breathes for proper rallying though. Traditional A-B stages dominate, with a few Super Special Stage duels thrown in for good measure. All the big names like Loeb, Solberg and Hirvonen are here along with their official WRC rides. The lower rally leagues and the infamous Group B cars are also present. You can race individual rallies with the stars straight away, or get started on the lengthy career mode, The Road to the WRC.
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Not the best time to release a rally title as Dirt 3 is power-sliding into stores on Tuesday. But if you can’t afford that right now Sega hope you might drop a few points for their bite-sized rally release.
This really is a small game though. Five tracks are all you’ll find here, along with 13 cars and modes. The initial tracks are a tropical jungle with mud and sand, a canyon with dirt and tarmac, and an alpine mountain pass with tarmac and snow sections. The time limit between sections returns, but never actually presents anything resembling a challenge, unlike the older games.
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These games keep surviving, despite never really amassing much acclaim, even after merging the two world of motocross and ATV quad-bike racing, which at least saved fans of both a bit of money. So is there enough here to warrant a purchase rather than another indifferent shrug two laps into the demo? Let’s find out.
There’s no a typical career mode in place, either by label or structure, which is initially off-putting. But at least there’s no terrible story. You can choose to ride an MX (bike) or ATV (quad) around a small handful of tracks while earning experience points for yourself and for each vehicle.
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After smashing vehicles and racers to bits across deserts, tropical islands and Arctic tundras, where else in the world is there left to race for MotorStorm? How about the end of it? Or more specifically a city that is absolutely not (it is) San Francisco, during a series of earthquakes and storms.
The setting might be a little close to the bone in regards to the recent tragedies in Japan, but in fairness the game was almost shipping when that happened and Sony sensibly decided to delay the release.
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All good things come to those that wait. Not just an adage for the long wait that’s preceded this much delayed game, but a piece of advice for getting through a rough start with Polyphony Digital’s driving simulator.
There have been a few patches already to fix the online issues, such as packed servers infecting the single-player game. So now after the storms have settled following GT5’s release, we can provide a proper verdict of the game as it stands today. Read more…
With the successful rebranding of Need for Speed as something a bit more serious with last year’s NFS: Shift, EA might have wished they hadn’t already tasked Criterion Games with taking on the old brand instead of working on a new Burnout game. But hell, we were all more excited than we’d like to admit at the possibility of a Burnout/NFS hybrid even if EA couldn’t be arsed coming up with a new name. But is it a Brangelina or a three-thumbed hillbilly?
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit straps you into the seat of some of the world’s hottest cars as both a racer and a police officer in the fictional US location, Seacrest County. Sea crest consists of many, many desert roads, beaches and mountain passes. But mainly deserts. While the races take place on tarmac there are loads of shortcuts you can take to gain an advantage. Often they’ll be more hazardous and over rough terrain, so you’ll have to judge which ones work best for you and the car you’re driving. There are even a few that may take longer than the original route, you’ll have fun checking them all though.
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It’s been almost five years since we last saw an official WRC game. The name is now in the hands of Milestone, the team behind the SBK motorbike games. Turns out they’ve been dying to get on four wheels all-along.
The full list of official WRC Rallies have been included. Sweden, Mexico, Jordan, Turkey, New Zealand, Portugal, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Japan, France, Spain and GB all make the cut supplying 78 tracks between them. For those of you that don’t follow the WRC, the tracks are for single cars only, with everyone getting one shot to get the best time over a series of stages. The road surfaces change between tarmac, dirt, gravel, mud and snow; with the car handling changing for each. Some tracks are backwards versions and many of them often share some sections too, so the 78 number can sometimes feel a bit padded.
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If Demon’s Souls was like getting your head kicked in and asking for more, Joe Danger is like waking up in hospital the day after with Katy Perry sat by your side telling you she’s murdered Russell Brand and everything’s going to be just fine.
360 owners have been enjoying Trials HD, but Joe Danger has leapt over the competition – and a few school buses and shark tanks for good measure to top the podium. Boost, jump and trick your way to the finish line racking up gloriously brave combo multipliers on the way. The game works on multiple 2D planes like Little Big Planet, but with set points for ‘changing lanes’. Read more…
Last month I was pleasantly surprised with Gaijin Entertainment’s effort to tackle Burnout with Anarchy: Rush Hour. Well they’re off starting fights with the big boys again, stepping into Blur’s and Split/Second’s territory. Admittedly this game started off life on the PC and predates the newcomers.
So it’s a car-combat racing game with destructible environments set in the future. The tracks tear through the crumbling remains of (our modern day) versions of London, Bangkok, New York, Moscow, Prague and so on. The first thing you notice is how good the game looks for a PSN title. Although a little rough, there’s a lot of detail built into each track. They bristle with colour and run at a smooth frame-rate. It’s certainly a better looker than Anarchy. There are lots of branching routes and even short-cuts to unlock. Pretty impressive design overall. Read more…
The best fun to be had on two wheels so far this generation has been with Burnout’s hell-powered bikes, with Moto GP and the first SBK game missing out on the love, failing to please arcade or simulation fans.
SBK X has split itself into three modes (Arcade, Simulation and Multiplayer) right from the start menu to try and please arcade and sim fans alike. But have they spread things out too much? I’ll split the review into the same three parts to cover all bases.
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After the platforming success of Little Big Planet, it’s good to see someone taking a similar approach to racing games. ‘Race Create Share’ is the new tagline for this arcade kart racer with user generated content at its core.
Players can create their own racer characters -or Mods as they’re known here- then create a vehicle for them too. The most exciting part of the game though is the track creator that has a huge amount of depth, but not at the cost of ease-of-use. And as a feature, it’s a great success. But what about the rest of the game? Read more…
Anarchy: Rush Hour is a plucky little PSN game that has quite simply waltzed up to Burnout in a bar, spilt its drink, snogged its girlfriend then ran outside jumped into a car and sped off. After backing into Burnout’s ride first for good measure.
For £5.49 you won’t find a more interesting racer on the store. It’s really rough around the edges but, there’s a lot of fun in here too. Read more…
Considering kart racers are supposed to be a heavily populated genre, it’s surprising that there aren’t really any on the PS3 and Xbox 360. There’s a few film spin-offs like Pixar’s Cars and PSN titles like Gripshift and Smash Cars but it’s almost like nobody’s got the guts to take on Nintendo and Mario Kart.
No longer though. Sonic’s star may have fallen in all manner of horrific ways over the years, with him even having to hop into bed with the porky plumber to pay the bills, but make no mistake Sonic and pals are back in contention with this top racing title. Read more…
It’s been years since the last F1 game and it’s a little surprising to see Codemasters test their newly acquired license on the Wii first, but probably a wise decision seeing as Dirt 2 and Forza 3 are keeping the non-Wii crowd busy for now. While Codemasters’ modern classics of Dirt 2 and Grid were developed in-house, Sumo Digital are in the driving seat for this one. Sumo do have a history of racing titles, but admittedly nothing that comes close to Codemasters’ recent output. Read more…
EA has decided to reinvent their own wheels as the Need for Speed brand disowns its street racing vibe in a much cleaner break than 2007’s NFS: Pro. Shift is the full transition to track racing to try and compete with the likes of Gran Turismo and Race Driver: Grid. They’ve managed to successfully re-invent FIFA over the last couple of years, so maybe they’ve got a shot.
It’s clear that a lot of time, effort and money have been thrown at the game with a Top Gear style dream collection of ludicrously expensive, top name cars such as the Zonda and Bugatti Veyron all fighting for dominance on dozens of familiar tracks from the USA, Europe and Japan. Read more…
They’ve done the desert and the tropics so now the MotorStorm tour has decided to cool off and head to the Arctic. There are 100 events to rip through in such frostbitten locations like ice caves, mud bowls, gargantuan bobsleigh tracks (or should that be tubes?) and mountain passes.
The biggest problem facing the PS3 MotorStorm games is they don’t exactly ease you in gently. And if the general lack of interest for last years rock hard sequel has shown anything, it’s that the series needed to relax a little.
Apparently new developers Bigbig Studios may have agreed, as it’s obvious from the off that this time around you’ll be winning races early on and not constantly begging for a top half of the field finish. Read more…
Gaming’s best kart track editor on a portable device? Damn straight we’ll have some of that. The PS3 game suffered from long load times and some miserably tight (and cheaty) AI, but here’s a chance to really push the game into a contender position.
