It’s Crysis without the drama ; GAMES [Mail on Sunday (England)]
Apr 3rd
[April 03, 2011]
It’s Crysis without the drama ; GAMES [Mail on Sunday (England)]
(Mail on Sunday (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Crysis 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) **** Okamiden (DS) **** The first Crysis was largely famous for refusing to work. The high-tech visuals were designed to push the latest PC graphics cards and processors to the limit, and even six months after it came out, most people still didn’t have PCs capable of running it. I bought a new PC specifically to play Crysis, but it still ran so slowly it was like wading through treacle.
So it’s rather welcome to see the sequel Crysis 2 on Xbox 360 and PS3 as well as PC because on both consoles there are no such things as different graphics cards or processors. Games just work, so you get the gorgeous graphics without having to cross your fingers hoping it will run on your rusty old PC rig.
The sci-fi shooter showcases the best graphics of this console generation. The developers are clearly confident: the game opens with real video of New York, then fades into the graphics, something developers never do for fear of making the game look second-rate. Here, it still looks great. With the high-tech Terminator-style overlays of your battle-suit scrolling across the screen, panning across the game’s ruined New York makes you feel like a lethal weapon.
The only problem is that the game, like the first Crysis, takes its time getting to the really good stuff – when your battle-suit gives you god-like powers such as invisibility and speed, and you’re so super-powered that it barely feels like a shoot-’emup at all. Once you get there, it’s unbelievably exhilarating, but it feels as if you’re stuck in tutorial mode for several hours on the way.
Naturally, if you do decide to play Crysis 2 on a PC, you’ll find the developers haven’t changed their spots too much. You’ll need a beast of a machine to run this: for full power, you’ll need a one- gigabyte graphics card, Intel’s new Core i5 processors and a minimum of 4Gb RAM. That means sit-down PCs only, or laptops so vast you’d need superhuman strength even to lift them.
With Nintendo’s 3DS now firmly planted in Britain’s gaming landscape, games for the old DS are going to thin out. Thankfully, the well-loved console isn’t being put out to pasture right away and there are still a few treats left, including the oddball Japanese adventure Okamiden, one of the best action role-players yet for DS.
Despite starring a magical dog with a paintbrush, not an elf, Okamiden owes a large debt to the Zelda series, sharing not only the basic gameplay of collecting new powers to solve increasingly fiddly puzzles, but also the lovely hand-drawn art style of the later DS Zelda titles. Here, it’s even more atmospheric, with a feel of ancient Japanese paintings.
Okamiden is great fun, looks good, and has plenty of charm, mostly inherited from the first Okami game on PS2. It’s more uneven than either of the Zelda games on DS, though. The pacing is a little lumpy, with indigestible chunks of travel and script ladled indiscriminately into the mix.
But the surreal Japanese world, and lovely touches such as flowers that sprout in the footsteps of your character, keep you playing despite the odd hiccup.
(c) 2011 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved.
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From www.tmcnet.com
Hear Ye, Hear Ye: The Importance of Digital Sound
Apr 3rd
More Related Stories email article print page 
Hear Ye, Hear Ye: The Importance of Digital Sound By John Gaudiosi for Digital Innovation Gazette 
New processors and advanced graphics are always a hit at the Game Developers Conference, but digital audio companies like Cakewalk, Dolby, and DTS also have a presence. With new PC games starting to take advantage of Dolby 7.1 surround sound — and DTS’ unveiling of 11.1 surround sound with DTS Neo:X technology at the Consumer Electronics Show 2011 — sound is playing a more important role in today’s video game landscape.
“We have seen the evolution of game audio go from sounds that accompany video to fully immersive musical scores that envelope the user in the action or world,” says Steve Thomas, public relations director of Cakewalk, which has Sonar X1 audio software available for game developers. “And when it comes to cut scenes, where the expectation for video and audio quality is very high, it’s like producing for TV/film. No more cheesy sound FX and simulated strings — now you get high-quality sampling and real orchestras. Game on!”
With the recent emphasis in the game business on stereoscopic 3D from both PC- and console-makers, Matt Tullis, marketing director at Dolby for games, says that essentially, video is only now catching up to audio.
Sound Rounds out the Game Experience
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While 3D visuals add depth to the picture, surround sound is a great complement to that experience, says Tullis. “Sound is an integral part of delivering any entertainment experience, but sound is especially important in games,” he notes. “When playing games, surround sound can give you a competitive advantage because you can literally hear your opponents sneak up behind you.”
One of the audio technologies making its way into new PC games like Electronic Arts’ Need for Speed World is 5.1 surround sound for Dolby Axon, the company’s voice chat solution for online games. What this means in-game is that multiplayer teammates playing online games like Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops will be able to hear their teammates from the locations of their in-game characters. This will add another level of realism to the audio.
Beyond 5.1, Tullis says the recent rollout of Dolby Pro Logic IIz into home theater systems, which adds height channels into the mix, means it’s now ripe for game developers to tap into that sound technology. Guerilla Games’ Killzone 2 was one of the first games to support discrete 7.1 channel output on PlayStation 3 a few years ago. Killzone 3 is expected to push that technology further this year. Tullis expects more game developers to tap into the fact that every 7.1 channel receiver in the market includes Dolby Pro Logic IIx. This technology works great with Dolby Digital 5.1 channel games to create a 7.1 mix.
Next Generation of Immersive Home Theater
At the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, DTS demonstrated DTS Neo:X , which the company calls the next generation of immersive 3D entertainment for home theater enthusiasts and industry audio professionals. Designed for cinema, music and gaming entertainment, DTS Neo:X provides a semispherical sound field using an 11.1 speaker configuration adding height/wide speakers to create a natural, immersive, spacious and lifelike 3D surround soundscape. The first electronics supporting this technology will be in homes by summer 2011.
This is all part of the always-improving audio landscape, which is often overlooked by media coverage. But game developers have always realized the importance of sound in games, even when cartridges and CDs didn’t allow for much creativity.
“We’ve been working with game developers for over 15 years to bring immersive surround sound to games,” says Tullis. “In the early stages of rolling out surround sound in games, audio was always an afterthought. Game developers had significant challenges to building high-quality games, coupled with minimal audio resources. As the industry has matured, so has the approach to audio. Audio in games now receives the attention it deserves, with proper attention being paid to sound design.”
In the PC gaming space, every new laptop and gaming rig opens up new opportunities for not just improved visual fidelity, but also a whole new audio experience to complement the virtual world.
Copyright (c) 2011 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved.
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From security.itbusinessnet.com
This Sweet Ass Hawken Gameplay Will Make Your Pants Feel Funny
Apr 3rd
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TehDude: Well I play video games a lot in my spare time and right out of college I was able to get …
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From www.ripten.com
Cartoon Network’s ‘Problem Solverz’ has Pittsburgh roots
Apr 3rd
If you happen to watch a new Cartoon Network series this week with some wild visual elements that look like graphics from an Atari 5200 video game, thank/blame Squirrel Hill native Ben Jones.
He’s the creative force behind “Problem Solverz” (8:45 p.m. Monday, Cartoon Network), a 13-episode, quarter-hour series that follows three friends who investigate problems and offer solutions. Horace is human, Roba is a robot and Alfe looks like the cousin of “South Park’s” Mr. Hanky but is, according to Mr. Jones, part-dog, part-anteater, part-human.
Mr. Jones, an artist who works in painting, drawing, sculpture and video, also gives voice to Alfe and Roba. He’s previously created animation for “Yo Gabba Gabba” and “Wonder Showzen.”
He moved from Pittsburgh at age 4 and grew up mostly in central Massachusetts but he still has family in Pittsburgh and gets back occasionally, though not as much as he’d like.
“I have a whole bunch of aunts and uncles there,” he said. “I went back for a wedding last year and missed a couple of weddings since then. So let’s take this time to apologize for all the weddings of my cousins I’ve missed.”
Mr. Jones, 34, said his father, Frank, worked on the crew of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” doing lighting, and family members still run Barone & Sons, a local real estate appraisal company.
After the family moved out of Pittsburgh, Mr. Jones’ father got into computers as a software engineer, always bringing home the latest hardware. The family had computers in the house, and Mr. Jones said that influenced how he makes art today.
“We had the first Macintosh at the house and I’m using a Macintosh now to make a TV show,” Mr. Jones said. “A lot of the work I do and my generation does uses that visual language of video games — bright colors, neons — that was the language we grew up with in the ’80s. Like Monet grew up with haystacks and glorifies those and celebrates those landscapes, my generation grew up with video games or neon BMX bikes or crazy hip-hop clothes, and now we’re seeing with all these shows this new visual language that reverse engineers it. I think that’s just a natural extension of the modern visual language.”
From www.post-gazette.com
Anime convention takes over Wyndham Grand Hotel
Apr 3rd
PITTSBURGH – They came for the costumes and camaraderie.
Between 4,200 and 4,500 people were expected to attend Tekkoshocon IX, the four-day Japanese anime and pop-culture convention that concludes today at the Wyndham Grand Hotel in Pittsburgh.
The lobby of the Wyndham (formerly the Hilton) was a colorful sight Thursday night for the opening ceremonies, at which youthful convention-goers mingled while dressed as their favorite characters from Japanese animation.
Speed Racer rubbed elbows with Pokemon’s Pikachu, while dudes in stuffed bear and wolf costumes socialized with young ladies decked out in bright skirts, shorts, dresses and robes with wigs every color of the rainbow and makeup capturing the wide-eyed essence of anime.
“It’s become so much bigger in the past five years; it’s been like an explosion,” said Tekkoshocon event chairman Bryan Spiegel. “The Internet has made it more mainstream.”
Tekkoshocon visitors can spend a few hours in a video game room that includes popular Japanese export Dance Dance Revolution, then listen to a lecture by an anime voice-over actor, before checking out a concert by a Japanese musical artist, such as Reni Mimura or Rampant. Panel discussions included “Power Rangers vs. Super Sentai,” “Yu-Gi-Oh! Fandom,” “Being Female in Geekdom” and “Godzilla: 57 Years of the King.”
There’s karaoke, a costume contest, a fashion show, and a dealer’s room selling Japanese pop-culture items. Attendees spend plenty of unstructured time introducing themselves and chatting about their costumes while posing for photos.
“Everyone’s very friendly. There’s not much elitism,” Spiegel said. “If I walk down the hallway in a costume and somebody dressed up in a costume from that same series sees me, they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome: Can I take a picture with you?’
“It’s like going to a Steelers game,” Spiegel said. “You see someone in a Roethlisberger jersey and you’re like, ‘Hey, you’re all right!’ “
(For more information on Tekkoshocon visit www.tekkoshocon.com.)
Scott Tady can be reached at stady@timesonline.com.
Copyright 2011 Timesonline.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Resident Evil: Begins unveiled as a prequel reboot movie
Apr 3rd
Bloody Disgusting’s Dead Pixels guys revealed that the new Resident Evil movie is a prequel/reboot called Resident Evil: Begins. This story has been picked up by a lot of movie sites since, but the thing is: the source article was posted yesterday. On April 1st.
However, the lovely people at our sister-site Flixist have looked into it, and apparently this is a real thing that is happening. Here is what Dead Pixels said about the supposed prequel, and a number of reasons why it sounds dumb (moreso than a new Resident Evil movie).
According to Dead Pixels — the videogame fellows at Bloody Disgusting — Sony Pictures subsidiary Screen Gems is planning Resident Evil: Begins as a prequel that will simultaneously reboot the Resident Evil movie series. A reboot with Jill Valentine as its protagonist, whose actress Sienna Guillory previously tweeted that she was training for “RE:5.”
Resident Evil: Begins supposedly takes us back to 1998, before the events of the first Resident Evil movie that centered on the Mansion events. So, before the Raccoon City outbreak actually happened. Milla Jovovich is said to return as Alice, again before the Mansion events. But instead of Alice taking the lead again, Begins will focus on Jill Valentine during the outbreak of the T-virus instead.
Yes, the same outbreak that didn’t happen until after the first movie. While that may sound stupid to fans, it makes perfect sense within the Resident Evil movie ‘canon’ because it’s so stupid that there’s no reason to doubt they wouldn’t do something like this.
Even sillier is the announcement of the possibility of a Resident Evil: Begins videogame tie-in. This proposed game would follow Jill and Alice before the T-virus outbreak, with Jill trying to slow down the virus’ spreading — before there was an outbreak — and Alice trying to reveal Umbrella for their role in the outbreak and the work they do in the Hive facility.
As a reboot, it wouldn’t really reboot the series as much as create a prequel that just goes back and messes with the storyline of the Resident Evil movie universe — in which Alice only meets Jill for the first time in Resident Evil: Apocalypse — which in turn has already laid waste to the videogame canon. Of course, we don’t know for sure if Alice and Jill will actually meet in Begins.
But do you doubt they wouldn’t do something like this? The movies made plenty of money after all, and these days ‘Resident Evil canon’ doesn’t really seem to mean much anymore. Also, the testes of a million horny teenage boys would probably explode if Guillory and Jovovich were to end up in some kind of semi-nude decontamiation sequence for the hell of it.
If you’ve seen Resident Evil: Afterlife (SPOILER ALERT for a movie from last year!) you’ll know that Jill Valentine is wearing the mind control device in the surprise plot twist at the end of that movie. Perhaps the ‘reboot’ will focus on some sort of parallel timeline of events that will eventually lead up to a sequel to Afterlife? Or maybe it will be Milla’s last one to make room for future movies without Alice?
While I was a bit wary of this when I saw it posted on April 1st (although it was posted at 10:24pm), some notable movie sites like Latino Review — who have broken their share of stories before — have since reposted it as well. After Flixist’s Alex Katz looked into it and told us it looks like really is happening, that laid those suspicions of a prank to rest.
Resident Evil: Begins will be in 3D, because of course it will be. Just like while there’s no mention of Paul W.S. Anderson being confirmed as the director, because of course he will direct it. Expect it sometime in 2012 after you’re done with Revelations. Can’t we just get a sequel to Resident Evil: Degeneration instead?
Please?
EXCLUSIVE: Fifth Resident Evil Film Officially Unveiled, Might Get A Game Adaptation [Bloody Disgusting]
From www.destructoid.com
Crafting clubs can appeal to teens’ creative side
Apr 2nd
Like a lot of teenagers, 16-year-old Geno Saenz, of San Antonio, spends his fair share of time watching television and playing video games.
But the high school sophomore doesn’t want to waste all his time in front of a screen. Nearly every day after school, he heads to the public library, where one of his favorite activities is making crafts.
“They’re really fun, and it really helps kill time when I’ve got nothing to do,” said Saenz, citing a recent calendar he made featuring the character Master Chief from the video game Halo.
He also likes the social aspect of crafting. “It’s better than just sitting at home and watching TV. I have so many friends here,” he said.
Persuading teens to step away from their laptops, iPods and gaming consoles can be difficult. But crafts can be a way to get them to slow down and express themselves.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re creative or not — you do what you like to do,” said Erika Maldonado, 17, who attends many of the same activities as Saenz. She gives some of her crafts to family and friends instead of buying gifts.
“That comes from the heart,” she said. “I think that’s something better.”
Recent teen craft events at the San Antonio Public Library have included clay charms and bracelets from bubble-gum wrappers (an “eco-friendly fashion piece”). There’s a scrapbooking session on Sundays for teens and adults.
Listening to what teens like Saenz and Maldonado want is what gets them to participate in crafts, said Jennifer Velasquez, coordinator of teen services at the library.
“Again and again, they want to make stuff that’s personal to them,” she said.
Tina Coleman, co-author of “The Hipster Librarian’s Guide to Teen Craft Projects” (American Library Association, 2009), said TV shows such as Bravo’s “Project Runway” have brought crafting back in vogue. One of the most appealing aspects to teens is being able to reuse and recycle things.
“Kids really respond to the idea of taking something that’s going to be trash and turning it into something beautiful,” she said.
Coleman and her mother, Peggie Llanes, are preparing to publish a second teen crafts book, including memory boards, patches and jewelry. The first book featured projects such as pressed-flower note cards, vinyl totes and a book pillow.
Rod Buttermore, youth services librarian at the public library in Grimes, Iowa, said he gets up to 10 teens at a time at his craft workshops. They are most interested in items they can wear.
“I think crafting is definitely in right now in terms of the cool factor because it’s another level of self-expression,” said Buttermore, whose projects have included making wallets from duct tape. “It’s definitely something that sets you apart from the crowd.”
Some teen crafters can even make a little extra money.
Marci Guzowski, 17, has turned crafts into cash on the website Etsy.com, dedicated to selling handmade and vintage items. With the help of her mother, a professional potter, the teen from Asheville, N.C., has sold around 1,000 pottery pieces. The money will go toward college expenses next fall, and possibly a car, she said.
Guzowski said she plays sports, likes movies and has a smartphone, but crafting keeps her in touch with her creative side and helps her “just chill.”
“When I’m doing my pottery, it’s sort of a place for me to kind of go away and relax, and have that time to not worry about anything — school or my friends,” she said. “It’s sort of like a sanctuary where I can go and relax.”
And what do her classmates think?
“They always ask for me to make them stuff,” she said.
From www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com
Aggies take on Cardinal in first step of title quest
Apr 2nd
INDIANAPOLIS — The Texas A&M women’s basketball team hasn’t exactly tried to hide its ambition as it prepares for the biggest moment in the 37-year history of the program.
The Aggies didn’t travel to the Final Four just to experience the hoopla for the first time.
They came to win the championship.
“We’re bringing it home to ya’ll,”’ Texas A&M forward Danielle Adams told fans in a video posted earlier this week on the team’s athletics website.
Not only does Adams expect the Aggies to beat Stanford Sunday night in the national semifinals, but she also expects to win again on Tuesday night in the title game.
“We’re winning it all right here,” Adams said in the video posted shortly after the team’s arrival in Indianapolis on Thursday.
A compelling statement, indeed, considering the competition. The Aggies (31-5) to the play tournament-tested Stanford Cardinal (33-2) at 6 tonight.
The game will provide some interesting storylines. While A&M has never played in the NCAA tournament semifinals, Stanford has been a regular.
In fact, the Cardinal have played in the last three Final Fours, including appearances in the national championship game against Tennessee in 2008 and last year against Connecticut in San Antonio.
The Aggies weren’t making any bold predictions to the national media on Saturday, but they didn’t sound like a group that would be intimidated by the Cardinal’s experience or size advantage.
“I think we’re going to present a little bit different style than the other teams that are playing,” A&M coach Gary Blair said. “All of us have good offensive players that can create their own shots.
“We can all run the floor. We can all play defense. But we try to play pressure defense 94 feet. Sometimes we’ll back it off to half court. But when you come down, we want it to be hard for you to run your offense.”
If Stanford’s guards can beat the A&M pressure and pound the ball to former Houston-area stars Nnemkadi and Chiney Ogwumike, then it could be a long night for the Aggies.
Post Kayla Pedersen, plus the Ogwumike sisters, all appear to have distinct advantages in height and athleticism over the Aggies. If Adams is concerned about it, she isn’t saying.
“I’ve played against many great post players,” Adams said. “Nothing’s changed. (It’s about) just doing great on my technique and being aggressive.”
Last week, A&M’s defense collectively brought down the top post player in the nation — Baylor’s 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner — in the finals of the Dallas Regional.
After losing three games to Baylor earlier this season, second-seeded A&M won 58-46 over the top-seeded Lady Bears when it came down to crunch time at the American Airlines Center.
As a result, the Aggies’ confidence has soared.
“You know, after our win we were really excited,” A&M senior Sydney Colson said. “But we brought it back down to reality when we got to College Station and (started) focusing on the next opponent. That’s what you have to do.”
From www.mysanantonio.com
Why Nintendo isn’t making a phone
Apr 2nd
San Francisco (CNN) — Playing Super Mario on a Nintendo phone will remain a pipe dream.
Although Microsoft and Sony — Nintendo’s rivals among the “Big Three” gaming companies — have branched into mobile phone development, Nintendo isn’t planning to build a phone or license its games for third-party software platforms, executives for the Japanese company said in interviews.
Instead, the video-game giant is continuing to focus on machines dedicated to entertainment.
“We have no desire to get into telephony,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said. “We believe that we will earn our way into someone’s pocket without having to offer that (phone capability) as an additional factor.”
Nintendo isn’t completely discounting the idea, but the high costs involved in cellular carrier partnerships are a roadblock, said Hideki Konno, a top Nintendo producer.
“It’s not that I’m uninterested,” Konno said through a translator. “However, I look at the business model, and I see so many additional costs that come into play.” Splitting revenue with cell operators would affect the retail price of games, he said.
“Would we increase the price of the software itself?” Konno asked. “The distribution couldn’t be free.”
On March 25, Nintendo released the 3DS, the first mainstream gadget available that can show 3-D graphics without the need for special glasses. Games cost about $40, compared with the free and inexpensive applications available for phones. In addition to games, the 3DS also is designed to be able to download movies or stream them via Netflix.
Some tech bloggers have wondered aloud whether Nintendo should have put cellular connectivity in the 3DS, and some analysts project that smartphones could cut into the market for hardware dedicated to gaming.
But in the U.S., the 3DS sold more units on its launch day than on any other DS or GameBoy system’s first day, Nintendo said in a statement. Nintendo didn’t release sales figures, but the NPD Group will release a report in two weeks.
LG Electronics and HTC are both working on smartphones with displays capable of glasses-free 3-D similar to Nintendo’s. The technology has gotten off to a strong start, especially with children. Yongseok Jang, LG vice president of strategy, recently joked that his kids are “begging” him for 3DS systems. “But I said no way,” he said.
While Apple has had significant success with the iPhone, some of its mobile-platform adoption has been driven by the iPod Touch, a phone-less entertainment device. And Samsung Electronics is releasing a similar handheld media player, called the Galaxy Player, in the U.S. in the next few months.
Nintendo recently has begun heavily criticizing the sprouting smartphone-games industry. Executives said the app-store model degrades the quality of games and isn’t sustainable.
“We don’t want to be in the phone business,” Fils-Aime said. “We don’t see that as an opportunity. Phones are utilities. Phones are not by definition entertainment devices.”
Even so, Nintendo has been thinking about phones for at least a decade. It filed a patent for a game-playing cell phone in 2001.
“It makes sense to enter a market when you feel you’ve got some sort of competitive advantage,” Fils-Aime said. “From Nintendo’s perspective, we don’t see that we have a competitive advantage in telephony.”
Sony Computer Entertainment, which makes the PlayStation, is working on a new portable system dedicated to gaming. It is also licensing older games in its catalog to outside vendors.
The first fruit of this mobile-gaming-software platform, called PlayStation Suite, will be Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play phone for Verizon Wireless. While the legacy PlayStation games come from Sony Computer, the phone maker is responsible for negotiating deals with other game developers to support its hardware, said Peter Farmer, Sony Ericsson’s head of marketing for North America.
Sony’s new nonphone PlayStation gadget, which is scheduled to debut this year, will be able to connect to cell data networks for online play and accessing downloads.
Fils-Aime from Nintendo did not discount the idea that a Nintendo system might adopt this strategy at some point and highlighted the relationship his company has with AT&T. Owners of the 3DS will receive free access to AT&T’s public Wi-Fi hot spots in the U.S., starting in May.
From www.cnn.com
Nascar the Game: 2011 review
Apr 2nd
Okay, today, I’m going to review Eutechnyx’s NASCAR the Game: 2011, which was released March 29th. It was published by Activision.
When I first heard about this game, I think, in September of last year, I was so happy, even days afterwards. Just having a new Nascar game after almost three years of the same EA crap was getting old. Then, the next couple of weeks and months, Eutechnyx released more and more info that just got me pumped upped for this game. The damage, car models, tracks, everything looked awesome from the screenshots they provided. You have no idea how pissed I was when they pushed the date back, even if it was only a month.
However, then the game was released. I didn’t get the game on the release date, so I had to settle for reviews from people on here and other sites. When I saw how many people were saying stuff such as, “WORST GAME EVER!!!” and “I didn’t pay for a beta video game.” and everything like that, I was unsure about this game, but I decided to still get it since I wanted a more updated Nascar game. I don’t buy games for perfection, I just buy games if it is fun to play and something that I can sit down to play if I’m bored or passing the time.
And that’s exactly what I got.
I finally got it yesterday, Friday, and right when I got home, I popped it into the PlayStation 3. I let it load and answered the trivia as best as I can and then I was able to drive. I decided to drive a few quick races to get the feel of the car and just to see how fun the game was. I picked my favorite driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and decided to race at Bristol, my favorite tracked. The race was on the Very Hard difficulty, no qualification (started dead last because of it), and turned the assists off; it was a ten lap race, by the way. It was just a awesome race. I was dumping into drivers and the walls, once I spun out after I decided to make it three wide coming out of the corner and it didn’t turn out well. If I remember correctly, I finished 33rd. I then raced at Martinsville where I won, ‘Dega where I finished somewhere in the top ten, Daytona where I wrecked out, and Kentucky where I also won.
This game is an overall great game. The graphics, feel of the cars and tracks, the car and driver models. It was just an awesome game. Does it have issues? Yes, but even my favorite games (COD: Black Ops and Red Dead Redemption) has issues. The issues can be patched and, from what I heard, Eutechnyx is in the process of patching the issues. Oh, all the races so far have been pre-patch (the first patch that was released). My connection was weird last night and I didn’t get it. That’s also why I haven’t been able to play Online yet, but I’ll try to get Online time in today. From what I understand, most of the issues are online, so maybe that’s why I haven’t seen to many.
One that I’ve seen the most? Caution flags not coming out when its supposed to. I spun once at both Bristol and Daytona and not once did the caution flag come out, and yes, I did have Caution Flags “on”. And caution flag did come out once for me, but I had to stay in the middle of the track for it to come out. Like I said, this was pre-patch so the first patch might have fixed this.
Something did bug me about the game though: the damage and crashes. Eutechnyx was raving about how realistic the damage and crashes look, but when I got into the game, the damage/crashes looked almost as worse as EA’s. It feels and looks like bumper cars out there and damage hardly ever appears even when you ram straight into the wall at full speed. Not a very big deal, but I was seriously disappointed in this aspect of the game, especially after how much they hyped it up.
Before I forget, the paint shop is amazing. Yes, it is complicated and time consuming, but it is still a very cool aspect of the game. I spent about an hour just in the Paint Shop making cars. It is really cool and if you have enough patience, you can easily make a car that looks like it could be raced on a Sunday. I’m defiantly going to play around with it some more today.
So, to this finish this review, a very good game with a few issues, but nothing a patch or two can’t fix. If you still haven’t got this game yet or haven’t opened it because of what you heard, it isn’t that bad. Don’t play it expecting a perfect game because it’s not, but if you can brush aside all the bugs/glitches it has, it is a awesome game. If Eutechnyx does fix those few bugs/glitches everyone is complaining over, this game would be amazing.
This is going to get the Nascar Racing 2003 and iRacing (both of which I have never played) fans pissed, but, in my opinion, this is the best racing game ever. The tracks race the way it does in real life and the drivers are aggressive, but it isn’t overdone. The graphics are a plus too. Only thing that disappointed me was the damage and crashes.
Get this game if you want a racing game that you can just have fun on when you’re bored or want to pass the time. People that have passed on this or already took it back, you guys are defiantly missing out on a fun game.
Once I play Online today, I’ll let you guys know my impressions on it. From what I heard, it in itself is a different game entirely.
My Score:
8/10
PS: When I went to GameStop yesterday to buy it, I was expecting to find a used copy or two, but the game said they were selling like crazy and no one took the game back yet. They had no used copies and no “new” ones in stock. Hell, even at Wal-Mart, they only had four in stock. Apparently, around my area it is selling like crazy.
From www.operationsports.com
