Oddball Update

Whilst in Michigan last month, I picked up a couple of used Xbox games — one of which was the new L.A. Rush driving game from Midway. I’ve been playing it off-and-on for the last couple of weeks. It started off okay, overall. The story is a horrid, hip-hop bling-bling tale with a bunch of phat (and fat) rappers in sweatpants talking about their whizzips and whatever. The graphics, though, are quite pretty, the driving is pretty fun (Reaper likened it to Midtown Madness, which I agree with), and the car selection is cool — you’ve got some real interesting cars in there, like a ‘73 Monte Carlo, the new GTO and Solstice, plus some sport compacts and nice exotics.

Problem is, the game is frustrating as all hell. In order to progress, you need money. In order to get money, you have to race. But in order to race, you have to pay money! Yes, each event has an entry fee. We’re talking like a $1,000 entry fee for a race where you’ll win a paltry $3,000 if you come in first. If that’s not bad enough, throw in the fact that you can’t practice a race, can’t restart while you’re running it (not without losing the entry fee), and some of the worst, extreme cheapo tactics of traffic placement, wall placement and trucks pulling out right in front of you…and you have a recipe for controller-flingin’ frustration.

So, after flingin’ my controller a few times today, I packed the shit up and drove to EB Games where I promptly unloaded this piece of trash. God damn. I’ve never been so pissed by a console game. I wanted to at least play until I unlocked the ‘05 GTO, but I COULD. NOT. TAKE IT. I found some cheat codes online in a last-ditch attempt to salvage some playability from the game, but even the cheats were woefully inadequate. A $5,000 money cheat doesn’t help much when I keep losing races because of cheap shit tactics (here’s another one: AI cars that recover instantly from crashes, whereas your car wastes precious seconds going through a crash cinematic while your opponents put more and more distance on you). A cheat that pimps out all your existing rides courtesy of West Coast Customs (wow, that’s real useful — the pimping doesn’t enhance the cars’ performance any, so that’s no tactical advantage). I had hoped for a “unlock all cars” cheat, but since there wasn’t one, the game went back to the store.

So, since I was going to EB anyway, I took a few other games back with me and traded them all in. In the end I was able to put $36 on the new Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Xbox360 version. I had a hard time deciding between the PC and the X360 edition, but went with the latter because of the added advantage of 16:9, 720p graphical goodness and the ability to play in a room that isn’t a sauna. And speaking of NFS:MW, if you have a PC and an even halfway-decent video card, get the PC demo immediately. It’s the best NFS title in a long time. It takes the best parts of the Underground series, the well-done police chases of the old fashioned NFS 1 and 2 games and a roster of cool cars, improves it all, and dresses it up in gorgeous graphics and the best automotive sound effects I’ve ever heard. The ripping V8 downshifts of the Mustang GT are like sweet, sweet music. The game kicks ass completely. I highly recommend it. And since there’s a version of the game for every single console system made, as well as PC, no matter what you’ve got, you can play it.

What else? Well, after watching some new gameplay videos of Condemned: Criminal Origins (X360) today, I can tell this is gonna be another must-have, even more so than I thought. I always knew this game was going to be a treat, but I didn’t know just how much of one until I finished F.E.A.R. on the PC. Condemned is basically the X360 verison of F.E.A.R., technologically. There are even some of the same textures and models in it, and yes, it’s developed by Monolith too. The gameplay looks incredibly awesome. Imagine the game with the best firefights and firearm modeling, and now apply that to melee weapons. Plus, you can put each weapon into a “melee” mode and beat people with the stocks of shotguns and the like. Add in a System Shock 2 style weapon damage element and you’ve got majorly cool gameplay. I can’t wait for this.

I’m also soaking up all the Xbox360 news there is to read on teh INTARWEB. The latest news of note is the complete and official list of all original Xbox games that will be backwards-compatible with the X360 on launch day. For the record, the old games are emulated in software, not hardware, but because of the huge leap in technology between the two consoles, there is reportedly not only no performance hit in doing so, but the old games are actually upconverted to 720p and given fullscreen anti-aliasing for a real treat. There are 200-some titles listed, not all of which are A-list, so I figure the ease of compatibility has more to do with the luck of the draw in how the original game was coded. Unfortunately, DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball is not supported in the initial update. The good news is that Microsoft will be continually writing little emulators for more and more old titles, and the updated emulation software can be downloaded from the Xbox website, burned to a CD and installed to your X360 console at no charge.

It’s a great time to be a gamer, that’s for sure — no matter what hardware camp you’re in.

Categorized as Games/Console, Games, Games/PC