Affectionate Diary

Nobody says Motorsport. That’s just on the box incase the image of a CAR on the front doesn’t give away what the game is about. This is what the game is about -

Collecting cars, painting cars and customising cars, and THEN racing in them.

This is what the game isn’t about -

Listening to the engine noises and thinking Fuck Yeah, that’s a fucking Ferrari Testarossa.

The engine noises are shit. The track textures are shit, which is only really a problem if you play in car. Which is more than half the planet. I wouldn’t have noticed had I not played PGR3. Wait! Half the world has played PGR3. Not that I’m saying PGR3 is better (though it might be, it’s hard to tell right now). What I’m saying is, Forza 2 isn’t perfect. It’s just FUCKING BRILLIANT. So far. After one night of collecting a car, painting it and racing it. I’ll stick a body kit on it later, chosen purely on the basis of how it looks and not those stupid sliders on the side that assume I know what force drag coefficients are. All I know is, I want a hot Asian underage teenager to want to suck me off when she sees me in my Tokyo Drift tribute wagon. I’m road-safety-conscious, though, so I’ll have to pull over and park before she Actions me. I can probably get a quick Battle tower Challenge in too, cos teenage girls have no idea how to suck cock. Boss Nonnu says.

The presentation is fucking brilliant. It’s like someone saw the Ridge Racer presentation and said “I can do as good as that” and then did, but then didn’t put a fucking SHIT game alongside it.

I like Dirt. That has nothing to do with its ability to convey the sensation of driving a car. It feels about as realistic as Outrun 2, though with less drifting. The car itself seems to be about 5kg heavy and the road surfaces are either “slippery” or “grippy”, depending on if you’re off-road or not. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. Dirt is most definitely an arcade racer. If it wasn’t, it would be shit. It could do with some more colour, I think, but what do I know? I’ve hated all the previous Colin McRae games.

You only really need to know this about the physics -

Alex Grimbley (one of the developers):  ”they’re one of the things about Dirt that we’re most proud of. We’ve taken them right back to scratch and started afresh for the next-gen consoles. The physics we have now are probably about as realistic as you can get, and we’re updating some of them 1000 times a second.”

Only some of them? Which ones? Gravity? Anyway, SOME of them updating 1000 times a second isn’t any use to me. I need them ALL to update 1000 times a second. For all those times when it’s recalculating and the variables don’t change, I have an incorrect result, because the variables are out of date. So this system is BULLSHIT. I know that’s true because I spoke to a friend on MSN last night and he’s an AI programmer. Admittedly we only talked about Pokemon but that has realtime physics so it’s relevant.

Not that it matters. Dirt has just won. Any driving game that comes out now has to update AT LEAST 1000 times a second, or it’s not as good. This is like when the Amiga added four million more colours than the Atari ST but nobody could tell the difference. Amiga won, midi ports or not. Dirt isn’t just faster than my tv - it’s faster than REAL LIFE.

Obviously, a hideous crime has been comitted here, but my custom character looks fucking amazing. Seriously.

PC version - check.

DS version - check.

Xbox Live version - check.

Real life deck of cards that aren’t porno cards - negative.

It’s like Halo 2 but better. My errection won’t go away, possibly ever. Look.

They need to move the push to talk button. Somehow. Perhaps a footpedal. And a gearstick to change weapons.

Some people have clearly never stopped playing Halo 2 and they are now so good that the game must surely be slightly meaningless for them. I’m not one of those people. I still get excited when I headshot someone.

The sound design alone is insane, the muffled sound of distant gunfire and the sound of bullets whizzing past your head are both stunning and the explosions are comical. Which is how an explosion should be.

Amazing Squad will clearly be reforming come September and we’ll kick your ass unless you’re better than us in which case we’ll lose, potentially very badly.

Overall, I would give Halo 3 Beta 10/10. Okay, goodbye!

0/10.

Sound balance is wrong. You have to turn everything off and turn the engine right up for it to be anything remotely like being in a car. Thankfully, the demo lets you do exactly that.

It risks being dry to the point of being cold and mechanistic, but Forza 2 is seriously fucking wicked.

Still 0/10, though. VRRRROOOM YOU FUCKERS.

It has shit fucking teeth, vacant glazed over eyes and you want to kick the living shit out of it everytime you see it. It’s the only pokemon that I won’t run from for quickness - I’ll batter it every time.

BUT! Pokefans! I urge you, keep one in your party. You can teach it Rock Smash, Rock Climb, Strength and Cut.

If you play Pokemon, this has just become the best thing you’ll read on the internet today.

Catan is a board game. I feel I need to state that before we go any further, because when you see the score at the end (a million out of 10), if you have any sense you go and download this game for 800pts immediately. But you don’t have any sense, obviously, because you’re reading this fucking blog and all we fucking do is swear so if you’re down for that you’re probably not too bright.

So you probably don’t care about how the recent Civ was alright at first, but once you realised how over-simplified it was, there was actually no point to it. They tried to streamline it, because they didn’t understand what it was about the game that was amazing - it was the micro management. It was! Fuck off. How many games did you play before you got bored? Exactly. And then you went back to Alpha Centauri because it was the best and regretted telling everyone it was a 90% game. It’s a fair cop, I did the same thing.

Catan is like a simplified Civ, in that it’s about collecting resources, forming shapes on the board that maximise your resource collection while minimising your opponents’ resources and it’s about trading with other people. Which is kind of like Civ, only a game of Catan doesn’t take up to three months, so you can actually find people to play with. Also, it’s possible for a normal human being to be able to hold everything that’s happening in the game in their head at one time, which is another thing that makes it better than Civ.

It’s Civ crossed with Risk. There, I said it. If you liked either of those games (Civ before they fucked it, of course) then you’ll probably like Catan. If you liked both then you’ll crap your pants with glee. If you don’t like either then you may be charmed by Catan’s simple but effective representation of the board game, but not for long. You are also probably stupid and have a small dick.

The interface! It’s perfect. Sending emotes are a bit fiddly but that’s because they’re prioritised ease of operation and information presentation, so that’s fine. I need that more than I need to send fireballs to other players’ avatars.

Graphics - COMPLETE PHOTO REALISM. 10 out of 10.
Sound - Amazing music, which is pretty much par for the course with Live Arcade games. 10 out of 10.
Playability - Arcade perfect. 100 out of 10.
Replayability - limitless! As they say. Or until you get bored. I mean, what the fuck does this mean anyway? Do most people when finishing a game play through it again immediately or do they go and play another game? Honestly, what the fuck is the point of commenting on how replayable something is? I don’t care! I’m going to play more games in my life than just this one, so I don’t need to know how great it is a second time through. Still, I’ll score it 1000 out of 10, just to be on the safe side.

Overall (not an average!) - 1,000,000 out of 10. If you like that sort of thing. It’s fun! And other cliches.

 The new king of Live Arcade and proof that the Xbox 360 is the daddy.

WHY THE FUCK can’t I assign more than one item to quick select? What is this shit? Some fucking restrictionist exercise in deciding which item will get used the most? You’re only allowing me six pokemons and four moves so FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

I want to be able to RIDE MY BIKE and then hop off to USE MY FISHING ROD without having to use the fucking menus that seem to take A FUCKING ICE AGE TO FUCKING LOAD FOR NO GOOD FUCKING REASON.

GAH. This is almost as bad as the box management options.

BULLSHIT.
In other news, zomg my LUXRAY is so fucking badass and he FUCKING LOVES ME. I wish I could take him for walks in the park. :(