okay actually what the fuck? what the dog doin

This games fuckin weird bro. Pretty much every individual part of this game goes for a completely different tone, and it all comes together as the gaming equivalent of eating paste made out of bananas, peas, and sardines. The visuals are made up of reasonably solid looking (albiet framerate-chugging) levels populated by uncanny-looking people. The writing is immensely crass and immature, with a wise-cracking snarky dog interacting with a myriad of cheesy stereotypes with enough poop/fart/sex jokes added in to make any middling dreamworks movie blush. The soundtrack ranges from bumping techno jingles to ambient music that straight up astral projects me to another plane of existence. Our doggy protagonist moves and animates with a shockingly realistic attention to detail compared to other cartoony platformers. It really does feel like the games director, writers, animators, composers, and designers all misunderstood the assignment in their own unique way, making the game an absolute tonal rollercoaster. And that's not even considering the unfittingly eerie and morbid ending.

The thing is though, the actual core game is a pretty solid collectathon, and the more I played it and got used to the serial-killer vibes the game has, the more I honestly enjoyed it. It really did feel like there was a lot of genuine thought in analyzing what dogs do and how to convert them into palpable game mechanics. Like dogs usually just beg, retrieve stuff for people, piss and shit everywhere, dig around in the mud, bark at things, sniff around random places, and eat potentially questionable food from god knows where. All of those aspects of being a dog and more are covered in this game, and the main gameplay of doing dog things to accomplish tasks to earn bones to progress is just as fun as collecting progress mcguffins in any other collectathon.

The game is weird, but it's not half-assed shovelware. If anything, the bizarre vibes make this game certainly hard to ever forget, and I could definitely see this game leaving an impact on me in many different ways if I had played it growing up. It definitely has a cult following, and I can honestly see why. Give it a shot if you enjoy some absolute strange fuckshit. Sasuga europe

Bro i do NOT remember this shit coming out the same year as the first game, i thought it was like at least the next year god DAMN.

Like the name implies, Wii We ski and snowboard is really more of an expansion of the first game instead of a true sequel. Not only is there the titular snowboarding that is included alongside the preexisting skiing, but the character creator has a bit more sauce to it, and they expanded the game to have TWO maps instead of the singular resort in We ski. There's both a brand new ski resort seperate from the first games resort, as well as a harsh mountain in the wilderness, untouched by the domestication of being ski-resortified. The new mountain map really felt like they took the bonus secret run from the first game and made a whole map out of it, which is hella cool. Since skiing both on real mountains and virtually was quite a family pasttime as a kid, this game and its predecessor def share a very "oh fuck yeah" place in my heart.

The ski resort map still plays namco game music through the in-game loudspeakers, they've made peak once again

Interesting game. NGL I've always been interested in this game solely on just how nice the box art looked and had no idea what the actual game was about or how it played, so I'm happy to actually have seen what's behind that beautiful cover.

It's an FPS type thing where you use the wii pointer to aim and blast these little sprite-y dudes called elebits in order to capture em. Levels are set on a timer where there's a point quota that ya gotta meet and different elebits are worth different amounts of points. The main gimmick though, is that the elebits are hiding in various places and your gun happens to double as a phys/gravity gun that can freely lift and move all sorts of things. There are also specific elebits that level up your gun and allow you to manipulate heavier and heavier things, and every level pretty much ends up looking like a tornado went through it. There's a very visceral energy to playing this, just saying "fuck this tree" or whatever as you launch it into the stratosphere, or just ripping drawers out of desks and smashing through full closets looking for more mfers to blast. That being said though, this is a launch-window wii game that tries to deal with hundreds of dynamic physics items onscreen at once, and that much processing brings the wii down to its kniis as it struggles to keep any semblance of a smooth framerate going. The chunky FPS plus the fact that the sensitive pointer controls move the camera all around from all the shooting makes the game certainly a bit dizzying to play in long bursts. The later half of playing levels can also be a bit difficult to move around in thanks to all the shit that's thrown on the floor and the levels where you have to worry about not making noise/breaking certain things certainly add variety but feel antithetical to the games primal "fuck everything in this room up" vibe that the gameplay goes for. If anything, I wish this concept would be done again on modern hardware, especially in VR, as doofy make-a-mess-with-physics games are always popular there and the hardware can actually power it this time. Too bad konami isn't interested in doing anything cool anymore...

It's just some dumb mindless fun. If I had this game back in the day as a kid I probably would have enjoyed just throwing everything around, framerate be damned. Certainly worth a play, though you'd probably get a better experience playing this on an emulator or something where the game would run smoother and have widescreen. The OST is done by konami's A-team, with Bemani and Castlevania people working on it and it owns. There are even plenty of fun konami references strewn about, like how the arcades have real modeled bemani arcade machines (but no DDR cabs :C) and the creepy bunny thing from silent hill as the mascot of the amusement park levels (which I haven't played any silent hill games, but isn't that like not a good character to be a kids mascot?). The in-game visuals are pretty just existent for a wii game, but the key art and cutscene art is absolutely wonderfully drawn with an excellent dream-like use of color and lighting, like I said before the artwork was literally what drew me to the game in the first place. With how wholesome and pleasant that artwork looks, I sure bet the main artist went on to become famous for other absolutely pleasant and wholesome things!

Have yall ever had a game where like you constantly hear gassed up by your peers and despite trying in your entire power to like the game and be a part of the cool game enjoyers club it just doesn't hit? yeah... I've seen both people I personally know as well as internet randos pour endless amounts of praise into this title, and I've always been curious to see what was up, but after playing through this game naw man it just ain't for me.

On a vibe level, this game is immaculate. Given the developmental lineage of this game being done by ex-Love de Lic members, that should be obvious. Characters have their own unique wacky designs with their own goofy chopped-up gibberish voice clips, the various other boss characters have a lot of personality thrown into them, and the story has a ton of thought put into it. The game isn't afraid to explore themes of colonialization and hierarchal government structures, and it does so in a way that's subtle enough to not feel overtly preachy about its themes, yet still heavy-handed enough to make its messages obvious. It's a game where you as the newfound ruler of this kingdom, must overtake all the neighboring kingdoms in a conquest to take over the world. How did you become king? It just happened. Why do you need to take over the world? Because the military minister said so. Are the other kingdoms actively hostile? Not really. Do your subjects and countrymen like you? Sometimes. Tonally it fits right in with pretty much any other Love-de-lic game, and if there's anything that you can absolutely count on from the people that used to work there, it's that the personality of the game shines brighter than pretty much most other games in general.

THAT BEING SAID, its the act of playing the game (and really more of finishing it) that is where the problems truly become apparent. For better or for worse, there aren't many other games like Little King's Story. Essentially the gameplay boils down to managing a crowd of people to help explore a large map, overcome the many obstacles held within, and use the treasures collected from combat and exploration to build your kingdom and upgrade your troops. I've heard the game be compared to Pikmin, but if there's anything that this game has done, it's given me an immensely deeper appreciation for how thought-out the gameplay in Pikmin really is. In this game, you can only send troops out one at a time, in a straight line from where you are facing. Troops don't continue doing their tasks and come back to you if you move a far enough distance away from them, and there's no way to call back particular members, with the B button serving to call everyone back at once, regardless of what they are doing. It makes multitasking in this game neigh impossible at times as the gameplay is designed in a way that emphasizes singular interactions one-at-a-time. Which makes pretty much any encounter with multiple things an absolute hassle! There is a large variety of different jobs for the troops, with each job having their own unique skills and weaknesses, some being designed to get past specific roadblocks like builders building bridges or lumberjacks to cut down particular trees, and others being more niche with their functionality like chefs that only exist to OHKO any chicken enemies that show up. Considering the fact that there are only so many people you can take with you, there's a layer of strategy and decisionmaking for whether or not to spread your crew thin but be able to handle anything that might show up, or to focus on mostly combat grunts in order to ensure any potential fights can be handled comfortably. For me though, I mostly spent my time running with the wrong crew composition unknowing of what lies ahead, getting my shit kicked in for not being prepared, then begrudgingly having to start over with a more optimized team given the foresight of knowing what's ahead. The fact that the only way to manually edit your squad is buried within 3 submenus that the game doesn't even really tell you exists is the icing on the cake too! Even things like how the large crowd of troops creating difficulty in movement as people constantly fall off ledges/get stuck on corners and how there's only one button to cycle through class types in your squad which makes getting a particular class sent out more work than necessary. The gameplay as a whole just felt like it needed a second pass to really iron out the kinks, and it does make me all the more impressed at how Pikmin was able to pull off a similar concept with so much more user-friendly execution 8 years prior on their very first go.

and the bosses. oh my god the bosses. I don't know how they did it but they managed to make 7 bespoke encounters that are just as memorable and unique as they are absolutely infuriating. Like being overwhelmed with enemies? How about playing pinball with incredibly dodgy physics? Do you remember what gibberish voices are used for each of your NPC job classes? How's your Geography? Are you a fan of boss i-frames? I'll certainly give them credit for making them unique but there were too many times where a boss fight throws something completely out of left field that I either wasn't prepared for or had little to no control over that it felt like I was wasting time trying to deal with the games nonsense. It's just all a bit too much trial-and-error for my blood personally.

All in all, yeah. Despite me not having a very good time actually playing the game, I can certainly still understand why it's so beloved. I can imagine that the games quirky charm and personality could easily leave a lasting impression on people, especially if they played it in their youth where they can take in the vibes and enjoy the game at their own leisure unbeholden to the desire to actually see the game through to its end. Maybe it's just me being fixated on finishing games that was why I couldn't enjoy this as much as I honestly should have. The game was certainly an interesting and memorable experience (for better or for worse), and I'm glad I was at the very least able to see what the game was all about, even if it did bring a lot of frustration. The game is fucking, but the vibes are amazing.

Hmm. Definitely feels more like PGR1 than PGR2 in terms of content and city count. We've stepped down from the eleven cities of 2 to less than half of that. We got Las Vegas, London, New York, Tokyo, and my favorite bustling cityscape, the Nurburgring. Seasoned PGRtaku will immediately notice that london, NYC, and tokyo were all already in the first game, so really the only fresh addition is the one city of Vegas. The soundtrack also bumps as per usual, with quite a decent amount of good ska and J-pop beats goin around.

The singleplayer basically is roughly the same as the first game, though a bit less balanced. Gone are the car classes as this game sticks to the rule of "every car has to hit 170 at minimum" so like every possible car choice is cracked right out the gate. I understand wanting to get straight to the good stuff out the door, but one of the core things I enjoy about PGR (and racing games in general, honestly) is the slow buildup from okayish cars to the good ones. I pretty much got one decent car pretty quickly on in and just stuck with it through the whole game and EASILY cruised past everything on the medium difficulty. I'd honestly suggest playing on hard or expert if you want this game to last any decent chunk of time or have any sustainable challenge.

The online support was a key part of what made PGR2 so cool, and this game appears to have tried to expand upon that by way of this broadcasting system showcasing what people are doing around the world. Key word being "appears" here though, cuz the servers are long dead so I can only really speculate what this game was like at its prime. There is the regular online multiplayer still up though, and I have heard that they added a bunch of cool new game modes like legitimizing the "cat & mouse" house ruleset into an actual playable game type. Can't say I've actually tried it as not only have I not found anyone that still has a 360 lying around for car gamer time and even if I did my xbox live gold game pass core membership has expired so i'm SOL on the online features, unfortunately.

Visually this is the game to take the series into the HD era, and it looks quite good! Only real gripe is that the dark areas of the game are really crunched out, and no amount of RGB range adjustments on either my TV nor my console could fix it so I guess that's just how it's supposed to look. I do think though that even if we specifically compare launch racing titles on the 360, ridge racer 6 has this game beat in terms of aesthetics both in menus and in the actual game rendering itself.

Overall it's certainly just existent, which is really surprising for me given how much I've enjoyed the first two games. It's really apparent from a lot of early 7th-gen titles that the jump in fidelity really cost a decent amount of game content from their late 6th-gen peers as devs require more time to make the most out of the new specs (sure hope that doesn't balloon over time!) Maybe my time would have been a lot more exciting had I been there in 2005 racing with the homies. Regardless, it's a game!

Ridge Racer V: Launch Titles and The Lost Magic of Console Generations
There's nothing quite like zooming through the streets of Ridge City at night time, while "Euphoria" plays on the radio.
As of recently I've been on a bit of a Ridge Racer kick again, most notably putting my attention back on the fifth main installment in the series. The best way to describe R5 is bold. It's a game screaming with confidence and promise, amazingly optimized at 60fps and boasting insane visuals for the year 2000.
But that's just right, R5 was a launch title for the PS2, one of the highest selling consoles of all time. And yet, it fell under the radar compared to many other games on the system, even when it came out (I'm assuming that goes to Tekken Tag Tournament being the more appealing Namco offering). It's buried under the popularity of the entries in the series both before and after, being sandwiched in between Ridge Racer Type 4 and Ridge Racer 2004. It's overall a somewhat forgotten game, it didn't even sell that well and has never even been ported a single time… and yet, I find it one of the most profound launch titles of all time.
R5 represents a time when the leap in console generations was greater and mattered so much more. While its predecessor RRT4 was a game about looking towards the next millennium and the future of racing, R5 is the future, as insanely flashy UI and hard techno beats blast from the television screen. It boasts the technical prowess of this new generation of gaming in every single way it can. It's fucking AWESOME.
But the sad truth is that it doesn't feel like that anymore with the last two leaps in console generations. The jump in hardware doesn't land as much because we've reached a point in graphical fidelity that can't go much further than looking more realistic and being able to handle more of said demanding visuals better. This isn't entirely the fault of modern game developers, it's simply just the sad reality of how fast digital technology has evolved. And sure, maybe I am biased… I don't despise modern games but I certainly aren't very passionate for them aside from more stylistic ones that feel like old games. But it simply makes me sit back and wonder how the hell the next generation of systems could really do anything major to impress me, something to sell me on the next console and go “holy fuck, gaming has evolved.” It makes me a bit sad I missed seeing the insane revolution that was the fifth and sixth generation consoles.
Ridge Racer V is not the most impactful launch title, nor would it have been the most important pack-in title had it been one. But what R5 is, is a game that showed the promise and passion of the sixth generation of gaming hardware, and paved the way for the most important console generation of all time.

hoo boy where do I even start here? This game stands proud as one of the vibest of vibe games, and with good reason, because the vibes here are truly on another level compared to most games today, let alone on the PS1.

It's a game where in the grand scheme of things not much happens as you spend a month over at your cousins house in summer. What you do with your 31 days at their countryside abode is entirely up to you. It is your summer vacation, after all, so there's no real correct or incorrect way to spend your time, and the game is entirely developed with that in mind.

The game very obviously isn't designed much like a traditional video game, as rewards for exploration are more scenes that try to evoke a particular emotion rather than being any sort of progress-making videogamey reward. I guess a good example is a random well that exists in a corner of the countryside. It's a dead end, there aren't many bugs to collect near the well, nothing inside the well, you can't go in the well to a new area, all that you can do is examine the well. Doing so plays a cutscene showing Boku looking down the well in intimidation before taking a few steps back in fear. That one particular area really has very little significance in the entire map as a side route, and it's really not like that area has any real threat to it. But like, I'm sure there has been a time in all of our youths where we ended up wandering somewhere we probably weren't supposed to be unsupervised and getting psyched out from something completely harmless. Bokunatsu is absolutely chock full of moments like that from start to finish. Regardless of whether or not you actually have experience of being a child living in rural 1970's Japan, this game covers so many aspects of being a kid in general that there's bound to be tons of things to relate to in spite of its setting.

Another impressive aspect to me was just the design of the whole world and it's characters. It's probably one of the most peaceful games to ever exist, with breathtaking hand-drawn 2D backgrounds of natural countryside landscapes and characters that feel like actual people just living another month in their lives. The wide age disparity between the different characters also provides insight in how summer is spent at different points of life. Kids like Boku and his little sister spend their time completely free and at their own discretion, being curious about the many things in the world, generally playing around every day with all their free time. There's Moe, the older cousin in her teens, where she struggles with growing up, spending most of her days studying inside or sitting outside at night thinking more philosophically about her future as she is about to enter high school. And then there's your Aunt and Uncle, where to their adult lives August is just another month of the grind doing work stuff and housekeeping. This game just excels at being a window into this precise household in this precise one month in time, allowing you as the player to observe the countryside and the family living in it just the same way as Boku does.

I could honestly keep going on about all the various moments in the game and the many different memories they made me feel, but I think yall get the point. Would definitely highly rec to anyone even remotely interested in these kinds of peaceful vibes, as this game definitely hits in a unique way to everyone who would play it. Much like actual summer vacation to a kid, this game is entirely what you make of it. or something like that.

more like the mid

I was planning to play this way later but the whole server shutdown turning every copy of this game into a coaster in 3 months forced me to play my hand and see what this game is all about.

Considering the fact that I've mostly been playing racing games from 5th/6th gen, getting whacked over the head with all the modern gaming tropes in this game was certainly jarring at first. There's a HUGE open world of fucked up america to drive around, and I really do mean HUGE. It takes about 45 minutes just to drive from one end of the map to the other, and while the copious amounts of space definitely allowed me to get into the zen headspace that long scenic car rides do, it also is just too overwhelmingly massive for me to really know what to do with. I'm the kind of guy that likes to slow down and appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into game worlds, and there's just not enough time in this universe for me to really be able to see all the sights that this game has, much less before the imminent server shutdown. So my options with world interaction slowly became a choice between slowly meandering through large empty spaces unrelated to anything else in the game, or just bumrushing straight from waypoint to waypoint to progress as much as possible. Neither of them really felt very satisfying, as both had this sense of "am I really playing this right?" lingering in the back of my head. Maybe I just need to get more comfortable with large-scale open world games, I don't really play that much in the genre.

The plot was a whole lot of whatever. Absolute junk food western shlock, yanno? Join car gang, rise the ranks in the car gang, it's edgy and gritty and written like a cheesy action movie and I can't tell how seriously it really wanted me to take it, but I eventually tuned most of the plot out and focused more on the road trips. The main character looks like what would happen if Gordon Freeman and Alex YIIK had a child, truly terrifying.

The actual racing is also solid enough. The cars control with a decent amount of weight to em, but also slide around a lot and sometimes the physics can freak out in comical ways so it's all decent enough fun. The events where you gotta take down other drivers kinda suck though, its like trying to ram a bar of soap into a drunk driver.

The game also has this huge focus on online multiplayer, with the always-on structure and how players are supposed to populate the game world in real time alongside the game being entirely playable in up to 4 player co-op meant that the biggest focus of the crew is in your literal crew of fellow players. Ironically though, in my entire playthrough of this game throughout this entire month of January I didn't bump into a SINGLE other player, despite what the large populated map every time I signed in would suggest. I left my game in "searching for crew members" mode the entire time, and not a single other soul answered the call. Surely, due to the fact the game is 10 years old and I am playing on Xbox (which is a platform that I do not really associate with active playerbases), there's not much surprise in the game being a ghost town. But that also begs the question of why this game needed to be always online in the first place when you absolutely can play the entire game solo and enjoy all the game has to offer that way. The closest thing I got to human interaction was spending like 5 minutes chasing a player location waypoint only for their car to vanish like a ghost once I actually got up close to them.

Overall, it surely is a Ubisoft title. Doesn't really do anything atrocious, but also doesn't do anything amazing. I will say that the licensed OST so far has been one of the most irritating setlists I have heard though, and the game constantly rerouting my GPS waypoint to fucking Ohio or whatever to try and get me to buy the delisted DLC was very annoying. But at least I got the chance to squeeze a playthrough in before the end of times. Maybe someone might make a fan server or offline mod or some shit to keep this game preserved and accessible down the line, but I won't hold my breath. Shame too, because while the game was certainly kinda existantcore to me, I definitely think enough effort was put into it that it's lowkey a waste to just get rid of it. Please look forward to my review of the Crew 2 in 2028 when the servers for that are about to bite the dust.

I've always called this game high-speed chess, the weapon combinations and how they interact with the game world open up so many possibilites. There is genuine strategy you must use and think of on the fly, always thinking 3 moves ahead at 200 miles per hour.
e.g. If someone has a rear weapon, it's better to pit them from the side with a blast of your shotgun and watch them spin into an explosive barrel. If someone is far away, you can shoot a magnetized trailer and crush them.

The armor system amplifies the depth of Battlelines even more. Each part of the car has seperate health, so spreading fire will never work. You must always position yourself safely and aim ahead, each projectile obeys physics.
Your choice of weapon is just as important. You can balance output with a defensive and offensive approach or go in guns blazing with 2 cannons and no self-preservation.

Even the map design was done with combat in mind, explosives litter corners and trucks roam the streets, but special set-pieces are the real treat. You can drop a train station on a pack of racers then watch as the incoming trains collapse onto unsuspecting onlookers. You can crush enemies with boulders and watch as they blow up nearby gas stations. Some of them open up new areas entirely, like the tower which caves the ground in when collapsed, giving access to powerups underground.

Speaking of destruction, this game has plenty. And that's an understatement. Everything you can set your eyes on is destructible, every building reveals an interior which can be destroyed even further. It's the only game I've played where chaos is non-stop, no wonder the PS3 couldn't run this game. Even the cars have unbelievably realistic damage modeling, crumpling and turning into a charred mess with your driver ragdolling against the windshield, pieces of your engine littered on the asphalt. It's not just the destruction, environments are detailed and have their own color palettes, cars are modeled down to their badging and rims.
The technology was ahead of its time, and the game's scope was too big for variety. Lacking in content but making up for it with quality, mostly due to re-using assets from Full Auto 1, but updating and improving everything that was carried over. The game was made in less than a year afterall.

The sense of speed is exaggerated greatly with smooth but jittery camera shake and slick motion blur that doesn't blind you.
The real feeling is inside the interactive soundtrack, mostly consisting of remixes from the first game. The soundtrack has a version for every action and multiple ones can be mixed together, like 1st place and boosting themes which can turn into one, orchestral and industrial beats mixing into eachother.

The handling model also plays into this. It takes some time to get used to the twitchiness of it all, but once you learn how to take corners properly, you will fly past them at top speed. It highly encourages the use of the handbrake to make quick adjustments and sharp snaps, even entire 180s.

While not a problem to me, the difficulty of the career might be a negative to some people, especially around the Sceptre chapter. I've seen people abandon the game there due to how hard it can become. You need to learn how some missions work and carve out your path. The one time it's a negative no matter what is when the physics act up and fling you into a barrel roll. For that we have something called unwreck.

If you thought Battlelines ran out of ammunition, you're wrong. Unwreck lets you rewind time, simple as that. What's not simple is that it's a part of your nitrous bar, you'll have to manage your energy and make sure you always have enough for both. Play it too safe or too dangerous and you'll end up dead. Energy management is key.
A bonus of having unwreck is one-touch replay. Fancy way of saying instant replay, you can watch one anytime you want with the press of a button.

The two remaining things to talk about would be the story and online. The story is mostly an excuse to unlock content and explain the spy hunter aesthetic. The Ascendants have taken over Meridian City, infiltrate their events and complete tasks given to you by an AI named Sage. It's an unforgiving campaign. I won't tell you anything else, there are spoilers and twists.

The online, while unplayable, had many exclusive arena and racing gamemodes with stat tracking, including rivalries and more. It's sad to see a special part of the game gone, I've tried to OpenSpy patch it before but the game uses tools.gamespy.net which isn't hosted by OpenSpy.

If you ever get Full Auto 2, emulate it on RPCS3. It's a surprisingly lightweight and easy game to run, reaching 60 FPS even on my dying 6 year old laptop.

We do not talk about the PSP port.

When I saw this game brought up in "best racing games of all time" or hell even "best games of all time" lists, I thought it was exaggerated hyperbole. I thought that this game was likely a good racing game that people overhyped due to the fact that racing games aren't necessarily a genre that people really immerse themselves in. But now that I've played it, I can wholeheartedly say that no, it is not a bit, this shit owns.

So unlike Burnout 2, where your car was fueled by adrenaline, in this game your car is fueled by the blood of your rivals. Sure, you could (and still should!) get boost by driving dangerously, but the real way to earn speed is by ramming your enemies into anything that could turn them from functional race car to smoldering scrap heap. For every takedown, not only does it reward you with a full bar of boost meter, but each takedown multiplies your maximum amount of boost. Slamming into an opponent, watching them smash into a trillion pieces, then zooming away from the crime scene at a billion miles per hour with the boost that it earned just fills me with the most shit-eating-grin ass energy. Even if you are on the receiving end of a takedown, you can still control your midair wrecked car to try and take people out with you, and doing so respawns you with all the benefits of a regular takedown. Everything is engineered to turn races into hyperaggressive deathmatches between a few insane racers in a city trying as hard as they possibly can to kill each other. Absolute banger, a must-play whether you like racing games or not.

Oh, and the soundtrack is entirely made up of the highest-tier 2000s pop punk/alt rock complete with doofy radio station with the most goobery-ass host covering everything that goes on in the game. BASED.

The lukewarm-to-cold reviews on this really almost put me off of trying it, despite really liking Burnout 3 as a teen (and adult, when I replayed it some years ago). I went ahead and tried it anyway, and boy, is it an exhilarating game. There is an enormous amount of butthole clenching to be had here as you hit the highway with 3 other people with a death wish, going triple the speed limit into oncoming traffic and trying to trip one another up and not lose your own life in the process.

Out of all the racing games I've played I'd say this one probably does the best job of capturing the feeling of being a cold blooded psychopath (in a good way?). At times you feel downright cold inside blasting past swerving civilians, and taking extreme delight in noticing that the guy who was catching up to you is now flipping 20 feet in the air behind.

Contrary also to a repeated opinion in the other reviews, I actually don't think the handling is bad at all, but I have a guess as to why people are saying so. The handling on the "easy" car, the first selection, is atrocious. Do yourself a favor and just go to the "hard" cars immediately. The truck is slower but offers a much better camera angle (higher) and so that will be your advantage. The muscle car on the other hand is very fast, handles probably the best in the game, but has a very low viewpoint by comparison. Either one can win races, but I found the muscle the most effective. You can also complete Face Off 2 to unlock the Roadster, another very effective and well-handling car.

The game also culminates in a very fun ~18ish minute race, 3 laps of the longest track you've seen which winds through just about every other track you've played so far. This gives you a long time to bask in the wonderful feeling of deep flow this game gives, just dodging, racing -- it's honestly joyous. Some of the most fun I've had in a game in a long time, just being allowed to play without any breaks over this extremely long race and soak it in.

The reason I don't give this game 5 stars is that it has two weakpoints. For one, it lacks content. I played the every GP and unlocked every vehicle by doing the 1v1 Face Offs in roughly 2-3 hours (I lost track of time, but something like that). That being said, this could also be construed as a strength, as I enjoyed playing this a lot, and it was over before it could wear out its welcome. If you really want to, you can tinker with the Time Trial and Survival modes, racing as fast as you can or as long as you can without crashing, while earning points for doing dangerous stunts.

The second downside is the rubber-banding AI. This is a pain point in any racing game, and it can be very frustrating. Luckily, it's not that bad here, as if you are being followed closely by an AI and crash, they will almost certainly all 3 pile up behind you, leaving you still in the lead on respawn. Even more so, at times I crashed, was passed, and still somehow respawned infront of the other drivers. All in all, if you're driving one of the fastest cars, you're never going to be out of the race as long as you keep a good pace and don't crash. You'll catch up eventually, and the AI will have a hard time overtaking you, so just... don't crash and the rubber banding won't be an issue.

I definitely recommend this one. I understand that the newer ones evolved the formula and they're good too. But this was a lot of fun. I'll play it again some day.

Alan Wake desperately wants itself to match its inspirations but fails to tell an engaging story with its insufferable characters and barebones plot. It really feels as though it's written by someone who loves the idea of writing a novel but hasn't ever really read one.

So much of the story is continously interrupted by ridiculous blockades the characters could very easily climb over. Oh no, a school bus just blocked the road. Can I climb over the 4 foot fence right next to it? Nope, gotta take this convoluted route down fuck knows where just to get to the other side! Not to mention, Alan's god awful running speed. I get he's an out of shape writer but jesus christ, my fat ass could sprint longer than he could even if my legs were dipped in cement.

Ultimately, there really isn't much of a plot despite being a narrative focused game. The blockades that artificially lengthen the story leave little room for much of a narrative to even be told. You'll spend an hour trudging through hills and shitty combat to meet up with a character only to be welcomed to a cutscene where said character just so happens to tell you "sorry buddy, I'm somewhere else!". How are you meant to tell an engaging story if you're constantly delaying the narrative in favour of action set pieces that aren't even fun to play?

The game has charm. It's just not enough to overcome its myriad of flaws.