fucking stunner from start to finish. today exists John Wick but 12 years ago Max Payne perfectly blends John Woo gun-fu with Tom Clancy esque military tactility to create the perfect third-person shooter. a noir game with the pompous thematic seriousness and grounded mechanics of a The Last of Us with a DOOM-like sensibility for cartoonish over-the-top mayhem; often an abandonment of reality in favour of action set-piece that live to be referred to as "badass". it is a game about a desperate, broken man, trying to find himself amidst the chaos his poor choices have led him to; it's also a game about human trafficking where you dive in slow motion to take on a shooting gallery Brazilian thugs and goons while HEALTH's "Tears" blares more than triumphantly through the speakers. it's a fucking art piece of action gamemaking; a drunken heavy spectacle of masculine pride and self-loathing. a game that makes me happy to be a worse person so that I can die alone and feel cool about it.

somehow I doubt i'll ever play a game I like more.

I played a little bit of The Crew 2 last week, simply because I thought it was worth it for the unique map and the nice looking car interiors. I thought it was relatively good enough if it's stretching itself thin in every direction by featuring such a large map and cluttering it with way too many diverse vehicles. If it it stripped itself it down to solely cars, I thought it had the makings of a world class driving game (albeit maybe not a world class racing game) in the mold of its spiritual predecessor, Rest Drive Unlimited.

Motorfest is closer to that game. It's mostly cars. It's a smaller map. It's kind of a more direct Forza Horizon (FH5) clone but that's okay because again, Test Drive Unlimited walked so Horizon could run. I think the driving and car handling is way imporved. The map is stunning. The destructible environments make race events less of a curse than in The Crew 2. And this game just has a sense of fun and frivolity that Horizon is missing. All the little unique playlist touches are gorgeous and nice to play through. The festival environment in this game spreads itself much broader. The whole map feels closer to the tone of the Hot Wheels DLCs and the game is better off for it. I'm sure I'll get bored at some point but this is the antidote to the modern racer right here. A better Need for Speed than Unbound. A better festival racer than Horizon 5. Just stunning.

Forza Horizon is the inverse of Horizon 4 for me. Where everything I liked and disliked about that game has been flipped with this. There's a sparse linearity to the progression here. It's just race and unlock wristbands. Likewise a sparseness to the map itself. There's virtually no off road racing in this game, no destructible environments to the point of making a checkpoint or way marker useless by way of rumbling across the terrain. I think it's pretty telling that the last three games in the series feature an SUV on the cover alongside some sort of supercar. In contrast, Horizon 1 is pretty much all highways, all coated in a warm, autumn Colorado sunset. It reminds me a lot of NFS Hot Pursuit 2010, just minus the police and a lot more infectious and fun to play. There's an actual story and characters in this game and a genuine reason to race in events. I enjoyed beating the shallow arrogant villain racers, especially Darius Flynt (what a name). It's something the Horizon 3 and 4 really lacked. I thought the festival atmosphere made the most sense too, felt like the most realistic actual festival setting - basically Coachella with race events for some reason (the concept itself is still fairly unbelievable). Features a small, but manageable car list that actively encourages and necessitates variety in which cars you race.

All good things to say in comparison to where I think the series evolved with Horizon 4. But saying all that, I still find this game to be empty and utterly sanitised. The driving physics are still rad and pretty much the same. It's a fun game to play, but it still feels a bit too easy. And I'm hypocritical, but I find the strict adherence to road racing a detriment to the fun. It's not really an open world racer. It's an open world menu screen where you can drove to whichever track event you want to participate in. It's a good blueprint for what's to come, sadly I think they went too far with it and kind of lost whatever identity they were striving for. I also don't find the car presentation in this game to be that appealing, something it shares with Horizon 4. The cars barely feel like they exist. Just a bit dated. Fun. But really just a sanitised, slightly better Need for Speed.

at first glance, functionally the same game as Horizon 3. same cars, same driving mechanics, same stunning visuals. what's not to like? "what, do you hate fun?" i had to remind myself. but you know what, maybe I kind of do.

there's like three main differences I found to be a devolution from Horizon 3.

1. the map. the UK setting is actually quite stunning tbh. although I didn't find it as rapturing as Australia. way less visually diverse, no distinct biomes interconnecting. in its place, there is the season system. which is fine but just seems like an instance where they couldn't over the obstacle of having having snow be part of the rotating dynamic weather. most of my problems with the map are the roads themselves. the Aussie roads are wide and straight. the UK are ones are thin and narrow. to accommodate this, they feature tons more rolling hills and elevated ranges. they pump up the destructibility so you can plough through more obstacles such as trees and stone walls. this gives way to Horizon 4 being way more focused on rough and tumble off-road racing. it features way more here than Horizon 3's Australia. as such, I found my playing time tied way more into enjoying 4wd's and off-road vehicles; way more time soaring in the air off large hills and crashing back and drifting across mud through various checkpoint markers. that's all good and fun but after a while I was thinking about the dissonance between this still being a hypercar fixated racer with the fact that it wanted to be played like an off-road version of Split/Second. I felt like a kid playing with his Hot Wheels or something. cool but like devoid of identity.

2. the progression. it just felt so lacking compared to 3. the wheelspins are godawful. just give me credits. why am I spinning now to win shoes, emotes and car horns? worthless, time-wasting junk. or even if I win a car, like cool. it takes away from any enjoyment of actually researching what to buy and how to upgrade it. i don't really mind that in the moment - it's fun getting cars for sure - but l don't love the feeling of charity this game gives out. then there's the story progression. Horizon 3 barely had any but the idea was more streamlined - you race and participate in events in an area, expand the festival to new locations, eventually work towards to a big showcase event, then repeat until the final event. roll credits. Horizon 4 it's like I have no idea what I am building towards. it's just 4 event types with some interesting side story stuff but none of that is properly advertised in game. eventually you unlock showcase events, but the last one the game advertises to you is a Halo related one for some reason, and then the final Delta Plane one just pops up randomly with no explanation. just feels so haphazard and careless. apparently if you get to level 20 in street races, you unlock a Goliath race that features the entire map, but that's such a long ass grind I am not going to do that. maybe in a world where this is the only game I have left to play, but otherwise, nah. the pacing is just bad.

3. the presentation. it's not remarkably different to the presentation in Horizon 3. it's equally obnoxious, garbage influencer... influenced. but at least 3 had some minimalism in the rewards screens and the garage screens. 4 has more menus and the rewards screens are just obnoxious. all the voice acting is and, the characters non-existent. the only thing feels even more corporate-sponsored and soulless. surely someone could figure out how to give this series some genuine personality and gravitas by now. it's so inoffensive as to be bland. which on its own isn't a terrible thing but it's lacking any conviction or strengths. it's like playing pretend with some kindergarten kids. just give me something more to work with other than being so proud about how much time it wants me to waste inside of it.

it's a good game. I don't even dislike. but it could better and it's lacking compared to Horizon 3. maybe it wasn't to be played as a series but as a game independent to itself. if it's the only Forza or Forza Horizon, it's probably better off for that.

It's fine. Relatively lacklustre tbh. I was alternating between this and Forza Horizon 3 before realising there's nothing to do in Unbound after about five ours or one week cycle. I've seen everything. The whole map, all the track, and events. It's just so recycled and boring. I couldn't stand the police chases or the fact that for some inexplicable reason the game resets you after each race and plants a cop car directly on your ass. There's no racers to see in the open world, only events. There are pedestrians and the concept of a busy city at work I'm this game but there's absolutely nothing going on. It's dead. It doesn't jive with the bustling street art and street car scene the game implies exists between cutscenes and the world design. I want to like this game, I want to fool around with body mods and cool liveries on normal cars like I'm 11 years old playing Underground 2 again. But, man, the game makes it hard. The progression is slow and the content and map are baren. The driving is nice, and living up to its name, there can be a decent sense of speed, but it makes it so hard to incentivise you to finish. Even the story is some boring nonsense. Feels too caught between "let's make a Spiderverse inspired racing game" and "remember we're Need for Speed, an EA franchise so no risks". I hate this term but such a cocktease of a game. I didn't hate playing it but I don't want to finish it.

This is like being in a newsagency, somewhere between the car mags and the travel mags or post card section. Horizon 3 is half racing game, half open world - but more aptly it's 50% dedicated to being a sizzling, autoshow-worthy display of beautiful cars and being a travel guide's luscious recreation of Australia.

I'm biased, outside of Mad Max, I've never seen Australia really represented in gaming. This game features one Aussie accent, so I basically still haven't. It's not an accurate representation of Australia but it's not trying to be. It's a gorgeous representation of Australia, though. The way it connects the various in-game biomes is chef's kiss. It's a beautifully designed game that makes me want to leave Melbourne and backpack around the outback and Yarra Valley. Beautiful variety in this game. Accurately straight roads too. Amazing skies. Maybe the best skies I've seen in game. I had to stop driving often to admire them. Just a jaw dropping array of sunsets mixed with really realistic overcast and clear skies. I played this because after Driveclub I was yearning for a semi simulation racer with some genuine bombastic scripted events that take advantage of realistic looking cars in realistic nature environments with dynamic changes. Or like if Gran Turismo and Uncharted were spliced together. Plus I saw a YouTube video about how good this was and I remembered I still have an Xbox One (which I haven't touched for months).

To add, much like Driveclub, Horizon 3 is a game that doesn't exist outside of a physical disc in the year of our lord 2024, so all hail physical media because at least it cannot be erased as easily as digital content. Unlike Driveclub, however, there's more than enough content and game here to keep one entertained for hours. Not that I think volume of content is always the most sufficient way to compare and judge games. I still think that moment-to-moment Driveclub is a more visceral experience, especially as a racing game, but there's no denying Horizon 3 has more cars, more tracks and event types, more customisation and just flat out more to see and play with, which when considering both games don't exist today and can only be played offline off of a disc, it does make a difference.

I misjudged the Forza Horizon series. It might have been what I wanted all along without realising it. I don't know. I'm going to play Horizon 4 next while it's still on Game Pass and still exists. I did find my brief time with it three years ago off putting, mostly the presentation. That's still an issue with Horizon 3 but I guess I managed to put it aside easier here. I'm not a huge fan of the corporatised, overly sponsored "happy" vibe to the whole festival atmosphere. It's a bit insincere and phony. What I liked about Driveclub is the fact that it kind of lacked atmosphere. It was like all the personality was sucked up by a vaccum, which sounds like a neg, but I'd rather have no personality than the soulless "bank-sponsored community arts project" vibe Horizon has for some reason.

Anyway. Good game. The driving in this is kind of right down the middle, where it's basically an arcade racer but I guess there's enough options to tune your car to something more. I wouldn't know, I didn't bother with any of it. I would just get a new car, slap on a suggested community design, and race around. The cars all looked fantastic. Mostly handled well and somewhat true to the look and feel of the car's design. Nice weight to most of the cars I drove. The progression system was lightweight and relatively rewarding. I think the wheel spins are rigged. But I wound up driving a nice variety of cars from a 91 BMW M3, to a Lamborghini Aventador to a Ford Shelby Raptor to a nice Rolls Royce Wraith (which fulfilled my childhood dream of racing a Rolls in a Need for Speed=illegal street racing game, something I don't remember ever finding an option for when I was 13). I only wish I knew how to drift...better or at all in this game. Solid experience.

fucking hell

Driveclub for years - like many racing games - merely existed on my periphery, alongside games like The Crew, Project Cars and Assetto Corsa. Just one of those realistic looking racing games I'd never touch. Then for some reason this year I caught the racing game bug. I started watching videos on the best 7th and 8th gen racing games. After buying some old PS3 ones, I tried searching for contemporary racers that I missed out on. Driveclub looked like the one that made salivate the most. And after playing it, it makes me salivate even more.

Racing games come in many flavours. There is no single serving, all-in-one comprehensive racing game. You gotta pick and choose which ones push your most buttons and satisfy you best. Do you want realistic physics and tuning; do you want circuit racing or street racing; do you want a extensive car list or a detailed one; do you want arcade settings or sim settings; etc, etc..

Driveclub for me fits in that perfect intersection between arcade and sim. It looks realistic. There are circuit tracks, but the environments are kind of quaint and isolated, like slithers of open world sections. The cars are all glossy and mostly sporty, but they're not GT performance cars. There's no real customization; no body mods or car tuning. They don't require knowledge of tyre grips to fly across tight tracks but they're not as loose and floaty as arcade cars. It's basically Sony's Forza Horizon. It's just about everything I want in a racing/driving game and yet it makes me mournful that it could be so much more. Playing it in 2024 is kind of heartbreaking since it's been offline for 4 years now and I'm pretty sure you can't even buy it digitally any more. None of the DLC is available. It's like a ghost town of a game.

But what a beautiful ghost town it is. As nerdy and irrelevant as it is to talk about, you can't talk about Driveclub without talking about weather and particle effects. The dynamic environments in this game are what I love so much. Like, yes, it's missing the physics and tuning modifications to make it an actual driving simulator, but no other game has ever made me feel so relaxed behind a virtual steering wheel and made me in awe of racing as this game has. Watching the sun go down and the stars come out, the subtle change of colours as your car's red lights come out to shine in the dark of night to end the race. The way the rain evolves, the lightning comes out, the little raindrops reacting realistically on your windshield. The little plastic bags floating across the track; or the flower petals, or dirt; the little bits of smoke alongside the sides of the track. None of these things are amazing particularly on their, but when combined with a photorealistic idyllic background and glossy sportscar, it just creates the most zen racing experience I've ever had. It's such a shame the studio closed and the game died and they got a chance to really iterate on this core concept and evolve and perfect it into some truly spectacular. A genuine "what could have been?" game but for what's here I'm still incredibly impressed. It feels like playing gaming's most comprehensive demo before the game got cancelled.

I hope someone can make another game like this again, although the way gaming has evolved, the way game budgets have ballooned out and racers have become more and more out of flavour, it seems unlikely. This will sit as a weird little PS4 exclusive curiosity until then, I guess. An S-tier racing game.

don't know what to say about this. on the one hand, it's everything Need for Speed should be: pornographically detailed sports cars racing against cops down immaculate scenery. gives you a sense of speed like few games I can remember. despite obviously being written by the manufacture's PR team, I love the little info snippets about each car. makes you feel like you're learning something between events. the whole game glitters the way a great car ad should. it skirts that line between ad and arcade racer pretty well. the sort of vehicular combat in this adds a nice wrinkle. but man, I've had to give up maybe 40% of the way through because progress is slow and the events and tracks are so repetitive. like I don't get the sense this game has anything more to show me that it hasn't after I've reached level 7. it's incredible fun but it feels like a game that's stringing me along.

it's a really nice feeling driving at night from the hood cam while I listen to my own music (because the soundtrack sucks) though. again, that notion of speed is right there. i just don't think this game has any idea what to put it towards. reminds me playing High Stakes and Hot Wheels Turbo Racing as a kid though. some really beautiful cars in this too. the Mercedes Benz Stirling Moss, ooh boy.

despite its central premise being very inspired by Life on Mars, so much of Driver: San Francisco feels like the pinnacle of racing game stories. or just car games in general. the original Driver was one of the first games I played. I was one of the thousands who never made it out of the opening garage tutorial. I've always had a rooting interest in this series, even if Driver 3 and Parallel Lines slipped me by and I wrote this off for years as the final nail in the coffin.

turns out I was incredibly wrong. at worst, it fulfills the promise the original Driver gave me - a fantastic, free-flowing open-world racing game with impeccable real world detail, from the layout of the SF streets to the use of many notable real life cars, as well a deep love for replicating the vibe of late 60s and 70s car chase movies.

the story is both insanely stupid but it's told in one of the most ingenious ways. it holds up as a video game story almost better than any game I can remember. the tone is perfect. the little snippets of dialogue throughout are all nice.

where this shines though is the creativity on display. not even with the shift mechanic that's almost flawless, but the concepts for events are all so good. riding under a semi-trailer to defuse a bomb like you're in a Fast & Furious movie? gold. the goddamn level where your POV is from the driver's seat of the car chasing you? that was beautiful and inspired. the ways in which the game reminds you you're in a game by reminding you your character is in a coma? really great. following an ambulance around to keep your heartbeat down while you're in cardiac arrest is some really compelling that not only other racing games never aspire to but few contemporary games manage to pull off.

one of the last real ps3 gems.

I don't know what to think of Alan Wake II. It's a game that feels like it never gets going. Every time I feel like it's building momentum it sorts of stops and keels over. Part of me is disappointed there isn't more gameplay. Part of me finds all the gameplay, particularly the shooting, uninspired. The big, heavily expected metal shootout setpiece was incredibly underwhelming because this is not a game designed for Max Payne or Control styled gun fights. I found a bizarre friction between the compelling mystery in the Saga section versus the much more visualy stimulating Alan sections. I always felt equally underwhelmed in both but for different reasons. For a game with high aspirations and interesting ideas, it just felt like a huge tease that went nowhere.

The high peaks are good though. Even if they're inconsistent. I disliked how stilted the word felt because despite the zaniness, a lot of the Saga sections seemed to imply a verisimilitude. I would have appreciated more commitment to reality than all the Twin Peaks/Shining dream-like logic.

I think there's a lot of interesting stuff in here about the death of auteurism and the trappings of it. There's so much meta shit going on I felt too dizzy to care whether it was too self indulgent or not. I think the genuis of this is, if it were a TV show, or a movie, or even a book, it'd feel pretty pedestrian. But as a video game - and the rare game about a novelist in a Tweed jacket - I think it workds really well.

I think this might be the best written game I've played all year. I just wish it played as straightforward as say a key inspiration like Resident Evil 4.

when this series was rebooted 4 years ago, despite how shallow of an attempt it was, there felt like a genuine effort to modernise it; change and adapt it to a new generation.

could have not have foreseen how far into the depths it would eventually sink, in terms of content, but also just the broad James Bond storytelling and actual game design.

the original Modern Warfare 3 was a really shallow game that tried to implore you to care about Price's personal vendetta with this Makarov figure. it was stupid and trying way too hard. at least the rest of the game, despite obviously dumb it was, was still a pretty well put together string of globetrotting CoD levels.

this is is the same shit but with loosely put together Warzone maps posing for a single player campaign. the ONE thing you could always count Call of Duty for was a pretty spectacularly string of well thought out corridor levels. even at its worst it was still trying to be a $1m idea wrapped a 5cent story.

Modern Warfare III can't even be bothered with that. it's so thoroughly disappointing on just that level that rest is worthless to even talk about. this is easily the most sorry-ass entry in the series. At least Black Ops 4 had the gumption to forgo a half-ass campaign all together. this is pathetic. like watching a clown piss themselves.

Yeah it was okay. As an action game it's extremely well polished and delivers some prime Naughty Dog esque setpiece moments.

As a Spider-Man adaptation, it's kind of limp and a bit underwhelming. There are no genuine moments on par with the Raimi or Spiderverse movies, for example. It's so sanitised.

The whole game feels sanitised to an inch of its life. Its depiction of New York City, while lovely from a gameplay perspective, is utterly lacking in character. The entire Peter/Harry relationship feels lifted from a church pamphlet or something. There's just very spark behind any of the characters in this. They don't feel like real human beings or even operatic comic book characters. I saw a tiktok clowning Miles Morales regular street clothes in this game and it made me realise there is just little to no effort implemented to make these people feel like they live lives outside the game. It just makes the whole thing so hollow, which is disappointing considering how nice the looks and plays. Or maybe I'm just not the target demo for this. I don't know.

A really fun but ultimate hollow experience. 7/10.