Jet Moto 2 (Review)

Developed by SingleTrac, this sequel to a game widely considered a knock-off of Waverace 64 has been regarded by fans to be the best in the series. This fast-paced, intense, no-bullshit thrill ride is a difficult, yet addicting masterpiece that has no business being compared to its competition.

Jet Moto 2 as a concept is the type of thing a six year old would come up with while playing with his toys n’ shit a day after Halloween. Unlike the mostly repetitive and predictable tracks in the 1^st Jet Moto, Jet Moto 2 drops all pretenses, and has the player traveling through difficult, yet awe-inspiring levels, which in the real world, is literally impossible and makes absolutely no god damn sense. 10 people compete in a tournament consisting of floating hover bikes, racing in locations ranging from the Grand Canyon, to the pit if hell. There is almost no storyline and no cut scenes. (You do get an epilogue with each character if you beat the game on master difficulty, but that’s it.) It’s just a tournament, a multiplayer mode, and the ability to select a track, which is more than anyone, could ask for from a game like this. Most game developers these days don’t seem to understand that in a racing game, a GAME is all fuck you need. A spectacular fucking storyline with retarded- mainstream pop music shoe-horned in and T-Mobile ads all over the fucking god-damn place is not going to hide the fact that your racing game is a racing game. There may not be much of a plot or story structure, but to be honest, that’s the way I like it in a game like this. This game isn’t trying to be something it’s not, and instead, capitalizes on what it is: a racing game.

GAMEPLAY:

I’m going to be honest with you. I may consider myself a pretty skilled racer, but this game is as hard as a brick soaked and cooled in a bowl of liquefied titanium. The only way to progress in the campaign is to come in first place in every single race. There is no way around this hurtle, and you can’t get away with progressing on easy mode, either. Your difficulty has to be set on novice or higher to get all of the tracks, and if you want to get your racer’s special bonus ability, the difficulty has to be set to professional, along with having to come in first place in every single race, in all 10 tracks in the season. This game may be hard, but unlike the first Jet Moto game, it isn’t damn near impossible. I’ve beaten this game’s campaign several times using all 10 riders, and I love how this game has an armada of stuff to win. To this date, I have never played a PlayStation game more often than I play this one, and for this game to have been released when online multiplayer for consoles didn’t even exist yet, this game’s replay value is one of the best out there.

Some of the things you can win in professional difficulty are pretty useless. There are features like “upside down cam” and “cybervision” which add nothing to the game at all, and are pretty pointless, while others like ‘Super Agility’ and ‘unlimited boost’ are just all kinds of awesome.

PHYSICS:

The physics of this game are every manner of awesome, even though the physics are what gives this game it’s supposedly notorious difficulty. They may get glitchy as hell sometimes, (Okay, they get glitchy a lot more than sometimes,) but the attention to detail put into the animations of the riders, the stability of each bike, and the way they balance on surfaces makes this one of the most carefully crafted physics engines in games of that generation. The flaws of the previous Jet Moto game have been completely improved, and it really shows this time around. One complaint I have with the physics is that the hang-time is way to freaking long. (Hang-time is the amount of time a rider stays in the air.) I understand what SingleTrac was trying to do, using the slow air physics to give players the opportunity to perform stunts and all, but all it does is make you slower than every other bike on the track, causing other racers to overtake you while you’re stuck in the air. Inconvenient or not, the physics are fun as hell, and that’s the way I like it.

CONTROLS:

The D-pad controls the direction your navigation, R1 & L1 control the bike’s rotation, and R2 & L2 controls which direction your bike will lean in. I have heard plenty of complaints from players that the controls are too complicated. They may be complex, but that is NOT a bad thing. In this game, the complexity works in its favor, as it gives the player more detailed and specific control over the hover bike. The buttons are in all the right places, making navigation in this game a skill, without making it a hindrance. The TruePhysics™ engine in this game provides a sense of complexity wherein actual skill and experience is required, and since no two bikes in this game is alike, your technique will always have to be different depending on whom you play. The control scheme of this game is the closest thing to perfection I have ever seen in a videogame, and this should have been the blueprint for how any racing game involving a jet ski should have controlled from that point on.

I have read plenty of reviews of this game, where players complain that the game sucks, because the controls are “too hard”, and let me just start this rant off by saying that these people have no fucking Idea what they are talking about. A video game doesn’t “suck” for being difficult, or because you suck AT IT. A game sucks when it isn’t playable, or when it is so unpolished that it becomes un-enjoyable. For crying out loud, you wouldn’t start riding a bike or a skateboard and say that it sucks just because you don’t know how to ride them, would you? My point is that a game’s worth is not determined by your lack of competence or your personal ineptitude. A motorcycle doesn’t suck just because you don’t know how to ride one, A guitar doesn’t suck just because you don’t know how to play one, and Money doesn’t suck just because it’s hard to come by, so why would this game “suck” just because you don’t know how to fucking play it?

Here are just a few examples of the unfair criticism this game receives:

… Okay, so this game deserved two stars because you could fall off of a cliff? It’s unclear where the Finnish line is in a game where all you have to do is go forward? What?

I cannot adequately personify in words how monumentally retarded this paragraph is. Where do I even begin?

These so-called “dumb characters” are the same characters from the first Jet Moto game.

So a game “sucks” because it doesn’t “live up” to the previous title? A game developed by the same company, published by the same publisher, under the same name, with the same racers, and even the SAME TRACKS FROM THE FIRST GAME doesn’t live up to a game with broken physics, horrible grappling system, and was literally impossible to win on master difficulty without stunt mode turned on?

"Buy this and you'll see a recycled, generic racing game with dumb racers and even dumber tracks..."

Wait, wait, wait…. You just said this game didn’t live up to the first Jet Moto, and now you are calling it recycled? If this game is “recycled”, then wouldn’t that, by extension, make the first game just as “generic” as this one?

Sound Design:

You know what? I’ve always wondered why the male and female riders sound like their respective sexes when they hit each other on the track, yet when they perform a stunt, the women sound about as feminine as a steroid abusing heroine addict in a maximum security prison. It’s so strange hearing such a masculine voice coming out of a female character, after performing a triple back flip off of a rollercoaster ramp! It’s like showing up at a blind date only to find out that the hot chick you are going out with is named Enrique, and has a voice that sounds like if Darth Vader’s DNA got spliced with the offspring of Dennis Haysbert, and that child had a voice that sounds like a mix between Don LaFontain, and Chuck Norris! The sound design in this game is pretty straight foreword, and pretty unremarkable. The music, however, is a different story! I may have heard better music in some other games in the past, but rarely do I come across a game where every piece of music in the first 9 tracks is amazing. I can’t quite say the same for some of the recycled music from the First Jet Moto game, but the newer music for the newer maps kick the ever-loving shit out of the first games, which, is pretty much an outstanding example of what I can say about the entirety of this game! Even if by some bizarre twist of common sense that I somehow didn’t like this game, I would buy this game just for the music alone! That’s how good it is!

Conclusion:

This game is the absolute shit. It’s one of a very short list of games I still play to this day, and after I finish writing this long, boring, time consuming review, I’m going to play it again. God dammit, this conclusion is taking to fucking long!! Hurry u….

The Good:

Exactly what a racing game should be; Fun. Not Over-cinematic, and not needlessly sophisticated, just FUN.

The Bad:

The sound design is not the best; the women have the same stunt cheers that the men have, the hang time is like zero gravity sometimes, and some of the badges you can win on professional difficulty kind of suck.

Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries (Review)

Originally written: 04/02/2006 

Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries is one of two sequels to Mechwarrior 3, which is one of 8 games based on a cartoon show from the 90’s called Battletech. You may think that because this game is it's 5th installment, that it would be different than the previous 4 games, but for the most part, exactly the same as Mechwarrior 3.

Story:

• In MW4, you are a free agent. You get paid to the highest bidder to defend or attack small arms military installations by either the local military or royal families. You play a mercenary with his own team, who are pretty much guns for hire through the galaxy. You have the ability to choose to favor either of two warring factions. (I forgot their names. I think one is lead by somebody named “Nandi Stiener”. Don't know. ) Anyway, This is a huge improvement from MechWarrior 3, with its lack of a boring storyline and uninspired dialogue. The story mode is a vast improvement from Mechwarrior 3. That game was like watching 24 straight hours of the Charley Rose show, while waiting in line at a DMV. Here, you actually feel like you are a part of the events taking place, keeping the player interested in the gameplay, along with the plot taking place.

Gameplay: 

• Gameplay is almost exactly the same as mechwarrior 3, and by that I mean a Mech battle can still take up to 10 minutes of shooting and waiting for your Mech to cool down and reloading your god damn weapon. one of the defining features of the battletech MechWarrior games is that the mechs themselves blow like the wind in a hurricane. The only useful weapons in the campaign are the long-range, slow-as-shit wepons that take a millennia and a half to reload. If you want to have a decent level of armor in a mission, you are going to need a heavy or assault mech, which are slower and less reliable than all the others. Unfortunately, adding more of what you need on your mech will only make you slower than any of the other mechs shooting at you because of the added weight, making you a 200 ton piece of TARGET PRACTICE for every mech with a missile launcher in the entire game. The amount of tonnage capacity on each mech is so unbelievably limited in comparison to the size and weight of the mechs themselves, that they mine as well not have carry space at all.

• Plus the available space has to be divided among the engine, the shields, the weapons and the HEATSINKS, which in my opinion are practically useless most of the time. Even though the mechs in this game are about as useful and as reliable as an American car built in the 1970's, the game play itself is actually lots of fun. In fact, it just might be one of the most fun games I’ve played on the PC. It’s important to keep in mind that this game is a SIMULATOR, not an arcade shooter It’s one of those games that require actual skills to play, as apposed to most games nowadays which just hold your hand through the entirety of the campaign.

•   One thing that makes this game stand out above the rest is SOLARIS. It's basically a planet full of tournaments that you can compete in for money. It‘s fun and it works. The further you get in the game, the more tournament classes become available. The problem is, once you complete the missions on all the other planets, THAT'S IT. No more SOLARIS. The only thing that could have made this game interesting AFTER the campaign was over was taken out as soon as the game was over. Give me a break.

Controls:

• The controls are like trying to beat a giant tarantula at a game of twister. Unless you have a game pad with at least 2 analog sticks, you are pretty much screwed, because the controls for the keyboard are possibly the worst in gaming history, and that is no exaggeration. If you are going to play this game at all, get this first:

Verdict:

• This game is better than all the other Mechwarrior games combined. Graphics may be old as MW3, The Mechs themselves may be about as reliable as a receding hairline, but the game is good, and is one of my all-time favorites.

The Good:

Still fun, better story,

The Bad:

The buddy AI is STILL stupid, Controls are STILL awkward, and Solaris only lasts as long as you don't complete the game

Race 07 (Review)

Out of all the motoring events and racing leagues out there, the WTCC (World Touring-Car Championship) is by far least boring racing event in my opinion. For those of you who don't think it's all that exiting, keep in mind that I was one of those kids that grew up watching NASCAR, and you can only watch shitty American cars making left turns so often before you get bored with it. WTCC on the other hand, is like the most intense struggle for supremacy I have ever seen in a racing league. Not only does the WTCC have tracks with turns that go LEFT, but ones that go RIGHT as well. This Series is everything that racing is supposed to be. It's Intense, Exiting, professional, and extremely dangerous. To bad the game is sort of boring. :(

Race 07 is actually a sequel to a game called Race™; witch is a bit surprising considering the two are EXACTLY THE SAME GOD DAMN GAME! Literally the only difference between the two games is the way the title menus look, and the addition of Formula race cars. (My guess is that Race 07 is a reboot because the original Race title wasn't very popular.) The Race™ series is a sequel to the GTR series, which was actually pretty popular for it's time, due to all the attention to detail put into the physics and the so called “realism” of the racing experience. The only other difference between the two “Race” titles is that Race 07 has the 2007 championship, and F3000 cars. That’s about it, really. Same cars as Race, same tracks as Race, different campaign. It's nice to know that when this game came out, the people who paid for this game back in 2007 would be paying a full retail price for a game that mine as well have been an expansion pack.

STORY:

There isn't much of a story here. The campaign is just a WTCC series, and that's it. It's a racing game, so if you're looking for cut scenes set to shitty pop music like something you’d see in a Fast and the Furious, movie, that's what Need for Speed games are for.

One good element of the campaign is that it includes vehicles from F3000, which at least ads an extra campaign, and extends the replay ability of the game a little bit.

CONTROLS:

The controls for this game just work, though they might be a pain in the ass to set up sometimes, and the game itself has a hard time remembering the settings that I spent several minutes setting up in the first place, but they do work the way they are supposed to, even if the default control settings for any game pad or racing wheel is like trying to get a six year old to remember the periodic table of elements.. I remember connecting my Logitech MOMO Force Feedback wheel and starting the game with the default MOMO settings, only for the gas pedal to be constantly floored as soon as I start the race! The most frustrating part about it is that the game sometimes can’t seem to just REMEMBER what the fuck I told the buttons to do in the first place. I never know when this thing is just going to forget my fucking control settings, so I have to keep checking the settings at the beginning of the game, EVERY SINGLE TIME. If I forget, I might end up fucking up my race, because the controls would be different than I remember. The GTR series didn't have this problem, and to tell you the truth, this issue started with the first Race title. It hasn’t been fixed yet, resulting in the control setup being the biggest pain in the ass this game has to offer. Even though the control setup may have Alzheimer's disease, when you do set it up, they make the game a lot easier and slightly more fun than it would normally be, thank god.

PHYSICS:

The Physics in this game are OKAY. The tire physics are there, there is understeer, oversteer, downforce, traction, and all of these elements work better in this game than they do in most. I've got no complaints.

CUSTOMIZATION:

The one thing I did like was the options you get when tuning your car. You can adjust everything. Tires, suspension, final drive, aerodynamics, Steering differentials, brakes, tires, and just about everything but the body kit. These things are pretty much a Necessity in a racing simulator. If you can't at least adjust your suspension in a racing sim, you need to start searching for a different racing sim.

Image (Helmet cam is completely pointless.)

GRAPHICS:

You know, I really don't understand how a game that looks this average can require Direct X 9 and 128 megs of ram, while games like Live For Speed and Need For Speed: Hot pursuit 2 only require DirectX 8.1, and 64 megs of video ram, and can look twice as realistic as this game does. Sure, there are games that look worse, and the car models in this game are excellent, but there is literally no need for this game to require DX9 Period. These graphics are just average, and even when I maxed out the graphics options, this game still manages to slow down to almost 40 frames per second on my Nvidia GeForce 8600GT with 512 megs of DDR2 ram, and it still only looks slightly better. Did I mention the fact that my video card crashed repeatedly over 10 times during campaign? What the fuck?

GAMEPLAY:

I must be honest here. If you haven't played a PC racing sim before, or if you are into arcade style racing games like Burnout 2, this game will bore the shit out of you till your bowels are completely empty. Every race starts with a 30 minute practice round, and a 16 minute qualifying round, and if you are still awake by the time you get bored with it, you can always just skip both any time you want. If you are a Ridge racer fan, or some guy that played NFSU2 and thinks that a car that has 410 horsepower is supposed to grip a hairpin turn at over 9000 miles an hour, then you don't have any business playing this game in the first place. Though I may criticize this game quite a bit, I will give credit where credit is due. This IS a very realistic racing sim. This isn't some pussy ass “arcade racing sim” like NFS Shift, with steering assist for little girls just in case you are too fabulous to remember to turn the steering wheel. These physics will EAT YOU ALIVE!!!!!!!! Don't even bring that weak shit to this racing sim. In this game, you better know EXACTLY what the fuck you are doing.

My favorite thing about this game is the AI on the other cars. Even in easy difficulties, the other drivers are actually THINKING their way through the race. They slow down to avoid accidents, and most importantly, they actually attempt to RACE each other. SimBin put a lot of work into these AI drivers and it really shows.

MULTIPLAYER:

Playing Race 07 online is a great way to pass out in front of your steering wheel. :( If you like driving a 30 minute qualifying round, only for every other player in the server you’re in to just quit the game before the race even starts, this is the game for you. If you like a very minimal selection of available online rooms to choose from, (because most of the other available rooms play a completely different version of the game), then you're going to love playing this online. The online play is even more boring than the single player campaigns, and it doesn't help that most of the other players are borderline retarded, and think that flooring the gas pedal just before a tight turn when another driver is directly in front of you will get you laid or something.

One thing that the Race 07's box art likes to brag about is the ability to make your own car skins, which wouldn't be a complete waste of time if every other racer could actually SEE the skin you made. Unfortunately the only way other racers can see your skin in multiplayer mode is if they manually install the skin themselves, which is a complete waste of time. Games like Live for Speed allow you to at least upload your skins to lfsworld.net so that everyone can see it, but since SimBin doesn’t have an infrastructure like that, there is no point in making a custom skin at all.

CONCLUSION:

Even though I like some of the customization here, it isn't enough to make a game fun, and in my opinion, that's what's missing. Even so, this game is a decent experience. A boring looking experience, but I've seen racing titles do a hell of a lot worse than this back in 2007, so I'd take this over some stereotypical Fast and Furious rip-off any day of the week.

The good:

Great car models, Good physics, (good enough,) can add your own music...

The bad:

Adding your own car skins is completely useless since no other players can see them. online play is almost as boring as a trigonometry textbook...

Super Off-Road: The Baja (Review)

This review was originally written 1/2/06

Every now and then, I come across a retro game that makes me wonder why no one has ever heard of it. It doesn’t have to be a particularly GOOD game, just a unique enough experience to make me wonder why it didn’t get the popularity that it should have. This is one of those games. It may not have the arcade appeal of it’s predecessor, or the multiplayer mode, but it was at the very least, a solid racing game, which is better than most were on the Super Nintendo.

 

GRAPHICS:

Imagine any 3D racing game you have ever played on the Playstation: That is this game, only it’s 2-dimensional. One of the things you might notice right away is that the game looks like someone’s 2D drawing of a ps2 game. –Keep in mind, however, that these graphics don't really look that bad, considering Super Off-Road: The Baja is actually a sequel to THIS game;

(Talk about a quantum leap.)

The road itself is actually mapped after the real tracks, which were considered the toughest in the world. Ivan Stewart is there at the beginning of every race, giving you more blatantly obvious advice since your mommy told you to look both ways before crossing the street.

Orly? Yeah, no sh**, Sherlock!

STORY:

The objective in this racing game is simple: Get in 1st place, stay on the track, and avoid running shit over. If you run to much shit over, your car breaks down, you crawl out of your car having some kind of standing seizure, and Ivan Stewart stares at you like you are a fucking idiot. If you can't make it through the first 2 levels without your car breaking down, then you probably are. All you have to do in this game is drive to the other side of Mexico before the other racers, and that’s pretty much it.

GAMEPLAY:

It’s one of those games wherein the learning curve is not steep, yet as you progress through it, you will quickly see that this game is not fucking around. These levels get hard as hell if you don’t know what you are doing, not just because the obstacles in the road can damage the Christ out of your vehicle, but they can also cost you more money you would need for the pit stop. Oh, yeah, speaking of just what you are using that money FOR, the pit stop is the place you buy upgrades to your already crappy vehicle. You will buy, umm… lights, Brakes, Tires, shocks, and so forth. You will also buy Nitro's, and, you will buy ENGINE! Lots and lots of ENGINE! Keep in mind; you're not buying these things in QUANTITY, but rather in QUALITY. For example; buying more “Tires” doesn't mean buying another set of tires; it means you're just putting more quality into the tires to give them better traction. (The quality is measured in little yellow blocks.) Buying more “Shocks” gives you better damage protection, buying more “lights” gives you a brighter view in the dark tracks, buying more “brakes” gives you better stopping power, and buying more “engine” makes you go faster. The really weird part about it is that you can take quality AWAY from any of those and get your money back to buy other stuff! Imagine if you could get money for taking important parts out of your vehicle? The first thing I would do is to take out the air bags. Also, the GPS tracking devices that have been in every vehicle made since 2000, and Maybe the Seat belts! Yeah! I mean, who uses those anyway?

What's the biggest difference between Off-Road and Off-Road: The Baja? Well, the overall games design. You see, unlike the First Super Off-Road, it isn’t some top-down racer where you navigate a car on the ground, like you would an RC. Super Off-Road: The Baja is a racing game that's a lot more like DRIVING A CAR, as apposed to navigating a car on an almost microscopic road. Here, you have a camera behind you, so that you can see in FRONT of you! It's a definite improvement from the first game in the series, but, then again, if you want to see DIRECTLY behind you, instead of just generally forward, you’re out of luck. If you turn your truck to the left or right for too hard, you could end up careening into anyone or anything without even seeing where in the shit you are going. By the way, the first Off-Road didn't have morons riding Mopeds in the middle of a street race with pickup trucks, So, making that hard left or right turn can often leave you careening into God knows what, because, you won't have a clue until you've actually ran it the fuck over! Also, make note of the people and/or animals, because not only do they add damage to your car, they slow you down and take your money. Unfortunately, pleasures as sweet as these come at a price.

One idiot on a moped: $ 3k. A couple making out dangerously close to the road while cars drive an excess of 80mph: $ 10k. A Deer… $ 20k Trying to figure out why it would cost more to kill a deer than a human being: Priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's the PitStop.

Multiplayer:

One of those things that I truly despise about this game is its sorry excuse for a 2-player mode. Instead of 2 players actually being in the same race at the same time, Player one will go first, following the 2nd player. When it's the 2nd players turn to play, player one becomes a ghost car, mimicking what player 1 already did! It sucks because taking turns to play results in 2 different races, so player 1 may always finish the race in a different standing in the second race than it did in the first. I mean, I understand that this type of game is hard to make & everything, but this just isn't something that is acceptable, in my opinion. The first arcade title was known for its multiplayer, and this just doesn’t do it justice, in my opinion.

VERDICT:

Aside from the messed up camera views, half-assed 2 player modes, and a god-awful set of music, this seems like a decent game which is also fun to play. The toughness in the game play itself ranges in difficulty from challenging to extremely challenging, and does so without compromising the fun this game offers. The pitstops, as weird as they are, add a reasonable layer of depth to the game play, and if you want to win something, you'd better come in third or better, because I assume the girls with bathing suits by the winner's circle don't take American Express.

The good:

“3D”, fun to play...

The bad:

Terrible 2-player mode (mine as well not have one at all)