Apples ‘n’ Oranges: Another TwoFer

Man, I am so behind on my blogging. Since I have last posted a video game review, I completed 3 games, two of which are in the second round of Apples ‘n’ Oranges. I’ll briefly review them now.

DiRT 2

Gamerscore after 1 playthrough: 855/1000

Game it is most like from Round 1: GRiD

My feelings toward the sequel to DiRT are closer to my feeling on GRiD than DiRT 1. Codemasters took the original DiRT rally/off-road formula, mixed it with equal parts Monster and X-Treme!!!!1!!1!, and served it with a side of GRiD’s flashback features. The original formula was great, but the X-Games veneer dumbed down the gameplay quite a bit. Rally is emphasized much less in favor of rallycross (aka standard circuit race) and rally (aka standard off-road point-to-point). Of the 41 tracks, only 15 were rally tracks. These 15 tracks consist of 5 long rallies legs and then each half of that leg. Granted, some of the short legs start the opposite end from where you enter in the long track, but it is rather sad compared to the 4-6 different legs per location in DiRT. This kills the replay value of the game.

They did make some substantial improvements, though. They kinda added 2 levels of performance mods for every purchasable car to the mix. Liveries are unlocks, as are new visual doodads like bobbleheads, hula girl dashboard toys, and fuzzy dice. By far, my favorite part of the X-Treme additions were the custom car horns! That’s right; you can obnoxiously emit fire truck noises from your car. The other drivers talk to you mid-race; you bump into them and they snap at you. They congratulate you when you win. It adds a sense of online-esque camaraderie to the single-player campaign. The one-on-one throwdowns are a change of pace. And finally, no stupid champagne references.

Totals Time:

Gameplay: 4.5/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 4/5

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 5.5/5

Total: 4.2/5

Need for Speed: Shift

Gamerscore after 1 playthrough: 910/1000

Game it is most like from Round 1: Need for Speed: Carbon

If I had to sum up Shift in one sentence, it would be: They crammed the Carbon driving engine into a Forza level technical racer. Even after some hefty control adjustments and tuning, the racing still did not feel right. I played the game with the same settings I played Forza 3, but I seriously considered turning on the turn-assist function.

The game is structured better than Carbon. They offered enough off-line badges (the new reward cards) to actually earn the full 1 K if you can get past the driving engine. Money is easy to get. The aggression/precision leveling system is a really cool idea. I just wish it was in a better game. And the whole illegality thing is done for.

Totals Time:

Gameplay: 2/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 3/5

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 5/5

Average: 3.4/5

So, a slight dip in DiRT and a slight bump in Need for Speed. Let’s see how Split/Second goes…

A Note on Drag Racing in Forza

When I reviewed Forza 3, I noted how I successfully avoided drag racing at that point. Well, I got around to trying a drag event today. This is not going to change the score I gave Forza; the mere fact that they are requiring me to drag race to get the last achievement I want is enough to warrant the dock I gave it. I never really elaborated on why I hate video game drag racing and how Forza handles it. Consider this a supplement.

My first couple of experiences with it was in the Need for Speed series, which might have colored the activity in a negative fashion. My problem with drag racing is threefold:

• They force you into a manual transmission set-up. I typically stay in automatic unless the game bribes me with a manual transmission achievement; then I’ll try it in a race I know I will win and then switch back. It is jarring to have the back and forth.
• They remove your ability to steer effectively and stick obstacles (cars, barrels, et cetera) in your way. So a drag race typically turns into a 30 minute crash-fest until I learn the pattern well enough to get the win.
• The payoff is typically not worth the time (as determined by in-game currency per hour) one has to put into the system. So every time I finish a drag I think that I could have made 3-4 times the money if I played a different event.

Well, Forza addressed some of my issues in a positive way. You can keep your automatic transmission if you like, which is nice. Granted, you probably won’t win against real players that way, but you can certainly plow though the drag events without too much hassle. As a sim, Forza does not have the obstacles that EA thought would add spice to the race type.

The payoff is still atrocious. The high-end drag events (which appear to be 3 3-heat races) pay 2,700 credits before any bonus money or difficulty adjustments are added to the mix. That is equivalent to 1 low level race. The load times alone (12 load screens for drag vs. 1 load screen for a single race) make it impossible for drag to pay the same amount per hour than the cheesy first-tier races that you spend maybe half of Year 1 on. I understand why they did that (to keep people from spamming a drag race as a gold farming activity), but making the payoff so low makes the event a drag. At least the other point-to-point races pay an equivalent amount of money by the time you complete the event.

Apples ‘n’ Oranges: Forza 3

Gamerscore after “Year 6″: 855/1000

Game it is most like for Round 1: Forza 2

Forza 3 is a sim-style racer that improves on the graphical presentation of it’s predecessor and steals the calendar as career format from games like PGR 4 and the flashback feature from GRiD. That’s all you really have to know. But, I must elaborate. Notes for the typical review categories will only cover those things that cannot be placed in one of the Apples ‘n’ Oranges categories.

The Good

• Gameplay: The flashback feature is well done.
• Presentation: The visuals did get a nice update. The Ferris Wheel at Suzuka moves this time.
• Interface: The calendar system is a nice touch, in general. The game makes 3 suggestions for weekday events (one of which can be changed by switching cars), and at least one of them usually fit my mood. The weekend events are set in stone, and you will repeat the R1 Championship Series ad nauseum Year 7 and onward.
• Interface: The event list system is a streamlined version of the old menu interface. At a glance, you can see which events you have unlocked, completed, and have a car for.
• Morality: The game still teaches that bad driving equals smoking wreaks.
• Car Quantity: 400 or so on the disc, plus some freebies in DLC land.
• Car Modification (Visual): The new blank canvas feature allows for relatively easy creation of complex decals and figures. The only complaint I have is that the created figure does not count as one layer.
• Unique Race Types: I enjoyed the new event types Super Lap (1 giant lap)and Speedway (oval races). They are a nice change of pace from the traditional track races Forza normally has.
• Achievements: No “Collect every car from a country” achievements!

The Bad

• Gameplay: They tied one’s starting place on one’s level a little too tightly this time around. You might have the best car in the race, but the game will shove you in the last spot when you start. This might be more “realistic”, but it really is more annoying than anything else. The one race I lost was because I could not overtake the lead car when I was in last place with a car that would have placed me in the middle of the pack if the game used the Forza 2 starting system.
• Presentation: The quality of the background music has decreased steadily since the first one. I miss the Junkie XL instrumental stuff in the background of a race. If the generic EA Trax-esque soundtrack played only during the menu screens, it would be tolerable, but they decided to bring back music in game. I think that was a poor move. It got to the point where I was listening to something else and had the sound to my TV turned down so that I could only hear the engine noises.
• Interface: The in-race HUB is almost unusable. I know they wanted to match the spiffy new visuals in the menus by having the data point graphics be semi-opaque, but I could not read my times unless a dark patch was in the top corner of the screen. The gas tank levels, lap time deltas, and car ahead/behind data suffered similarly.
• Interface: The “you screwed up” (id est, hit a car, slide off the track) indicators bear a special mention because it is downright broken. Gone is the old “add penalty time in bright red to one’s lap time” indicator, which, while a little annoying, made it blatantly obvious where you are screwing up. The new “triangle” indicator is ridiculously hard to see while you “making the mistake”. I put that in quotes because I lost track of how many times it would flair up while I was not doing anything wrong. It was especially annoying considering that, once you have completed a lap without the triangle showing up, the game would no longer use a triangle lap as the best lap in the box, which using that lap’s time as the best time in the lap time delta indicators. That is a major screw-up.
• D’s of Doom: Forza 3 has 1.5 D’s, as opposed to Forza 2′s 0 D’s. To be fair, you can get past Year 6 (the end of all new calendar events) without ever participating in a drag event (like I did) and drift is more of a side activity (it has no off-line events). While drifting still uses the normal physics, the drift calculation system is incredibly infuriating. For it to count, the angle of your car has to stay betwixt 45 to 90 from the road, you cannot stop or veer off the road in any way. I earned the one-time drift achievement (1 K points in one turn) purely on accident and, after 5 solid attempts, gave up on the lap version (100K points in one lap).
• Currency: They took out the rarity scores of old, so money (credits) is earned based on final place, damage, and difficulty settings only. Similarly, all the cars are unlocked from the beginning and you earn a car every level instead of finishing first in every race in an event. Needless to say, it is annoying to drop money on cars just to be given one for free later, especially since it seems one can only sell a car back for 100 credits.

The Meh

• Gameplay: The actual racing has not changed from the previous iteration in any noticeable way. That is not a bad thing, but it may not have the same appeal the first time around.
• Gameplay: They took out the “pick a region” aspect of the previous games. On the one hand, no more worries about cars being locked out when you are not in their home region. On the other hand, no more discounts on cars.
• Replay: Replay suffers because of the sheer number of events and how they are paced. I have more or less put the game up and I have not finished it. Sure, I will play it a couple of hours a week until I finally get the 100% event first place achievement, but the spark to play it non-stop has been quashed by the game’s flaws.
• Car Quality: It’s the same mixed bag as in the previous 2 Forzas. They added a F and E class while getting rid of the R4 class, which helps make a higher percentage of the cars useful in at least 1 race without mods, but I probably did not use 10% of the cars I had access to to get to this point.
• Car Modification (Performance): The quick upgrade system seems of little value. The times I had to upgrade, I went though the menus the old-fashioned way.
• Unique Race Types: They brought back the point-to-point races from Forza 1, but implemented them in a weird fashion. Instead of the normal 1 8-car race, you have 3 heats of 1 vs. 1 races for each track in the event. Needless to say, it’s time consuming with little payoff.
• Achievements: 940 of 1000 points are offline. Most of the achievements are earned by getting to level 50, which is the wrong way to do it. They have 1 80 point achievement for beating all 220 events, but no real rewards for continuing on after completing Year 6 to finish the 100 or so events you still have to do to get there.

Totals time:

Gameplay: 4.5/5

Presentation: 4.5/5

Interface: 3/5

Replay: 4/5

Morality: 6/5

Average: 4/5

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Apples ‘n’ Oranges: Round 2

So, I have finally caught up on the first round of Apples ‘n’ Oranges (see post below). Unfortunately, 3 of the 5 games I have listed as potential Round 2 games are already out (I’m currently playing Forza 3; DiRT 2 and Need for Speed: Shift are out and not yet bought). So, it’s time to start thinking about Round 2.

My current list of Round 2 participants:

• Forza 3
• DiRT 2
• Need for Speed: Shift
• Blur
• Split/Second

It’s a shorter list, but that’s okay. I could pad it with the Need for Speed games betwixt Carbon and Shift (Pro Street and Undercover), but I am not that much of a masochist. If the list needs to be expanded by the sudden announcement of a potentially good racer that will be out within a reasonable amount of time of the last on the list, I’ll add ‘em in then.

Whenever I beat one of those games, I will stick up a review. I will (hopefully) include all the Apples ‘n’ Oranges comparison points along with the typical review system deal. Whenever I have the last on the list beaten, we’ll see which is the best around. Will Turn 10 go back to back? We’ll see.

In case you do not want to dig back to the premise post, here are the points of comparison:

• Car Quantity- How many cars are in the game
• Car Quality- How many cars are in the game AND actually fun to drive
• Car Modification (Visual)- How can you make the cars pretty
• Car Modification (Performance)- How can you make the cars drive better
• D’s of Doom- There are a couple of race types that, in my humble opinion, should be banished from the realm of racer. They both happen to start with “D”: Drift and Drag. They throw the game physics out of whack to make drift work and still then think it is somehow fun to slide around like your car is a greased brick. Frustration abounds. And drag boils down to annoying pattern recognition game design that went out of style in the 90’s. Again, frustration abounds.
• Unique Race Types- Are you just doing circuit/point-to-point races, or does the game have more variety?
• Currency- How does the game’s economy work. Just cash? Earning reputation, too? How is cash (and rep, if applicable) earned?
• Achievements- How many achievements are offline? How many are reasonably attainable?

Read a Game?: A Two Fer Edition

This is my attempt to close out Round 1 of Apples ‘n’ Oranges. Seeing as I did not go back and replay either of these games (and have traded them in for Mass Effect 2 pre-order money), this is going to be relatively brief. I’m going to review these games based off of what I can remember about them, so I am not going to go though all the Apples ‘n’ Oranges rigmarole.

Project Gotham Racing 4

Gamerscore after playthrough: 855/1000

This is Bizarre Creations last PGR game (and my first one to play). It’s go a similar career structure as GRiD, but with a more arcade-y feel and the option to race cars OR bikes. Weather effects can throw monkeys into your wrenches. Yes, there is drift racing, but it is drift racing done right. Drifting is a part of the normal race engine, so you do not have to learn 2 different sets of physics rules like you do when, say, Need for Speed digs out the drift stuff. Of all the games in Round 1, this is the game where I hated the drift stuff the least. Speaking of drifting, you earn “kudos” for things like drifting, along with overtaking people in the race, winning, and maybe clean sections. You spend kudos on things ranging from useful (car and track packs) to kind of lame (helmet designs) to downright hilarious (like the million kudo gamercard picture).

The graphics were cool at the time. The weather effects spiced things up. The build-your-own livery system is on par with GRiD’s, but without the sponsorship aspects. I do not remember anything about the sound.

The interface is a little clunky, if I am remembering right. Things glitched in a “positive” way, especially when I was buying stuff to get the “bought it all” achievement. The biggest letdown was the lack of replay. I beat the career, played through the arcade mode once, and felt down with the game.

Morality wise, I do not remember anything one way or another.

Total time:

Gameplay: 4/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 4/5

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 5/5

Total: 4/5

Burnout Paradise

Gamerscore after playthrough: 555/1000 (Reason for the low score forthcoming)

Criterion’s latest racer, Burnout Paradise brought the Burnout style of gameplay into a true open-world environment. No retry button, no in-game mini-map, no invisible walls forcing you to go one way. Just you and your car killing other cars. In fact, the open-world environment got a little annoying. The PS3 version included the option to upload your save to EA’s website to get a personalized “You missed stuff’” map. They never brought that option to the 360, as far as I can tell. I beat the game with all but a couple of each of the smash into something collectibles found. My options were to use a walk-though to go to every run into things collectible to find those last few or forget about 80 points. I chose the later. Combine that with the 285 on-line points, and that explains that.

Getting off that rabbit trail, boosting works differently depending on what car you are in. The Aggro boost works like the traditional boosting system: By killing somebody, the bar extends and fills up; by being killed, the bar shrinks and empties. The stunt boost fills when you pull stunts. The speed boost fills when you use all of your boost at once, allowing you to build up “boost chains” (keep holdin’ down the boost button). Crashing takes away boost. This is not so bad with aggro and stunt, but makes speed just about less than useless. The AI is acceptably aggressive.

The soundtrack was the best of the bunch. A good combination of instrumentals, Paradise City, and indie. The graphics were pretty good too. The typical for Burnout lack of car coloring options was still there.

It is a long game (expect to have to beat every race at least twice). It has a ton of on-line content, both co-op and competitive. If you are off-line (like me), there is nothing really to do after you get that 100% I never bothered to get the last 2% on.

Morality-wise, the big premise is kill the other cars. That deserves a hit.

Gameplay: 4/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 4/5

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 4.5/5

Total: 3.9/5

So, there you go. Let’s review Round 1 of Apples ‘n’ Oranges:

1st Place Forza 2: 4.8/5

2nd Place DiRT: 4.6/5

3rd Place GRiD: 4.2/5 (really?)

Also Rans

Need for Speed Most Wanted: 4/5; Project Gotham Racing 4: 4/5; Burnout Paradise: 3.9/5

Need for Speed Carbon: 3.2/5

I really want to disagree with myself and put either Most Wanted or Burnout in at 3rd place, but I’m not going to fight my own review system.

Read a Game?: GRID

Gamerscore after one playthrough: 710/1000

This is going to be another long on.

GRID is Codemaster’s attempt to DiRTify the regular racing scene. In general, the additions GRID makes to the DiRT engine are improvements, but the core game is less appealing.

Sequel Bullet Point Time:

The Good:

• Flashbacks are cool. The worries of one crash (or bad turn) at the end of the race requiring a re-start are no more. They are optional, but quite useful for someone with my middling skills.
• The Le Mans 24 Hours of Racing event is cool. And removes the need to grind 400-500 miles in career mode for an achievement.
• The build your own livery function is neat. Sponsorships are cool, too.
• The arcade mode is better integrated into career mode.

The Bad:

• You are trading rally racers for “Touring Cars”, which feels like you are racing the Griswolds from National Lampoon.
• They stuck in drift racing; the drift racing is especially heinous since the drift physics is car and not event based. The drift cars are stuck in “drift physics” even if you try to use them in a regular arcade race. You want to race with the Mazda RX-7 or Subaru Impreza (two of my regular race cars when they are offered)? Be prepared to feel like you have no control of the buttery sliding you will get as a result.

The Meh:

• Rep replaces racing points. Rep is dependent on difficulty level (and the cap drops once you complete the event once), so you cannot max out on rep nearly as easily as you can on DiRT’s racing points.
• The career structure is based on racing seasons, so every 5th event is Le Mans. It makes the career seem more nebulous. You compete in races until you and your team are #1 in their respective leaderboards. The “brown screen” pops up and that’s it. Then again, Le Mans is a 25-50 mile event, which makes that 1000 mile achievement attainable before you finish the career mode.

Apples and Oranges for this sim racer:

• Quantity of Cars: 43 cars.
• Quality of Cars: The pro-tuned and Le Mans cars drive real well. The muscle and drift cars? Not so much. Touring cars are outright boring. The same lack of variety issue that plagued DiRT hits here.
• Car Modification (Visual): You build your own livery from pre-set patterns (that you can stretch and morph to your liking). You win sponsorships, which you position to set spots on the livery (and get sweet cash for the effort).
• Car Modification (Performance): No mod parts. You can tweak various performance aspects. It appears to be as deep as Forza 2’s tweak system.
• D’s of Doom: Drift. It’s one of the 2 themes of the Japan racing scene (there is 2 or 3 drift events at each level of Japan, plus 1 or 2 at the Global level), so it’s pretty much unavoidable if you want to complete the career mode.
• Unique Race Types: Touge events are like Carbon’s Canyon races, but the engine supports the technical tracks. There is also a Demolition Derby event, for what it’s worth.
• Currency: Cash for placing in races (how much depends on the difficulty level) and completing sponsor’s requirements (how much cash and what the requirement is depends on the sponsor). You also get cash for your teammate placing (the teammate does take a cut) and meeting sponsor’s requirements. You earn global rep and the region rep for completing races (how much depends on the difficulty level, place, how many times you used the flashback feature in the race). Cash gets you new (or used) cars. The various forms of rep progresses the career.
• Achievements: 880 are available offline. 30 goes to a glitched achievement (Gotta Drive ‘Em All is glitched out of the box; they apparently had a patch to fix it, but more current patches unfixed it). Some are ridiculous. Get a 50x multiplier in a drift event? Win an event with all assists off, locked on head camera, manual transmission, extreme difficulty, and no flashbacks? a 90 second lap on the long version of Okatama? A normal person should not expect more than 760-790 gamerscore, depending on your luck with lapping your opponents.

I’ll be brief with my other notes. The graphics are on par with DiRT. The career mode is interestingly arraigned, segmented by region. The AI is better, putting up a strong fight without being blindly aggressive. There is little reason to play after beating the career mode; even if you somehow get the glitched achievement fixed, you still cannot earn it after the “brown screen” and there is little to do outside of career mode. No drunkard yammering on about sweet champagne this time, as far as I remember.

Total time:

Gameplay: 4/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 4/5 (glitched achievement made me mad)

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 6/5

Total: 4.2/5

I would think it would have rated lower than that. Oh well.

Update on DiRT Review

Gamerscore as of update: 940/1000

Ok. I assumed wrong.

Championship mode is actually pretty different than the regular career. It feels like an actual rally season. You can race an individual event (4 or 6 rally legs and a crossover with co-driver variant), or race one of the three championships (Europe- England, Italy, and Germany events; International- Japan, Australia, and Spain event; Global- all 6). If I was not so burned out grinding 450 miles for that 1000 mile achievement (and lost some rally mojo in the process), I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more. As is, I did the short version of the three championships and never broke a personal best (outside of the couple of times it was a new-to-me leg). I stunk it up pretty bad.

Therefore, I am adjusting the score:

Gameplay: 4.5/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 5/5

Replay: 4.5/5

Morality: 5/5

Total: 4.6/5

Read a Game?: DiRT

Gamerscore after one playthrough: 790/1000

In the world of professional racing, there are tiers. Wiener Dog Races and NASCAR on the bottom. Circuit races in the middle. And, on top of the heap, rally racing. Rally races are a series of point-to-point off-road races, filled with tight, technical turns and trees to smash into if you make a mistake. DiRT is a re-vamp off the Colin McRea rally racing series.

Apples and Oranges data for this sim racer:

• Quantity of Cars: 46 rides, ranging from rally cars, big rigs, dune buggies, trucks, and these strange RV-looking things.
• Quality of Cars: The actual rally cars drive very well, but the rest range from okay (Big Rigs and Buggies) to fist-shakingly terrible (trucks and “RVs”). Frustratingly, most races give you only 2 cars to choose from.
• Car Modification (Visual): Barely existent. You can pay to get new liveries. That’s it.
• Car Modification (Performance): No mod parts. You can tweak various performance aspects. It appears to be as deep as Forza 2′s tweak system.
• D’s of Doom: None.
• Unique Race Types: All of the race types in DiRT are unique because they are based on the rally scene. Some are minor: Rallycross is just like any other circuit race you have done in other games, but you have to deal with the occasional surface change. The CORR and Raid race types are just off-road circuits, too. Crossover is interesting; you compete against an opponent on a looping, dual circuit, never meeting. It’s kind of difficult to describe. There is also the Hill Climb variant to the typical Rally point-to-point, where you have elevation changes to deal with (You literally race up Pikes Peak).
• Currency: Cash for placing in races (how much depends on the difficulty level). Race points for completing races. Cash gets you new cars and liveries. Race points progress the career.
• Achievements: 940 are available offline. All of them are attainable by completing the career and championship modes, though you will have to grind career races for the 1000 mile achievement (only 350 miles to go for me!).

It is a very tight racing game and it has to be to met the rigors of rally racing. There are a couple of minor AI quirks when opponents are racing on the same track as you (id est, rallycross, raid, and CORR races); the main problem is their almost stupid level of aggression. Also, the career, while interestingly arraigned, is a little short; I finished it in about 6 hours of racing, not counting the grinding I still have to do to hit 1000 career miles. The big rally races only have 3 legs to them, too.

The presentation is sharp, with tons of info being displayed during a race. The mini-map is smack-dab in the middle of the top edge, which is the perfect location, considering how you need to watch the map and the road simultaneously. The career mode system is arraigned in a cool pyramid, which you climb up. The co-driver’s direction drops out at spots, but is usually extremely helpful. I broke out into rally calls while driving around town; you may start doing it too.

The grinding to 1000 miles and the chamionship mode stretch out the playtime, but grinding is not extactly the most entertaining of pasttimes and (I imagine) championship mode is not going to be all that different from the career.

Morally, it is slightly more offensive than Forza. The co-driver is a bit of a champagne-obsessed lush and I think I heard him say something about getting a trophy up his rectum after winning a race (but I might have misheard that). It still earns the same bonus as Forza for showing the consequences for driving like a fool.

Total time:

Gameplay: 4.5/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 5/5

Replay: 4/5

Morality: 5/5

Total: 4.5/5

Hey, another “A” game. Huzzah!

Read a Game?: Need for Speed Carbon

Gamerscore after 1 playthrough: 170/1000

If that number does not create a sense of dread about what’s coming, you do not understand achievements.

So, Need for Speed: Carbon is the sequel to (the also reviewed) Need for Speed: Most Wanted. It combines attributes of Most Wanted and the previous Underground, with some new concepts (wingmen, territory) thrown in for good measure. While there are some good ideas, they are all poorly implemented. And by poorly implemented, I mean I want to punch the lead designer in the face.

Comparison time:

The Good:

• Most of the city is unlocked in free roam from the start.
• No drag races.
• 6 competitors in a race, as opposed to 3.
• The likelihood of the cops showing up during a race are dependent on territory heat levels and not just an on/off affair, which feels more realistic.
• Better starting cars (I got an RX-8 to start with, which you could not get until you beat the 4th boss in Most Wanted)
• The EA Trax this time around is less ear-bleedingly bad. I only had to turn a third of the tracks off instead of turning off music altogether.

The Bad:

• Pursuits that start during a race (with a few, minor exceptions) no longer count towards in-game rewards.
• Pursuits no longer have any career functions, relegating them to annoying side quests.
• No more helicopters, which would have been really cool in the night-time setting of Carbon
• The city seems smaller, more generic than in Most Wanted. Might be due to less highway parts and less set-piece areas…
• The career mode is short. That is, I finished it in 3 days, completely unfamiliar to the city; it took me 2 weeks to finish Most Wanted, even after playing through the first 2/3′s of it repeatedly on the original X-Box.
• Money and extra cars are harder to get Carbon. There are considerably less career races than in Most Wanted. The value of races are determined by how many territories you have; since there are only 3 races per territory, there will be few high value races. Repeating a race (which you will have to do if you want to keep your territory) will result in a whopping $500. There are only 3 bosses that you can win a car off of and you only have a 50% chance to do so (as opposed to Most Wanted 15 bosses, with a 67% chance). The auto-save feature is the only way to save your progress, so you cannot pull the “I save before a boss race and reset if I do not win the car” stunt. Even if you win a boss car, you cannot sell parts to get the trade-in value anymore. Oh, and one of Carbon’s achievements is have 1 million dollars on hand. The end result: I was able to cycle though 5 souped up cars in Most Wanted, but had to make due with the first boss car (at the level of mods the boss had on it) for most of Carbon.
• Your opponents seem to drive with all of the mods you have unlocked equipped. Your wingman will get to win a lot of races for you if you go for the million dollar achievement.
• Did I mention that there are only 4 bosses? And, even though the end cut-scene implies it, you cannot win the last boss’ car?
• The camera in the boss race “Canyon Duels” WILL kill you, repeatedly. It nauseatingly swings around curves and will fling you into walls/off the cliff if you are not extremely careful. Oh, and they take away the arcade functions (nitro boost, speedbreaker) and demand sim-like precision while still using the arcade physics engine.
• They brought back drift from Underground.
• The HUD provides a lot less information this time around. Examples: Time Trial races no longer tell you “% complete”, pursuits no longer tell you how many cop cars you have traded paint with.
• They took out the custom speedometer and leave you only with a digital readout one.
• You pretty much HAVE to have a Gold Level X-Box Live Membership to get much out of the game other than Career Mode. Challenge Mode has been curtailed in half and custom quick races only happen on-line.

The Meh:

• More cut scenes than in Most Wanted, but the story is less appealing and coherent. Most of the cut scenes are inconsequential. All of them feature slightly creepy looking CG people. But, at least you are not staring at text to move the story along as much as you did in Most Wanted.

Apples and Oranges data for this arcade racer:

• Quantity of Cars: I have no idea, but at least 36. Not all of the cars naturally unlock in career and some may be locked for the entirety of the career, depending on which starting car you pick.
• Quality of Cars: The cars with naturally high handling are very drivable. Low handling leads to greased brick territory.
• Car Modification (Visual): Adequate. You have a nice variety of pre-made mods that will slowly unlock; you can also auto-sculpt certain pieces to make them look like you want them to. The heat system creates the situation where it is hard to stay too attached to a given car’s look. The lack of funds make it hard to invest any real money in the car’s look.
• Car Modification (Performance): Barely There. 3 levels (usually only 2) of general category mod collections: engine, tires, brakes, suspension, turbo, nitro, transmission. You can slightly tweak them while you buy them, but that is less in-depth than I vaguely remember Most Wanted was (I looked at it on the original X-Box). The car will feel different when you add them on, but don’t expect in-depth part boosting.
• D’s of Doom: Drift racing. But they do pay the same as the other races and all entirely skippable if you are not going for the 100% completion achievement. It is a shame that this is the only Apples ‘n’ Oranges category Carbon beats Most Wanted in.
• Unique Race Types: Speedbreaker is back. The “Lap Knockout” circuit variant is not. The Canyon races are new. These are point-to-point races on tight, technical courses. I already ranted about the Canyon Duels, but there is also “Canyon Drift” (drift on a canyon course), 4-racer Canyon Races, and a Canyon Time Trail (which exists only in the Challenge Mode).
• Currency: The same 4 different forms of currency from Most Wanted are still in there. But only race wins matter to progress.
• Achievements: 600 points require on-line. Of the 400 points left, 10 points go to a glitched achievement (Win 50 free-roam challenges in Career Mode). So, people in my situation can only get 390 points. Thanks EA! My 170 does not sound so bad after all. It will take 3 playthroughs to get all of these achievements, which range from car collection, meet goals similar to end-game pursuit milestones from Most Wanted, complete Challenge Mode, and 2 career completion achievements (one for finishing the game, and one for 100%). Lesser accomplishments are rewarded with in-game “reward cards”. Get 4 specific reward cards, and unlock an item (spoiler, rims, vinyl, car). The cars usually require earning at least one achievement to unlock.

I’ll be brief with other notes. The graphics are stylized after Underground, with night scenes and neon. Speedbreaker still feels wonky. You are still stuck with using pre-selected cars for Challenge Mode, which is enough to make Johnny a sad boy. Civilian cars are more self-preserving this time, trying to swerve out of the way if they see you coming. Same morality and car material issues.

Total time!

Gameplay: 4/5

Presentation: 3/5

Interface: 2/5

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 4/5

Average: 3.2/5

In other words, I hated this game as much as I did Yahoo’s Daily Crossword with Hints. It’s going to be traded in today; I have no desire to slog though it for achievements. Assuming “Dirt” (which I will start today) is at least “Grid” (which was the game in the first round I disliked the most) good, it is the definite loser of this first round of Apples ‘n’ Oranges.

We will see.

Read a Game?: Need For Speed Most Wanted

Gamerscore after one playthrough: 1000/1000

This is also probably going to be very long, as I need to cover the same breath of information as I did for the Forza review. Need for Speed: Most Wanted is the physical successor to Need for Speed: Underground 2 (which I played a long while ago on the original X-Box), but it is the spiritual successor to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (which I have never played). It is also widely considered the apex of the series.

Time for the comparison to Underground 2:

The Good:

• No more SUV’s
• Full Motion Video cut-scenes instead of graphic novel thing
• No more “look-how-stereotypically-ghettotastic-my-car-is” rating and events
• No limit to the number of cars in your garage
• No more spinners
• Able to jump directly to events
• No more drift events
• The police chases are a much more satisfying open-world activity than challenging random street racers

The Bad:

• The police chases make traveling to the car lot and body shops much more annoying
• No trade-in for performance mods (assuming I am remembering Underground 2 correctly)

The Meh:

• Different EA Trax track list, but both were equally horrible enough (outside of the instrumental stuff) that I turned off the music.

Apples and Oranges data for this arcade racer:

• Quantity of Cars: 32, more or less
• Quality of Cars: The cars with naturally high handling are very drivable. Low handling leads to greased brick territory. There are only 4 true clunkers, in my opinion (the first 4 you have access to).
• Car Modification (Visual): Adequate. You have a nice variety of pre-made mods that will slowly unlock. The heat system (more on that later) creates the situation where it is hard to stay too attached to a given car’s look (especially until you have 3 or 4 good cars in your garage).
• Car Modification (Performance): Barely There. 3 levels of general category mod collections: engine, tires, brakes, suspension, turbo, nitro, transmission. The car will feel different when you add them on, but don’t expect in-depth part boosting.
• D’s of Doom: Drag races. You only have to do 4 or 5 in the whole game though. Adding insult to injury, normal drag races pay considerably less than any other race type. Drag maxes out at $4,500, while the other race types max out at $25,000.
• Unique Race Types: There is a unique race type outside the traditional circuit (with lap knockout variant) and point-to-point races (both time trial [called Tollbooth] and race varieties). It is called Speedbreaker and, man, do I enjoy it. The goal is not necessarily to have the best time, but to have the highest total speed, as determined by your speed at set points on the track. Once somebody passes the finish line, the total speed of the remaining competitors gets knocked down gradually until they finish. It is a unique spin on the race concept. Also of note are the cop chases, which are open world and, at the right heat levels, are also quite enjoyable.
• Currency: There are 4 different forms of currency in this game. Cash is earned by winning races, boss battle bonuses, and selling boss cars (be sure to strip the body mods first. You only get half the value of the base car back when selling a car; you can trade in body mods for stock parts for some extra cash). Bounty is earned by pursuit time (with heat multipliers) and immobilizing cop cars. Pursuit cost is earned by breaking things (cop cars, other cars, signs, tollbooths, et cetera). And, finally, heat is earned by breaking the law and resisting arrest on a per car basis; heat can be reduced by changing the looks of the car and by using a different car. A certain amount of cash is not necessary to progress, but a certain amount of bounty is.
• Achievements: All 1000 points are up for grabs offline. You complete the career mode, you get them all. Prepare for a long, strange slog, achievement hogs. The first 12 achievements combined are worth the last one (at 350). It makes for a strange combination. 35% points,but 80% of the achievements.

Other notes:

• The graphics are okay. The cut scenes are heavy on the light bloom (and sadly, very few in number; there is only one of them between the opening section and the end of the game). They do have okay boss intro vids.
• The speedbreaker game function (think bullet time) feels wonky. It might be because I rarely used it, but it made every car feel like a greased brick jerkily sliding around.
• There is very little reason to play this game beyond the first playthough (other than getting the top spot on every leaderboard for various categories of cop chase data). The game does have a challenge series, but no achievements and no choice in the car you drive makes Johnny a sad boy. Quick races round it out. I do not even remember online as an option.
• All of the cars (except the cop cars) are made of this indestructible metal. You can dent a civilian car, but not take it out of commission. You can crash your car repeatedly and only see cosmetic damage (broken windows, paint scrapes). It seems silly that the cop cars can be smashed to being inoperative, but nothing else can be.
• Looking at the morality, you are pretty much encouraged to break various traffic laws and resist arrest. I do not remember cursing in the actual gameplay (the music might have had some in it, but I turned that off). Cars are left as (non-exploding) husks, so violence and gore are minimal. Sex and whatnot are completely avoided.

Total time!

Gameplay: 5/5

Presentation: 4/5

Interface: 4/5

Replay: 3/5

Morality: 4/5

Average: 4/5

Well, I started on the sequel (Need for Speed: Carbon) today, so we will see if Most Wanted lives up to the consensus.