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.

Read a Game?: Forza 2

Gamerscore after 1.7 playthroughs: 820/1000

I will eventually deliver on what I promise.

This is probably going to be ridiculously long, as I have to do the traditional review AND the sequel comparison bits AND the Apples ‘n’ Oranges stuff, so I apologize in advance.

Starting with the comparison to the original Forza Motorsport:

The Good:

• More cars, more tracks, more races to complete
• They got rid of the Tokyo track
• The AI seems a little smarter this time around. It might be because I am more competent this this around (or playing at a higher difficulty) and they got rid of the most grievous failure (that hairpin in Tokyo led to one of the AI opponents crashing into you 90% of the time), but I do not recall nearly as many AI fault crashes this time around
• They included a “braking only” option for the suggested line mode, where the line disappears when you are not needing to slow down (which is really all you need to learn the track)
• Cars can level now, which wins you more cash for using the cars and mod discounts

The Bad:

• They got rid of the point-to-point races
• They got rid of the Blue Mountain track, which was among my favorites from the original
• They seem to have been picking sides at little more this time around in the rivalry races. I remember that both car types had a competitive stock version in Forza Motorsports most of the time, but in Forza 2, you have to bust out the performance mods more often if you are anti-Mitchubitchi (like I am).
• You have to shell out money to change regions twice if you are offline AND want the collection achievements, which is a pain, let me tell you. I restarted career mode just to get the other collection achievements (and have not gotten to the point where I can earn them at approx 70% completion).

The Meh:

• The Drivatar auto-race function was replaced with an easier hire an AI opponent system. I rarely used the Drivatar and never hired an AI to race in Forza 2, so it did not have much of an effect on me.
• No music during the race. On one hand, all you get is engine and street noise. On the other hand, these are really well done, especially if you install the game to the hard drive (the disc spinning covers up the quieter aspects, like going over the rubbery bit between two slabs of concrete).

Apples and Oranges data for this sim racer:

• Quantity of Cars:303 (more with DLC). The clear winner (assuming Dirt does not have more). The other racers in this competition do not even get into 3 digits.
• Quality of Cars:a pathetic percentage of those 303. Cars are divided into 6.5 classes (D,C,B,A,S, 2 U-999 cars, and R). D cars are starting clunkers, which feel especially slow (this is a sim game). B, C, and R cars tend to be fun, as are the higher quality S cars, but the A cars tend to feel like greased bricks, as are all the classic cars. The other issue is that the vast majority of the cars are not competitive in the races without some mods and most of the cars that are competitive in a race are not competitive in many. So, which you have 303 cars, you will only race in maybe 10% of them.
• Car Modification (Visual): crazy in-depth. If I am remembering properly, you have 100 shapes/decal spots for each of 6 sections of the car, a huge paint palette, plus a hefty supply of aftermarket visual parts (bumpers, spoilers, rims, window tint, side runners, hoods). Some of those aftermarket parts will even provide some slight performance boosts. Again, the clear winner
• Car Modification (Performance):also crazy in-depth. Not only are their multiple tiers, brands also affect how good the performance mod is. Makes for an interesting balancing act: do you go for the better mod or the one you have a nice discount for? A wide variety of performance mods, separated into engine, handling (I think that is what is it called, but I may be wrong), and aerodynamics. Most of the tuning options depend on you having adjustable mods equipped to the car. Having mods on the car also increases the cash you bring in for a race; if you race the car enough, you can eventually pay off the cost of installation. Again, a clear winner.
• D’s of Doom: none
• Unique Race Types: Just circuit races, but the endurance races (where you will need to do a pit stop if you have fuel/tire wear set to on) are of note.
• Currency:The currency here are called credits. You earn them by racing (you get some even if you come in last place), having a leveled car, having a “rare” car (partially determined by region and mods on the car raise rarity), and racing on higher than average difficulty levels (heavily adjustable, my second run through I averaged an extra 5% due to my settings). You can lose money by damaging your car (of racing on easier than average settings), but they subtract that from your winnings first; you would have to be especially awful (and not reset) to finish a race with less money than when you started.
• Achievements:950/1000 points are grabbable offline. The collection achievements range from easy and cheap (1 gamerpoint for getting all the French cars!) to ridiculously hard (30 points for getting every car in the game). I’d say that, depending on which region you start in, expect only 800 to 850 points in one playthrough, unless you are a heavily seasoned veteren and spent the time to get the on-line achievements (and then you have probably already completed the game).

So, that pretty much sums up most of the review notes. A couple of other things:

• The graphics are sharp. Sharp enough to distract you and cause you to crash.
• I preferred the older soundtrack (there is less Junkie XL instrumentals techno and more singing electronica), but both are well done (there is music in the menus).
• Controls work well, but prepare for hand crampings. It really hurts to hold down the Right Trigger for as long as you have too.
• The game does drag heavily around the halfway to three-quarter mark when you have to go through a bunch of A class races and otherwise kill time until you start to unlock the R class races and the McLaren car you need for half a dozen S class races. Without the achievements egging you on, it’s hard to get through it (thus the lateness of the review and my lack of 2 complete playthroughs).
• Sim racers tend to be pretty darn clean. No violence (well, other than trading paint with other drivers), no explosions, no language of any sort, no sex, no evilness. In fact, Forza deserves a bonus point for showing how driving like a maniac is a bad idea.

Total time!

Gameplay: 5/5

Presentation: 5/5

Interface: 4/5

Replay: 4/5

Morality: 6/5

Average: 4.8/5

Hey, my first “A” average game! How about that?

Apples ‘n’ Oranges: The Premise

If you walked by my DVD/video game shelf thingy, you would probably notice that I likes me my racing games. I have a whole section full of them. We are in a bit of a lull, as far as racers are concerned, but there are at least 5 with the potential to be excellent coming rather rapidly down the pipe (Split/Second, Blur, Forza 3, Dirt 2, and [knowing I am probably going to start a flame war with this one] Need For Speed: Shift). So, if I am going to finish getting all the reasonable-to-get achievements for the ones I have, I’m going to have to get a move on.

I am going to use that excuse to do a little comparison here of my current stock (and maybe add a couple older ones to it) to try and figure out the one racing game to rule them all. I realize that this is going to be a little like comparing apples and oranges (thus the title), but there are some commonalities that make a comparison relatively useful.

Racers tend to come in two different flavors: arcade and sim. Arcade racers, in my tenuous analogy, are the oranges. They tend to be thinner (yet more intense) experiences that rely more on twitch than general race skill. Sims, being the denser and more serene of the two, are the apples.

Here is the list of competitors in Round 1. They are all either the first or second entry their developer made this hardware cycle. I have completely played through all but 3 once already (and one of those 3 I played most of the way though on the original X-Box):

• Need For Speed: Most Wanted
• Need For Speed: Carbon
• Dirt
• Grid
• Project Gotham Racer 4
• Burnout Paradise
• Forza 2

Burnout 3 and PGR 3 might be added into the mix. I’ll update this one appropriately if they are.

Let’s look at the points of comparison that are specific to the racer genre (or are missing from the normal video game review rating system).

• 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?

Expect the first review (Forza 2, as it is the racer I have played most recently of the ones I have finished) this week. This will be fun.