It may have taken two weeks, but I now have a whole new desk set up, taking my total desk ownership to two and hopefully increasing productivity by 5%, making it all worthwhile. That isn’t very interesting though, unless you happen to be a stalker and want to know as many details about my life as possible, of course – I wouldn’t blame you if that were so, but we may need to meet in court at some point in the future. So instead of tedious desk news I shall write something about video games.
Thankfully due to it being the great August game dearth of twenty-ten I haven’t missed too much during the time I have been unable to write, unless of course you count the Summer of Arcade. Luckily I refuse to support such initiatives so it is like I missed nothing! Not because the selection of games on offer this year were poor, I just happen to hate that those games could have been spread out over a larger amount of time rather than forcing people to download them all at once, and for a price Microsoft appears to have dictated rather than the developer. But never mind.
I did miss a rather large European event which goes by the name of Gamescom though, at which stuff was announced. Most of it was Sony or publisher based announcements as Nintendo have no idea what Europe is, and Microsoft realised Europe isn’t America. That is fine for me due to Gran Turismo 5 being my most anticipated game of the year, and it being a Sony published game means they actually released some information on it. You can find all of that information elsewhere on the Internet. I’m not usually one for ‘holy crap game X is coming soon now I must play something similar to it’ syndrome, but the latest GT5 news had that effect on me. So with that, and my new desk which enables me to have a steering wheel clamped to it almost permanently I went back and played a vast array of old racing games.
By vast array I actually mean I played several for about 10 minutes each, then skipping straight ahead to Richard Burns Rally, which I then spent several hours applying mods to and attempting to determine which Ford Focus is the correct Ford Focus for me.
As I was operating from a fresh hard drive I didn’t have a save equipped for my Richard Burns Rally needs. Instead of traipsing back in time and collecting one, I decided to start everything again from the beginning. This meant I had a chance to play through the rather excellent tutorials again, in which Richard Burns tells you what to do, you listen to Richard Burns and do as told, then leave with a nice collection of gold medals – and a Subaru WRC99, which you can then replace with the community built Ford Focus of your choice. If you happen to care, I decided upon Colin McRae’s 2001 Ford Focus, but deployed my talents as a texture artist to remove his name from the car, making it look like I am the driver.
Forcing myself away from Richard Burns Rally I ended up having a multitude of thoughts on racing games and on where I should head next. It all culminated in me somehow concluding that purchasing a copy of Sega Rally (Revo) from Microsoft’s Games on Demand service was a good idea. I wish I could explain my decision but I can’t, so instead I shall talk shortly about the game.
One of my great gaming gifts is the ability to pick up pretty much any racing game and play it competently no matter how terrible the handling is. This ability is perfect for Sega Rally. Perhaps it was just the fault of the horrendous chase camera – something almost unforgivable in arcade racers – but the cars look like they’re driving across sheet ice no matter what the surface under their wheels happens to be. Switching to the bonnet view appears to solve that, but then I don’t get to look at my car as I drive around, which is part of the appeal of arcade racing games to me.
Strangely the controller also appears to vibrate permanently if you stick to the racing line, this seems like an odd decision. Perhaps it was assumed I would struggle to stay in the groove and therefore need to be told just when I was in it. The problem is after around 10 minutes of gaming (oh the irony) it began to feel like I may as well be playing the game with a lady’s friend, as clearly the damn thing wasn’t going to stop shaking with delight if I continued to play it correctly.
Despite my issues with the handling I still made it to the final difficulty level without too much effort, mainly because I figured out the fastest way around most tracks was to ignore the brake trigger entirely and just bounce off the invisible walls at an angle that didn’t slow me down too much. I couldn’t bear to race the final four circuits consecutively without the option to save between them though, and the track variety was becoming quite tiresome, so it was at that point I called it a day.
Sega Rally does offer advice for any safari goer though. Assuming these animals behave as they do in video games, next time you are in Africa you should ask for directions to the local rally track and drive around. Expect to see vast amounts of zebra, giraffes, and elephants just hanging out by the sides of the track.
And for the car washer – simply drive back and forth through a puddle in order to wash all of the mud off your car. I appreciate it may sound quite sad that I discovered driving through a puddle repeatedly will clear all of the mud off a car, so allow me to explain. As you drive around the track your vehicle carves grooves in the track surface, I decided to would be cool to make some grooves out of the puddles and this was when I realised my car was being cleaned as I attempted to perform the task I set out to achieve. Actually, that explanation probably doesn’t help my case at all, as that is an equally stupid task to be performing.
However, by far my favourite feature of Sega Rally is the co-driver, who, unless I am misunderstanding the words he is attempting to speak, appears to be incredibly unsure in his reading of the track. “Easy right… maybe” he says, and rather more alarmingly “caution… maybe.” Wait, what? How can it be a maybe caution? And I’d also quite like to know whether this corner is going to be easy. Clearly this man is no expert, but as I am the only one sitting in my car he may also be a ghost, if that does happen to be the case then it is probably best to forgive his incompetency.
So there you have it, some opinions on a three year old game, just in case you hadn’t decided whether to buy it during that time. Also Richard Burns Rally is brilliant, any rally simulation fan should go out and purchase a copy right now.