http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:54:42 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/05/145442.php ColdForgedOurs is -- if anything -- a litigious society. Witness the Haitians suing Rockstar over content in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and the lawsuits filed against Nintendo, Sony, id software, Atari, Jesus, and a small newt by families of victims of the Columbine massacre. I'm personally still looking for my strike-it-rich lawsuit, as I'd really like to get a new car and with the current state of torts I figure it's merely one well-placed grape away. But all of these slavering reptilian stuffed suits are really missing out on what I think of as a clear and present danger today: Project Gotham Racing 2. Addictive as crack dipped in velvety dark chocolate, it also horrifyingly alters the minds of players. I now aim to acquire kudos in my aging 1998 Dodge Intrepid ES, AKA the Imperial Smoothie Cruiser. This is not a conscious thing, but I literally hear the kudos wrack up in my head. "Nice Line, +13 kudos" as I hit the apex of a turn on the on-ramp. "Nice Overtake, +25 kudos" as I blithely blow past a laboring Sonata. I find myself edging closer to cars, trying to hit that perfect drafting distance and calculating that distance based on speed, "fixing to hit 65, so I need to start lengthening that tail some," as the kudos tally increasingly. "Oh, 2X combo, another nice line!" Insidious. I have so far restrained myself from getting two-wheel, "cool air", nice slide, and 360 kudos. This, I'm sure we can all agree, is good. You may think I joke but I do not.This should tell you how completely wonderful I think this game is. Those of you owning an Xbox and subscribing to Xbox Live that do not currently own this title are, frankly, blithering dolts. I say this because I care. You will not find a game out there today that has more to offer the Xbox Live gamer than PGR2. What's possibly most alarming about the game is that I've found myself driving on previously unremarkable stretches of road and suddenly think "kriminy, this looks exactly like a scene from PGR2." Whether it's the lighting on the car in front of me as we negotiate a curve, or the glare of the sun off the roof of a car, or the shadow cast by an overpass, there are times when it's actually disturbing how close PGR2 comes to imitating reality with the graphics. They haven't overdone the reflections of the cars, for example. You've seen the mirror-like appearance of the cars in some recent games (e.g. NFS:U) -- not so much resembling cars as they resemble miniature ice sculptures. Don't get me wrong, there are reflections. Stunning reflections of subtle beauty, but mildly subdued so as to provide more depth and realism to the depiction. It supports widescreen TVs. Enough said.And the tracks. Look, forget everything else about the game, every other track that exists. It has the Nurburgring. Yeah, the whole sordid thing, all 20.8 kilometers of some of the twistiest, gnarliest German racing asphalt ever, lovingly recreated right down to the graffiti on the pavement. Sure it has other locales like Sydney, Washington, Chicago, Edinburgh, Moscow, and Florence, but until you've slung serious metal around the twisties at the 'Ring, you haven't lived. There's a couple of really good videos out there on the net of real drivers taking real cars around the entire ring, and damned if they didn't capture the feel of the 'Ring perfectly.The racing mechanics are firmly entrenched in that genre I like to call "fun." This is not the Gran Turismo beater for realism, but neither is it utterly arcade, rather striking a precarious balance between the two. You will use that left trigger finger to break if you hope to complete events. You will learn to feather that right trigger on the gas finger if you ever hope to complete some of the later events with 700 bhp beasts that seem intent on nothing more than laying down square kilometers of rubber on the tarmac. However, the driving physics are still forgiving enough that you won't feel like you're fighting the cars to get them to do what you want. Wonderfully, each of the cars has a distinct and noticeably different feel from the others, from the ass-happy Corvette Stingray to the seemingly unflappable Ferrari Maranello, from the low-end grunt of the Mustang 2+2 Fastback to the indomitable top-end of the Ferrari Enzo. Unlike similar titles in the genre, you will most likely drive a fair number of these cars as well after a while. Yes, some of them are throw-aways if you have no overwhelming urge to drive one for personal reasons, but to a large extent the different cars have unique enough characteristics that there isn't always a dominant car in a class for every single event. Have a lot of twisties, 90-degree corners and relatively short straights? Get something with a bit more low- to mid-range torque to pass. Have to complete that cone challenge? Select something with impeccable handling and a bit of ass-hanging ability thrown in to wrack up the kudos.Kudos. Kudos make this series' world go 'round. Kudos are what determine your "kudos rank" which is subsequently used to determine how many kudos tokens you receive to unlock more goodies. Kudos are earned by driving with "style." Though this can be a bit misleading -- some of the top kudos scores on Xbox Live are generated by doing endless doughnuts and tearing up a straight with continuous hand-brake ass-flings, which to me is anything but stylish -- for the most part it is effective. Whereas the first game was punishing in its application of the rules governing kudos, this time around the developers have eased up on the restrictions and added some new methods to earn kudos that -- to me, again -- truly define "stylish". For PGR, merely touching a barrier would kill off any kudos earned during the string. In PGR2 you can graze a wall without diddling your kudos at all. Hit it too hard and you'll invoke some kind of penalty: if you have a combo string going, you'll lose the combo string but you'll still earn the base kudos, or if you have no combo string active, you'll simply lose the kudos. As I mentioned, there are new kudos types that really add to the "stylish driving" aspect: "good line" kudos which rewards lining up turns and hitting the turn-in point and apex of curves at the optimum speed and "drafting" kudos, which rewards you rather handsomely for staying in an opponent's slipstream as long as possible. Both of these kudos types epitomize stylish driving more than some of the standard kudos types like 360s and power slides and, to a lesser extent, 2-wheel and nice air kudos.The sound is damned fine. Some of the cars still sound like sewing machines, but for the most part cars sound rather convincing. I rarely get to play with the sound up with an 8-month-old in the house, but when I do, the big American iron does sound ballsy, and the redheads usually sing well to boot. There's little more I like hearing than the turbo whine of the Porsche GT1 rocketing around the 'Ring at around 220 MPH. Not only does the game sport a stunning variety of sings and actual radio stations from the locales in the game, but you can (of course) make up your own track list and listen to that. Oh the Live integration. They did this one right, folks. Before you ever even enter a multiplayer game over Live you'll have experienced more entirely sexy Live integration than you could dream of. Go on, hop in to the main single player component the Kudos World Series. Starting with the compact car class, you'll participate in a number of events within succeeding classes, unlocking more events and car classes as you go, earning kudos and unlocking cars to boot. Before you enter an event you will see a small scoreboard on the right of your screen the shows the top 7 or so (I forget) scores for that event from everyone in the world who has Xbox Live. You can elect to see the top 10 and what cars they used, then scroll through them and see more. Should you desire, you can download the ghost of anyone in the top 10 to see precisely how they approached the event. This is astounding and an ideal use for a service like Xbox Live. Unlike almost every other game in existence that has a single place to access all of the Xbox Live features like friends lists and options, an Xbox Live menu is usually available at the touch of a button from just about everywhere you'll find yourself in the game. There are a whole class of separate events that occur monthly that test your ability to drive a particular vehicle on a particular track so you can test your driving style against everyone else on a level playing field. Of course the multiplayer overly Xbox Live is well done, of course it is. I have zero complaints, no left out features. Search out games, enter the lobby, wait until the current race is done then join the race and go. Hosts have control over every option in the game, from weather to time of day and car restrictions. You can restrict by class or even down to a particular type. Probably the most fun games are the ones where everyone agrees on a certain level of performance rather than a class... so, you are allowed to choose any car with a performance level of 12 (meaning that the segments of "top speed" and "acceleration" can add up to no more than 12 for your car) which creates some good variability in an otherwise staid restriction environment. Restricting by class works, but there is generally a vehicle that eclipses the rest in the class (e.g. the Porsche Cayenne in the SUV class) so doing a "gentlemen's restriction" by performance usually works better and creates closer races. Also nice is the fact that you can unlock additional cars in the game without ever having to bother with the single player game if you don't desire... kudos earned online are tallied with a separate "Xbox Live Kudos Rank" which earns you additional kudos tokens. Note that it's farther between kudos ranks for the Xbox Live ranks, so if unlocking cars is your goal, the best way is through the single player game.There are niggles. The AI is, shall we say, "aggressive" in the higher levels of difficulty. Going for platinum on events -- the highest level of difficulty in the game -- brings out the asshole in the AI drivers. It's not so much that they're jerks, they're just trying to get on the ideal line. That you happen to be on that ideal line at the time is of minor consequence to them, so you'll often find yourself loudly cursing at the television, eyes wild, hands clenched around a shattered controller as you profanely berate the AI driver of that Morgan that just sent you into a spin on the last corner of a race. Followed by relatively meek apologies to your now-crying 8-month-old who was terrified at the spectacle of a 210 pound bald guy jumping and shouting loudly for seemingly no reason. Not that this ever really happens. Show me a game and I'll show you an exploit. The problem with basing scores on kudos is that someone will figure out a way to get kudos that is anything but stylish. In the early days, most top scores in the game were derived from some truly inspired driving. As time went on, the scores got higher because people completed higher levels of difficulty (e.g. platinum) and got higher completion bonuses for doing that (e.g. 5000 kudos completion bonus for completing platinum instead of 3000 for gold) so the top scores were of people completing the game at platinum level and doing it with panache. Now people have figured at that they can compete at the steel level (the lowest level) where you face much slower opposition and basically spend the entire race doing doughnuts at key locations in the circuit. Yay. That's style, with a capital "bullshit." So, instead of getting helpful tips on how to complete that difficult race on platinum, you now get ghosts of mouth breathing loggerheads that couldn't cut a corner if God miracled them around it. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot that I see happening with this situation. Perhaps the ranking could be modified to take into account two things: the medal awarded and the kudos earned. Dolts that earn 80,000 kudos on a steel medal would be somewhere in the bottom 95% of the standing, whereas that guy that beat platinum while pulling a clean race bonus would be in the top 10. That's what I'd like to see.All in all, though, this is the best money I've spent on my Xbox in a while, along with my wireless bridge to get in Live. Hope to see you on the 'Ring soon. Gaming11468@blogcritics.org Mon, 5 Jan 2004 14:54:42 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/22/123548.php ColdForgedI know you're proactive. You've been working on your Christmas present list for months, snagging little things on sale here and there to fill in the little gaps. Now you can sit, relax, and await the festivities with a knowing glow, comfortable with the knowledge that you've covered all your bases and have something for everyone. Sure. My Christmas season shopping technique closely resembles a Turkish fire drill -- madly rushing hither and yon, panicking when I realize that I've utterly forgotten one aunt, a mother-in-law, and three acquaintances, finally reaching apoplexy when I realize that I as yet have not one damned thing for my wife -- and I again thank all that's holy that online shopping is available and convenient and ships right to their door. With giftwrap, at which any self-respecting male is, quite frankly, terrible.So, for your last minute items for that DVD lover out there, here's some can't miss gems and true items of perfection. And the beautiful thing is you can order today and still get it there in time for Christmas. Note that these aren't full reviews (how could you miss it?), but little capsule descriptions to inform, delight, and entertain. Perhaps just inform. Ahem. Make with the clicking! For the action movie buff: Let's hope they don't have this one yet... The Usual Suspects. If there's ever been a quintessential crime-gone-wrong action-drama, this is it. Kevin Spacey is flawless as small-time con man Verbal Kint, who tells his story of surviving Keyser Soze. Forget The Sixth Sense, this is the movie that defines "twist". Memento should be required watching for anyone that owns a DVD player. Guy Pearce portrays Leonard Shelby, a man unable to make new memories, unable to remember what happened just 15 minutes ago. A man tracking down the person who raped and murdered his wife. This may sounds remotely compelling, but add the following storytelling element to it and you've got an instant classic: it's told from the end to the beginning in 10 minute segments. You may know what happened, but you won't know why until later. Carrie Anne Moss puts in a solid performance (oh, the two scenes at the house) as does Joe Pantoliano. Carefully crafted and subtly acted, this one is deserving of a place in anyone's movie drawer.For the kids in the group: Pixar makes good again with Finding Nemo. Somehow they have the unerring capacity to perfectly anthropomorphize anything, this time breathing life, vibrancy and emotion into the undersea world. Boiled down to its essence, this is the story of a father's quest for his "kidnapped" son. He travels far -- physically and otherwise -- and experiences much in his quest. You'll be hard-pressed to find a more solidly effective performance from Ellen DeGeneres than her characterization of the forgetful fish Dory. The animation and backdrops are stunning. Click!The Catch-All: The Adventures of Indiana Jones box-set. I shouldn't have to explain this one. At last the entire series is available on DVD and includes a feature-length documentary on the making of all three movies. Young, old, who cares, there's something for everyone in this set. You can't beat this set for pure action and enjoyment. (Updated note: this one is on backorder, so if it absolutely must be there by Christmas, make another selection.)Hopefully this will help those of you needing some last-minute help with the Christmas selections. And if all else fails, gift certificates are a great way to say "I appreciate you and am thinking about you but have no clue what your taste in films might be so I'm punting." Video11166@blogcritics.org Mon, 22 Dec 2003 12:35:48 EST