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.
Article comments
1 - Olaf_22
Great comments, just completed in on Platinum and im the last bastard in the world ever to drive the TVR cerbera cos i dont have xbox live and if i did, id rather earn the cars instead of cheating. (It has only taken me around 150 hours to complete it! woo)
2 - Eric Olsen
CF, very nice review and cute kid pics too - whatever happened to you, dude?
3 - Wayne Sheih
CIPPlanner Corporation is the leader in web-based enterprise class software for government agencies to manage their entire capital improvement and maintenance programs from planning to implementation.