Category: Game On

I don’t know how I forgot to mention this, but I played TOCA Race Driver a couple of weeks back when I was at this sports car show thing. Well, it was pants – framed out like the renderer was gulping down virtual Night Nurse and the control was just terrible.

The cars had all the weight of an airfix equivalent and it was just a very crap game to play, to be honest. I’m a bit pissed off about it as I was really looking forward to it.

I’ve started playing Gran Tourismo 3 again, courtesy of Cedrick, and even though I think the AI is absolutely pathetic, the car handling is so sweet in this game that I can almost forgive it.

Almost.

Fuck Acclaim!

Screw them into the ground and all the way to hell.

Ahhh. That feels a little better. Having just bought Headhunter and re-discovering the foul taste left in my mouth by their piss poor port of Crazy Taxi for the PS2, I cannot believe they get away with this sort of shit time and again. Is anyone at Sega even remotely interested in saving this once proud brand?

Ten years ago, seeing the Sega logo on an arcade machine meant it was probably going to be well worth your coinage for a play. Now, seeing Sega on a PS2 title just means it will be another absolutely piss port by the talentless wankers over at Acclaim.

I make no apology for coming across strongly here – I have been stung twice now – three times if you count the rush job that was Burnout. So I’m wondering what Acclaim are all about.

Are they single handedly trying to destroy the name of Sega? Are they just intent on producing shoddy product for a quick buck?

Well, I hope I never find out. To follow the promise I made never, ever to buy another EA F1 game, I will never, ever buy another game written or ported by the talentless gits at Acclaim who have already had far, far too much of my money.

Twisted Metal Black…. erm… where do I start… well, nowhere, actually. I owned it for less than 24 hours at the weekend there. Took it straight back to EB the next day and swapped it for two other games.

I’ve never done that before… heck, I even gave the terrible State of Emergency the benefit of the doubt (and I shouldn’t have). But it has to happen every once in a while, I suppose. You end up with a product so awful that the only thing to do is to return it or cut your losses and trade it in.

Not so with Ace Combat 4, for instance; I completed it the week before Easter and I’m pretty sure I’ll play it again on a rainy day. The rewards for completing the game were fantastic – you got to start over with all your planes and credits. It opened further sub missions, all the incidental music, and all the missions that made up the storyline, except you can play them individually at any difficulty level.

I haven’t had a game for ages that really rewarded you to this extent for completing it. Well done Namco!

* I was on a train at easter time. Sorry – best I could do for the headline :o)