Game Curmudgeons

I admit, I really don’t have a broad racing spectrum. It’s either Burnout, or it’s a simulation racer.

Alright, it’s not that simple, but there’s your Riiiiiiidge Racers, Burnouts, Sega Rally Championships, Virtua Racers, and Daytona USAs (I told you, narrow spectrum!) for the arcade side of things. A little bit beyond those is Project Gotham Racing, which holds the line pretty well, except on The Nürburgring where it qualifies for my rule of simulation racing.

That rule? “If I spin the fuck out, completely out of control off the track and into the barrier at least once a race for the first 3 or 4 hours of play, it’s a sim.” I don’t usually like the games in this category for some reason, likely frustration and impatience. Gran Turismo is slow and boring to me; Forza has the worst camera angles ever and also falls under slow and boring. But GRID, though it may be closer to PGR than I’m willing to admit, has opened me up to something more realistic. Yes, I just called flashbacks realistic, deal with it.

They are a great idea, though; extra lives for are new to racing games, but they’re so easy to waste by picking the wrong time to take control. Especially as players learn the game, they’ll choose the wrong time for example and still smash into a wall, or another car they were trying to pass. Or, flashbacks might be used up in an attempt to gain position, and then the player smashes his car into tiny pieces, forcing one to quit or restart a race entirely. So, while the replay doesn’t remove frustration completely, but it’s helpful, especially when you’re learning to control some of these damn cars and don’t mind restarting constantly.

GRID sets the bar high right away with a very fast race in a very fast car to get a beginner’s license, and leaps right over that bar for the most part. Crowded races on wide streets, smaller races on incredibly tight roads, and the occasional free drifting race with just you and a slick track. Most races and race types are enjoyable, and they tend to stay tight, though a few very long races will have a wide spread, like the LeMans 24 hour (or, in this case, minutes).

Most of that tension comes from the classes and disciplines of the cars involved in the races. Nothing will ever be an impossible run if you can enter it, though it might be extremely hard. And an unfortunately large amount of the tension comes from, here we go again, rubber band AI that’s almost as bad as Burnout Revenge’s AI, which was only beaten by Trickstyle on the Dreamcast, where you could stop moving entirely, and watch the AI do the same ahead of you. Only in Burnout Revenge you could avoid the rubber band to an extent by just not using boost. In GRID, there’s no real equivalent. You run the best race of your life, and the AI will still be right behind you. Maybe twice I saw the AI fall significantly back, upwards of four seconds, which was enough to spin out entirely without losing my position because I was SO out of replays by then, meaning that wall was permanently embedded in my drive shaft, and my car was going to pull left, hard, for the rest of the race.

But, that was a rare situation. Most of the time the AI was on my heels, and it was clearly a bit artificial but never felt to be cheating, at least, just more skilled than it should be for a few minutes. It’s still hard to know what one’s goal is sometimes, in terms of placement or points earned in drift competitions, which results in a lot of replays to hit what one assumes is a high enough number, especially for inconsistent drifters as myself. I can’t count the number of times I’d restart a race just to hit the perceived barrier of 100,000 points in a drifting competition, since I’d learned they usually ended with the last AI opponent at 90,000.

Still, it’s hard to match a good race for pick up and play fun, and exploiting replays can be wonderful. Certain things, like spinouts, pileups, or an occasional spectacular blowout will happen again to the AI, and rewinding to use that to your advantage is so fun. During the LeMans 24, in a super tight race in the bottom class, the lead racer blows a tire and is hurled through the air. In the panic resulting, everyone else crashed, myself included. 4 AI racers, and me, into the wall avoiding this catastrophe. Then I realized what to do with this, knowing the blast was coming. I rewound, slowly. I found the pattern in the chaos, watching the replay a few times, and saw my opportunity. Picking the moment of the blowout (I had to watch it a few times just for the sheer joy, I note. GRID took some cues from the Burnout series when it comes to massive damage), I shot forward right under the car, knowing it was going to fly a solid 30 feet into the air and to the right, giving me ample room to cruise under while everyone else crashes; I got an easy lead which would last for 3 game hours as night fell.

Night is where the AI weakness shows more than anything since players can see that the AI isn’t getting the same view. The AI just knows there are turns and cars within certain distances, the AI has every course memorized even if it doesn’t always take a turn right. And at 2 AM during the LeMans 24, it’s obvious when every car is passing you at full speed, excepting for the one that has 3 tires and is upside down still, sliding into spectators that look like they came from a PS1 game; really, why can’t we make spectators in sports games not look horrible finally? But I digress.

As I’m running through the darkness, braking harder and faster than I would in daylight because not doing so leads to smashups, the AI runs at top speed. In that same race I went from a 10 second lead to being 15 behind EVERYONE, within that 10 minute span. First to last in the dark, because I’m not driving with The Force. Other night races suffer the same problem, just not nearly as pronounced due to the shorter, more well-lit natures of the courses. I could possibly drive by sound, listening for other cars screeching and sliding around me, but that’s something best left for someone with no personality and a severe obsession with the game.

Obsessions may be required to really get anywhere. After a long time I made it to a medium rank in one of the three divisions. There’s a lot of race grinding, this is a racing game that feels like it has an MMO core, especially when you get teammates and start raiding courses. And like most any MMO, guidance is minimal for the new players. My first drift event, something I had NO idea how to do, told me two things before I took off. One is that I should drift really close to the flag, and linking drifts together forms combos. Sadly it doesn’t mention that there’s more than that to forming combos, because I drifted, stopped, and drifted again, hardcore, when the timer was running down, to no avail.

Second, it told me “Press X to begin drifting!” That’s it. It tells me to hit the handbrake, and that will be magical. Feathering the gas, careful brake use, realigning and revectoring my movement, nothing mentioned. Just “Press X!” GRID desperately needs some tutorial. And a mention of the fact that using the flashback feature in the middle of a drift combo doesn’t end it and give you the points, nor does it give you a chance to continue the combo with a new drift. It just kills it more often than not, so when you get two perfect flag brushing drifts and slam into a wall due to a tiny bit late or early handbrake, well, you’re screwed. No taking control and stopping the car to bank the points, not doing the slide again to get it right, no points for you at all.

Despite the several unique race types and mostly solid AI, the actual amount of tracks wears thin fast, as does the number of cars, and variety in general suffers. It’s essentially muscle cars and tuned racers, with a few that drift well mentioned. But there’s not a huge disparity between the cars in a class usually, and it may never be necessary to buy more than a starting care for a race, especially with so many races limited to two or three cars that can be used. Cars and terrain start to all look and sound the same within their respective regions, especially the eighth time you run a race to get a new license or some cash for a new car to enter a new race.

GRID could be a gateway racer for a casual fan, but for a totally new player or a veteran it’s going to end up confusing and frustrating, or short and shallow. There’s a group of people who are going to fall in love, finding it to be just forgiving enough to really be fun without breaking immersion through flashbacks, but replaying events so often stops being fun fast; with unknown quantities dominating the race far too often, and far too many repeated races after a few days, I’d had enough GRID. Part of the problem is that while I still feel like I’m learning new tricks in Burnout Revenge and say, Tourist Trophy after all this time, GRID walks the same line as Moto GP does for bikes. It’s fast and fun at first, but you’ve done it all by the time you figure the game out; you’ll probably feel like you want to flash back to when you decided to buy it instead of rent it.

GRID gets 3 out of 5 canes. Lots of initial fun, but too little help and too much repetition.

Uwe Boll isn’t synonymous with good movies. He’s synonymous with “Oh god, why did I watch that? Who financed this shit?” And for four very amusing boxing matches, “OH GOD, LOWTAX’S FACE!” So right there I at least have to like him a little, even if I hate what he does with movies.

Postal, well, it’s a lot like the game. Honestly, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but it is. It’s clear Vince Desi tried to keep some tight control over things, and it mostly worked.

Postal 2 was intended as shock material, comedy with a dark dark sense of humor for those who cannot be offended. It’s as if /b/ organized itself enough to make a video game instead of just fucking with Scientology and yelling “RULE 1 AND 2!” all day. No group is safe from mockery or bullets, but there’s never a situation where players MUST kill. They can always just unzip and pee their way out, not hurting anyone. There’s rarely an area without armed NPCs anyway, but they often won’t shoot first.

Of course, this wouldn’t be much of a movie if plot didn’t force itself to occur, and it usually does at gunpoint. The protagonist is certainly set up as a likable character in a shit situation, moreso than in Postal 2 even.

The movie rapidly jumps into the offensive, and it does reasonably alright at it. There are some laughs to be had, and the plot feels surprisingly cohesive, though it drags at points. It’s nice that Uwe at least makes fun of himself in the movie, and while a lot of the jokes are drawn out too far,  they tend to hit the mark when they’re started. Dave Foley and Zack Ward are both excellent in their roles as is expected, and the supporting cast does well.

There is a tendency to be heavy handed or for jokes to be hammed up more than needed with extra sound effects, but the ideas are at least there this time and true to source. This is a far cry from past works like Alone in the Dark or In the Name of the King. The story isn’t mangled, the direction hasn’t ruined the flick, and the effects are better than a Sci-Fi Original for once, without screens from the game’s attract mode spliced in for some reason.

And it’s WAY better than Date, Epic, or Disaster Movie, and especially Meet the Spartans. Uwe, keep this up and you might not be the most hated writer/director around.

Postal gets 2 and a half canes. It’s not good, it’s not actively bad, it’s just average comedy, but for anyone who’s ever been offended by anything, this movie should not be viewed nor the box gazed upon. So once again, it’s true to the game!