MotoGP 08 - Fine Sense Of Speed

www.gamespot.com

MotoGP 08 is meat-and-potatoes racing with enough challenge to keep two-wheeled gearheads busy for weeks.


After snagging the official MotoGP license from THQ in 2007, Capcom released MotoGP 07 on the PlayStation 2; a promising, if far too difficult, rebirth of a game license that had previously thrived in the hands of developer Climax and publisher THQ. MotoGP 08 is Capcom's series debut on the PC (as well as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3). While the game likely won't create a new generation of virtual racing fans, those who have some two-wheeled gaming experience will find a demanding driving model and plenty of stiff competition to keep them busy.


There aren't any surprises in MotoGP 08's list of game modes--you've got the standard list of single-player modes you'd expect from a racing game: Single Race, Time Trial, Championship, Challenge mode, and so on. The highlight on the single-player menu is the Career mode, which gives you a chance to create a rider from scratch and work your way up through three bike racing series (125cc, 250cc, and, the pinnacle, MotoGP). As you enter races, any points you score by placing high enough in the final results will earn you attribute upgrade points you can apply to one of four aspects of your particular bike: top speed, acceleration, braking, and traction. You can then take your souped-up bike online and enter the competition in online racing events against up to 11 other online riders.


While Career mode is certainly the best single-player mode in the game, it has its quirks. First of all, your career ends after five years regardless of how many series championships you've won. Second, once you've selected from the game's various AI and handling difficulty levels, you can't change them for the entirety of your career. This is especially frustrating once you've maxed out your bike and can smoke the easy or medium-level AI opponents. It would have been more user-friendly to give players the chance to tweak options in between seasons to keep up the challenge.

This lack of career option flexibility is a shame because MotoGP 08 is all about the challenge. While the learning curve is a bit gentler than in last year's PS2 debut, even an experienced MotoGP vet will find some challenge at the default difficulty level. If you bump that up to hard or champion level, you'll face cunning, hard-charging AI opponents that won't give you an inch; you'll be fighting for every position and having a fine time of it (except when you're cursing out loud at your own lack of skill).

Fans of motorcycle racing games will relish the game's bike physics, which are excellent. There are three handling settings to choose from: easy, advanced, and simulation. With a little track time, MotoGP vets will likely be able to settle in at the advanced handling level with little trouble, but throughout every race, the emphasis on the racing line and careful acceleration out of corners is a hallmark of the game. The advanced handling setting is touchy enough; when riding in the simulation setting, even the slightest error on the throttle while deep in a turn will result in a spill. When running against the upper-tier AI opponents, any mistake you make is magnified by their unyielding aggression, and you'll find yourself in yo-yo battles for position at nearly every corner on the track.

While the feel of the bikes in MotoGP 08 is just right, the riding model is not without its problems. The developers have chosen to downplay the consequences of contact between riders. While it is possible to be knocked off your bike by an opponent (and only slightly more difficult to dismount him with some dirty driving), more often than not, you can run into a rider ahead of you with little consequence. In fact, once you've gotten used it, you can actually use this to your advantage by using a rider ahead of you as some extra braking when approaching a corner too fast. The tracks, too, have their quirks. For example, in some corners, the game will penalize you for cutting corners by instantly slowing your bike down to a crawl. It's a fine idea in theory, but its implementation is inconsistent; with enough experience, you'll know exactly which corners you can take advantage of and which you'll need to play straight.

As with the console game, up to 12 players can hop online to race in the PC version of MotoGP 08. Actually getting online is confusing, and neither the game manual nor the game itself does a particularly good job of explaining the process (you need to fill out a form on the game's loading menu). Still, once you're online, network performance is decent--even if the lack of features leave you wanting. You can only run races one at a time--there's no option for virtual championships where players can run multiple races for points--and can only bring your Career mode bike into a race if the host allows it. Even when using custom bikes, however, there's not much in the way of customization; you're stuck with the actual team leathers and bike paint schemes, as well as a series of unique helmets from which you can choose. In an era of customization in such games as Forza 2 and Midnight Club: Los Angeles, next year's MotoGP game simply must have more options for making your rider appear unique.

The game's system requirements are modest, and on the Intel 2.13 GHz machine we ran the game on, the frame rate was solid throughout. That said, the game has its graphical high and low points. Best of all is a thrilling sense of speed (especially on such long, straights tracks as Shanghai and Mugello) that really puts you in the seat of the rider. Unfortunately, decent speed doesn't make up for certain tracks that are simply a bore--with plain backgrounds and sometimes grainy asphalt textures that aren't impressive. New details, such as the night race at Losail, and the brand new Indianapolis GP track set at the historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway are great additions to the game. The hardcore fans will also find a lot to like with the game's audio presentation; not only is there a big difference among the 125cc, 250cc, and MotoGP bike engines, but individual constructor bikes have an engine sound all their own.

A slightly more approachable learning curve coupled with a great deal of challenge means that MotoGP 08 provides enough to keep you busy for months to come while not being as punishing on new players as the previous game in the series. Now that the series has moved to the next-gen consoles and the PC, the real work begins. Next year's game must primarily make sure that it has the same suite of offline and online features that players have come to expect from modern racing games. There's a lot to like in MotoGP 08's meat-and-potatoes approach to two-wheeled racing; here's hoping that next year's game offers a more extended menu.

Cool:
Three different series of bikes provide some nice variety
Excellent handling physics
Great track list
Fine sense of speed

Poor:
Game physics are sometimes haphazard
Career mode only lasts five seasons
Limited online options
Very little bike/rider customization



See also on Car Games To Play:
colin mcrae dirt 2

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 announced

After a year and a half after the release of the next game in the Colin McRae rally series, which was hot prefix to the title - DiRT, Codemasters announced sequel not the series, but specifically the game - Colin McRae: DiRT 2.

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The title will remain the name of the legendary riders Colin McRae, not so long ago died in a plane crash (helicopter crashed). Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is created in versions for Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS and PSP.

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 will continue to develop the theme of races on different location, in particular, on off-road. The game is created on the basis of further developed version of the game-engine EGO, which was used in the original DiRT, and in recent GRID. The developers promise to improve the game for all options and pay great attention to multiplayer - all as usual.

The release of Colin McRae: DiRT 2 to be held next year.

Need for Speed Undercover Returns To Its Roots

www.gamespot.com
Need for Speed returns to its roots with hokey cutscenes, wild cop chases, and solid racing action.

For the most part, the reaction to the last few Need for Speed games was the same: "Why aren't they more like Need for Speed Most Wanted?" "Where are the cheesy cutscenes and the over-the-top cop chases?" It seems as if EA heard those cries, because for better or for worse, Need for Speed Undercover feels like Most Wanted.


In Undercover you play the role of...wait for it...an undercover officer. Along with agent Chase Linh, played by the attractive Maggie Q, your job is to take down a group of street racers that have somehow become involved in an international smuggling ring. The story is told via campy cutscenes that fail to capture the charm of Most Wanted thanks to uninteresting characters and a predictable plot. Having a story provides incentive to make it through race after race, but the whole "this is cheesy so it's cool" thing feels kind of forced this time around.


Like many other Need for Speed games, all of your racing will take place on the streets of a fictitious open-world city--here it's the Tri-City Bay area. You'll start with a lousy vehicle, but it won't be long before you're able to snag a pink slip to a nicer ride. As you progress you'll earn cash, which can be used to unlock (50+) new vehicles from manufacturers such as Nissan, Dodge, Cadillac, Ford, Porsche, Lamborghini, BMW, Aston Martin, Mitsubishi, and more. If you're into tuning individual aspects of your ride or purchasing individual parts you can do that, but if you're not into tinkering you can purchase an upgrade package and be on your way.


Not only will you earn money for winning an event, you'll earn driving points for dominating it--basically beating it really, really bad. You can power up a number of your driving attributes, but they don't have a noticeable effect on how your car handles. As long as you drive fast you'll probably dominate, but there are occasional races where you'll totally obliterate the time needed to dominate an event, but you'll still lose to the CPU. The game also encourages you to drive with style and drift, draft, and drive really close to other cars, but other than increasing your nitrous there's little to gain from doing so. That said, the new J-Turn mechanic, which lets you bust quick 180s, is invaluable when chasing down rivals or evading the cops. You'll use it because it's useful, though, not because it gets you heroic driving points.


The cops are back in full effect in Undercover, and for the most part, their return is welcome. The challenges in which you must ram and take out a certain number of police cars are great fun, as are the challenges where you must cause a certain monetary sum of damage. Of course, you don't always have to ram cars to take them down; you can also run into log trucks, electrical towers, billboards, and more to leave a little surprise for your pursuers. It's too bad that some odd quirks hamper the cop chases. The environmental hazards that you can unleash certainly look cool and are effective, but quite often you won't see any police cars get hit by the objects, yet when the cutscene ends the cars are trashed. Sometimes you won't have to do anything at all to evade police--the game says "go" and you stay still and nobody finds you. Cops are capable of laying down spikes, but you can go the entire game without them ever doing so. The biggest problem, however, is that the cops don't do much other than bang on the side of your car and yell at you, so if you last long enough they sort of fade away on their own. This makes the chases less challenging than they could have been and also makes them feel artificial, like you're just fulfilling some sort of time requirement until the game decides you've done well enough to escape.

Undercover isn't just about messing with the Man. There are events where you need to maintain a lead for a specific amount of time or get a certain distance ahead of your opponent. Sometimes you'll have to shake the cops while trying to keep a stolen ride in pristine condition, and there are checkpoint races and circuit races as well. There's not a whole lot that's original here and the races are generally extremely easy--you might not see another car for an entire race once you've cleared the starting line. They're difficult on occasion, but this is usually because of the choppy frame rate, which is often dreadful on the PlayStation 3. It's not as if Xbox 360 owners are getting a smooth, fast frame rate, but it's significantly better than the PS3's slide show, which is often so bad that it makes the otherwise great-handling vehicles a chore to drive. What's odd is that there's really no obvious reason for the game's poor frame rate; the city doesn't look much different than those in Carbon and Most Wanted, and the car models have aliasing issues.

That said, the game does do a few things very well. The online cops and robbers mode, where the robber tries to pick up money and take it to a drop-off point while another person plays the cop and tries to ram them, is quite a bit of fun. But mostly what the game gets right is its pacing. The races are short--sometimes as short as 20 seconds, and almost never longer than five minutes. Another cool thing the game does is it lets you instantly jump to the closest race by pressing down on the D pad. If you want to find a specific event you can press up and you're taken to a GPS map, where you can instantly go to the race of your choice. It'll save you a lot of needless backtracking, and combined with the short races, makes sure that Undercover never gets boring.

If you're one of the many people who loved Need for Speed Most Wanted, flaws and all, you'll find a lot to like in Undercover. It's not very original and the slow frame rate is a downer, but there's no denying that it's just good fun to run from the cops and wreak havoc on a city in the process.

Cool:
* Plenty of cop chases
* Instantly join races with press of a button
* Isn't long before you're driving a cool car.

Poor:
* Lots of quirks and nagging gameplay issues
* Emulates Most Wanted, but doesn't necessarily improve upon it
* Story isn't much to get excited about
* Frame rate isn't great.



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Speed Racer

That the Wachowski brothers, having brought their blockbusting Matrix trilogy to a close, would turn their directorial attention to adapting a children's Japanese anime for the big screen was something of a surprise. But, while critics seem divided, it seems to have been a good decision where younger audiences are concerned, the combination of lightning-fast futuristic cars, wide-eyed drama and the all new art of 'Car Fu' proving popular. It's also a premise perfectly suited to videogame conversion, ripe for a Mario-Kart-on-the-moon treatment, and this Wii adaptation is surprisingly solid for a movie-based title. Welcome Speed Racer


Speed Racer based on the World Racing League (WRL), a competition in which drivers streak around tracks at 400mph, use vehicle 'jump jacks' to launch into the air and slide around corners using their rotating wheels. To control the cars in Speed Racer you'll be holding the Wiimote horizontally (either on its own or in the racing wheel cradle). You steer by tilting the whole controller left and right and, to jump, you move the wheel quickly up and toward you.

During jumps you can pull off stylish flips and stunts, although, as these are triggered with the d-pad they can be a little fiddly to execute. You’ve a shunt move for smacking into opponents but it's the slide that you’ll really need to get to grips with if you’re to start winning races. Releasing the '2' button, turning the wheel and then pushing it down again will throw the car into a sideways drift allowing you to tightly follow the curves of the track without the need for hard braking, an essential technique on the road to stardom.



This palette of moves can be combined to create more complex Car-Fu manoeuvres that help you gain advantage on the track by taking out opponents, slowing them down or evading and recovering from their attacks. Move combinations allow you to perform 360 degree roundhouse spins, torpedo-like barrel roll attacks and painful smack downs whereby you land on top of an opponent. Of course these moves are all a means to an end: winning the race and with speed boosts (if you can manage to avoid hitting the sides of the track), slipstreaming, alliances and speed up squares there's an impressive variety of tools to help you achieve this goal.

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Speed Racer presents a good-sized championship to play through and you earn points in each race not only for the final position you achieve but also for the amount of Car Fu you executed in doing so. Time Trials and a simple split screen multiplayer mode provide some additional content and with multiple characters there's a decent if not generous amount of game here for your money.

Speed Racer is not going to cause a revolution in futuristic racing games and it lacks the polish and tightness of rivals Wipeout Pulse and F-Zero but, nevertheless, it does provide short sharp bursts of fun and expands competently upon the world of the movie.


car games to play: flatout - head on
mario cart: ready! steady! go!
Car Games Review

The Mario Cart, Wii! Ready! Steady! GO!

The Mario Cart, Wii – it is a new title in Mario galaxy.

Brand Mario - is not only a list of a dozen different arcades, but also fights, and race, and RPGs, and sports simulators, and a pack of different mini-games. Alone and with friends, baleen Plumber brings droplets of joy and happiness to every house time after time. Thank you, comrade Mario, for our happy childhood!

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Ready! Steady! GO! And dozen adults around the world forget about the difficulties of life and global issues. The race is full of childish excitement and comical jokes of opponents, speeding passing turns and unpredictable behavior of competitors in the Mario Cart, Wii.


At the start in the Mario Cart, Wii there are cars and bikes from 25 riders (including Mii-avatar). This characters from the Mario gang, Vario, and Donki Kong are familiar to every player from many excellent games from the Nintendo. Drivers differ by only one characteristic, significantly affecting the gameplay - Weight category, but this is probably depends on the choice of car or motorcycle because each of them has 6 vehicles. Light cars clocked faster and go into breakaway, when heavy cars stable feel at the route, and ram absented opponent.


Tokyo Drift? Mega Afterburner? Urban slalom of Mr. Bond? Forget about these stamps and production tricks. Better take a look at what doing little dinosaur Yoshi, bypassing opponents on the gigantic ice, feel the triumph of evil with Vario, maimed favorite for the second of his finish, and applauds every deftly stunts - such is not the case in a movie, although happens in sport. So painful unpredictable, fun and situational demand every maneuver in the Mario Cart, Wii.

Drivers launch snail shell systems "earth-to-earth" and "air-to-earth", cause earthquakes and lightning, spreading banana skin, and traps in the form of bonuses, reduce the size of opponents, and themselves become giants through the magic fly-agarics. All this villainy allows change the course of the race radically in favor of any party, although virtual opponents in the Mario Cart, Wii are not ashamed to use the entire arsenal is strictly against the player.


Flew into the gulf, giving way only a few meters before the finish or become a victim of violence fairytale characters? Repay the same coin. And do not forget to use special futures for a short time down a bit to reduce the backlog or to escape forward, there are a lot of options for increasing the speed. Playing in the Mario Cart, Wii you can wisely use features tracks - accelerate springboard enough at each site. You can simply take mushrooms, launch artillery shells or go to the star treatment and fly at supersonic speed half a way.

The game comes with a special device in the form of the steering wheel - Wii Wheel. With the help of this device control, of course, becomes more authentic and radically simplified, unlike of the classic Game Cube controller, that also supported by the game.


To win in each of the three racing classes, player must go through 32 tracks at 8 championships. Carting and bikes compete both individually and together. Motorcycles little bit faster and harder in the management, and mixed leagues are distinguishing with foxlike behavior of opponents. The second part of a single game of the Mario Cart, Wii is the race for the ghost, where you should beat the record of game developers without any additional bonuses. The personal dislike between players and characters found out itself in the duel and general mayhem. And if the first one still retains features of the regular race, the second more like a demolition drunken clowns, seeking to pin opponents for balloons or gold coins.


The unique architecture of tracks in the Mario Cart, Wii surprising with unusual jumps with unexpected flight through all locations, and pedestrians walk by pests, and the familiar decorations. The race is changing color and themes constantly. We only just carried on the usual route, when after a turn the road becomes ice bobsled Gap, competition in freestyle-jumping to a dozen hills, dangerous super slalom near the cliff, cross-country safari or a great descent on roller-coaster.

But the proud feelings of loneliness, nothing compared with pleasure that awaiting players in the online game with the Mario Cart, Wii. This is a real paradise for riders around the clock with a tour around the world. Championship statistics monitors special Wii-channel, telling the user any information on ongoing competitions and their parties. Not surprisingly, the first week was hard to servers for Nintendo - amount of players has proved several times more than planned.

Conclusion:
Pleasure in pure form. Funny unpredictable drivers to bring tremendous speed on the track and child delight, excitement and laughter. The cardinal changes, except for a new class of vehicles and access to online, in the series did not happen, but there is nothing really to change.

Cool:
• Desire to play for long time
• Online game to 12 players
• Excellent dynamic competition
• A new class of vehicles - Motorcycles
• Various options of races
• Wii Wheel goes with the Mario Cart, Wii.