A Couple of Conquerings

Race Driver: Grid

Last week I finished Race Driver: Grid (alternately known as just GRID). After the drying-up of new racing games from Japanese developer Genki, I decided I needed to try a new route (heh) to get my racing fix. I did some investigating, reading reviews and playing demos before finally settling on GRID, Codemasters mixed-discipline racer.

Codemasters has a lot of racing games under their belt, including the extensive TOCA Race Driver series of which GRID is supposed to be the most recent chapter. I've looked in on TOCA at different times actually buying one for the PS2 at one point, but it just didn't catch my fancy. It emphasized sports and touring cars which are my favorite forms of formal real-life racing, but the narrative in the game just didn't click with me. I really like racing games making things personal. It is one of the reasons I think Genki's driving games have it all over stuff like Gran Turismo or Forza. But TOCA puts you in the shoes of a specific character with specific motivations and that, perversely compared to other types of games, actually served to de-immerse me. But my understanding before buying GRID (and demonstrated in a demo) was that it personalised your experience (gave a loose narrative or leveling up experience) without slapping it into a drama.

Obviously the particulars of this game must've clicked for me because I've just played it through. It was actually one of the most immersive video games I've ever played racing or otherwise. Codemasters absolutely hit on the formula for making it about YOU with a fun ladder to climb through the ranks, but without forcing in some melodramatic story points. The drama is on the track where it really counts, but pretty exciting during down time too, when you are managing your sponsors, or seeing that you've been challenged by the everpresent villains of the piece, Ravenwest Motorsports. A big part of this is the mechanism whereby the in-game speech addresses you by your real name... a feature officially labeled 'creepy' by my kids, but that really made everything in the game much more personal and affecting.

And then there is the driving itself. There aren't tons of cars. There aren't a lot of tracks. But each car is so lovingly detailed. Each track is so realistically presented. The sounds and bumps when you are jostling in the pack, particularly if you have an over the hood or in-car camera view (look at that shit, the pic I posted at the top of this entry). And the radio communication from your crew chief and your on-track teammate, though repetitive and sometimes inaccurate, is pretty well done. It is unbelievable how intense the driving got at times. Codemasters also made a couple of decisions about the opponent AI that I have to applaud. It had some drawbacks which I'll detail below, but this is one of the few times outside of Genki racers where I felt almost like there were people in those other cars, complete with mistakes made and tempers lost. Most racing games the opponent drivers just hew to the racing line as if there was no one else on the track. They will robotically race the same way every time. In GRID, opposing drivers sometimes push hard to get ahead of you and then neglect to check up enough in the next corner and skid wide, sometimes crashing outright. If you're in the back of a twelve car pack it might seem you'll never get past everyone, but the opponent drivers fuck each other over so frequently, that you'll almost always have a shot. Compare to typical driving games where cars form packs and because they don't spin out, AND because damage isn't taken into account really, the way you usually have to get through the pack is by unrealistically crashing and grinding your way through them.

Not only do you not need to do that so much in GRID, but given that this game DOES model damage, you really can't. Or at least you really have to be judicious about it. I also give props to Codemasters for not (seeming) to rely on rubberband AI. This is the annoying tendency built into racing games for computer opponents to suddenly exhibit supernatural abilities when they fall behind. You can see it in some other types of games too, most notably fighters where a computer-controlled opponent plays twice as fast and pulls out inhuman combos when you've beaten them in the first round of the possible three. In GRID when you get ahead you can stay ahead by the same interval if you keep driving consistently.

All that being said, the game has some annoyances, and they are tied to some of the same things that make the game great. GRID has the appearance of a simulation-style racer as opposed to a so-called arcade racer, but it IS actually skewed to the quicker arcade-style model. There is no tuning. So when you pick a car, if you don't like how it handles, tough shit. You can't change it. All you can do is get by until further in the game and more cars are unlocked.

This rarely presented a problem for me, but there were a few categories of races that made me wish for tuning. On the one hand, it's nice that the cars do all handle with noticeable differences. On the other, a driver wants to emphasise one thing or another in a car, making changes for certain tracks or variables like weather conditions. With GRID if the car you are driving is too slippery to be really effective on a twisty track... you gotta suck it up. In most sim-style games you could use the suspension settings to dial this out of the car. The compensation in GRID is that each individual race can have its difficulty turned up or down. So while I felt a bit guilty about it, after struggling with open wheel cars and club car races (Tuscan TVRs drive like little lead ingots on skis), later in the game I notched the difficulty down one pip. I just don't have the time or wherewithal to learn the nuances on the classes of cars that handle so radcially different to all the others. Turning down the difficulty turns down the speed and aggressiveness of the opponent drivers so that if you don't drive quite so accurately you don't suffer as much for it.

The flip-side of the driver AI: GRID models and reflects damage. It isn't comprehensive enough to drive the game into full-on realistic simulation territory, but it is significant. Through all the years I've played driving games damage modeling has just not been a real factor. Most games just haven't done it. It requires intense processing power, particularly if you want multiple makes and models of automobiles in one race, AND you need the car manufacturers to agree to it if the game is based on street cars. Most car makers are not all that keen for a game to show their car flipping around with the doors and tires flying off. TOCA games did show some damage but it didn't affect performance much. In this generation of video game consoles we now have the power to model damage extensively and realistically... even to the point of wreck debris littering the track laps after the original accident. I've always thought prior to this that I wanted damage modeling. It would just add that much more realism and drama. Playing this game shows me it isn't an all-good addition.

Codemasters knew bashing around trying to race without getting your vehicle disabled was going to be tough, particularly on scads of gamers weaned on Gran Turismo, where you can literally ride on an opponents doors all the way around a tough corner. So even though AI drivers can screw up in GRID, the developer still included a now-famous time-rewind function that lets you to roll back up to ten seconds of driving to allow yourself to re-drive to avoid a bad slip or game-ending accident. The lower you set the aforementioned difficulty setting the more of these rewinds a player gets. As I've said in previous posts there's no way a racing game can simulate a lot of the tactile aspects that really help a driver in real life and this game also shows the limitations on duplicating the visual aspects. Because gamers don't have four screens set 360 degrees around their seat, you've got a button for looking back, and the right stick lets you turn your virtual head to look out the side windows. But compared to the glancing, quick-snap method one uses in real-life to acquire and process all the information; mirrors, rear window, side windows, guages, road feel, etc... the different views in-game are highly disorienting and I found myself basically NOT using them. Since the AI players presumably DO have all of the computer's awareness of what is going on around them, essentially they get the benefits of 'using' all the views correctly, the rewind function is a really cool way to offset this advantage.

So with a rewind function, AI drivers that screw up, adjustable difficulty per race, and pretty good fixed tuning on all cars I gotta say GRID ironed out pretty much every potential frustration while still presenting a fun, challenging game. The only real unaddressed gripe I have with the game (and one a GRID sequel could easily fix) is that the computer opponents seemed 'dim' in how they treated some car types, particularly the prototype cars. In muscle car or touring car categories there is, in real life, a certain amount of jostling and bashing for position, particularly in the first turn of any given race. The cars are built similar to street cars, have sheet metal skins, and don't go uproariously fast. But prototype cars are purpose built race cars usually with a lot of carbon fiber and aluminum. They are fast and tremendously expensive. Yet in GRID, the AI drivers were bashing me around the same as in touring car races. Needless to say the results of a mild shunt at 190 miles per hour in a lightweight prototype are hugely different to one at 60 miles per hour in a fat Dodge Challenger. In the open wheel races the opponents seemed aware that you can't just smash the huge fenderless tires into each other, but in prototypes this sort of care was sorely lacking. And minor though it is, it grated because I really REALLY like real-life prototype racing a la the various Le Mans series LMP categories.

I would highly HIGHLY recommend this game to racing enthusiasts. It does so many things right, I find racing even after completing the campaign to be almost as fun as when I started. My son feels the damage makes the game too difficult... yet he is compelled to try because it just FEELS like the closest thing to being in a race yet. Great stuff. A word of warning though: I'm not really much of an online competitive player so I can't comment on how the online versus racing is... but I've read that it is pretty rough. All versus gaming online suffers from so-called 'griefers' the people who deliberately try to wreck other players' experience. GRID with its damage and its ability to easily wreck out of a race seems a prime target for this sort of abuse. There is a code that allows one to turn damage off, but I don't know how prevalent the use of it is. I didn't get access to the code until I finished career mode, so GRID doesn't give you THAT easy out during the single player campaign.

Illbleed

In a completely opposite direction we have Illbleed for the Sega Dreamcast which I finished nearly the same time as GRID.

Illbleed is one of those titles that on paper doesn't read like it would be a very good game, particularly to modern gamer sensibilities, but the weirdness was so compelling that it just forced me on and on to get through it. 'Kusoge', literally 'shit game' in Japanese is a term used to describe a game that is low-quality or has serious deficiencies and yet is considered fondly or seriously by some segment of the gaming community. That might be for character/licensing reasons, uber-difficulty, nostalgia, or a bizarre sense of humor. Illbleed isn't literally a kusoge in MY book, but it is just the sort of game that could be to some gamers and mostly for its strange, borderline disturbing, plot and visuals coupled with weird mechanics. It is certainly NOT unplayable or beyond-belief difficult.

In simplest terms it is a third-person survival horror action game. Unlike early Resident Evil episodes, the camera is only fixed during combat. Most of the time it follows around behind your avatar. This means that the game can't really use a forced viewpoint or unseen areas to provide shock scares. You can move your view to wherever you wish, so nothing is going to jump out at you like RE's famous window-breaking dogs. But Illbleed does manage creeping menace pretty well, at least at first. After a while, when you've got a good handle on healing item stock and how mortal your character actually is, much of the suspense and anxiety goes away, but the narrative gets wacky and unpredictable to make up for it.

The story is that you are navigating your way through the various areas in a deadly horror-themed amusement park. There is a cash reward (in game terms, duh) for doing so, but the money is secondary to rescuing your friends who went in ahead of you. Originally, your character Eriko had zero interest in going to the park because your Dad used to run a haunted house attraction himself and you've been there and done that. This of course, makes you the ideal person to go rescue your friends when this amusement park appears to have gone all lethal. Eriko is basically skeptical and has nerves of steel.

The game that follows on is, by turns, funny, creepy, and puzzling. Like a dream or a bad drug trip filtered through Rob Zombie's garish take on B-movies. The tale in each area is a take on a horror or fantasy movie plot cliche, but each level plays out in a unique and hallucinatory way. By the time I was done with the game I'd seen faces pushing out of blood puddles, pieces of pork and chicken chasing me around on a giant grill, a tree that eats people, and a parody of Woody from Toy Story battling a huge demonic version of Sonic the Hedgehog. The pic above is a spider boss with a head for its abdomen. All of this is interspersed with overly-copious amounts of bloodletting and an awesome soundtrack.

If you're like me all that stuff would only drive you on to seek out and play the game. Hell, that's exactly what it did in my case. But there are complications. I bought this game during the actual shelf life of the Dreamcast. I started playing it soon after, but the play mechanics were off-putting. Illbleed isn't actually about running, jumping, and shooting the ghoulies. It requires a methodical, exploratory approach. Eriko has all kinds of vital signs that need to be monitored. The game tracks her heartbeat, blood loss, health, etc. And keeping all of this stuff within safe levels is quite an exercise. The game also gives you a pair of night-vision goggles called a 'horror monitor'. You use this device to set off traps and scares ahead of time so that Eriko won't be shocked or injured when she actually gets to the triggering point.

When I originally started playing the game, this all seemed a huge load on the player and not really what I was after in a horror-themed game. But recently when I felt like playing something 'different' I gave it another go. The Dreamcast is capable of some pretty astounding visuals (think Ikaruga), but a lot of the console's titles have sort of glossy early PS2 graphics... which is appropriate considering the DC just precedes the PS2 chronologically. Illbleed is hardly cutting edge visually. In fact, it's pretty ghetto. But most of the time, that only adds to the games charm. Same thing with the mostly crap voice acting. Climax/Crazy Games is obviously not a big budget game maker, but in Illbleed's case a lot of the cheesiness seems very much deliberate. Only Eriko really looks and sounds 'normal' with a polished character model and mostly okay vocals, an anchor amongst all the confusion and strangeness. I think the choices made in the game just reflect a very Japanese take on the appeal of low-grade horror films... and LSD trips.

Once the player wraps their head around the not-at-all-obvious way exploring is done with the horror monitor, and the way one has to monitor Eriko's life signs like a crack trauma team, there are still some really odd choices the designers made in other ways. Sometimes these choices just fit right in, like playing jump rope with a murderous doll. Other times the mechanics seem needlessly old-fashioned and can be pretty frustrating. Mostly this comes from combat. The controls are a variant on the old Resident Evil scheme and they come with similar movement and collision detection problems. They are functional and the game usually gives you a way to get out of combat encounters (a rescue helicopter!!!!), but this game isn't so old that a more workable fighting system couldn't have been implemented. There are a number of places where it seems Eriko just can't connect with an attacking enemy, but of course they have no problem ripping the shit out of her.

The save points are also really infrequent. This doesn't normally bother me because I kinda feel today's gamers with insta-save all over the place are being enabled right past a video game's challenges. But in Illbleed, even accustomed to Eriko's precarious life functions in the first few levels (you get the hang of managing them), the deliberate pace of the game meant huge stretches of time between save points when I really needed to quit out and get onto the business of the rest of my life. A few times I had to leave the DC on to do something else, which sucks because the game penalises you monetarily, the longer you take getting through a level... and the clock ticks even if the game is paused.

Anyway. Through all the quirkiness, this time I persevered and was rewarded with a game experience I won't soon forget. There are multiple secrets I missed, and I didn't get the best ending, but I felt pretty triumphant just getting through such a bizarre, often confusing video game. I had to consult an online walkthrough twice to figure out what the game actually wanted from me. Now that I understand so much more about how the vital signs and horror monitor work... not to mention being much more practised at fighting... I could see myself having at this again to do better. I wouldn't say the learning curve is super steep, it is just that the game, and what it expects from the player, are so different to everything else out there. And the manual is pretty much no help at all.

Illbleed is like a lot of the movies I watch when it comes to defining its target owner. Not something I can just recommend to anyone, but with the right audience the positives would outweigh the frustrations. If you have fair patience and really liked Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, then this is probably the game for you.

Whew.

After a real push over the last weekend, and some concetrated effort last night, I finally finished TXRD2 to completion.

And in 'game that must go on forever' fashion, it drew out even the last few rival encounters for maximum drama... or exhaustion.

Yesterday there was the boss of the final area to take down, then the ultimate boss of each 'villain team'. THEN the former champ of old (who is foreshadowed in cutscenes) comes out. He's the final boss.

Then you get the final ending screens. I say 'final' because Genki racers usually have ending screens and credit rolls at each major juncture in their games. But wait.

The TRUE LAST BOSS challenges you at the very first track you started the game in. He has a weird almost science fiction car.

After he is down, some upstart team challenges you at one of the winter tracks. So you have to now defend your crown against a team of new upstarts, sort of simulating what things will be like for your avatar now that you are the new king.

Jiminy Christmas, that's a lot of game!

For all my blather about this game being too big, it was very exciting and emotional getting down to the end. My son was on the edge of his seat for much of it. And there was a lot of high-fiving when it was over. I can't say I'm actually SORRY it's over-- but it will be strange not putting any more time in on this. Okay, maybe I'm a little sorry it's over.

And the game was really good.

Just About Enough

Okay, some games are just too goshdamn big. I’m all in favor of value for money, but there’s limits… or there should be limits.

The game that has got me posting is Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2. A Genki racing game that is a fucking fixture on my Backloggery work in progress list. You’d think I’d be used to this by now, with as many of these games as I’ve gone through, but they just keep getting bigger and more complicated!

Don’t get me wrong. Its fine for a game to have some meat on its bones. The hour-long runs on a Mushihimesama or Street Fighter IV are great. The twelve hours of delicious combat action to get through the story in Bayonetta, awesome. But sometimes you need something you can just dig into like a big book. Spending two or three weeks on an RPG can be truly enjoyable with the right game… I’ll be playing Skies of Arcadia before long.

BUT. Jeezis. Enough is enough! TXRD2 is gigantimous! There’s the usual, for Genki, SEVERAL HUNDRED listed rivals. THEN there are a bunch of randomly-created ones… some forum guy has counted FIVE HUNDRED random rivals. Then there are dozens of sponsors to earn (with races) so they basically count as rivals. Ten long courses each with sets of basic, advanced and master level races. Six short courses full of daytime rivals (and YET MORE sponsors to race). And each long course also has a gymkhana parking lot with ten levels of both time attack and drift attack to master.

The stuff you’re given to handle all that shit: A gigantic list of like two hundred cars, some based on real life track cars, some only available in the used lot… yes, there are like four car dealers in the goshdamn game… umpteen squillion parts, an ingame computer complete with multiple forums (one for each track!) a general info site, and an effin’ email system! What the fuck? I pride myself on beating all rivals and finishing each Genki racer into the ground, but who the hell has time for all this?

Role-playing game? I’ll give you role-playing game! You are an up and coming racer, and you will get up each day, check your emails and forum posts including replying to the asswipes that challenge you, back out and go make yourself a sandwich (that’s a real-life sandwich, by the way). Then you’ll go down to all the car shops. Sometimes some motherfucker is waiting for you at one (or more!) of the shops and challenges you. Then after you are all done shopping… oh I dunno, for parts or paint or layers and layers of vinyls or gauges, you go back to your garage and install your parts, tweaking the settings in every detail including reflashing the engine management chips. THEN you can test drive it on any course including a GIGANTIC circuit that isn’t even used for anything else in the game. Once that’s all good you can… wait, better make sure your sponsor stickers are all up to date and placed in optimum position on your car! Don’t want to lose out on any sponsorship money every time you win!

Now motherfucker! Go race! Pick a course. Either do an official course challenge; time attack or drift. Or choose one of the more advanced races limited to certain engine sizes or cars or ability levels YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE YET! And if you don’t have them you MUST buy the appropriate make or size of car and go shop and install all the shit that car will need to be competitive. AND/OR go to the parking area and see if that dickburger that challenged you in the shop is there. After you’ve done everything you can do, go on to the next course. Make sure you alter your tires or suspension for each different kind of track, challenge or CLIMATE CHANGE.

Oh yeah. There’s climate in the game. Sunny, cloudy/foggy, rainy and snow. So don’t fuck up your tire choice. And after you’ve gone over all ten long courses and six short courses, depending on how much you’ve unlocked, and done whatever you can do or until you keel over… THEN go back to your garage and save your game.

Guess what? If you were to do all that for umpteen days in a row and rested every game night you wouldn’t even scratch the street race rival portion of the game. So just like a street racing junkie who has no money for drugs but pours all his funds into repairs, parts, and RockStar energy drink… you get to stay up at night and race, race, race until dawn. And as you face each rival he has some shit he needs to say to you—usually trash talk, and if you want he has a whole background card you can read up on. Fuck you, man! I don’t want your life story. Shut up and race!

Day/night/day/night. Over and over. And some of these guys WAIT. They wait until a certain day or a certain type of weather, or you’ve beaten someone else.

All of this should be great. And in a way it is. It is the culmination of everything Genki has been doing to make the street racing experience immersive. It takes like EVERYTHING they’ve used in games before and mooshes it altogether into one monster highway world. The only thing that I think is missing is the freeway tracks from the Shutokou games (this is about rural racing) and the special non-car items you could buff your abilities with in Racing Battle. It is really impressive actually. The parking areas are detailed. The rivals are all fleshed out. When you read a post from one of them, if you’ve beaten them you can link to their car and their bio. Its all connected and well detailed. And there’s a lot of tracks. A lot of cars. The rivals cars all look different and they act and talk as individuals with their own interests or emphases. There’s cool dramatic cutscenes of the bosses. It all adds up to make a compelling race world.

But it is JUST TOO BIG. I thought Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix was big. RB isn’t Gran Turismo big, but it’s close. I generally don’t play Gran Turismo because for the size of the thing it is just too dry and colorless. Even if it did have more flavor it’d still be too big. Which is becoming the problem for me with TXRD2. It is so big that even all the cool immersive shit is beginning to get old. And it is so complicated that you just flat forget to cover all your bases. Its realistic in its way. The street racing world, especially with internet communications, is a really big sphere. But there’s a point where non-driving aspects threaten to overwhelm the fun. Amazingly, there is almost NO grinding in the game. Everything you do moves you forward. The game doesn’t make it difficult to buy new cars. There is always something new to do. But there is just so much. What fun is the fact that you are the fastest swimmer if the goal is crossing the Atlantic? I don’t care how fast you are, that opposite shore is going to seem a long way away!

I think I’m just tired of seeing this thing in my PS2. I could take a break from it, but the last time I did that, when I came back I discovered my drift skills had atrophied and I went through about two weeks of struggling to get back to being able to handle it. Never mind forgetting where I left off in this vast, non-linear game world. The thing is, it’s a great game. I’ve felt bitchy about Genki games before, much as I love them, but that usually revolves around grinding. Having to race over and over in order to get the cash to upgrade enough to beat a boss or buy a car to get a rival to appear. This game has none of that, but it seems like Genki felt you still needed X number of hours in the game, so if there’s no grinding we’ll just have to have more of everything.

I will persevere of course. I’m actually not that far from finishing the game if online rival lists are anything to go by… probably 85% done. It might be telling that Genki’s race game output went WAY down after this.

I said somewhere before that the smaller scale of Import Tuner Challenge was because of time probably spent on current-gen graphics, but now I think it is because most of the staff committed suicide after giving every iota of themselves in building TXRD2. They had nothing else to give and nothing to live for. I’m going to eat a bullet soon to if I don’t finish the damn game! I’m one of those players who doesn’t like to just rush pell-mell through RPGs, action adventures, or even first person shooters. I like to explore. Look at the art, interact with the characters, do the side quests. I’m not super-meticulous about it, but I don’t need to rush my game experience to get to the end. I probably dragged Bayonetta out about 40% longer than a straight-ahead playthrough because I just wanted to ‘look’ at everything. But with TXRD2, unfortunately, I now find myself skipping the color and just trying to be as efficient as possible and get shit done. My goal is 100% rivals defeated, so no skipping opponents, but there is no way I’m going to try to win every non-critical event too.

There really can be too much of a good thing.

Whew.

Still Engrish or Janglish.

But still.

Lipschitz and Lipschitz, Name Change Specialists

So I've gotten back into playing Kaido Battle: Touge no Densetsu for the PS2, known in the USA as Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2. A Genki racing game that I started last year, but then wound up putting off when I got an Xbox 360. I am again making good progress (huge game) despite trouble getting back into handling drift events. I can't believe I was good at these several months ago.

Anyway, the point of the post. Genki racers all have rivals, named opponents for you to race. The game also gives YOU a street name, that changes as you progress. Sometimes your street name is cool, sometimes its lame, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.... a combination of the parser Genki uses and how the Japanese translates to English. So I frequently get stuff like 'Meteor of Destruction' or 'Money Maniac'. Yesterday the game bestowed a street name on me that is somewhat disturbing and I hope really inappropriate to me:

Essence of Boy

Now I realize this is just an unfortunate pairing in the parser of 'Essence of' (which goes best with stuff like 'speed' or 'power') and 'Boy' (which could be a suffix for just about anything; 'racing', 'drifting', Nissan, etc). But those two together?

I have to hurry up and gain another milestone that'll flip that name over. Not something I'm particularly comfortable with my kids seeing up on screen either, even if I don't actually have to explain it. Makes Cho Aniki's Holy Protein obsession seem almost tame.

Yes, yes. I'm sure there are plenty of funny and derogatory comments to be made. Let fly, everyone! I may have to forego publishing the comments on this post if it gets too nasty!


Note: The post title is an SCTV reference, kids.

X Marks the Followup

This is a sequel post to the previous ‘Price of Power’ entry. I’ve spent a decent amount of time on Shutokou Battle X now and feel the need to comment on what I’ve discovered, and how it contrasts with what I expected.

To review briefly: after picking up an Xbox 360 I knew at some point I was going to have to buy and play Shutokou Battle X. It is my go-to racing series, and no matter what differences arise between installments I always have a pretty good time. Not too long ago I was dismayed somewhat by how much luster has worn off Shutokou Battle 2 for the Dreamcast, but it was still a good game.

The Price of Power ‘blog entry was my attempt to lament the drop in game content as graphic sophistication has increased. To make my point I chose two game series that crossed from previous console generations to the current one, the Earth Defense Force series and the Shutokou Battle games. The current chapter of EDF I’ve played through and was the impetus for writing the post. The section on Shutokou Battle was more anticipatory based on what news, information and rumors I could glean from the internet. So how did this latest Shutokou Battle actually stack up? Did the gutting of the content to fuel the graphics work to the detriment of the game? Did it move the meter away from substance and over to style?

The answer: Yes. But not as much as I thought it would.

Shutokou Battle X (Import Tuner Challenge in the USA) being the latest installment in Genki’s venerable franchise, had a huge foundation on which to build this game. The series has been on almost every platform since its inception, and Genki has had countless opportunities to tweak the mechanics, car physics, car selection, interface, complexity, graphics, and everything else. Like any developer making a sequel, especially as part of a franchise, Genki, has a fine line to walk between offering something new and different enough (from their own previous games AND other games) to warrant a purchase while not alienating long time fans who expect some mechanics and traditions to be maintained. Every Sonic game, every Gran Turismo installment, almost all of series, tread this narrow, perilous path. Occasionally enough time passes to where a developer feels that an intellectual property’s (IP) can be radically changed while still having a name that will be a sales draw. See the new 3d Bionic Commando or the upcoming Splatterhouse. Significant reboots of franchises are rather rare. Successful significant reboots are an order more rare still.

(Dedicated) gamers are picky fuckers. On the one hand they want innovation… they don’t just want the same old retread games. On the other, they break out the torches and pitchforks when developers go TOO far from what they perceive are the core mechanics (or narrative, or graphics, etc) that made the franchise beloved in the first place. Fans often deride developers and publishers for their lack of ability in seeing what made the good chapters in a franchise… well, good. But it really isn’t as easy as just ‘leaving the good shit in and adding some more good shit’. Who decides what is good shit? What aspect of the old game was THE good part? At what point is adding a new character a great idea, and when is it just lame? Like movie studios, game developers often seem to think MORE is the same as better… and who can blame them really when that so often seems to be what the audience responds to. The syndrome that Tim Burton’s Batman film series fell prey to? Hell, yes.

Genki didn’t reinvent the wheel (so to speak) with SBX. And I didn’t really expect them to. Shutokou Battle games are all pretty much the same game. Same mechanics, same plot (such as it is), same tracks (mostly), same opponents (mostly), same progression, etc etc. Fans of these games don’t play each installment religiously because they are always hungry for radical innovations. They play them because driving through traffic on Tokyo’s highways is really fun, but also each game’s backstory, rivals, and cars build on the previous chapters. Every new chapter does also feature just a bit of tweaking to the driving model to emphasize something different to go with the increase in detail and realism in the graphics that you’d expect. The likeness to actually being on the expressways gets closer and closer to the real thing. The updates have the latest car models to add to the game world.

I’ve likened the series (and all of Genki’s racing games) to role-playing games. The actual play features have a lot in common with RPGs; the hunting for opponents, the battles, the money earned, getting items (auto parts), affording better weapons (cars). But there’s also a history woven through the individual games, which affords the player as they spend the time necessary, a sense of very simple narrative progress complete with characters that grow, change, or drop out as time moves on across the series.

In Shutokou Battle X, the driving ‘feel’ has been made more forgiving. It is typical for Genki games to be characterized as having slippery or ‘floaty’ handling, but this really only applies to early or unmodified cars. In real life a low-power or stock car is not as difficult to keep on the road as this game indicates, but that is because the poor handling is an abstraction. It is designed to a) symbolize crappiness in both car and driver, ie ‘making you be crappy’, and b) give the modifications a serious effect. In real-world driving if you upgrade your suspension by small increments; maybe stiffer springs first, then stiffer dampeners, then bigger sway or anti-roll bars, then upgrade everything to a coilover system, then a racing-heavy four-corner adjustable coilover system. You will notice improvements but they may be subtle or only noticeable in the most extreme track situations. In a Genki racer they need every mod to make a demonstrable difference. So in effect, they start you off a little more difficult or ‘worse’ than real life, in order to encourage you to mod as soon as possible and then reward you when you do so with tangible results. The floaty handling usually manifests itself in the fact that you have to make lots of small adjustments constantly while driving, as if the car has a bit of a mind of its own. You have to constantly feed inputs to the controller to get it to go exactly where you want, a combination of steering being a bit loose or unstable and tires that don’t hold the road or give you a proper feel for when they are about to break traction. In the old Dreamcast chapter, Shutokou Battle 2, the game never completely dropped the tire feedback problem. In SBX the floaty feel seems minimal, only manifesting itself to me (and I may just be really used to these games by now) driving down straights when the instability of the steering has me making small adjustments to keep it heading correctly… rather like the tires needed balancing. Once you improve the tires and suspension, even by one increment, the floatiness goes away. This is a fairly big change from the old days where you had to buy the upgrades, adjust and test a lot, then fiddle with the sensitivity controls for the game itself. Continual upgrades, adjusting, and fiddling continue to improve the handling as always, but you can banish the trademark Genki floatiness almost right away.

Another difference in this game is how it handles breaking traction. Various installments have waffled back and forth as to how important or useful drifting is. In real life drifting is more useful in touge (mountain road) racing, or as a show and competition form on a formal track. It is not really used in highway racing which is more akin to driving on a circuit with its well-paved roads and less drastic elevation changes. Drifting would also be death used in highway traffic. Touge uses spotters to make sure the road is clear… doable on the short twisty sections out in the country. Can’t do that on urban expressways. So highway battling typically takes its corners in the slow-in/fast-out philosophy of grip racing. Being a driving fantasy, Shutokou Battle games try to incorporate drift… making it more important as drifting has gained popularity (as a competition) in real life. In earlier chapters, your car just broke loose and careened into a wall if you tried to drift. It was possible to get this under control, but it was almost in spite of the game, not because of it. With the PS2 iterations and the rise in drifting’s popularity, this changed, though still not allowed with the same alacrity as the companion series Kaido Battle. In SBX, losing traction (accidentally or on purpose) in a stock car will cause a weird, sudden slide that just as suddenly ends when enough speed is scrubbed off. It is jerky and unpredictable, much like the way the Ridge Racer games handle the same phenomenon. It was REALLY off-putting at first, because I have always hated Ridge Racers sliding. But much like the floatiness, this detriment can be quickly dialed down. And once you learn to expect it, it can be controlled right handily. I don’t think it is realistic… odd they didn’t just use the drift mechanics from the Kaido Battle series… but it does put the option to drift controllably as a firm, planned cornering option into the expressway battles.

Some other things: glancing off cars or barriers are rather like Shutokou Battle 3 on the PS2—some speed loss and a hit to your SP bar, but recoverable in all but the closest battles. A direct hit into traffic causes a really weird, almost slo-mo hit to the traffic car. The effect is roughly the same as all other Shutokou Battle games, but it FEELS like it is costing you a ton of time because of the perceived slowdown. I’m not sure if it actually does cost you more time… I don’t think so… and I’m not sure if this was intentional on Genki’s part; maybe done to make the player really hate crashing and really try to avoid it. Your car is also larger than its apparent shape, meaning you will hit traffic and opponents by just getting really close to them, rather than literally touching them. Driven properly this isn’t much of an issue, because:

This game is really REALLY easy.

Given the power of your modifications and the new more forgiving driving model, this game presents the least challenge of any Shutokou Battle game I’ve ever played. I finished the game handily in a JZA80 Supra that was still three upgrades away from the maximum allowable engine size. Supras are known for having overbuilt engines that can handle monstrous amounts of horsepower, but I didn’t have to get anywhere near those titan levels to romp through all the final bosses of the game.

And you know what? That lack of difficulty was okay, frankly. I have enough games on my plate that require scadloads of practice or effort to progress in microscopic increments (Mushihimesama Futari anyone?). This was really enjoyable to drive and race just for the pleasure of it.

The new versions of the cities are really beautiful. Lots of detail, and animation. A couple of new offramps added that lead to an entirely different kind of racing for this series, with very hard-angled corners. New rivals, new bosses, and everyone seems to have gotten a graphic overhaul for their stickers, the rivals’ team or nickname emblems.

Okay, so the game was fun… more fun than expected considering the rumored losses. Losses that turned out to be true, but had little effect on my fun with the game. What were the losses exchanged for the improvements?

Drastic downsizing of the car list. There are only about two dozen car models in the game. That is a major drop from the hundred or more that was typical in earlier chapters. There are a few more makes and models amongst your opponents than you can get yourself, but besides limiting your options, this really increases the repetition amongst your opponents. Many teams have members that all drive the same car. Many bosses have had their traditional car changed. It was quite disconcerting to see some historic rivals like the Death Driver and The Emperor have such radically different rides. The number of cosmetic upgrades (aero parts, vinyls, etc) help this somewhat. But at the end of the day, this was probably the single biggest hit to my pleasure in the game. It was a groaner to think to myself ‘oh another team entirely made up of Evos’ over and over again. One of the big attractions to Genki Racing Project games is the immersion factor, and that has always been helped considerably by the number of different car types (multiplied by the possibilities in modifications) you could encounter. It has seemed like no two cars were alike, like real life. And there have always been plenty of oddball or weird cars thrown in like vans, utility trucks, muscle cars, or maybe a Corvette Z06… all unexpected in the racing environment of Japan. None of that in SBX.

Downsizing of the highway map. They dropped the Wangan and Yokohane expressways, the epicenter of flat-out drag racing in these games. These areas had to be opened up in the previous games by progressing… and offered a stark contrast to the tighter corner-based racing of the games’ initial C1 tracks. This could’ve been as big a drag as the loss of cars except Genki added the two aforementioned offramps which themselves have some fairly long drag-able straights. Genki also took a cue from the Kaido Battle series and started putting parking areas into the game. Parking areas are the social heart of Japan’s racing scene. At key offramps around the expressway system, the racers, teams, hangers-on, groupies, and just plain car nuts gather around and talk, compare vehicles or just loiter. Music is blaring, challenges are made or refused, a lot of snacks and drinks are bought out of the area vending machines. This adds a lot to SBX, giving new forms of interaction, and new places you have to go to find your rivals.

Traffic is a lot more sparse. This is probably in keeping with making the game a bit easier and more accessible, though I’d say Genki’s inexperience with optimizing the graphics comes into play and they needed to minimize slowdown… of which there still is some in instances where many cars are onscreen, the developer’s traditional weakness in this area.

That’s really it for the minuses. Less cars, less track, less traffic. The first two are definitely ‘content’. The game isn’t literally shorter than other iterations in terms of rivals and number of races to run, but it is really obvious that there is less variety. As I said, this bothered me less than I thought it would because, and I don’t want to sound like a graphics whore, the game is just so much prettier and realistic. And my mind was taken off the shortcomings by having the two side road areas and new rivals to master.

As if time has continued its march in the Genki world, so some old teams have disappeared, new teams have arisen and the player has to find his place in the scheme of things… usually at the top when all is said and done. There were some pretty cool things to this part of it. There is a selection of bosses that have been recurrent through the games usually called the Thirteen Devils. For this game, they are kind of in semi-retirement and a new group, the Phantom Nine, have come to prominence. Upon beating the Phantom Nine you, of course, catch the attention of the remnants of the Thirteen Devils. This is all handled with cool intro videos and music.

It is as fun as ever to knock these rivals on their asses and once again assume the mantle of King.

Note: I played the japanese version of this game. One wanderer rival, Green Wild Child, has a different requirement than what is indicated in the USA version (Import Tuner Challenge). His Japanese requirements are the same as they are in SB3 on the Playstation 2, a license plate edit.

Mixed Feelings.

I’m in the middle of a nostalgic, but epic run through my beloved old games and systems. One of these old games is Shutokou Battle 2, known in the US as Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2.

I’ve got earlier entries that go on at nausea-inducing length about how much I love Genki racers like the Shutokou Battle games. This one, the second Dreamcast-based episode was the reason I got into them. See those earlier entries for the details if it matters.

In any case, I originally played the Japanese version. I was really smitten with the description and some demo I’d played of the first one, but I wanted the expanded world of the second one and didn’t want to wait for a localization that might never come. So importing it was the way to go. I didn’t understand all the text, mostly the wanderer descriptions, but all the upgrades and gameplay stuff was in English, so I got through it and thought it was practically masturbation material.

Recently, in my fit of oldskool fondness, I got ahold of a USA version of the game. I’ve played subsequent episodes in English, and knowing the details of the rivals and all that only added to the experience. It had been years since I’d even looked at this old game, and while I was digging my re-look at the Dreamcast, I figured I might as well replay this old love in an even more understandable, engaging form.

It ain’t quite the same. The graphics have aged pretty well. The cars and streets look fine. The music is still decent, with one tune being a real standout, and some of the best ‘racing battle’ music ever in a game. BUT, some of the actual gameplay specifics are just ass. The controls are part of the issue. The Dreamcast has analog triggers for gas and brakes (most racing games can be mapped to these controls) exactly as I prefer, but there is some disconnect between how hard you pull the trigger to apply the brakes and how hard they are actually applied. If you want a little bit of braking, you have to go REALLY light on the trigger. Pull the trigger halfway and you get full panic-stop brakes and your tires break loose from traction. This basically has the effect of making your brakes worthless IF you try to brake with the timing and feel of all the other Shutokou Battle games and most other racing games besides. It is really irritating. It must not have bothered me much back in the day because I was either enjoying the novelty of the other aspects so much OR I just didn’t know any better not having played many of the others. This is something I’ve gotten used to somewhat, but in the panic of a really close race I find myself reverting to my tried-and-true methods and timing and I typically blow the race. My win-loss record is truly pathetic compared to other Genki racers.

The other bigger problem is the balance between racing and upgrading. Most racing games have a ‘career mode’ of some kind. The one-player story sequence game where you start with a shit car and work your way up by winning races, upgrading your car, buying faster cars, and winning some more until you finally finish the game by having one all the races the game has in its roster. Most allow you to keep playing in an effort to unlock (or buy) any cars or parts you still don’t have.

Genki racers have a very specific methodology to their career modes, oft imitated, but in my opinion, never equaled. You still have to win, upgrade, then win some more. Racing games’ career modes have to strike a balance between challenging you with races that test you, but reward you with cars or parts around the time that you actually need them. When you first start, your car is crap but the races aren’t hard. You buy a few mods and then the races are easier at first, but then they start to get challenging. When you start to lose a few times or really have difficulty pulling off wins, the game unlocks more cars or parts… and this is the cycle. It is possible to suck so bad at racing that you lose and don’t unlock more parts, but most of the games will allow you to grind away at replaying races you’ve won until you earn enough money to buy parts that will allow you to overcome your suckiness. This ‘grinding’ is familiar to RPG players. They have to battle a lot of peon monsters to earn enough gold to get the super-item needed to get past an NPC or boss character. This repetition can often break the fun out of a game. Over the years Genki racers (and other racing franchises) have fine-tuned their play progression so that the player gets fed the ability to get additional parts at the ‘right time’, assuming your skill level is reasonable. If you can find reasonable racing lines, and stay off the walls and your opponents, you will win enough cash to afford better cars and parts as you need them. Memorizing new tracks so you race the correct lines, and learning how to stay off faster, more aggressive opponents in turns is the challenge part. If you get hung up in a game with a fair progression/difficulty curve it is because you need to learn the track better.

With Shutokou Battle 2 this is not so much the case. I have frequently found myself up against opponents that you simply cannot win against. Your car is not fast enough to keep up, no matter how you’ve tweaked the settings, and no matter how well you stay off the walls and avoid traffic. When you look about for better parts… either there aren’t any OR you don’t have nearly enough money. And the game is VERY stingy with the money. In the case of ‘I have money but there are no parts’ the game is basically telling you to buy a new car, but you’d have to have A LOT of money to both buy a car that is significantly better than the one you have already and to be able to upgrade it. You need to upgrade right away because you probably already have your current car maxed and no vehicle fresh off the showroom floor will be its match or better… certainly not one you can afford. So it becomes a money issue again.

So here’s the problem. Opponents you can’t beat, so you don’t progress. No parts to buy because you’ve bought the best of everything. Upgrading to another car is expensive, and the parts cost more on the better cars. So you’re left with ‘grinding for gold’ basically, by re-racing old opponents to slowly, tediously build up your cash and get a better car. This process is aggravated by the games insistence on making opponents worth less every time you race against them. So the game forces you to race for peanuts, over and over again. This process is why I don’t care for the Gran Turismo series. The nuts and bolts are a bit different in that franchise, but apart from the absolute lack of atmosphere and color, you have to race and re-race the same tracks for piddly amounts of cash. It just isn’t worth it to me, though I know a lot of players swear by those games. In iterations of Shutokou Battle after number two, you don’t really run into a lot of this problem. Between improved controls and a better progression curve, when you get hung up in the game it is typically because you need to learn the street section better (or confront them in a section in which you are stronger), get better about staying off the walls (because with the better rival, every tenth of a second of speed scrubbed off on a wall is a potential race loser), or tweak your cars settings. If you finally reach a point where a new car is needed you typically find that you are really close to affording it, if you didn’t buy unnecessary cars at some earlier point.

So this is kind of a drag. I guess this didn’t bother me much years ago, because I hadn’t been spoiled by the more balanced progression Genki would come to dial into their games. I’ve also got the much more recent Kaido Battle Touge No Densetsu (Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 in the States) going on as well, and it is the very model of the balanced progression I’ve been talking about. There is some grinding, but it is as much to learn the tracks I suck at, as it is to earn money. AND they give you quick and easy ways to earn cash other ways. Repetitive to a degree, but not like the seeking out and racing of penny-ante drivers in Shutokou 2.

I still see what was great about this game. It IS obviously a step in the evolutionary process of Genki developing their racing system. Sometimes you go back to some old game you remember fondly, and it is just lame. Often the graphics play a big part of this. Most people, particularly old school gamers, don’t want to cotton to being graphics whores, but it is awfully hard to sit through hours of NES graphics (or heaven help you, Atari 2600 or Mattel Intellivision screens) when you’ve been spoiled by modern games. The eye candy of 16-bit consoles (Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and SNES) can still hold up okay. This being a Dreamcast game, and not an early one, it really doesn’t look far off from the PS2 or Wii. The game’s system is the hang up. Like an old movie you find doesn’t scare you the way it did when you were a kid….no matter how well filmed.

At this stage the game is a chore. When I finally upgrade the new car (which I’ve bought, I’m just grinding for parts money), maybe the game will break wide open and be fun again. But the gloss is off now. Not tarnished exactly, but not the same as it was. Never thought I’d say that about any game in this series.

I’ll just blame Genki actually. It’s their fault for improving the damn things so much.

(screenshot swiped from IGN)

Racing, Not the Video Game Kind

After having posted verbosely about racing, it seems like a good idea to put down some kind of baseline for what real-life racing I enjoy, so terms and concepts are understood if I go batshit and start blogging a lot more about driving games.

Right off the starting line, I'm not a NASCAR fan. I keep up with the Nextel Cup standings each year and occasionally catch a race (or the highlights of one), but I'm not a frother about it. There was a time when the cars represented something more like a car you could buy. I'm not saying they REALLY were like street cars... the term 'stock' in stock car racing has been false at that level of racing for a long time now. But the cars were not entirely fabricated for a particular race or track type like they are now. The money and sponsorships have just taken the competition 'fun' right out of NASCAR. Everything and everyone has to conform. Very strict templates. Very strict rules. The cars are almost interchangeable, apart from the very rich teams who have the money to squeeze one last tiny ounce of engineering advantage over the poorer teams. A sport that used to have fans (and rivalries) at the driver level, car level, and manufacturer level now really only varies in its drivers. If you are a Chevy fan and Jimmy Johnson wins again, you can't in all fairness say 'Whoooo, Chevy rulez!'.... because Chevrolet had nothing to do with his victory other than supplying sponsorship money. They don't supply the car, the engine has no real-world basis of comparison, even the tires-- arguably the most important part of the car-- are all the same across all the teams in the interest of fairness. And whatever the drivers, sponsors, or fans will tell you, these cars are not on any pinnacle of technology. They use old technology based on simple systems that no person driving on the street would still want to be stuck with. I don't begrudge people that ARE fans, and as I mentioned I do keep up some. It just isn't my deal.

I could make almost the exact same arguments for Formula 1. At least Formula 1 cars ARE cutting edge technology. But this league is also mired by dollars and an incredible list of rules. These big league races want to keep competition close (a good thing) but it just seems making the teams conform to huge rule sets is not the best way to go about it. I keep one eye on Formula 1 too just as I do NASCAR, and I'll give 'em this: this last 2008 season was the best one in a long time. All props to Schuey, probably the greatest race driver in history, but with him out, a lot of the excitment (for people other than Ferrari fans) is back in. His absence is NOT the only reason, but I think it probably helps.

Similar bullet points for open wheel racing in other leagues, like IRL and (in times past) Champ Cars/CART. But these leagues had the additional burden of politics. And not just the kind of personality politics that can make NASCAR interesting at times, but bullshit suits-making-decisions politics.

I don't follow drag racing much either. I admire the enormous work that goes into making a car go as fast as possible, hold to the road, and not blow up. I think to be involved, as driver or crew, is probably pretty exciting (and I enjoy the video game version of the sport), but watching it doesn't engross me. It's over so fast there doesn't seem to be enough time to appreciate driver ability before-- WHOOOSH-- its over and there's another car up on the marks. I would never say there is no driver talent because keeping one of those monsters under control while you shift perfectly (or at least better than the other driver) is more than most people could do.

I follow sports car and rally racing. That'd be SuperGT, GrandAm, and American LeMans, along with various Speed Channel and Touring or GT events in Europe for sports cars, and WRC for Rally racing. Sports car racing covers a lot of different classes of car. Some don't really have an analogy to a car you can just buy and drive yourself, particularly the prototype classes in GrandAm and ALMS. But the cars in the majority of classes closely resemble their street counterparts, particularly if you like to mod street cars, and the manufacturers are frequently more directly involved or support privateer teams. Much of the technology or even the parts themselves are streetable. Hey, their headlights have to work. You can't get by with stickers. You might be driving at night, or in the rain, or through mud and snow (in rally races). They have lists of rules to keep driving close, but it doesn't seem as restrictive as the really big money leagues. Adding weights to winners may seem odd, but I think it beats the shit out of having all the cars conform to a template. And these races aren't just around ovals, like stock car racing. You gotta turn right too. Or go up a hill. Or through a tunnel. It doesn't allow the cars to just blaze around the whole track at 200mph... theres' finesse involved. Which is probably why a lot of NASCAR drivers just throw their hands up at the couple of road races they have to run each year. Or get ringers with road racing experience like Boris Said. You can see some really high speeds in these races (the ultimate probably being the Nurburgring in Germany or the Lusanne Straight at LeMans in France. But this type of racing requires more than taking your foot on and off the gas and knowing how to bump around in a pack of sheet metal.

If your an import tuner fan, sports car or rally racing should be your sport (along with some drag racing and drifting). A lot of the culture and technology dovetails really well with street tuning methodology. Like that Nissan Z or a Suburu Impreza you saw at the car show? Sports car teams run the Z and rally teams run the Impreza. You want to put Eibach springs on your car? Chances are a sports car team out there is running some version of them.

So my video game playing tends to mirror what racing I catch on television. Unfortunately I don't live in a burg that has a racetrack. The weather here is actually detrimental to tuning cars or even owning a decent ride. In amongst my dreams of moving from here, I include the fantasy about buying a ride and fixing it up. It'd be nice to move past just being an armchair driver. But you do what you can do.

Currently On My Plate

So I've been playing STGs (2D shooting games) almost exclusively lately. I like other genres but I've been in kind of a mood (rut) the last six weeks or so. Two months from now, I could be totally immersed in fighting or driving games. I am getting something of a hankering to tackle Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 (the US version of Kaido Battle Touge no Densetsu), but I keep putting it off because I have not quite finished (100% completion) Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix and I don't like to have too many of the same sort of game 'open' at the same time, if that makes sense. I already have Need For Speed: Most Wanted and an iteration of Burnout still waiting for me to complete as well. So actually that makes three racing games on my plate.

I was working through GT4 at one point, but y'know? I just find the Gran Turismo games to be 'too big'. They are great for what they are... but what they are is also just endless. They are simulations-- lots of realism, no drama. They have the some of the best physics, but no wrecks, no damage, no story, and no real opponent AI. So to get through the entire Gran Turismo experience (in all the chapters) is about endless racing in very pretty cars through very pretty scenery but absolutely no emotional content apart from just digging the cars. I find that some kind of competition really makes my motivation to get through this sort of game. Even a game somewhat thin on the human drama like LeMans 24 hours is more interesting to me. THAT game wasn't quite as big (so as not to seem so endless) and had more of a focused goal, even if one of the things you had to finish was a real-time 24 hour endurance race, amongst all the other races. I liked that game so much that I've played all the way through two different consoles' versions though the difference between the two was miniscule... only a couple of new/different cars. It doesn't hurt that I'm a huge sports car racing fan though.

Ever since Need For Speed went 'import tuner' with the Underground chapters, I started playing them. I finished Underground 1 and 2 in pretty much no time flat. Then got into Most Wanted, and pretty got hung up on cop evasion issues. I'm at 69% completion but the level the cops pursue now gets so much in the way of the actual racing that it is frustrating. I like the idea of the cops involvement but they just throw so much at you so quickly... and a large part of completing the game is involved in very un-racing behavior-- wrecking stuff, hitting cop cars, ad nauseum. So much of it isn't a real racing game, kind of the point of playing a RACING game. Complicating things is the fact that doing well at it requires a lot of memorisation of the city layout, and the more time I spend away from the game the more time I'm going to have to spend re-learning what is where when I do pick it up again. A lot of the same could be said for Burnout (Revenge I think). Good game, awesome wrecks. BUT. Racing is only part of the overall play. It has a lot of non-racing you have to do. And to top it all off I was at 89% complete and my game save got corrupted. That's just discouraging. In my head I want to start over and try again, but my heart just isn't in it. I'm hoping to let enough time go by before restarting so that the game will seem somewhat fresh, but as time goes by there' always that next newer, cooler game... including new chapters of Burnout, of course. I probably won't be a completist and try to do a lot more Underground or Burnout chapters. I played through the DS version of Need For Speed Carbon and it was just okay. I think the only racing game company or series that ritually holds my interest is probably anything by Genki Racing Project. That'll be the Kaido Battle, Racing Battle, and Shutokou Battle games.

Like any car game, racing in Genki games gets repetitive. The Underground games (which are from Electronic Arts, not Genki) tried to get around this by really mixing up the race types. They have drag races, circuit races, street races, drift competitions, etc. all aimed at giving you a varied experience and keeping your interest in the long career modes. And of course they want to cover all the types of racing that can appeal to import car fans. Apart from Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix, Genki games don't really have that many different types of racing in each game. But what they do have is drama of a sort. They have characters, even gangs of racers for you to compete against, all with their own customised cars, driving styles, and in the later games, messages. There are even 'bosses' to defeat to get to the next level. There's a whole immersion factor here that most racing game makers just don't reach. The Underground games give you a whole city to roam around in and 'find' your races. That helps it feel like you are in a lifelike environment, really strutting your car around in a city. But Shutokou Battle did that first. From a pretty early point in the series you could literally drive around the Tokyo freeway complex looking for opponents, and because the streets had real counterparts, it added a dimension of 'you are there' that other racing games just don't have (to me). Genki driving games are all still like this. I love the games so much, a few times the release of one has tipped me into buying a new console earlier than I otherwise would have. I think Import Tuner Challenge, which is Shutokou Battle for the Xbox 360 is probably the only one I don't have, and the reason for THAT is a different, longer story that involves the high price of the console AND my indecision over whether to spring for a US or Japan version machine. I'll discuss my feelings about the Xbox in a near-future rant about region lockouts or the state of video gaming in America.

Its hard to explain the Shutokou/Kaido/Racing Battle to other gamers. Genki racing games are kind of a cult thing. A lot of driving game fans play them and just don't see what makes them so great. Its like being a fan of STGs, which are generally 2D, have somewhat old-school graphics most of the time, and a play mechanic that is based on one of the oldest video games known (Space Invaders or more correctly Galaxian). How can you explain to the modern gamer the badassedness of an STG when they are ducking for cover from 1000-polygon missiles in surround sound in the latest FPS, or trying to put one over on another dozen gamers in the massive multiplayer online RPG du jour?

You either get it or you don't. Age probably makes a difference. While newer-generation gamers ARE getting turned on to some of the cult genres, most of the hardcore seem to be old enough to have some firsthand experience of the time when the genre in question ruled the arcades. Genki racing, though not specifically arcade based (Wangan Midnight aside). They don't have the spiffiest graphics (though they aren't bad either). Their driving physics tend to 'arcade-style' as opposed to GT's more simulation-style.... though not as arcade-y as Underground. But they are just more exciting I think. Sometimes you really get some rivalries going-- just as in some more human character-based games. There'll be that one diver (often a boss) who is just a pain, and its just awesome when you squeeze out a victory over them. And the rivalries and feelings can carry over into other games. I remember seeing a boss in Shutokou Battle Zero who I'd met and raced in previous chapters, and if he had given me trouble it was like, 'okay man, let's see what you've got in your new car', because frequently the characters will upgrade between games, 'I will still leave you sucking my exhaust.'. Most racing games with a career mode (and that would be almost all of 'em) have a sort of RPG-aspect to them. You go along in your career and as you conquer opponents you get cash and can buy upgrades to your car, analagous to a character in an RPG, who defeats enemies, gets gold and buys better equipment. I guess for me, Genki racers just do this better because they put faces (or rather car stickers) and names to all your rivals, even having some come looking for you when you defeat their rivals or friends.

So yeah. I really should be getting back to finishing my racing games. As I said, I've only got a few characters left to beat for 100% completion in Racing Battle, but getting those last few to appear has been difficult. Difficult enough for me to put THAT game aside for awhile too. Racing Battle is one of the few Genki racing games that has not gotten an english version and so it is much harder to figure out and fulfill the conditions required to make all the rivals available if you don't read japanese.

On the shooter front:
I made a giant jump in progress in Lords of Thunder. Probably would've beaten it by giving it another go, but I had other stuff I had to do so conquering must wait. The game, according to internet information isn't actually that hard, but it took me awhile to come to grips it, as I posted in another 'blog entry. I did fit in completing Gleylancer though. This is an odd-duck little shooter. Great option system (options being the generic term for the little side pods that are power ups in many shooting games), and your hit box is pretty forgiving-- smaller than it might appear from the size of your ship. But the art style is strangely primitive, just sort of utilitarian with some enemy designs just sort of slapped together. Some of the choices in backgrounds are weird too. The colors chosen and the scrolling speed make some of the enemies and their bullets really difficult to see. This is mostly a game-breaking problem in the first level, so once you get past that, the visibility goes way up most of the the rest of the game. But it is still a strange game. It was fun, but compared to contemporaries like Thunder Force 3 or Gates of Thunder it is no classic. Can't complain though. You can get it for pretty cheap as a download on the Wii Virtual Console and it was an rare-ish import-only title.

There's a lot of neat little import titles appearing on the Wii shop channel. I have always been an import maniac through all the consoles I've owned, but even I couldn't find or afford all the titles I'd have liked. This service gives me a second chance. I downloaded Cho Aniki awhile back and that game was a hilarous good time. I see Gradius Gofer no Yabou on there, and when I get into a Gradius mood, I'm sure I'll get that one too.

STGs are a great pick up and play game genre. They generally only take a half hour or less to complete (Treasure mega-epics aside) if you are expert enough to get all the way through. Even if you aren't a couple good runs that get you part way to the end can be really fun (or you can credit feed to the end, but that cuts their replay value way down). The graphics may be old-school (2D) but they are often spectacular, with pulse-pounding music to go along. And their difficulty (optimistically read 'challenge') is something not often found in more modern gaming genres. Shooters are kind of the archetypical 'boss fight' genre. In short, they're kind of a potent gaming 'shot'. Good stuff for adults that just can't sit down for hours at a stretch or who may be away from their consoles for long periods and don't want to have to figure out where they left off. They also lend themselves to being a good one-player experience.

Current STGs playing: Thunder Force VI, Lords of Thunder, Mushihimesama, and Border Down.