Review: Test Drive Unlimited 2

Posted on by Forge77

I Generally like racing games , Kart games, Racing game, Sandbox games. A few years back I bought Test Drive unlimited. TDU is an open game pretty much leaving you open to do what you please in the game with a MMO’ish setup and a social side. When I heard TDU2 was going to come out I was going I WANT THE GAME NOW!

Many months later the game releases, and I loaded the game and the first 5 minutes seemed ok . Than as i got into the game  I realized the introduction was an omen of sorts. The scene where your lead out to the garage and drive a car around for 5minutes and you *wake up* only to realize that you were only dreaming.

TDU2 Is nothing like its first game,While it has familiarity with the first the game is completely different in all the wrong ways. Some of the new things are welcome. Such as random locations for the random missions as helping people out. finding the random wrecks was also a nice addition. Than things take a toll for the worse.

Licensing- In the first game they were given through progression, the more races you won and other stuff you did the licenses were given to you, In this game you have to earn them through painful tasks reminding me of gran turismo that have extremely stringent rules. When you fail a task for the whole fact that someone rear ended you that’s a little asinine. That said the game wants you to be one of the borg, Driving to your standard is  futile, You will be assimilated to driving like we say.  Those test alone are worth one thrown controller for things beyond your control. Not to mention they threw in tantulus jr in as one of the driving tests.

After you deal with the driving test you have the hope of driving to a race and being off on your own, Instead your welcomed to the solar crown or Clown which fits better. this is begining of the point where you realize TDU 2 Is taking a turn and plowing into a wall at 150MPH. You are introduced to the “drama” of the game of putting faces on the brainless AI. Each cup has a set number of races and very poor rewards. At $2000 a race and being Non-repeatable at that point makes your options very slim. Whereas TDU if you failed a race you could always go back to a race you had better luck with you could race that race till you could afford a car that would better handle, Instead you can drive around to random events that include driving a man to work that sounds like sol Rosenberg from the jerky boys, Mr i want to go fast guy, and the vomit queen. The Cup races are painfully convoluted when you can rerace them, by the tenth time you hear the voice you just turn off the volume.

The biggest problem is they separated the open game from the racing part, since you do not have to drive to the locations the whole point of getting to the race is lost. The Driving Schools are harder than the game itself, and integrating the sims is worse. Sure you can have your own personalized Avatar but it takes away from the game. Sure its nice to “walk around” but on a severely limited scale.

All the problems of the launch day and the game itself it draws down to one thing.  With the Casino add-on the only winning move for the game is not to play. Since money is so poorly dispersed its actually easier to get money at the casino by jamming a key down or using a turbo controller. TDU2 Comes down to being simcity 2000 at that point, You build up a bit by racing to the next point, than zombieing out in the casino for hours on end. The First night of playing TDU with my friend we actually went into the casino , sat down at the machines than hit the buttons hours on end while smoking cigarettes outside and BS’ing.

Atari Really needs to do something here – Even at the shortest somehow implement the original TDU 1 races… because, As i said the easiest way to play TDU is not play at all, since thats what I’ve seen about everyone i know to play the game. build up a bit- get to the casino, Than turn on a turbo controller or mash a nickel into the keyboard and goto sleep.

Of the PS3 Jailbreak and sonys reaction.

Posted on by Forge77

As you know I do talk about games… alot. Anyways, When i bought my PS3 i had intended to make use of the OtherOS feature. The only thing was when i bought my PS3 a week later They removed OtherOS.  If you have followed this little adventure, Sony originally dropped otherOS from the PS3slim and people got worried that  they would drop it from the ps3.

OtherOS on the PS3 was used to install Linux and use the system as a computer in some ways, From the Normal user perspective it would be a mostly useless thing, The only reason I say mostly useless is, that most people have a home PC and would rather use something they are more familiar with. People interaction with linux is pretty funny, even the word they cringe thinking its some sort of alien software.  The state of linux Is just a different iteration of “windows” really .. between win7/OSX/linux the interface is nearly the same now .

Before the removal of OtherOS hacking the internals for the playstation3 was minimal, when sony decided that removing otherOS was a good idea, they Officially opened Pandora’s box.  After that door was opened and removing the option hobbyist and players alike were pissed because of the loss of otherOS, but the segment of the market they did piss off was not the one they should of pissed off. Basically everyone that had this on there system looked for a way to return there system back to having the otherOS option. Geohot was the first person i payed attention to when it came to poking around in the PS3 hardware.  People originally blamed Geohot when it came to exploiting the hypervisor and the removal of OtherOS on the ps3.  The most recent development was the release of the private system key for the system pretty much fully opening Pandora’s box. With the final kick to the door with the key exploiting the system is actually a null point now. With the Key in hand people can now sign there code with the key and run software as if it was from Sony with little to no exploitation to the system. The question comes to mind.. would this key have been found without the removal of OtherOS , yes eventually , but Not as fast as it was found since the removal of it. If you follow the timeline of hacks for the PS3 virtually all hacks came AFTER the removal of OtherOS .  Now, sony is suing the two groups involved with finding the private system key, at this point Sony I think is making the wrong move.

Why, because look what happened with the bluray/HD-DVD AACS Encryption keys. the attempted DMCA take down started an explosion of attention towards the keys in question. Will this happen with the PS3? Maybe, the main problem is this Key will be harder to fix. there are a ton of problems with fixing the key or revoking said key.  If the key is revoked millions of PS3’s will have issues playing games, basically making your entire game library a minefield of if you can play it or not. Reading from Sony’s “motion for Temporary restraining order”

Knowing that the “Metldr Keys” can defeat TPMs in the PS3 System, Hotz began
using these proprietary Keys as a component of a Circumvention Device that applies SCEA
signatures to any file, effectively “tricking” the PS3 System into running unauthorized
programs.

by Using the key your not “tricking” the system, as far as the system cares its a signed file and will run it as so. Since the key is there you can run whatever you want, with that key exposed basically the keys to the castle are open and its open season on whatever someone wants to run.

Again if sony revokes said key there will be a nightmare of problems with games, there is no good way to revoke a key at this point since you would have to adapt EVERY piece of software out there to the newer key and changes to the system may create a hardware failure rate that would cost billions to the company. With Failoverflow and geohot were there intentions piracy… No, it was not , most software hardware and other devices tend to have homebrew scenes to which to run there own code on systems and find out interesting things with the hardware or make your own games. Unfortunately homebrew is often associated with piracy and homebrew is not piracy .

From here since Sony’s suing people the next step will be very interesting, Questionably – if the slashdot effect happens sony will have truly released Pandora’s box and created themselves an even bigger problem as millions of users go rogue. If they ban consoles, same effect, at this point they have backed themselves into a corner. Sony could have stayed silent about the issue and tried to fix it in the background, Either way its a long road ahead and an uncertain future with the PS3 since one of the main keys has been released. Looking at the possibilities…

The worst case scenario? Sony throws up there hands at the ps3 and shoehorns the PS4 into service with little to no upgrades and completely alienates there user base.
Another possibility, Sony finds an amicable fix that doesn’t break too many consoles but leaves older unsupported software unplayable.

Hopefully Sony finds a way to not completely screw up everyone’s game library.

well.. in the next few weeks, we will see..

The Price of Coffee and You.

Posted on by Forge77

In the last couple of years you may have noticed that a cup of coffee is not exactly cheap anymore. What used to be under $2.00$ is now over $2.50 or higher.

This is a many part problem, on the one hand you have weather and whatnot but that does not affect the longterm supplies as there is always next year and so on. On the other hand you have the stock market which is now played like the worlds largest and most expensive slot machine. In the end Both hands play together and effect you.

When a crop of coffee is destroyed and mass media picks it up they generally don’t play the news in a way that is helpful to the average person . instead they go on a just about myspace approach and say “OMG COFFEE GOT BLOWN UP ZOMG THERES NO MORE COFFEE OMG PRICES RISE!!!”  well the problem with that is its one crop in some place in the world. But, if you take the news at stock you’d be going “shit… thats going to hurt.”  Coffee is grown world wide. From the National coffee association of USA Coffee is grown in about 50 countries . In the last year coffee commodities  has have rose about 70% due to speculators looking for a pay-off with any commodity.  The problem with that is speculators tend to  buy up the coffee at unheard of rates than force the price up , the problem is that people that don’t even sell coffee have the ability to buy up coffee in the stock market, I could see if they had a limit cap on this but they don’t many other foods fall into this trap where they get bought up and sold and resold to the point of insanity.

Soon the only way to get a good cup of coffee is bleeding your self to death at a blood donation center, Giving blood is not a half bad idea but.. the price of coffee should not require you to give a damn kidney.

I’ve never liked the idea of speculators, because of the control they can assert over a market. Commodities should have some limit cap to outside buyers that have no reason to purchase coffee. to lock speculators out would be a bad thing but, limiting the damage they can do in the whole scale of things.

the reason i say limits is it makes the market much harder to game and force the prices way the fuck up .

Even dunkin donuts knows a bad thing when they see it

“Something as simple as a good cup of coffee at a fair price is under threat today because of intense pressure by hedge funds and other speculators,” said Ed O’Rourke, chief procurement officer for Dunkin’ Donuts National DCP LLC, a franchise-owned cooperative that handles purchasing and distribution to more than 6,000 Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins outletsnationwide, in a Dec. 14 letter to the CFTC.

Honestly,  it seems like the stock markets are based in fantasy as far as the “Recovery”, and speculators are NOT helping things .

Mini review: Racing games (agravations in racing games)

Posted on by Forge77

As a Semi fan of racing games I tend to pick up a racing game or a kart game now and than.  I used to pick up every need for speed game in the past but as the quality of the programming slipped into oblivion I stopped picking up those games. Need for speed was fun in the terms of you could Race your cars around Smash things and generally just play the way you wanted .. After hot pursuit 1 they tended to close alot of doors with the game.  Gone was Car editing and adding your own cars. Things really went downhill with Porsche unleashed.  Signs of bad programing and shoddy programing were starting to appear than in hot pursuit 2 it seems EA just gave up the ship and decided that shit was good enough to send out, Sure it looked like a Need for speed game but it stunk badly in ways that just piss people off to no end.

My thing with racing games is if the AI is good the game is good, with poor AI the game severely takes a hit. the AI in Hot Pursuit 2 was an abortion.  The developers seemed to never thought through the whole process and shortcutted the AI massively in some areas.  Since the game had stats at the end of each race it showed how poorly the AI was done. If you raced as an Enzo Ferrari you’d thing you’d leave a ford Fiesta in the next area code, not so much, there was a chance that fiesta would win against you – since the game once the opponent got off the mini-map would engage nothing short of the enterprises transporter and rubber band to just outside of the mini-map.  At the end of the race it would create some pretty funny statistics such as.

Enzo: top speed 202MPH – Average speed 168 MPH
Fiesta: top speed 72MPH – Average speed 142MPH

WTF? Not only has that car just broken laws of physics but it manages to do something impossible unless the car managed to actually teleport to another dimension and have Time/space/speed laws revoked, If you did not run the perfect race it would also give the computer opponent A chance to win since the AI was magically rubberbanded to behind you.  Using that kind of trick in programming a racing sim should be a HUGE NO NO. Even though that the need for speed series borders on not being a racing sim these days, More over it plays like a quarter eater you find at an arcade.

You don’t need a game that has shortcomings that affect the outcome of the game due to poor programming versus the outcome based on your driving. with the advent of consoles I know programmers are under pressure to port games to each system as fast as they can but the quality takes a tremendous hit.  The console specific games tend not to suffer as much as games that are whored around.   Most Mario karts always have a sound racing game, Gran Turismo has a sound racing game. Even Test Drive unlimited had a sound racing game since it was based around the PC than ported down to the console level, there is one exception that should be noted- burnout paradise was a “racing” game that was on every system just about without much problems but they thought round some of the issues and made the game based on fun.

As more companies take to the “Open World” concept of racing it comes to mind that the open world needs to be open. With burn-out paradise the openness just was not there, Test drive unlimited had a extremely open world but a poorly implemented system where aggravation would set in trying to find your friends in the game even though you were actually on top of there car but due to the server running multiple sessions you’d spend 20minutes trying to get into the same play area.

Originally I was going to say something about one racing game but i changed my mind to a critique rather than a one game review.

Drowning…

Posted on by Forge77

I’ve had a Crazy last couple of months and I’ve been working to save my house and Its just been one sacrifice after another and its getting to the point I’m burying myself in debt.

After having surgery and working to keep the house afloat its just been to the point where I do not know which way is up, currently my debt is shooting up past $4000 . I wish i could get myself  out of this hole and be done with it but right now my focus is trying to get the house back to normal.

Its part of the reason i’ve not really posted in the last  couple of months.  its hard enough to retain sanity trying to Stop skidding down the road and being not able to pay creditors. as much as i don’t want to I’m going to put a donation button up in the random case that someone out there can help. I just don’t know what to do anymore.





Gamestop part XXXVI

Posted on by Forge77

Shortly after i had posted about gamestops website and use of the holy computer of knowledge of video game prices.

My biggest aggravation is searching something on gamestop and than going into the store to find different prices.  If your shopping you’re not going to go to the product page to find out if the price is “Online Only Price; Not Valid in Stores.” r

Now when you search you get that. personally they should have both store and online prices to sort out confusion overprices. I don’t feel that you should have the same ethic of actually understanding the Dow Jones Industrials just to get a fucking game price.


More stuff.

Posted on by Forge77

Small updates for now due to my arm being messed up.  Just trying to get my page set up for easier reading. Its not exactly finished so i’ll keep tinkering till I’m happy with the setup