[Link removed - login to see]I grew up in the golden era of PC Gaming - the DOS years of late 80s & early 90s - so I'm very familiar with this series' roots. But despite its concept early on, with add-on packs of different cars to test drive, the series never flourished, and was nothing more than second (or third) fiddle to the hugely popular Need for Speed series. The closest the game actually felt like a test drive was the first Off-Road spin-off series, with a large selection of trucks & SUVs, and wide-open terrain to explore, and the buggy but ambitious Test Drive III.

And now comes Test Drive Unlimited, released a few years back for the Xbox360 and then on the PC. It is the latest (and perhaps the last, given Atari's financial woes) of this long running series of driving/racing simulators. And man, what a ride it is!

Unlike the disaster of a PC racer that is [Link removed - login to see], TDU developers took a lot of effort to make this PC game much more than a worthless port. For starters, not only are steering & pedals well supported and setup, driving with a wheel feels very realistic and is a pure blast. And OMG, mouse-driven menus in a console port! Unheard of! :)

You start the game with $200,000 and a ticket to Hawaii. Upon your arrival, you choose a rental car, choose a house (which acts as a hub for your stats and multi-car garage for the cars you purchase along the way), and go to various dealership to test drive and pick your first ride. I started off with a sexy Audi TT Coupe, bright red.

And now the beauty of the game. It's open-ended, and the world is massive (complete island of Olahu, to be exact). And driving 15 miles actually feels like driving 15 miles. And on a high-end system, you crank out all graphics and turn on HDR and you've got a stunning looking world to explore. Various races are held throughout the island, as well as several missions (courier, hitch-hikers, etc..) are you chances to rack up money. You can sell your cars, collect them, but other than paint jobs and rims, you won't find Grand Turismo or Need for Speed Underground level of tuning. This isn't pimp my ride - this is test drive the world's most beautiful exotic cars (although several dozen cars from all dealership, from GM, Nissan, Audi, Cadillac and many others, are available - its not strictly supercar city). Damage however is non-existant, except for fact more cars you hit, the more the cops will be out after you with a hefty fine (racked up a $20,000 fine after evading the cops for half hour, passing numerous road blocks, and trying to hide from them. Man, that was a riot :)

And let's not forget about the music and sounds. Every car is perfectly re-created, not just in details, dashboard and instruments, but also by engine sound. And if you turn on the radio, you'll notice the game comes loaded with a killer list of tracks (although its easy to link to your mp3 folder for a personal radio station.)

I haven't had this much fun in a driving/racing game in ages. I mean, if racing is your thing, there's so many to choose from on the massive island (and even more if you choose to race online, where everyone else is driving around the island in real-time, waiting for challenges). And if you just want to drive around a beautiful island, in a lambo with the top down, soaking in the rays, you can do so as well, for hours at a time without seeing the same scenery. This game truly is unlimited.

Gameplay: [Link removed - login to see]

The only drawbacks some may see is lack of customization of your cars (which in all honestly, go play NFS: Underground or something similar, if that's your thing). Also even though handling of the car is quite accurate, physics and damage model are not (the car never seems to be affected by damage, and everything except for street signs is totally rigid and indestructible). The lack of any pedestrians is also a bit weird, especially after being used to moving down people in GTA. ;) But I'm sure to model up all the buildings, every tree and shrub, and have tons of dynamic traffic around, it was probably deemed unnecessary to include pedestrians, as it would just kill system requirements needlessly.

Presentation (graphics, framerates, level design): 10/10
Gameplay (controls, interface, game mechanics): 9/10
Sound (sound FX, music, voice acting): 10/10
Personal slant (fun factor, nostalgia): 8/10
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Overall: 9.3 / 10

[Link removed - login to see]DiRT, the next gen installment of the long-running Colin McRae series of off-road/rally games, is getting some good reviews on the net, and being a rally racing fan, I was excited to finally get my hands on this title. Unfortunately, the excitement ended very quickly.

Let me say the few pros of this game before I bash it senseless. For starters, this is a beautiful game, and it gave me great framerates at full resolution. It's probably one of the finest looking racing games to come out on the PC to date. And that's all the praise this lemon is getting.

The Joys of Installing: As seems to be the current trend, games are released so buggy they need a patch before you can even run them, and DiRT is no exception to that. In fact, had to get 2 patches before my steering wheel & pedals would even be recognized in this driving game. Its not like my hardware is obscure - it's a Logitech Formula GP.

Interface: The game's menu and navigation make this title feel like a sloppy port. Mouse is not recognized, so I have to resort to bashing the arrows keys, Enter and Esc a dozen times to get anything done. Even when its saving progress and settings, the game keeps telling me not to turn off my PC. Yes, that's just what I was going to do. Turn off my PC and lose data on my memory card. *roll eyes*

Racing & Driving: Now for the painful part. I do not believe that Codemasters have spent more than 3 hours tops programming in support for a steering wheel. I turn the wheel, and car responds two seconds later. Sure comes in handy flying thru narrow paths at over 100mph. Oh but it doesnt really matter anyways, because the car just bounces off scenery like its made of rubber, and you can honestly drive with pedal to the metal, make a hard turn, and your car flies thru a narrow tight turn like its on an invisible set of train tracks. Thats the whole game. Keep pedal buried, turn wheel sharply. Of course, that wheel delay simple kills you. But if you turn off wheel & pedals and go back to keyboard setting, steering is flawless, instant, and you just keep gas buried and fly thru all the turns, and you will move up the elegant career mode because you'll be winning every race like that.

I want a real racing game though, so I didnt give up. I went to Google and searched up anything I could to improve DiRT. And it turns out I'm not the only one. In fact, everyone with a steering wheel & pedals finds the game hopeless. There's one custom patch that made the grip more realistic, and it helps as it no longer feels like you're on rails, but since you're now actually sliding around and fishtailing and fighting for control of the car (the way a real racing game should be), and you still have that nice 2 second delay to your wheel, you'll find yourself alway in last place, a full minute or more behind all computer car times. So much for career mode.

But since this is the only recent rally game for the PC, I had to give it one more chance. Maybe me (and everyone else) on racing forums were wrong. Maybe it's just been a while since I played a racing game with my wheel on my PC (probably has been 6 months at least), so I fired up Richard Burns Rally, and was in heaven once more. Every single twitch of the wheel is recognized, you can pull awesome moves, and the game honestly feels like you are really driving. And I noticed something else in that game - the sense of speed. In Richard Burns game, you can feel the speed. I loaded up DiRT, and noticed the difference. Going 50km/h or 100km/h or 150 km/h, its such a minor change. Its almost like your speedometer and the rate the scenery flies by you are on two seperate clocks. You go 150km/h in RBRally down a narrow forest track, you're crappin' yourself. You do the same in DiRT, and you can look around and enjoy the scenery and call your wife on your cell phone and maybe flip thru your CD collection. It doesnt have the sense of speed whatsoever.

The Final Verdict: It's a pretty game, but it's nothing more than a keyboard-driven arcade racing game. And if using a steering wheel in a racing game feels worse than using a keyboard, there's a major problem. It may be a fun game on consoles, but PC racing fans should avoid this at all cost.

Presentation (graphics, framerates, level design): 8/10
Gameplay (controls, interface, game mechanics): 1/10
Sound (sound FX, music, voice acting): 3/10
Personal slant (fun factor, nostalgia): 1/10
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Overall: 3.3 / 10

This movie was great!.... when I saw it 4 years ago, as a Canadian-made film called [Link removed - login to see].

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That's Hollywood for ya - no more original ideas left. They had to steal all Canadian actors, now they're stealing our movies too. And some IMDB reviews are calling it 'fresh and original'. *sigh*

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Being a mario fan for life, I knew I was going to have to get Sunshine for my Gamecube, despite some of the poor reviews I read. And to be honest, at first, I tried it for about 20 minutes and was rather disappointed. The water canon / water jet pack was too strange and too different, and I think the issue I had was that Mario seemed to do 90% squirting and 10% jumping in this game. That's not the Mario I know and love. First impressions, I probably would've given it a 4 or 5 out of 10, and was even contemplating trading the game in at a pawn shop.

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After it sat on my shelf for 6 months untouched while I was having fun with Paper Mario, Zelda Wind Waker, Mario Party series, Mario Tennis and Mario Kart, I finally decided to give Sunshine a second chance this past week, and I'm actually hooked. What's odd is that levels are scattered all over the place and there is no set path you must take, but each level is actually very nicely made and very creative, and there is a lot more jumping and other tricks Mario has to do than just using his water pack. But once you get over the initial 'WTF is this?' feeling when loading the game for the first time, you will find a very addictive 3d platformer.

Inspiration for Super Mario Galaxy?


For the negatives, there are a few issues I find rather frustrating. First, the way the characters talk, with the arcs of blue ribbons, is ugly as sin. It almost makes me not want to interact with all the townsfolk. They should've just stuck to Paper Mario style bubbles. Second, the camera is a major pain in the arse, often rotating when you don't want it to rotate, clipping behind buildings or mountains, or not rotating in one direction at all because 'something' is in the way. Third, Mario is known for cool unique power-ups, and despite some variety in enemies and ways to defeated them, so far everything is either water nozzle or jump. Where's the Fire Flower? Where's the raccoon tail? Frog Suit? man, give me something different. Maybe it comes later in the game, but after bout 5 or 6 episodes, I'm starting to lose hope in new cool power-ups.

Trailer:

The final verdict: if you love Mario, and have a Gamecube, its a must-have title, though definitely not his finest game.

Presentation (graphics, framerates, level design): 9/10
Gameplay (controls, interface, game mechanics): 6/10
Sound (sound FX, music, voice acting): 6/10
Personal (fun factor, nostalgia, personal slant): 9/10
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Overall: 7.5 / 10