Went for a blast around Paris

Well, that is yesterday I bought an Xbox that came with Midtown Madness 3...
so I've been having great fun stomping around Paris smashing things up.
It's great, you can mow down pedestrians, smash up other cars, ram raid
(some) buildings, etc.
120mph along the Champ Elysee (sp?) then pulling a handbrake turn at the end
was a hoot
Well recommended.
No sign of any m'bikes though, R1's or otherwise :-/

 

That's what's about the only thing missing from Project Gotham Racing 2..
the ability to demolish things/people/pets.

That and the _slightly_ unrealstic damage model where you can hit things at
120 and only break a headlight [1]





[1] why is it that car manufacturers won't allow computer games to blow up
their products?

 

Because they look bad.

 

Yeah but why? They allow movies to blow them up... why not computer games?

 

This would actually be a great way of getting customer feedback - embed a
little bit of spyware in the game and the customers' favourite "victim car"
can be fed back directly to the manufacturers. With a little bit of social
profiling to determine the background of the gamer, we could get
confirmation that motorcyclists really hate, loathe and detest Volvo drivers

 

Dunno. Nor do I know why they're perfectly happy for you to smash their
rally/F1 cars up. Okay, it's in the nature of the sport perhaps but still...

 

still...

True... driving a rally car into a rock at 120 in Colin McRae does indeed
have much more impressive results...

 

In MM3 you can knock the bejaysus out of most things, from pedestrians and
pavement furniture to cars and buildings. You can knock down road signs,
belt pavement tables up the road, etc. The driving environment is pretty
realistic too for the most part, the shops n that under the Eiffel Tower
look pretty much as I remember them, though I must admit that I couldn't
find the drive in entrance to the Watergate in DC; I haven't yet been able
to find the Louvre and go see if I can smash that stupid glass pyramid, but
then I always get well lost in Paris anyway

Hitting trees is weird, cos you either pass through them without so much as
a blip or they stop you dead in your tracks. Police cars are also odd, even
when driving the nearly indestructable dustcart it seems to be impossible to
roll them onto their roof like you can do to other cars. You can of course
inflict so much damage to the police cars that they can't chase you anymore,
though the cops in them still hail you with crap like "driver get out of
your vehicle" or "you're going nowhere" (when clearly you are <g>). With
the dustcart in particular you can actually destroy all of the police cars
in town, which is a laugh (this is in "cruise mode", the game has a zillion
ways to play it).

Another odd thing is the way the pedestrians behave. If you drive straight
for them then they leg it, trying to get out of the way, but once you've pas
sed them by they just carry on as if nothing had happened. Oh, and when you
do squish one it's not terribly satisfying, you don't exactly start flinging
body parts down the street or anything.

But non of this really impairs the game play, it's still a good lark
blasting around Paris or Washington DC.

There's different ways to play as I said, you can just go for a cruise (and
can control the various weather conditions, pedestrian, police, and car
density, set the season and the time of day, there's also a range of cars to
choose from), or you can do "undercover work", or race other cars... at the
end of the day except for the cruising it's all car racing.

It's good fun but I can't seem to beat the other racers yet, I always come
last, I'm wondering if investing in an add-on steering wheel and pedals
might not be a bad idea, cos car racing with a little controller wot not is
hardly intuitive or delicate on the controls IYSWIM.

Not tried Project Gotham myself, but I can recommend MM3 as a bit of a laugh

Ah now, in MM3 when you hit stuff your car slowly but surely falls to bits
and starts smoking in bad ways etc, not as quickly as it does in GTA3 but
then that's just as well else I'd have totalled my cars within the first ten
minutes

Currently playing GTA3, which is proving quite fun. Having trouble
"borrowing a cab" though (note: I am most definitely *not* a whizz at
computer games).

Can you (or anyone) recommend any other games for the Xbox? Especially
non-fighting adventure / puzzle solving ones that I can play along with the
missus (we had great fun with Discworld 2 on the PS/1).

Oh, and I'm now due to collect my PS/2 on Monday... I had a blatt with Eye
Toy in the shop, that was great fun... anyone got any other recommendations
for the PS/2? (I'm deffo after a copy of The Getaway).

TIA.

 

Depends what you like. Fighting games are good fun if you are your SO have
disagreements (though mine sometimes gets confused between the screen and
me)...

But generally I prefer sport/flight orientated games...
MotoGP2 ,
Links Golf 2004 (which has online play),
Tiger Woods Golf 2004 (which does not have online play but is pretty much
better then Links for everything else)..
Secret Weapons over Normandy...
Crimson Skies...

But on the whole I have an X-Box that doesn't get that much use :|

You could try the offical X-Box magazine - it's stupidly expensive at £6,
but you do get a demo disk with it.

 

Not being into computer games, would you care to explain why, having
bought
an XBox yesterday, you are getting a PS/2 on Monday?
Surely they're pretty much the same, or is it that the range of games
varies widely between them? Just curious, is all.

 

The simpsons Hit and Run is good fun. A bit like GTA:Vice city but not as
detailed.
XIII is a very nice change from the usual First Person Shooter.
I quite like Gauntlet : Dark Legacy as well but none of them are really what
you are after.
--
Alex

Sig missing , presumed formatted

FAQ for u.p.c.e.
www.upce.org.uk

 

Oh, yeah, me and computer games don't get along all that often either.
Personally I go through patches where I *really* want to play them, then the
rest (most) of the time I simply can't be arsed.

But the consoles are so dirt cheap these days (more so for my forthcoming
PS/2 cos my mate's flogging me his for £50) and I was getting a bit bored so
I thought feck-it, why not?

As for the games, yeah, they're probably much of a muchness, dunno for sure
but hey, for an extra fifty of your Earth squibblies who GAF. Oh, and I
deffo want to play Eye Toy and The Getaway (hence the PS/2)

 

Eye-toy.
Ratchet and Clank
GTA Vice City.
Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid II.

Enjoy!