Quote:Oh no, you can jump far in BAR!! GASP!!! BAR was made by the NFS developers, btw.
Makes sense. The racing and tracks (especially the first one) felt very NFS-ish. And as I said it's not just the lack of gravity! More importantly it's the huge number of big shortcuts all over the place.
Quote:2049 has somewhat non-shitty controls, but the previous two have cars that control like mobile homes.
All three have a wide variety of cars. 2 has a lot of cars (well if you unlock them) that have widely varied control styles. 2049 has similar cars but a huge amount of customization that matters a lot to how the car handles... 2 does handle worse than 2049, that is true, but one of the cars (I forget which) is pretty close.
Quote:Haha, that is the lamest thing I've heard since... since your last post! It's the "safest" game because it has a higher average score?? Hahaha... man you are dumb.
I've said it many times before, including there, and I'll say it again. Rush is a love or hate game, I suspect. When you look at those scores it's blindingly obvious. No game that everyone sees as good will get both 50% and 99% scores! BAR has consistently high scores. Rush is all over the board. That's a sign that Rush is a game that if you get you get but if you don't you could really dislike... and playing it I can kinda understand that. Now why BAR doesn't have any of those low scores? I'm not sure. Because it uses normal cars? I think that's part of it. And the speed... I'd say that the game design is more something anyone could like while Rush has a very unique physics environment that turns off some people. BAR has nice safe NFS-with-low-gravity.
BAR is a lot of fun, and I'd never say it's bad game (I'd give it a solid B probably, at least), but it's not as good as Rush.
Oh... on a somewhat related subject. Where was I today? Well I went to the mall... spent $97 on videogames. And for that I got six games... Beyond Good & Evil ($20) and Rayman 3 ($10) for PC, Goemon's Great Adventure used (loose cart) (when I saw it I could not pass it up!) for N64 for $15, Gradius Galaxies ($10) and Lunar Legend ($18) used (loose carts) for GBA, and the relevant game for here --- XGRA for Gamecube for $20. :)
Oh I'd put this in one of the XG threads I know we have, but I can't find them. ... there I found it and posted the review there too! Feel free to ignore it in this thread if you wish.
Okay, here's a review of XGRA, based on several hours of gameplay! Why? Because I want to! :) When Weltall says he fixed the review system I'll post this there too. Actually this probably should be in a new thread because I just spent over half an hour writing this and I want people to actually read it... :) It could be better but for now it's solid I think.
I know i just got it tonight, but i've put a few hours into it. Very fun game. Way too easy (I'm already like a third of the way through! It takes a little while to get used to but within a few races you'll have gotten it down and then it becomes simple to do very well. Other than the rare hard race the main challenge is achieving the optional team goal --- some of which are hard.), and simplistic, but very fun... the game is a major improvement over XG3. Oh, and as I suspected it is like XG3 with some XG2 added to make it better... great! Now there is a lot of customization. the 'sports network' theme is pretty cool too. Oh, it has 14 tracks in 7 environments... nice variety. And the tracks are very nice. Much better than XG3... XG3 had okay tracks but they felt, as I've said, sterile -- you never interacted with the environments and spent the whole time on the narrow tracks. Now there are parts on the ground, and the track surfaces vary. You'd be surprised how big a difference that makes... oh, and the tracks have WAY more splitting. Most all tracks (maybe all) have split sections, different routes, etc... makes for a much, much more interesting race. Oh, and there is a weather-effect version of each track too... like the desert track in a sandstorm. Pretty cool. XG3 had big, nice tracks but the road surface was always the same and you never actually interacted with the world, not even driving on it! And there was a noticable lack of splitting and multiple routes. These tracks are a huge improvement. They are also narrower... again, more like XG2...
The game is, as advertised, slower than XG3. But that's a good thing, It also, as they said, greatly improved the weapons system. In XG3 you bought weapons and switched beween them inrace. Now, you have two triggers, like XG1 and 2. There is a main weapon -- which varies depending on which team you are (more on that later) -- and the secondary weapon system which for the best explanation I'll say Gradius. There are power ups scattered on the track. Like Gradius, each time you get a powerup it moves to the next box on the list on top of the screen. And like Gradius when you're at the weapon or powerup you want you press select to activate the weapon. Then, pressing that button again will fire it if it's a weapon... the secondary weapons include returning things like the Leech, speed boost, and mines (the main weapons are a machinegun, lightning gun that bounces, grenade launcher, rockets, etc) and a sidecannon, but there are new ones like a nuke bomb, options to fill up your weapons or shields (more on THAT later too), and the Deathstrike. Oh, the Deathstrike, as the reviews say, is a problem. I did just get it but I can fully see how it unbalances the game. It's the last powerup so it takes a few to get to but once you get it you can target someone and have them instantly killed. It makes most all the powerups before it not that useful... and is just too strong. Not that great for a games that is already too easy...
On to the drivers. There are 8 drivers. There are also 8 teams. There are 3 different bikes. Each team uses one of the three bikes -- the team comes with the bike. You choose the rider seperately. Each rider is rated in three categories but honestly I'm not sure what they do... you can't change riders in campaign mode and in Arcade you don't choose a rider. I assume it affects how you race somehow, though. :) The teams and bikes are more clear. You get periodic opportunities to change teams, and as you beat better speed classes their stats get better... faster, more powerful, etc. Each team has its own stats in 5 categories and uses one of the three bikes (and has a different main gun), each of which is a bit different, so the teams each are nicely different. Also, there are three bike control options you can vary -- the height of the bike, braking, and one other, that let you change how you brake and turn greatly so that it's the way you like it most. Very nice addition. They did remove the shop, however... now you get upgrades by succeeding in challenges your team gives you in races.
The racing itsself clearly takes XG3 as a base. Then it slows it down, adds a completely different weapon system, and changes the powerups. First, you don't have boosts. There is an accelerator special weapon, but it isn't a boost it just raises your top speed for a little while. And it is used like other weapons so you'd use it at the expense of secondary weapons... however they make up for that by having a LOT of boost strips on the tracks. Now the tracks are littered in rows of boost arrows. So you don't exactly go slowly. :) The other huge, huge change is healing. There are NO, I repeat NO, health or weapon power recharge strips! This is a huge change for this subgenre... those are almost a required feature in futuristic racers. Well they're gone. First, your shields and weapon power auto-regenerate, and depending on your choice of team it can be quite fast. So just wait and it'll fill back up. Second, falling off the track draws a respawn and not instant death like XG3. And third, the weapon system has options in it to instant-fill your shields and weapon power.
This change really changes the dynamic of the game from XG3. In XG3 to fill up your shields and weapon energy you had to sit on the heal strips... on fast speeds stopping was almost needed to get full. Slows you down a lot. Now you have regeneration and you can heal yourself with the weapon orbs. It really speeds up the game. It also makes it harder to die, or to kill people -- I haven't had my bike blow up yet and I've only killed a couple of people. They too have regeneration... of course the Deathstrike 'solves' that problem, but that isn't the best solution I think... you just need to not choose the team with the mortar. It's really hard to hit people with... :) But even with the lightning you need to hit fast because they regenerate -- you can't wait a long time between hits like you could in previous games. It makes you have to hit harder and then you hit the time limit between shots... you can't just fire constantly. I think it works pretty well overall... you shoot a lot and can kill cars. The weapon system is a lot better and the racing as a result is a lot more interesting... the tracks aid this too of course. They are well designed. But the end result is that despite the speed drop the game is probably more fun than XG3.
Oh, almost forgot to expand on the goals. First, it's broken into speed classes. In each one you have a set of challenges. Each challenge is usually 3 tracks long and there are up to 6 on a speedclass... the intro class has just one challenge but the game really starts with Subsonic, with 6 challenges. Each challenge has a three tracks and one of a variety of rule sets. These include Normal Racing, one that is just one lap, one that is longer than normal (3 laps, for the class I'm in), Warmonger where there are turrets on the track shooting at you and you get points (the game keeps a leaderboard style, like F-Zero and XG2 or 3) for kills, Pure Racing (no weapons), Extreme Weather, etc. So the main goal is winning so you have enough points to beat the challenge and the speedclass. But you also have team goals. In each race your team will give you a mission goal. These vary from 'Beat Rider X' to 'Beat 4 riders', 'destroy 2 riders' (a hard one early on), or 'destroy 4 signs for team X' (this one's interesting. You have to shoot and blow up signs that are above the track for the team in question... there will be red markers on them to show they are the ones you must blow up but it can be hard if you aren't on the right paths of the track...), and some others. If you succeed, you'll get rewards -- weapons, upgrades for your bike (this is how you get them now, instead of buying them like XG3), unlocked features... but if you fail? You just won't get them. You are allowed to fail these and progress through the game, unlocking those things will just take longer. This makes the game even easier. I regularly fail. If it made you succeed these, the game would be significantly harder...
In conclusion, XGRA is a good game. I haven't beaten it so I don't know exactly how long it is but once I got used to it and found a bike balance (garage settings) that I liked it became easy... I win most of the races now. I just moved up a class, but it's not a huge amount harder... the game might have twice as many races as XG3 but unfortunately despite many features it borrowed from XG2 difficulty was not one of them. The speedclasses are Introductionary, Subsonic, Sonic, Supersonic, and Ultrasonic... I've already beaten Subsonic. And it wasn't hard... the point requirement was mild. I didn't need to win anywhere near all the races and easily qualified. And since it's circuits you don't have to redo tracks much... you can save after every track but I haven't done that because I haven't had to redo a track yet. And it autosaves after you complete a challenge. So the game won't take long, but if you like futuristic racing games you'll have fun nonetheless.
![[Image: ridgeracervarcade.jpg]](http://www.manjiro.com/images/ridgeracervarcade.jpg)
