zerolight

I’ve barely used my DS Lite over the past few months. This is mostly because I’m rarely away from home on business these days, so have no need for hotel room entertainment. However, I dug it out the closet to sample some DS games that I’d previously overlooked – I thought they were quirky. I’m currently enjoying, and can highly recommend, the following: Elite Beat Agents, Kirby: Canvas Curse (aka Kirby: Magic Paintbrush), and Mario vs DK2: March of the Minis.

I also gave the Jap Import version of the new Zelda DS game a whirl. Whilst it’s nearly unplayable since all the text is in Japanese, it’s a thoroughly wonderful little game, and I look forward to a Western release.

I was bidding on an absolutely stunning little Mini for a while in Forza 2’s virtual equivalent of eBay until the price went beyond my means, ditto on a 350z that was bonkersly pretty. Then along came a nice little Mini, which granted, isn’t as pretty as the one I was after, but I got it for a song whilst everyone else was chasing the other 2. Not long afterwards I found the more expensive (but still affordable) Dragon Ball Z Skyline. I’ve added all my upgrades and car setups to each and taken snap shots on Tsukuba. Check out more of my cars here.

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As a big fan of Stussy T-shirts (I have many) I decided to try my hand at a custom paint job using Stussy’s Arc Skull design as a base. I’m pretty happy with the result, which I think is a fairly accurate representation of the Arc Skull design. It can’t compete with the Japanese Anime inspired cars I bought from the auction house, and as such isn’t something I’m going to be able to sell – I’ve tried. However, given my love of all things Stussy, it’s an appropriate design to apply to my own cars.

So I’ve had the weekend to get the single player experience under my belt… it’s very very good. Not sure what planet IGN were on. I’ve focused on the offline career mode because it’s unusual for me to have so much 360 time these days, certainly won’t as of Monday, and so figured I’d get some cars bought, modded, and tuned, ready to race the lickers – some of whom will have plenty time to quickly amass a garage far bigger than mine.

Offline, some of the races are challenging, others a bit easy. Depends on the race restrictions really. Often, you just cruise off into the distance and chase lap records. But them, I bought this for the long term online prospects. I’ve been playing medium difficulty, all aids off, full sim damage.

A modded car has radically improved braking, better cornering, and more stability than those cars available in the demo. Those of you worried about driving without aids, don’t worry. It’s also easy to setup a car… I usually just shorten the gear ratios, tweak the rear anti-roll bar (especially in a FWD car), and soften the tires. Works for me, most of the time anyway.

It initially takes time to earn money, especially since your “prize cars” are worthless. You can’t even get rid of them in the auction house, as all regions get the same prize cars, so nobody wants them. Thankfully, some of them are worth keeping. Tip: Take care what you buy in the auction house, as I say, it’s full of “prize cars”… I have two Sparco Evo VIII’s after winning one.

Quickly you’ll amass cars… I have at least 6 tuned to perfection, and another dozen in prize cars waiting for mods. Once up at level 10 or so and things start to open up bit… races worth more money come thick and fast.

Graphically, most of the tracks are excellent, with Suzuka being particularly gorgeous. All are excellent to race on, as are their many variations which create numerous Tsukuba length tracks. The only weak track in the game is NYC. All have great draw distances by the way, even Silverstone. Jaggies aren’t as bad as the demo, and certainly nowhere near as intrusive as IGN would have you believe.

My favoured cars thus far are my tuned A class Gallardo, B class Impreza, A class Sparco Evo, and D class Mini Cooper S. Infact the Mini is better than anything I’ve built in C class, so I’ve just made a second Mini specifically for C.

Audio is especially impressive… the noise these cars make when modded can only be described as awesome. Modify your car, and the audio changes with each addition.

All in all, best racer ever. No question.

I’ve had the PS3 a little while now and find that there’s a few simple things that I hope Sony will integrate into the OS. Sure, it could have a better online service, and better integration of your friends list into games, and better use of voice chat, and all the other things we’ve come to love about the 360. But none of those are as important to me as the following.

1. Independent resolutions for the Dashboard, Gaming, and Blu-Ray playback. I’d like to be able to set my Dashboard and Gaming to 720p, and Blu-Ray movie playback to 1080i. Developers can already force games to 720p regardless of dashboard resolution, so why not just expand the options and make them available to the user. This would be great because…

2. What’s the point of setting up the audio formats your AV amp supports only to have Blu Ray movies default to plain old DD 5.1 (640kps bitrate)? Should I really have to go into the options menu of my Casino Royale disc in order to enable uncompressed 5.1 surround (4.6Mbps bitrate)? How about making the PS3 a bit more intelligent – isn’t that Cell processor meant to be a super computer ? Let me choose my preferred audio and video options, then actually use them.

3. Let me stream movies from my Mac. In any format. And while your at it Mr Sony, let me also stream MP3s and Photos.

There’s a new 720p gameplay movie of Forza 2 now available at forzamotorsport.net and it’s looking lovely, featuring R class cars on Mugello. Check it out. Only a month to go! There’s also a tiny little Enzo based video clip here.