Colin McRae: Dirt 2 – Game Review

Haven’t played the original Dirt yet? You haven’t experienced the raw joy of winning the Le Mans in Grid? THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! You have another chance now so don’t screw it up! Dirt 2 brings the excitement of rally fun with the great gameplay of Grid and makes one hell of a racer.

What’s back from the original? Pretty much just the style of the game. A few weak points from the original was it’s lack of enthusiasm in the actual rallying. It got you into the race, did the track notes and the course maps great, but if you weren’t racing, you weren’t doing anything. Really, don’t get me wrong I loved Dirt, but this new title just does everything right.

What’s new in Dirt 2?

The addition of a cast of real Rally drivers from the likes of Ken Block (as you can see blasted on the cover poster), Dave Mirra, Travis Pastrana, and many others that you can befriend throughout the game and partner up with.

Profiles can be filled in with your name (if you’re lucky and have a simple name) so that the rally stars can call you by your name during the menu selections and races. It’s a cool addition compared to Grid when they only used nicknames (which you can still do if your name isn’t listed..)

Menu selection has become surprisingly realistic. Again like Grid, the menus move to certain areas depending on what you choose. For Dirt 2 you move between the outside section, littered with your fans, your car, and the Rally set up and inside of your trailer, where you can choose to play the dirt tour, multiplayer or check the options. Dirt Tour is shown off a world map and lets you choose which region you’ll be racing in as well of which course type you want to play.

Great music plays during the menu selection screens as well as after you win your races, getting you nice and pumped for the next race. Music like “Little Sister” by Queens of the Stone Age, “To Lose My Life” by White Lies, and others.

There are a few different game types including rally, rally cross, trailblazer, land rush, last man standing, gate crasher and throwdowns, and raid.

Rally: This game type follows the generic time trial with the track notes for when turns are coming up and what speed you should be going to make it. You can choose who you want to read the notes (between some chick and some guy) and how detailed they are about them. I actually love how they react when I suddenly decide to do a barrel roll in the car and hear them continue to read the notes.

Rally Cross:  The main attraction of the Dirt series,  lets you race against the many legends in the game and share some paint with them.

Trailblazer (my favorite of them all): A mix between a time trial and a normal race. Each racer starts at a certain interval after the racer before them and is timed throughout. The racer with the fastest lap time wins and it’s just amazing for those speed junkies who like knowing that their doing good when they overtake another racer who started a few seconds ahead of them.

Land Rush: A little bit like King of the Hill. The racers follow two laps on a course that’s been breaken up into five sections. Depending on the time each racer passes a sector they are given a place. First place offers 10 points, second place offers 8 points, etc. During the second lap, racers can either hold on to their respected position on that sector or dominate a section and win first place. Racer with the most points wins.

Last Man Standing: As the name says, you need to be the last racer still on the course. Staying out of last place is the goal as every 20 seconds a new racer is eliminated. Stay infront and stay victorious.

Gate Crasher: This fun, mini-game of sorts, is great for learning the turns of each course as well as just being enjoyable to play. The gates are placed throughout the twists and turns and you must drive your car through them to break it. Each break adds +2 seconds to your time and the racer with the most time wins.

Throwdowns: Seems like someone’s been winning their races and the pros have noticed. In certain regions, the pros of the rally world will challenge you to a one-on-one in their specific specialties. Winning means earning some respect and a new life long friend.

Raid: It’s like the Rally Cross of the truck world. Everyone gets their own gigantic truck (or tank if you’re using the Hummers) and races with the full force of the beasts. Pretty entertaining to see the pick-up trucks going sideways.

Each new race is unlocked on your map and lets the player travel to such hotspots as London (Battersea Power Station), Morocco, China, Japan (Shibuya), United States (Los Angeles, Baja, and Utah) and Malaysia. Each offering up a unique experience to get your car dirty.

Now lets talk about the beautiful cars the player gets to choose from.

- Subaru Impreza WRX STi n14 (Best for Rally/Rally Cross.)
- Subaru Impreza WRX STi n12
- Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX
- Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X (Great for Gate Crasher.)
- Mitsubishi Eclipse GT (Love this car for Trailblazer.)
- BMW M4 Coupe Motorsport
- Pontiac Solstice GXP
- Nissan 350z
- Colin McRae R4
- Hummer HX
- Toyota FJ Cruiser
- Mitsubishi Racing Lancer
- Chevrolet Silverado CK-1500
- Honda Ridgeline Trophy Truck
- Dodge Ram Trophy Truck

As well as a few more cars, trucks, and unlockables. Each car will have to be bought (besides your initial Impreza, driven by Colin McRae. RIP.) and will needed to be upgraded depending on what race it will be used in. Each new rank (Rookie, Pro, All-Star) will also add on upgrades to make your car fast enough to hang with the big boys. You’ll even get to outfit your cars with windshield and dashboard toys. My personal favorite is the 360 Avatar that hangs by it’s leg and dangles around as you make your turns. Finally a good use for them!

All those races won’t just count for your paychecks, as a new level up system has been added to the game. Each new level unlocks a new race and large milestones may unlock a new country to visit or one of the bigger events like the X-Games or World Tours. Depending on what difficulty you put it on, ranging from easy to hardcore, you’ll earn some extra green and may have more of a challenge. The difficulty also determines how many instant replay saves you get.

Multiplayer also gets some love with the level up system as you race in pro mode or just fool around in the unranked races. (Sort of like Call of Duty or Halo..which is a nice add on for people who want to achieve something.) The multiplayer is well rounded and fair, but I’ve seen some weird things happening while racing. Cars would start floating as they race down the track and sometimes disappear. Hopefully a patch can fix it, even though it never effected the races badly. Along with the multiplayer races are the tournaments in which a certain task must be accomplished. This week for example is a time trial on Battlesea Power Station. Everyone is ranked by the leaderboard and thrown into ranks such as 1st, 2nd, top 10%, top 100%, and earn points to up their multiplayer rank.

Any problems with Dirt 2?

Just a few that seem like they could have been added on quickly.

My first problem is the lack of cars. It was a similar problem in Grid but both games have such great gameplay that it feels like a minor trade off. Also I really can’t think of another car that would qualify under the Rally flag besides just the older Evo generations and maybe the Dodge SRT.

My second problem involves that wonderful instant replay that Codemasters has created. We can see the new trend of being able to record and even edit (thanks Uncharted 2 <3 you sex ps3 exclusive I’ll end up having to waste money on) in game clips for such purposes at Machinima movies and just showing off. But, those great gods that have given us lowly mortals such a fantastic racer…didn’t even give us the option to record our crazy stunts! Instead I get to rewatch my own performance..and share it with no one! That great barrel roll I landed a mile away from the finish line will never be seen because of this! Unbelievable Codemasters! I expect more from you!

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Rating: Must Play!

You get a great experience out of this game that I never really see in racing games before them (I’m talking about you Need for Speed!) I’d like to see how this game is going to compare to NFS: Shift even though they’re two different racing styles. Maybe EA has actually remembered that racing isn’t about pimping your car. :3

District 9 - Movie Review

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(This following blog post is written in a personal perspective view, it is fan made to be like as if I am in the world of the movie, but I am still living in the same area as a college student.)

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Web Log Entry #0146

Title: Regarding the District 9 Situation

Time: Friday April 11, 2010 10:03 P.M.

Well, the aliens were around ever since I can remember. I was born about 5 years after they crash landed at Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982. My dad told me about how the whole world literally stopped what they were doing and focused all their attention on the  massive spaceship which was just simply hovering over the city like God finally came to Earth.

Its pretty interesting to be in the first generation of children to encounter aliens because we tend to feel a bit more comfort-able then our parents do. We been living on Earth with the aliens all our lives that we just saw it as a natural occurrence. As me and my friends grew up, we were told to refer the aliens as Prawns. They looked like humanoid insects, kind of like a cockroach, but that's my opinion. None the less I’m probably more uglier anyway.

My friends and I would literally have a whole line of discussions about the future of Earth itself if the aliens were to continue to live here. We would predict that either we or future generation of kids would go to school with aliens someday and many other surprising changes in order to co-exist with the aliens. I honestly wouldn’t want to go to war with them. Based on the news reported to us about their weapon design, I would never want to mess with that, especially the gravity gun…I hear someone got killed by a pig when it was launched from the gun. I would never want to mess with that.

Well, as my dad told me, he said that the military cut their way into the spaceship and found a mass amount of Prawns just nearly dying of starvation, so they setup an area below the spaceship and called it District 9, and sheltered the Prawns until they can raise them to good healthy condition.

It was suppose to be the beginning of a bright new future for mankind and the Prawns, working together to live in harmony, paving the way for a better tomorrow, however, it never turned out that way. District 9 became a slum for the Prawns and was boxed up with fences and high military guards.

People are wondering what is going on? The media is telling us one thing and the illegal underground news feed is giving us real horrifying stories about what we the human society is really doing to the aliens. It was said that they were experimenting on the aliens, trying to figure out how humans can use alien weapons, and even murdering them, all in the name of research and advancement. Now that's fucked up, your destroying a person’s life.

And then came an organization called MNU, Multinational United. I personally believed they were a bunch of faggets thinking they can do whatever the hell they want with the aliens without their given rights. I mean come on now, their spaceship isn’t working, they got no where to go, and now they want them to move 200 miles away from the city. They planned to move them to a new shelter and call it District 10.

While MNU tried to evict the Prawns out of District 9, something happened to one of the workers. I don’t remember what his name was but he was in charge of the operation. I think his name was Wikus van de Mery? Or was it Merwe? Names really don’t mean anything nowadays, but anyway, we were told that he had sex with a Prawn and got infected that made him mutate into a Prawn. Everybody was shocked by the images of him having sex doggy style with a Prawn, which was literally in every magazine, newspaper, and the internet. It was actually pretty hilarious when people made comics, parodies, flashes, etc etc. The best was AmazaFAIL’s new song, “Prawna Lover”.

Then come the conspiracy theorist talking about the mysterious control ship that fell off the mothership, I can’t believe they made an entire 20 minute documentary about some mysterious object falling from the mothership. Then there was one about how Wikus was actually tortured into being a research specimen for MNU, one clip they showed of him firing the alien weapons looked pretty real…but then again it may have been edited with special effects. Later it talked about him escaping from the secret lab 4 stories under MNU.

I honestly don’t know what to believe, the year is 2010, the spaceship that was hovering over south africa was said to have started and left earth shortly after. Maybe Wikus managed to escaped MNU and ran away to the spaceship. Not sure why he left 1.9 million Prawns on Earth, should have taken them with him or something. Now the population is 2.5 million in District 10, where they were all moved to, and their clearly here to stay now, since the spaceship is gone. Or maybe it wasn’t Wikus, maybe whoever was the pilot of that ship finally got it to work and left to get help. However…if the underground source is right and the media was lying to us the whole time, I wonder if they would wage war on us?

Who knows what the future might hold. Until then, I should just stop thinking about current affairs and just focus on my school work and how I’m going to shoot this film for my final exam. Hope my friends are available Wednesday Night. Damn…its getting late, there's so much I wanted to say, but I blanked out, I always seem to do this, maybe I’ll write down main ideas and topic focuses before I make a blog before hand.

Anyway, goodnight and thanks for reading my fellow subscribers. <3 All 6 of you.

Log End….Saturday, April 12, 2010 2:15 A.M.

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box - Game Review

One thing I loved about my birthday this year was the fact that the sequel to a game I absolutely loved was released. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box is puzzle game that takes you far and beyond the brain activity you're used to. It makes you think really hard to solve one puzzle, and then tricks you with a simple answer for the next. Professor Layton and the Curious Village was a great DS game, and this new sequel is no less than magnificent in all ways.

The game begins with the introduction of the story- a murder. What would a mystery game be without MURDER?! Apparently, Professor Layton receives a letter from his mentor about a mysterious box that is rumored to be cursed; the "if you open it you die" curse...haven't heard that before...

So Professor Layton, being the wonderful Englishman he is, decides to take a trip to Dr. Schrader's house to make sure all is well since the dude hasn't been answering phone calls. He takes Luke along, his trusty apprentice, and they head into their next mystery.

I don't like spoilers so I refuse to release more info about the storyline, as it does have its twist and turns and it surely does have its laughs. I will tell you that our beloved Flora does make a cameo but I will leave it at that since other people do as well.

The sequel does not disappoint with the different levels of puzzles and interesting new Look & Finds. After rebuilding a camera (you get the camera parts by answering puzzles correctly), the feature to take screen shots of certain areas is available allowing you to go into Layton's briefcase to solve look & find puzzles.

Another nice addition is a sort of mini game that can be played whenever you need a mind break. During the game you meet a cook who has a hamster in his kitchen, yes i know its disgusting...but you feel bad because the hamster is very overweight and you feel the need to help him lose weight. By solving puzzles correctly you get little toys and healthy snacks for this hamster which you then set-up on a board to make him walk to each item with-in 3-steps of him. It's a good mini-game and a little tricky.

The last new addition to the briefcase which has little to do with the story line i the ability to make tea. Yes, you read that correctly..Layton and Luke can now make tea for the people they are interviewing. The trick is, they all want something specific and the only way to make the tea is by unlocking the ingredients by answering certain puzzles correctly. Each tea has a distinct quality to it. Some teas make you feel better, others make you feel refreshed..one even makes you feel beautiful (I wish I had that one).

I feel the new add-ons to the briefcase a re important to the game's success. I know that I have spent a large amount on a puzzle and was happy with the outcome of it leading to a piece of my camera, or a new ingredient...or a POOL for my hamster (which I named Noodle). The add-ons give you a sense of accomplishment besides the normal picarats you get from puzzles.

The game puts a new twist on the puzzles since you can now open the Memo Pad separately a-top the puzzle making it easier to work on a difficult puzzle and be able to switch between your notes and the actual puzzle screen.

All in all, I love this game. I play it when ever possible, not only because of the puzzles, the hamster, tea time, and a mysterious box that is rumored to kill those who opens it...but because I'm just head over hells in gamer love with Layton! There...the cats out of the bag!