Maintaining pole position in the kart racing genre isn’t as easy as it used to be for Mario and friends. Mario Kart 7 was a lackadaisical cruise around the block, while Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed ate its lunch through the use of dynamically-changing tracks that required your vehicle to transform between a go-kart, jet plane and hovercraft. Sure, it’s framerate could have used some work and it doesn’t fully execute on all of the ideas it brings to the table, but it was built with a level of passion and innovation that Nintendo’s 3DS kart racer sorely lacked. Mario Kart 8 may not pack enough fresh ideas to completely close the gap, but it makes up for it with great track design, quality online play and a level of polish that makes this game sparkle.
racing
Jett Plays Mario Kart 8
Jett Plays Trials Fusion
I crash my motorcycle a lot in this clip. As I repeatedly wipe out, I talk about my love for the series and randomly go off on a tangent about the disconnect between theme and mechanics in tabletop games.
Mario Kart 7 Impressions
There once was a time when I thought that the Mario Kart franchise would always be the king of kart racing video games. Some of its entries are all-time classics, while the rest were still better than any of its contemporaries. But then Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed happened. Featuring crazy tracks, a deep single player campaign and transforming vehicles that fundamentally changed this kart racer into a jet and hover boat racer too, that game took the genre to new heights.
Mario Kart 7‘s big new feature is also air and water racing…sort of. You can glide off of specific jumps and drive under water, though the implementation of it here pales in comparison to Sonic’s latest outing. Unfortunately, besides that, there isn’t much here that you haven’t experienced upwards of six times before.
Need For Speed: Rivals Impressions
Aside from one attempt at a Need For Speed iPhone game, I’ve never played any of the games in this franchise. I’ve never held any sort of grudge against it, though its particular brand of racing action hasn’t really grabbed my attention, either. With Rivals, EA caught me at just the right point where their latest entry built up a lot of positive word-of-mouth during a weak console launch. Is this the game that hooks me in for good?
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Hands-On With Driveclub
Driving games are synonymous with console launches. Most console manufacturers use them to demonstrate the raw horsepower of their platform in a way that appeals to a wide audience. Gran Turismo would have been the obvious choice, though Gran Turismo 6 is set for a PlayStation 3 release later this year. Probably realizing that GT wasn’t going to work out in time for the launch of the PlayStation 4, Sony has greenlit Driveclub from the makers of Motorstorm.
I got to play a pre-release build at Fan Expo, which consisted of one time trial race. It was enough time to me to realize that this isn’t for me, and that it may not be the next gen racing game to beat at launch.
Trials HD Review
Trials HD still stands as one of the most successful games in the history of Xbox Live. You’ll be hard-pressed nowadays to find someone who hasn’t tricked their way through its insane motorcycle obstacle courses. For the longest time, I was one of those people. I’d saw and heard a lot of feedback about the game being difficult, and that was enough to keep me at bay. Had it not been for a Splitkick community game night that featured Trials Evolution, I probably would have passed on the series completely.
It’s sequel won me over in a big way last year, though I’ve only gotten to HD now. While I still have a blast working my way through every course, it’s definitely not a series one should play backwards.
LittleBigPlanet Karting Impressions
My experiences with Sony’s Play, Create, Share line of games have been mostly negative to-date. I wanted to love LittleBigPlanet, but couldn’t get over how floaty the jump was. Then I tried Mod Nation Racers, which ultimately turned me off due to its generic karting action and some of the worst load times in this generation. Knowing that, I figured that a LittleBigPlanet karting game made by the Mod Nation Racers people was doomed for failure in my eyes. Yet, when LittleBigPlanet Karting went on sale for dirt cheap through a PlayStation Plus sale, I couldn’t help myself.
Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed Review
Call me stubborn, but I’ve been a staunch believer in the fact that nothing can top the Mario Kart franchise. Besides the fact that it created the genre, the vast majority of kart racers haven’t even come close to matching the series’ quality, regardless of which version of Mario Kart you put under the microscope. While I’ll always have a spot in my heart for the franchise that started it all, Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed takes a serious run at the crown.
Trials Evolution: Origin of Pain DLC Review
As much as I love Trials Evolution, I haven’t played it since wrapping up my review. Once I unlocked the extreme tracks, which I will never have the skill to complete, I set the game down and moved onto other things. Sure, I could have kept myself busy all of this time with user-created tracks, but it just fell out of my rotation. The Origins of Pain DLC pack aims to bring players like me back to the fold with 36 new tracks, more skill games, and a hundred extra track creator objects to play with.
In Third Person 