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.
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.
When most think about the F-Zero franchise, their minds immediately head towards the Super Nintendo original. There’s no shame in that, as the original F-Zero is a classic. For me, when I hear the name, my head speeds towards my fond memories of the Nintendo 64 sequel F-Zero X. Though I feel it was highly overlooked, it was easily one of my favourite games on that system and one of my favourite racing games of all-time.
Hot off the heels of Kinect Joy Ride is Joy Ride Turbo; the sequel to a motion-controlled game that ditches motion controls completely. On one hand, it’s a curious move to eschew the original’s key selling point. On the other hand, the key selling point in practice wasn’t very good.
If you’re curious about how well it turned out, head over to Splitkick.com to check out my review!
Trials HD took XBOX Live by storm when it first came out in 2009. Though it did not have the name recognition of the games it launched with as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion, Trials HD won gamers over in a big way thanks to its wildly addictive gameplay. To this day, Trials HD still stands as the best-selling XBOX Live Arcade game of all-time. Where was I during all of this? Not playing Trials HD. After reading the impressions and hearing people talk about it on podcasts, the game really didn’t sound like my thing. In particular, everyone focused on the game’s soul-crushing difficulty, which did not sound appealing to me at all. Instead of getting in on the action, I took in the horror stories from the community as assurance that I was doing the right thing by abstaining.
Not too long ago, Trials Evolution came out and I was originally set to ignore it just like I did its predecessor. However, after some thought, I figured that I should at least give the demo a shot, as the series has cemented itself within the current gaming zeitgeist. Instead of coming away from the demo with just a point of view, I found a new video game love.
Having never played a Trials game before, I approached this game with a great sense of fear. Though I’ve heard a ton of positive things about the series, the one point that has always deterred me from giving the series a chance is the game’s supposed difficulty. Based on how everyone talked about its difficulty, it really didn’t sound like an experience I’d be interested in.
Recently, I gave Trials Evolution a shot, just so that I could be a part of the current gaming community conversation. In hindsight, I’m kicking myself for not trying this series out sooner.
Since the birth of the PS3, the Motorstorm series has been Sony’s go-to arcade racing franchise. Up until now, I haven’t played any of them. I must confess: I had no interest in giving the franchise a shot. I do like arcade racing games, but there wasn’t anything that grabbed me about Motorstorm, at least as someone on the outside looking in.
However, since Motorstorm: Apocalypse was included with the PlayStation 3D Display I picked up a few months ago, I figured I should at least give this a fair shake. Though I came into it fairly apathetically, did Motorstorm win me over in the end?
Split/Second was one of two high-profile arcade racing games to hit the market in May 2010. The other was Blur. Both Disney and Activision had high hopes for their respective racing games, with visions of turning them into the next big racing franchises. However, despite positive reviews for both, neither game sold very well, which led to the demise of both studios that made Split/Second and Blur. Despite my issues with Blur, I thought it was a shame that game and its’ creators suffered the fate that they did, as Blur was a pretty good game. I’d say the similar things about Black Rock Studio and Split/Second. This is a pretty good racing game that, unfortunately, a lot of people overlooked.
For a few days, I was on a roll with Split/Second. I was really enjoying the progression through the career mode and I thought this wouldn’t end like my experiences with Burnout Paradise or Blur, where I hit a figurative brick wall. In both games, I hit a point where I needed “x” amount of points to move onto the next set of challenges, yet I couldn’t muster up the skills to make the necessary progress. At first, I was finishing second or third in my Split/Second races, which was enough to get me to the next episode. However, my lack of perfection eventually caught up.
I really like Blur’s Career Mode in concept. It’s designed in a way to make sure that you’re never stuck on one thing. You always have multiple races you can choose from and different goals to work towards in order to unlock the next series of races or the next rival race. Even when you lose races, you can still earn fans or new cars.
But what happens when you get stuck on every available option? This is what’s happened to me in Blur. I’m not very far into the career mode at all, but I’ve already hit the wall. Maybe more determined (or skilled) players would fight through it, but I’m going to have to disappoint Vin Diesel on this one.
In Third Person 