Be Excellent To Each Other

To be honest, I know how much you love Burny Pee and I'm a bit surprised you bought it, as I suspected you wouldn't like it due to it not being Burny Pee (that's not a criticism of you, just an observation).

It's a different game and doesn't really deserve to be compared to it. I'd akin it to something more like Need for Speed: Most Wanted (and it's a better game than that, imo).

I was persuaded by



Haven't seen any so far.

First impressions:

Love the fact that it's massively easier to tell where I'm going than BP - the big waypoint markers are ace.
Love the fact that it has real cars that are customisable.

Not a fan of the handling - I hope it's just this starting car being a bit arse-heavy.
It's purty, but there doesn't appear to be anything there that does anything - racing down one big road is much the same as racing down any other.

Hating the cops. Since when does me stopping my car mean I'm arrested? I can reverse the fuck out of there before you can get out of your car, you know.

Like I said earlier, I had to change the steering sensitivity to -5 as it was far too twitchy. Try that and see if it's an improvement.



Err, you should be able to get away from them when they get out to ticket you (in fact, there's an achievement for it).

I'd already made the -5 change after seeing your comment.

Once the car stopped, it seemed to immediately go into a cutscene. I'll give it another try.

You should be able to drive away during the cutscene, which is most amusing.

If you are just pulled over for a minor infraction (the speedo will be flashing 'pull over') you can drive off during the little cutscene in which the cop is walking out to you to give you a ticket. However, if you are effectively stopped after this or during any other chase where the speedo is flashing 'police pursuit' you get arrested. In all honesty, the cops shouldn't be a big problem. You have your map indicator AND your radar detector. Next to your main speedo is an indication of what the speed limit is, so if you slow down and then just pull the trigger gently it'll keep you just under the limit until you're clear of the cops. If they do come after you, either outrun them on the freeways (get some serious distance between you and then duck off at an exit) or swerve at every cross-street until they've lost track of you.

While it's not wild to the extent of Burnout Paradise with your jumping off cliffs and doing barrel rolls over beaches... there are ramps, there are buildings you can drive through (include a mall where you drive across the fountain in the central square before driving up the escalators and out the second story window, and a hotel lobby) and you smash through a lot more scenery than you do in most other car games.

Singleplayer mode is concerned almost entirely with racing... but multiplayer mode has fun modes like capture the flag (in cars) or a cat and mouse variant (again, in cars) which I've already said is great fun and would be even better with more people.

Pathfinding and getting to know the map is a big part of things here... quite often I've seen the AI take ingenious shortcuts or clever routes I'd never though of. Sure, the direct route got me to the next checkpoint at the same time as him, but his more circuitous route meant that not only did he pass through it going faster, but he was also now pointed towards the NEXT checkpoint and was at speed.

The handling takes getting used to... I was playing on -1 sensitivity and basically the car goes from turning gently to a sudden wrenching increasing in turning rather suddenly. Decreasing the sensitivity tempers that.

TOP TIP: DON'T set A as your boost button... as if you hit A in a menu screen that then immediately returns you to the race, the game will interpret your pushing of A as a desire to immediately boost. Ooops.

My order's been posted. How long do Play take to deliver normally?

29 days, so far. I'll let you know the final tally when it arrives.

Played a lot last night (including two races with Dimrill before his ISP crapped out, right on schedule).

Word to the wise, people - you'll get challenges from a guy called Oswaldo to do a time trial race. No matter how easy it might seem or tempted you might be, only BARELY beat the target time. The reason being, you'll be called back TWICE, each time to beat your record from the previous time trial. For the third and final session of the first set of time trials, I had to beat my time of what had been a nigh-on perfect run. Not easy.

In doing so I finally earned enough cash to buy another new car and was finally able to beat that French fucker in the Focus (fantastic!) and also the chico guys who race around Mulholland, esse.

And some great dialogue: "I'm so bad, I make medicine sick!"; "Save your breath for your inflatable girlfriend!"

But the important thing is, does Dimrill like it yet?

He always sort of did, man.

I've decided this has filled the void left in my life by utterly and totally completing Test Drive Unlimited. The cars have gorgeously rendered (and very customizable - change the colour your speedo glows!) interiors and retracted roofs on convertibles. It feels a lot more like it's your car than Forza and I reckon Rockstar continue to miss a trick by not putting proper interior views like this into GTA.

TOP TIP: Don't ever bother buying a new car, using a car other than the one you start with, or ever buying any upgrades at all. The difficulty of the races scales with your car, rendering the entire business useless.

Wow. That's something of a glaring issue.

Imagine you're standing in front of a splayed leg Pamela Anderson. You look down at that delicious kebab with a mixture of fear, anxiety and excitement. What a fantastic opportunity! But, oh no! You're pecker isn't big enough to touch the sides. Damn and blast it. No worries, you'll save up for an enlargement. Asking Pamela to wait around, obviously hanging up fly-paper to keep the worst away while you're gone, you dash off to make some money working as a gigolo for teenage school-leavers.

After a few hours you've harvested enough pennies for the surgery. *sounds of drills and sawing* *flesh, blood and sawdust spray from offscreen* That's some impressive plonker you've got there my boy. You approach Pamela again. You're just about to dip when you realise that, oh good golly, it's still not big enough. Curses. Off you go down to the club 18-40 holiday park and work your special magic for more pennies.

*VRRRRRRRRRR!* *BAM! BAM! BAM!* *RASP! RASP!* You're sporting an eyewatering 12 incher. Yum yum, you sure are looking forward to this awesome intercourse! Approaching Pamela again, you pick off the fly eggs and are about to do the deed. Oh noes! It's still like waving a stick in a cave. More work at the local pensioner coffee mornings gets you some more pennies.

*SQUELCH!* *[sounds of crane]* Wow. Your member is 12 inches in girth and 3 foot long, and is throbbing with nuclear power. Flicking away the centipedes and giving the beetle bonnet a quick buff, and insert your pulsating, glowing member. It's like Mary Poppins bag. Unsatisfactorily you withdraw and nurse your blue balls. Out of the corner of your eye you notice a vagina stretcher with her fingerprints on.

The fucking bitch.

How many ways do I love thee? Too many to name, though I shall first start with 18, the number of spondoolies you have saved me on this. I might pick it up when cheaper - though I still need some Burny Pee first - but for now, no. I like racing - get it right, end up miles ahead, mess up, lose by miles, all fine.

Really? While there is undoubtedly some difficulty adjustment at play here (and thank you for the lovely tale of todger adjustment, truly you are a visionary when it comes to, er, visualizing things using your or other people's genitalia) I don't know if it's quite as bad as you say.

Indeed, races which I struggled with/was utterly unable to win in my barely upgraded Cobalt became much easier once I made some cash for upgrades and then re-attempted them in a fully upgraded Cobalt/a barely upgraded Charger (which is the next level classification ranking doodad up).

Certainly, I have not been this enthralled with a racing game since Forza 2, nor as excited by the actual races since TDU all those (good grief, years) ago.

The dynamic difficulty thing was actually added in a patch. I still don't have my copy.

It's not a far cry from the problem I had, 2.

Looks like the patch only affects people who are mongs and can't do racing games, anyway:

And then it flip flops into the second half, does it? I was fucked over several times by traffic appearing out of nowhere at an intersection and plowing helplessly into it.

Read other forums and they're filled with people whinging the game is too hard.

360 mentioned this in their review too.

Yeah... it's for these reasons I've decided that Aggro is the best special ability. I spent most of yesterday grinding up EMP and it's amusing but not that useful... the effects only last a second or two so unless you time it perfectly (so your opponent coasts into a wall or past an offramp or something) it's not that great. The only other time it was useful was on the desperate last dash to the final checkpoint to stop a faster opponent from overtaking.

Roar, which I've just started using, is also pretty pants... the other cars don't swerve out of the way quite enough. And Zone I imagine will just allow me to watch myself crash into an impassable wall of traffic in slow motion.

I liked EMP, disliked Agro. Roar isn't too bad when you've got a pile of them on top of your at once. Used at the beginning or end of a race for full effect.

The thing that annoys me a lot about the traffic is the 50/50 chance that the oncoming lot have their headlights on. Especially bad when going through the tunnels in downtown. Plus the smoke from a checkpoint can obscure vehicles.

Here's my Golf as it is at the moment. I haven't played this game anywhere near enough, yet.

Yeah, the transitional period from day to night and vice versa is a bit tricky as - much like real life - some jerks haven't turned their headlights on.

Ooh no, this is a goodly few hours into night. At least Doc's post means I can clear my xbox cache and not end up smashing my controller to bits in disgust now. Funnily enough, I find the red "hard" races easier than the yellows. I've got 2 of the "dub" cars for winning the tourneys on hard.

Have you had the textures not being able to keep up with your travelling yet? It's like driving into a brown lump of neverending porridge, with traffic hitboxes, but no actual visible cars.

Nothing like that yet, no... but have had a few mysterious freezes. Unlike other games which freeze, MC:LA still allows me to bring up the guide and go back to the dashboard! There's no rhyme or reason to it... it happened three or four times in the space of half an hour... and then I played from about 9pm until 1am with no problems at all.

I'm doing pretty well... I've only got the fourth and final group of cars to unlock, now. I haven't bothered going to see the woman at the hot dog stand yet (though Booke keeps nagging me about it) and the game tells me I'm 26% complete.

In case anyone hasn't figured it out, to spin your tires at the starting line (and get a better start) you have to hold the handbrake while revving the engine.

The thing is, that's it's a really fun racing game, but has so many piffling annoyances to make me turn it off in disgust. Then I load it back up again 20 minutes later. If you saw me popping on and off Live last night, that was the reason.

Yeah, I did wonder. I assumed you'd done 'hard drive maintenance' and were having to redownload updates for things. I tend to go and race someone else if I get pissed off during a race.

As I've said, i find the races incredibly exciting and most of the time the game gets it right by not spawning traffic in my path.

To be honest, I always found that a problem in the Burnout games, too. I guess it's just the risk you run from racing on crowded streets rather than a racetrack.

Burnout's cars at least flashed their lights at you when you were oncoming. This one's much more unfair.

Got the Kawasaki Ninja yet Poikes? It goes like stink, but not stink enough to outrace those scaling racers.

Not yet... looking forward to getting it, though.

It's very easy to spam the hard freeway racers with that and the Ducati. 6-8 grand a pop from zipping between traffic. It's evil doing that with EMP or Roar as your special. Simply wait a few seconds after the race and he respawns 20 foot behind you.

I don't find the freeway races hard at all... in my Cobalt I easily beat a guy in a Gallardo who was a red icon. That extra-wide divide between the normal and diamond lane is great!

This has finally been dispatched by Play today. Yay.

Right, I've decided we need some people to play CTF. It would be acebest fun with four or more of us, essentially playing a cross between Unreal Tournament and dodgems (with nitrous).

Six of us means achiecvmvement.

Well, that as a larf. Even if most of the night was spent grinding out the two wheels/wheelie/jump time achievements while talking increasingly vile bollocks. I needed that after today, though, thanks.

No sooner had you guys left then I figured "I'll just do that freeway race guy before going to bed". I then realized I was only three races away from doing the ten that Booke wants anyway, so I carried on. With one to go, I unlocked the group 4 (final set of) vehicles! So, quickly finished the final race and then dashed off to the garage to buy my Ninja. Wahey!

I think I might grind a few more freeway races... both for the achievement and to earn some more quick and easy money n' respect. Most of the group 4 cars are ridiculously expensive anyway, so it's rather nice that (as in TDU) the Ninja is both among the fastest vehicles and one of the cheapest. (see also: motoring mag sections where they race Hayabusa vs Swift, Fireblade vs Jazz)

Now to decide what group 4 car I want. Thinking maybe Ford GT...

Completed it. Now just to grind out the achievements.

Well done, I'm motoring on nicely now (arf). Despite it handling like a drunken barge, I've got a bit of a soft spot for the Camaro that Karol gives you after beating him best of three. I've given it a burgundy respray and some whitewall tyres.

This has arrived. It better be good.

It is bloody good. I'd say it was better than Burny Pee, but then Dimrill and Mr Dave might hurt me. So I won't.




It is.

I played it twice, then couldn't bring myself to face the annoying characters and uninspiring racing any more.

Oh the characters get much more annoying. So very very annoying.

Your brain is broken.

I agree with him. The racing is quite quite stupid. And annoying. And the characters are annoying and stupid. Still playing it though.

I couldn't possibly comment, having never tried it.

I definitely shant be buying it then.

I personally think the racing is brilliant. Dodging in and out of traffic and activating roar to see cars diving out of your way at a junction leaves a massive grin on my face.

The only thing that Burnout has over it is the co-op challenges, and I got a bit bored of those quite quickly. It's all about the racing for me. The characters are stupid, OTT stereotypes, but they make me laugh.