Ian - Simple Pleasures

Having been granted permission to steal the family PS2 for my own private use at University (as I’m home for easter), I set about hooking it back up to my TV and playing whatever I had lying around. The only PS2 discs that I had available at the time were Gran Turismo 3, Half Life, Stuntman, and a recently acquired copy of Killer7 (Joe made me buy it). Having only gotten the slightly scratched Killer7 disc to work once, and having completed Half Life 1 and all available components of the Half Life 2 saga, I decided to make a beeline to Gran Turismo 3 (a copy of which I believe used to belong to David), a game series which I now see I’ve been too harsh about recently.

 I’ve slated Gran Turismo for being too realistic, the handling being not responsive enough, the license system being very unreasonably difficult, and generally the sort of people who play it tend to be Sony Fanboys, and Im not too keen on excessive fanboyism for a very good reason (I.e. If they start on your console, you defend your console, simple).

Having played from the start again, getting the B license, getting the A license, and then trying the first test of the International B license and screwing up, I decided to start the game properly, and headed for the beginner league - Sunday Cup. Sat at the rear of a starting grid in my cyan Mazda MX-5 on the Super Speedway circuit, I hear the conventional series of noises that accompany the start of a race. The AI revving their engines. Me revving mine in return. The jaunty intro music they play at the start of every race. The indescribable noises that are made at 3, 2, and 1, followed by the even slightly higher pitched version on 0 (aka: GO!).

 Considering the track I’m racing more is nothing more than an Oval that’s had a bit too much chocolate, and the sugar and fat has gone to its hips, the experience was rather compelling. The realism I had so criticised before was working very much in the game’s favour. As the first corner approached, I was extremely dissapointed that I had only reached 5th position, after I thought I was in a pretty awesome car anyway, but it turns out that the driver of the Yaris was slightly better at keeping the tight line at the bottom of the banked corner, and I was only in 2nd at the end of the first lap, which was the same for that lap as well, as I tried to catch the Yaris.

 After entering the final lap, my car kicked into fourth gear. I think I’m going to play on Manual Transmission next time, because (as knocking it up a gear does) this made my car go a lot faster, and I rapidly approached, overtook, and gained a lead on the Yaris, winning the race.

 This 3 minute experience, with graphics that were groundbreaking for a 2001 game, inspired quite a good feeling inside me, and I continued to play the other races out of the Sunday cup, and I won all 3, and acquired a Toyota AE86, retro as you like (ironically with a nominal amount more BHP than the MX-5), which again induced a good feeling.

 All this came from a game that was released in 2001. Similarly, the one play of Killer7 that I did get to partake in was equally stellar, I only got as far as meeting Travis and I was extremely impressed by the atmospheric gameplay, which again is a pretty good feat for a game that isn’t out on my beloved Xbox 360, and I’m playing it just as its successor is being released.

 Being a Rhythm Action game fan, Amplitude and Frequency have provided me with many hours of fun (and one broken controller, I believe), and Tekken 5 is currently one of the only games we play on the CVGSoc PS3. The PS2 is far from dead, and I can forsee many more hours of decent gameplay to be had on it (Not least because I intend to buy GT4 and Okami, the latter of which reportedly has 30 hours of gameplay).

 Do yourself a favour, go last gen for a day.

~ by mallowman87 on March 25, 2008.