Nurburgring drive

(tags game, driving, Burnout, Xbox 360)
(originally written 2008-06-24 23:42)

Burnout Paradise was pretty fantastic with all the car action. Then again, I played most of the game with the camera on the bumper so I didn't care about how the car looked. So I started looking at racing games again. One integral part of my revival is that Nurburgring track, the 20 km course. I mentioned to a friend that the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue game has a video of the producer Kazunori Yamauchi riding a Nissan GT-R on the track competently. Nice.

I spotted the Viva Pinata and Forza Motorsport 2 combo pack for 1680 yen used, so I nabbed it after a night's sleep. Wow. Stats galore. Paint your car ala PhotoShop layers. The visible racing line. No music during racing. Crispy crispy graphics. I spent about an hour on career mode. I got the perfect racing Achievements on my first try, har har. I hate playing this with an analog pad. I wonder if I could reuse my GT Force. I doubt it.

I then backed out into Arcade mode because I wanted to try out Nurburgring. In my initial crappy car, an asia "soap-shaped" one. Of course I turned down the realism and turned on the visible racing line. I would turn on the training wheels if they had it. So I didn't crash but I clocked about 11 minutes. Is that slow or fast or what? Obviously its slow, because I don't really know the track. I totally forgot my record on the GT4 on PS2, I should fire that up.
I also tried out the online racing spectator mode. It's pretty interesting with all the cars. I would like to loop this mode and just watch it.

So I was in Nipponbashi recently looking for figure stand parts when I spotted Joshin's front display for Toy Land. They were advertising a Nissan GT-R model kit. The 40 inch widescreen TV showed someone driving the Nurburgring in the Nissan GT-R, with the stopwatch clock in big numbers and various stats in the lower right hand Picture-in-Picture. I stood in front of the store blocking foot traffic watching this video. So it took the car about 7 minutes (close to 8?) to complete a circuit. Is that slow or fast or what? Obviously its fast. 150+ kmh average.
I also picked up some other racing games while in the area, Moto GP '06, Project Gotham Racing 3, Fatal Inertia. Again the price point was 1200 yen or less. I don't when I'll start these, yeah.

My Burnout Paradise

(tags game, Xbox 360, racing, Burnout)

This has been the best video gaming I've had in a while. 51 hours of pure driving mayhem. According to the stats, I averaged 76 MPH.

I got 100% at the 45 hour mark, but the offline Xbox 360 Achievements were left. 100% Power Parking wasn't so hard. I finally cleared the Million Dollar Stunt Run and the 20x Boost Chain, w00t. Both took a number of tries.

Stunt run is fun, well, at least when you land the jumps and the points are awarded. But the latter achievement was aggravating. Except that on the run that I got the award, I hit the zone and set the 37 Burnouts. I tried a number of things like the Oncoming on I-88 and taking my foot off the accelerator and tapping the brake but I finally settled on boosting starting from the Naval Port going towards Lone Stallion Ranch. It helped that I had the worst boosting car as well. putt putt puttering through Paradise City.

Other things of note: I can't remember where I got my 457 yards of drift, but perhaps it was at the basketball courts spinning my wheels. I want to know where I got my longest non-cheating drift, but that record is long past.

I don't really feel like playing multi-player online.

So after I was done I was checking the forums and Gamefaqs to see if I could some more cars through inputting sponsor codes. I have the Asia version and there wasn't anything published, so no new cars for me. I read upon on other peoples stunts and I was surprised by the 60+ stunt multipliers, the tens of millions Showtimes, 6x barrel rolls. Amazing.

Finally, I read a comment where another game with free roam like Burnout Paradise was Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I bought that game for 1000 yen new, so I tried out that game today and it feels like a PS2 port. So slow. What is this, 30 fps? Is it fair I'm comparing a 2005 game to a 2008 game? The drama scenes are laughable. I keep wanting to change the language to English, because lip-sync or lack thereof makes it so laughable. I should play this after playing something slow and different.

Oh well, I wish it wasn't over. I even free roamed the city just taking in the sights again. I am definately going to try out BP again when they update it for motorcycles.

i can haz boost?

(tags game, Burnout, Xbox 360, failure)

I completed the Burnout Paradise at 100%, after finishing the boring Showtime, but its still not over yet. I know that there is one more thing that will give me the completely complete 101%. So I've been knocking on the known Achivements. One of them is to get a 20x boost run. 20x FSCKIN boost run. I can barely get 6x. I'm sorely tempted to look for the cheatin' knowledge but there are a couple of things I can try and some roads to master before I hit a Internet Search Engine.

Some gaming: Burnout Paradise and DJ Max Portable 2

(tags game, Xbox 360, Burnout, Playstation Portable, music, Dual Screen)

This is a summary of the last week or two of my gaming hobbies.

I felt like I finished up with Stranglehold, since I mopped up most of the easy and intermediate difficulty Xbox Achievement Points. "Hard" and "Hard-boiled" difficulty remain untouchable, as well as the 50 point killing spree Achievement. So I will toss the game back on the rack for now. Still I wish that other FPS games had the cover and time-slow system that Stranglehold uses.

I went back to Burnout Paradise. I finally completed all the events yesterday, earning my "Elite License". Of course I only seem to be in it now for the easy Achievement points. Now I all I have to do is get 100% completion, which means setting record scores on all the roads in both Showtime and Time Trial modes. Showtime was fun but now its just tedious work. I surpassed 10 million (dollars worth of damage) on one run, just to see how far I could go. Usually you need about 700,000. I wish though I finished Showtime first. And I wished that I drove around the city in Time Trial mode instead of plain mode. That would have made my clear faster ... maybe.

Today I went to the grand re-opening of the Gamers Nanba, now called Ani-Bro Gamers. It was only recent news to me that Animate (or the parent company of Animate) and Broccoli (owner of Gamers) became the same company. I will write more about today, later, if ever. Anyway, my bud asked me if there were any interesting PSP games recently and I named Echochrome. I also dug through my stash and DJ Max Portable 2 came up. I intend to lend it to him if he's interested, but I played it for a day waiting for the opening of Ani-Bro Gamers. I got a max combo (no miss) on my favorite stage Seoleim again. That felt good. Then I remembered that I am playing it on 4p ("easy mode" four buttons) with easy difficulty. Increasing the buttons is just insane, so I tried normal difficulty. I get cut off with "You need more practice!" a heck of a lot more. Stop interrupting the song I am attempting!!?!? How am I supposed to practice! Normal has some interesting new songs (to me). I wish the developers of this game made a casual mode for the music neophyte.

Finally, since I was in Nipponbashi, I checked out some stuff. On the gaming front, I was going to buy the PlayStation Simple 2000 Series The Taxi 2 since it was only 840 yen used, but I thought about Vice City and how I need to Taxi that one. Also I was going to get some DS games, like Super Mario 64 DS, since the price dropped at one store to 2480 yen and I figure I like easy collection-ing type games. However, thoughts of the imminent completion of Burnout Paradise and the Bioshock I haven't opened, stopped me again.

You'd think my willpower is strengthening, but I bought Valve's The Orange Box for Xbox 360 (Asia version) at A-Too. It was only 2480 yen. I suppose I was seeing easy Achievement points again. Portal! I do have Half-Life 2 on my PC (link to me playing with the physics engine back in 2005), but I got it free with my video card, so no problems there. Plus this soft has HL2: Episode 1 and 2, which I doubt my Project Sugar PC can handle. Well it couldn't handle HL2 or Portal deftly, either. I really like how my Xbox 360 is making me ignore PC games and the PC gaming upgrade treadmill. Thank you Xbox.

Hello Xbox 360, jealous of my Game Boy Micro?

(tags Idolmaster, purchase, Xbox 360, demo, Burnout, racing, RPG, Final Fantasy)

Well I have to turn on my Xbox 360 today, because I have to buy this month's sale DLC in Idolm@ster. Bye bye 2800 points. Yeah, "Japan Downloads Idolm@ster Content Big Time" (thanks Kotaku). It doesn't seem like there's any announcement for the next catalog or sale. It's time to concentrate on Live 4 U.

Yesterday, I finally checked out the Burnout Paradise demo. I want this game. It looks pretty cool and I can really dig into the stunts. With a city this big and seamless, it would be a shame to not have any taxi mini game. But no Burnout to date has any images of people, so it doesn't make sense. Some parts of it remind me of driving around Los Angeles, like the big white Paradise sign and the beach area. Oh yeah, the announcer is in Japanese, except for the part where he says "right here, on Crash FM". It sounds okay, but wierd. Japanese radio announcers are so cool, they speak perfect intonation (American) English while shredding it up in Japanese. I wanna be like that.

I bet you Xbox 360 owners have downloaded your Undertow for free right? It's an apology gift. (Game Watch: マイクロソフト、Xbox LIVE アーケードで「Undertow」を期間限定で無償提供 )

And I am still playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It's not hard, it's just a easy treadmill of leveling up and acquiring spells/skills through combat points (AP?). 43 hours, probably most of it in bed before I go to sleep.