I thought this was pretty cool. Used the YouTube Insight tools to gather all the most popular words used in the comments for my LGR Sims 3 (and Medieval) reviews, ran it through Wordle, and this is the result. Pretty sweet, eh?
Funny how some of the most common words are things like fart, pocket, sadism, and soviet. Ahh, creating my own mini-memes…
People often ask why I haven’t reviewed many of the classic games I love. A fair question.
The answer is simple: because I love them!
That means I feel a need to properly pay my respects to them, which means I end up making a crazy lengthy video, and that is decidedly un-lazy.
I think this review of the DOS PC classic Jazz Jackrabbit is a testament to this. I cover everything from the game’s history, the designers, the revisions during development, various releases, merchandise, and several other things. What do you know about “Lazy”?
Many thanks to Mark (UKRetroGames) for sending this bit of retro awesomeness to me! A fantastic little interface for the Speccy, pity the games are a pain to come by.
I also used a different mic with this one, since I had some complaints about audio quality with the last two Oddware videos. Sounded like an improvement to me.
This expansion, frick. I have never had more requests to review one thing! Ever since it was announced months ago the emails have come daily, just insane the anticipation for this in the Simming community.
So much so that EA released a demo today for just the pet creation tool. Here are my first impressions, if anything as a way to let people know that, yes, I am well aware this expansion is incoming.
The second video in the LGR Oddware series, hope you enjoy!
Driver: SF – Muscle cars, epic chases, immortal pedestrians!
Click the video above to watch a quick sample of the action you’ll see quite often in this newest incarnation of Driver! It was made using the Xbox 360 version’s in-game Film Director mode, which should be very familiar to you if you remember the classic Driver games. I love how they included it, even in the console version, since the GTA IV movie editor mode was only on the PC.
Anyways, yeah, Driver: SF. Is it any good? Balls yes.
Is it freakin’ awesome. BALLS yes.
Is it the most fun I’ve had with a racing game in years? BALLS YES.
Is it a worthy addition to the Driver franchise? Um…
Here’s the thing about DSF. In many ways, it’s just not like any other Driver game of the past. It’s got much more in common with games like the Burnout series. Is that a bad thing? It might be if you really loved the original Driver games, specifically the first one and Driv3r (I still hate that “3″ title). But for me, it’s not bad at all, and really is the most fun I’ve had with a racing game in a few years now.
The biggest change with DSF is the “shift” gimmick. Basically, the protagonist, John Tanner, goes into a coma and discovers he has this ability in his dream world to shift into other people’s bodies. This allows him to instantly transfer into the driver’s seat of any of the cars you see in the world. Of course, this allows for some absolutely unique and insane situations. For instance, you may need to perform a takedown on a speeding opponent. You could go the Burnout route, chase them down and smash them into a wall. Or you could just shift into a massive truck a quarter mile ahead and ram into your opponent head-on, then shift back to your car and continue. It’s just weird at first, but once you get used to the idea it is a ton of fun!
Gravity-defying Ford Gran Torino FTW
Another change is the licensed cars in the game. Generic vehicles have been part of Driver since the beginning, but now you’ve got like 125 licensed, realistically-modeled cars to play around with. Everything from classics like the Bel Air, Charger, and Trans Am, to high-end cars like the Lamborghini Diablo, Dodge Viper ACR, and Jaguar XKR, to very welcome unique cars like the Delorean DMC-12, AMC Pacer and VW Camper van. This of course means the damage models aren’t as intense as previous games, but I still find it a welcome addition and helps make the game world more believable.
But the best part of the game for me so far are the missions and challenges themselves. They’re intense, varied, frequent, and extremely satisfying. Usually in a racing game you start seeing repetition pretty quickly, or you run into some race types you don’t really like. I’ve run into neither problem in my nearly nine hours of playing. There is always something new to do, and even if it’s the same type as one you just played, it’s going to have a new twist or the intensity is going to be ramped up. Also, I have yet to play the same “track” twice. Strange how often in open world games like this you end up racing through the same route so many times, but with this one I can’t remember a time I’ve been forced to go back and played the same exact place.
There is so much more I could say, but those are the things that have really stood out so far. Sure, the premise of the game is cheesy and the whole feel of the gameplay is entirely different from previous Driver games, but I find this to be incredibly fun and addicting. It really does feel like a mixture of the styles you see in games like Burnout Paradise and the old-school Driver games, which is very weird at first but took no time to get used to and love. It’s always a good sign when you look at the clock and realize several hours have passed and it feels like no time has passed at all, especially when playing a racing game.
It really is so easy to screw up a racing game, especially when you’ve played as many as I have and know exactly what you like and don’t like. But DSF gets so much right to me it’s crazy, and I wholly recommend it if you want something a little different… and just plain exhilarating.
This has been one of the most-requested reviews on LGR, and for good reason – this game is freaking awesome. Enjoy!
Dead Island – Crowbar+Zombie=Splattery Fun!
Several of you wonderful individuals have asked about my opinion on the game Dead Island, since I’ve talked a lot about how much I enjoy open-world games and certain zombie-smashing titles like Dead Rising.
So after a couple or few hours with Dead Island, I’m still enjoying it! Seemed oddly lackluster at the very start, and perhaps even a bit disappointing, especially having been blown away by that epic cinematic teaser for the game several months back. But it’s steadily gotten more interesting. Nothing breath-taking, but it’s cool. Feels a lot like the exploration and character selection of Far Cry 2, the constant looting and XP-fueled upgrades of Borderlands, and some similar weapons and customization like you find in Dead Rising 2. The landscapes are awesome to explore and the zombies are very fun to bash over the head with the huge variety of melee weapons. I also really enjoy the bone-bashing system in the game, where it’s preferred that you smash up limbs and body parts to disable enemies. A pretty good time if you like open-world FPS games and zombies. It supposedly only gets better co-op, though I’ve yet to try that.
But the PC port of it sucks, avoid it! The mouse movement is often clunky, framerate is inconsistent garbage for no reason, there is a severe lack of options to change (no Vsync unless you modify a config file), and it still has controller-oriented hints like “move right stick” displaying all the time. Just a terrible console port, which is disappointing coming from this developer (who also did the Call of Juarez games). Play on 360/PS3 if you want to actually have fun and not have the tremendous desire to decapitate your computer with a canoe paddle. I’ve been told this was due to them releasing a console dev kit version on the PC or something, even though I downloaded the patch and it didn’t seem to fix these issues I have, but hopefully this will be remedied soon.
I don’t see myself proudly singing this game’s praises like I have with Portal 2 and Deus Ex: HR this year, but whatever, I never expected to. It’s certainly not a bad game (PC version notwithstanding), it’s certainly fun, and I’d recommend giving it a shot if an FPS zombie game that’s more Borderlands than L4D sounds interesting.
