Take the Beach

Blinding the Dragon

The economy sucks because Obama is pile driving our country into submission, worsening the national debt and basically doing everything he said he wouldn’t do with the exception of close gitmo and our country still blindly supports his efforts at leading the nation. For this reason, money is tight for all of us but it is my opinion that fun is something that should rightfully be kept in all of our budgets. To me, one of my releases from college work, job hunting for post grad work, and athletic hardships I endure as a varsity college athlete is through gaming. I have long said that gaming is not for nerds but people who dream. I dream to be a winning race car driver, a top notch soldier defending our freedom, an ace World War II fighter pilot and a pro football player. Because I cannot be all of these things in real life, I have turned to gaming to live a fantasy life from the edge of my couch on a 22 inch HDTV.

With my economic condition being tight, having to put funds in more important places, now more then ever I have to pick games that will not only be of quality unparalleled but also games that will give me the most bang for my buck.

Forza Motorsport 2 was a game that sat for a very long time in the DVD drive of my Xbox 360. It is a very good game. Granted I dont think it would have had half the life that it did without the paint editor but it was a good game. I still to this day think that it’s biggest weaknesses are the lack of night racing, weather variation, and the ridiculous inclusion of fantasy tracks. Get real Turn 10. No one wants to drive Maple Valley when Spa Francorchamps is more fun and a real circuit that could have been very easily rendered. The other disappointing aspect for me of FM2 was it’s sounds. The cars sound so terrible. The Ferrari FXX is a car that was released as part of a download content pack that I think emphasized the point the best. The car’s in game sound was pathetic. It sounded like a whithering pathetic mess compared to the real deal. As did most of the high performance cars with very few exceptions. I personally think that Turn 10 cut some real corners in the sound department. Simbin’s Race PRO did a MUCH better job of turning a real race car’s engine note and putting it in a game, and from what looks like a MUCH smaller budget.

SO! Exciting news! Turn 10 announced Forza Motorsport 3 and part of its hallmark selling feature is the inclusion of the 24 hour du Leman’s circuit de la sarthe. The 24 hours of le mans is a race to be reconed with and Codemaster’s GRID tried, and did a fairly good, and interesting job of displaying the driving skill it takes to push a car to the limits at 3 am with no lights but the ones coming off your car. BUT WAIT…Turn 10 says no weather and no night racing will be included with Forza 3. So let me get this straight. They are going to have 24 hours of leman’s cars and the track but no night racing and no variable weather? Is that legal? Turn 10 then tried to make up for this by releasing a press statement including how many variations could be included in making an online game. Wooohoo. No one cares how many things you can change about the online system. If you are going to tout yourself as a driving game that resembles simulation, then you had better have what gamers want. And what gamers want are good tracks, weather variation, and good racing with a great set of cars to choose from.

Now when I say a good set of cars to choose from…do you really want to be driving around low end model Chevrolet’s like Top Gear’s reasonably priced car? I sure as hell don’t. Where is the fun in that? I want race cars. I want sports cars. I want cars that I’ll probably never get to drive recreated with perfect driving and sound precision on tracks that actually exist. But then again, Turn 10 has never really believed in that philosophy of recreating real life.

I still laugh when people say that the Forza games are simulation. HA. Get your hands on Race PRO and then tell me how it goes to drive one of those cars fast. It sure sounds a hell of a lot better. The cars handle a hell of a lot more realistically and granted, the game is no winner in the looks department, but why should a development team dump all their resources into making the most beautiful game ever when beauty is only what lies at the surface. I would be willing to bet that Forza 3 will have all the attraction of marrying a 20 year old super model. Yeah, she’ll have the looks and the relationship will be a fiery one for about a month, but when you get to know her, she’ll just be another blithering idiot in a world of talentless wanna be’s. That is why I wont be buying Forza Motorsport 3. Race PRO will more then satisfy my driving addiction until Formula One 2010 releases and then I can drive the greatest tracks in the world in my favorite racing series. Best of luck Turn 10, but your Forza has lost my support.

International Formula Masters

It’s been a while and I thought I’d post my thoughts on the Race PRO download content.

First let me say I had not really had my attention toward Race PRO these past few months. Since it’s february release, the glitches, lag, and general game issues somewhat dampened my enthusias for the game which waned into boredom in testing by myself and simply running laps to work on set ups with warped into not playing the game at all.

So to my surprise, a few months back, Simbin gave us Imola and two “new” versions of Road America which was sort of a joke plus a muscle car pack that I don’t find particularly fun and was clearly geared to bring more Americans into the game. Imola of course is one of the greatest driving tracks of all time and that of course was great fun to play but the “changes” to Road America included a short course version of the track and a turn added near the “kink” onto the long back stretch. It really added nothing to the game and I was bored with the additions a week after downloading.

Two nights ago, I was again surprised to see that Simbin had released a second set of DLC with the addition of Spa Francorchamps and Mid Ohio Sports Car Course. NOW WERE TALKING! Spa is a truly epic track and if you don’t know what it is, where it is, or it’s history…you need to quit watching NASCAR and watch some real racing. In addition to the tracks added in this pack, they gave us a nice little car pack including…

Pagani Zonda R, Volvo Amazon, ’71 BMW 2002, ’68 Mini Cooper S, Volvo P1800, Opel Commodore GS3000, ’73 BMW 3.0 CSL ,’74 Chevrolet Corvette, ’70 Chevrolet Camaro

Then Simbin dropped another bomb and released ANOTHER set of DLC yesterday evening including the addition of the WTCC 2008 season (Lada 110/Volvo C30 models) and the International Formula Master series PLUS the addition of Okayama (Japanese track) and Estroil (old F1 and MotoGP track in Portugal).

I will give you a brief review on game packs 2 and 3. WOW. Just WOW. Spa was an awesome addition to begin with and not knowing much about Mid Ohio, I checked it out and was loving the sweeping rolling bends and hills. It is a tough course! Spa is no walk in the park either. For once, a game publisher has made Eau Rouge feel like the monster it is. It is genuinely difficult. Estoril is also brilliant. Punctuated by several kinks, hard turns and one LONG sweeping corner back onto the main straight…it is a lot of fun to drive. Okayama is also a fun one! I have not heard of it but in reading up on it, it hosted the 1994 and 1995 Pacific Formula One Grand Prix which were won by a man named Michael Schumacher. Maybe youve heard of him.

Finally International Formula Masters. Oh my. Where do I begin? Obviously, my allegiances to car racing lie with open wheel. I love any and all open wheel racing. So the addition of this series was an exciting one for me. Prior to the release of this series, the Formula BMW’s were my favorite cars to run but IFM takes the cake. They make a great low rumbling noise, almost like that of a Porsche but are GORGEOUS to look at on screen. They have the curves of a 2007 or 2008 F1 car, are short in wheel base length like FBMW but have the speed of the F3000 series minus a degree or two. Oh and they slide quite a bit. It takes a good driver to handle them and drive fast.

So those are my thoughts. The Race PRO DLC packs are each over 1 gig in size so clear some space and each cost 800, 800 and 560 MS points. Well worth the size and price though. Go get em. Attached below are some videos and photos.

As always, if you want to race, hit me up (Lonesomeglory). I run no assists professional mode. Lets race!

One of the missions I remember most distinctly from Operation Flashpoint, originally released in 2001, was from a mission fairly early in the campaign where you and your squad are on patrol, come under heavy fire, you all run off into the woods and slowly but surely, all your squad mates and commanding officer are killed or wounded beyond repair. You are then left in the woods of an eastern european looking island with tall deep pine forests and dense undergrowth. Its you and you alone left alive. Enemy patrols are at your rear, your radio is shot to pieces and you have very little ammo. The last call you receive on your dying radio is that of an emergency broadcast telling all UN personnel to regroup at some coordinate to be immediately evacuated from the island. Lets just say, the mission goes from bad to worse at this point. The island is so big, you are probably in a conservative guess, about 15 miles from your evac point. And the terrain in front of you is crawling with foot, air and armor patrols.

Fast forward from 2001 to 2009. Enter Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising. This is the game I’ve been waiting 8 years for. I played the living crap out of the old PC titles and was one of the few to buy Flashpoint on console, but now, its a new ball game. A made for PC and Console military simulation. If you liked any of the Ghost Recon series games, Call of Duty Modern Warfare or Rainbow Six games, you might want to be keeping this game on close watch.

Based on a real life island north of Japan, the story line is loosly translated to, someone struck black gold, aka oil, the chinese want it, the japanese can’t defend it, the Americans are sent in to defend it. The developers chose the Chinese as the fictional enemy for two reasons. One, because its not THAT far out of the question that the US would go to war with China and secondly, the Chinese are the only conventional military on earth the US should be remotely worried about. Their weapons and vehicles match our own in technological superiority. Its basically an even playing field, which makes for an intriguing idea for a war.

So what makes this game so special? Why exactly is it different then that list mentioned before that currently have the strangle hold on the military FPS market?  Well for one, Flashpoint is unscripted. What I mean by that is think back to when you were running through COD4 Modern Warfare. As awesome of a game as it was, no matter how many times you played it, the soldier that kept killing you was still standing in the same spot. The airplanes still flew over and dropped bombs because you crossed an imaginary line in the game and more waves of soldiers still ambushed you from the same exact angle as they did last time. Essentially what you have in Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six and COD is linear and scripted game play. Imagine if instead of that linear style gameplay where you had one route to attack the enemy, you had a map the size of Grand Theft Auto’s Liberty City, except bigger. (85 sq miles/220sq km) and more detailed and you were given free reign to attack and command as you choose. Well, that is what Flashpoint aims to offer. Open environment, non-linear gameplay. You decide you fate and the developers said, the man that thinks he is rambo, will not beat the game. Interesting. This style of game play has been tried only once before. And that once before was in Operation Flashpoint on the PC.

Some interesting/fun facts about Skira island, where the game will take place…and let these soak in. This is real time, you could actually do this, although I don’t really recommend it, but apparently, it can be done in game. It takes 4.5 hours to walk across the island from end to end. It takes 2 hours to drive across it in a jeep and it takes 20 minutest for fly from end to end in the games fastest aircraft.

A google maps image of the island the game is modeled after

The other unique element to the game is its incredible level of detail. The game developers of Flashpoint 2 are not after the arcade sim crowd. Oh no. If you want to use a weapon in this game, you had better have the time to properly put it together. Take for instance the Javalin Missile launcher. It is an anti-tank rocket launcher that is extremely large and heavy. Generally it is carried in several pieces. That is what it will be like in game. If you happen to have one nearby, say in the back of a tank, you had better be prepared to put it together and then have one, MAYBE two shots at your target before it’s out of ammo. Similarly to damage, don’t expect a HALO style shield to re-load when you sit out of the action long enough. You have one life and you had better be prepared to use it wisely. If you die of course, the game will restart at a checkpoint but if you take a 50 cal round in the chest, don’t expect to walk away from it. In fact, the designers have said that the damage modeling to both human, material and the environment will be reflected on the size and calibre of the weapon as well as the type of ballistics being used AND the distance fired at. The developers have slowly been leaking information and videos like the following to tease the public on the level of detail in herant in the weapons being developed for the game. The following are in game sequences from Operation Flashpoint 2′s EGO engine.

Operation Flashpoint is no ugly duckling either. It’s game engine, called EGO has been used by gamers to great success and fanfare for the better part of a year now. Codemasters, Flashpoint’s developer, used the EGO engine in the racing game GRID. While the game itself did not really live up to much beyond the initial shock and awe, I can tell you, the environmental detail and damage modeling were bar none the best I’ve seen in a long time. Below is an in game sequential movie of an M1A1 Abraham’s tank firing off a few rounds. I recommend watching in HD.

Finally, if your motto is something like…variety is the spice of life, then Flashpoint is the game for you. With 50 drivable vehicles in the game (20 US, 20 Chinese and 10 civilian) there is little need to worry about boredom and repetition. Each vehicle is faithfully reproduced down to the nut, bolt and unique noise and weapons it has associated with it. Whether it be land or sea or air, Flashpoint is going to deliver you more variety of vehicles to choose from then ever before seen in a game. EVER.

Similarly, weapons will have the same level of detail and numbers associated with them too. With 70 to boot, ranging from pistols to shotguns, assault rifles, grenades, sniper rifles and anti tank weapons, each with unique options to add to it from laser sights, grenade launchers and scopes…you really can’t go wrong at all. To see more like what I have posted below, go to Flickr and search for Operation Flashpoint 2. Codemasters has been using Flickr to post screen shots and weapon specs as they develop the game.

I think that about covers what I want to talk about. Of course there WILL be multiplayer but the details of which have not really been released. I know the console versions will rely heavily on CO-OP game play with having real life people replacing your team members but we can only hope that they will use XBOX LIVE to its potential and have versus game play too. Maybe I’m crazy but I remember reading something about a game type they were experimenting with where there is a team of lightly armed men (think AK47′s) defending a base, or an object against a much smaller team of Marine Force Recon soldiers who are much better equipped. Sounds intriguing.

Expected Release Date: Autumn 2009

Out of curiosity, I have compiled some data on how well Race PRO stands up to real life times set in Formula BMW races.

What I’ve done is compared lap times I have set (with track set ups) against real world lap times from Formula BMW races across the world. If a track is not listed, the F-BMW championship either doesnt run on it, or runs a different variation of the circuit. The times I took are from the Formula BMW official website and were the fastest lap of the weekend from that year.

While I am no professional nor the best game racer out there, I can more then get by so here we go. Pretty impressive…but not really surprising considering what Simbin wanted this game to be. A racing sim.

I have color coded the times below. The faster of the times between my time, and real life is in red. The slower of the two times is in black.

My (current) leaderboard rank out of total racers that have set a time in FBMW on that track is listed next to the track as well.

]]> http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/how-realistic-is-race-pro/feed/ 0 JameyPrice FBMW1 http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/racepro-download-content-wishlist/ http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/racepro-download-content-wishlist/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 21:13:56 +0000 JameyPrice http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/?p=35 ]]> Here are the top five download tracks I want to see released for Race PRO. F1 fan’s wil clearly see some good ones in here. Since Race PRO has failed miserably as a selling game in the US (because most Americans don’t understand turning left AND right) I’m going for longer, more well known european tracks and not tracks like VIR…even Road Atlanta doesn’t sound that interesting. Ranked in order of desire to race from soonest to sometime in the future.

Feel free to add your own suggestions below.

1) Nürburgring Nordshleife (Germany)

2) Suzuka (Japan)

3) Monaco (Monte Carlo)

4) Catalyuna (Spain)

5) Imola (San Marino)

]]> http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/racepro-download-content-wishlist/feed/ 0 JameyPrice nordschleife Picture 4 Picture 6 Picture 5 Circuit_Imola http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/race-pro-formula-bmw-sign-up/ http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/race-pro-formula-bmw-sign-up/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 14:00:13 +0000 JameyPrice http://lonesomeglory.wordpress.com/?p=31 ]]>

First let me pre-face this by saying… THIS IS NOT A LEAGUE, CHAMPIOSHIP, OR SERIES. I want to find like minded people who race fast, consistant, and clean and are in it for good racing and for some fun endurance races. Anyone can put down one fast lap in a race car. Race drivers get paid to do it over. and over. and over. While I’m no race driver, I do want to compete in some competitie races on Race PRO. So anyone interested in doing that, respond below with your gamertag.

This is nothing formal. Races will happen when people happen to be online and have time for it. Whether is 2 of us, 4 of us or 8 of us. The game settings will look like the following

Laps: > 10

Difficulty: Professional

Damage: Realistic

Brake and Tyre Wear: On

Player slots: 8- 10

Qualifying: Yes

10 Minute Practice Session

If you haven’t messed around in the Formula BMW class on Race PRO, I highly recommend it. The cars are really really fun to drive. They are deceptively quick, noisy, handle well, and always have very close racing.

Anyone who wants to drive F-BMW, WTCC, GTSport/Pro or F3000, add me as a friend on XBOX LIVE.

I love the Nürburgring. It is such a challenging track to drive. If a game features it, I’ll buy the game. The “ring” separates drivers from gamers. And for that, I love it.

This video is the real deal. It looks like this is a test day for two GT race cars but on a regular track day for the Nürburgring…after all, the circuit is a public toll road most of the year. The Behemoth is the nickname Project Gotham gave the full Nordshleife PLUS the full Formula One circuit. The two tracks are linked by a small corridor at the top of the last turn on the F1 circuit and re-enter the F1 track after a lap on the Nordshleife on that same turn. Pretty intense lap for sure.

Enjoy the part around 3 mintues, 10 seconds. That poor BMW driver must have been shitting his pants. Porsche goes right…Viper goes left. F1 fans… that moment may remind you of the Belgium Grand Prix at Spa in 2000 where Hakkinen and Schumacher split a back marker car heading into Le Combes. Anyway, enjoy. Epic stuff right here. THIS is real driving talent. I have the utmost respect for Rally drivers and anyone that can throw down for lap after lap on the ‘ring.’ Its absolutely nuts.