Review of the Week

So this week we present TNA Impact, now for the record I was only mildly interested in this one, While I have pretty much completely stoped watching wrestling altogether I do still enjoy the video games. This was about 9 games down on my que but its what showed up so here we go....

Now the WWE products have always been fairly well polished affairs, (save for the RAW atrocities on the XBOX) and I was hoping for the same here, sadly the TNA game (much like the product its based on) shows its not quite ready for Prime time.

I went ahead and jumped right into the career mode right of the bat. It starts off with a narration of a wrestler named Suicide chronicling his rise to the TNA Champion, he was supposed to take a dive in the championship match and didn't so a couple of wrestlers beat the snot out of him and dump him in Mexico, this is where you come in...Basically you create your character and are Suicide reincarnated. The character creation is very basic and nothing compared to the depth offered in the WWE games.

You start off fighting a bunch of nameless wrestlers in Mexico eventually winning you're way into TNA. The story is lackluster at best and is basically just there to progress you through the matches. Speaking of the matches where WWE always has a wealth of modes to choose from in TNA there is really only two types basic match (single and tag) and the Ultimate X match (witch I'll touch on a little later). As for the in ring action again the lack of polish really sticks out here, all the wrestlers basically have the same exact moves and it gets really repetitive after awhile. Also the reversal system is abused by the AI, basically anytime you get close to doing significant damage to the CPU they will start reversing almost everything you attempt. This really sticks out in the Tag Team matches as you can be dominating a match, but then have the AI reverse everything, tag in their fresh partner and suddenly destroy you.

The Ultimate X match could have been the one shining point in the game, as it is one of the things that sets TNA apart from the competition. Sadly its just one more area where the game becomes a letdown. The goal of the match is to grab the big red X hanging in the middle of ropes that crisscross above the ring. Sadly there is really no strategy in the matches, basically get your opponent down once climb up try to grab the X, get attacked, Rinse and Repeat.

Graphics wise the game looks good, but the little details are missing like intro video's on the jumbo screens. Also some of the cutscenes are animated while others are just snapshots, its really weird.

One final note is the roster there are only like 25 wrestlers to choose from, and some of them are very questionable choices, compare this to the WWE games which usually approach 50 or 60 and it once again points to a lackluster effort from the developers.

Overall TNA Impact could have been a good game if they had just taken the time to add the little details that make or break a wrestling game. As it stands TNA is a very poor effort and leaves alot of room for improvement.

OVERALL RECOMMENDATION: AVOID IT

New Review Finally....

So Gamefly finally delivered my game last week and after spending some quality time with DiRT here we go.....

DiRT

DiRT is the fourth game in the Colin Macrae series produced by Codemasters, Now while Codemasters hasn't done much right in video games, this series has always been top notch. The game does a nice job of giving you a rundown of everything you can do the first time you boot it up, I spend all of my time in Career mode which is the bulk of the game. Career mode is set up as a tier system. You start at the bottom tier and as you clear events you unlock more on your tier and eventually the next tier. As you go through events you can buy new cars and will sometimes be forced to because only certain cars can race certain events. The really nice thing about career mode is that you can start of easy and ramp up the difficulty as you get better. Another nice touch is the loading screen you spend a lot of time looking at it but the nice thing is it will give you a rundown of your current stats, such as average finish, longest jump and so on, Its a little touch but its nice to have something engaging to look at while you are waiting for the next event. In addition there is no shortage of information to be had, pressing Y on just about any screen will give you some info about what you are looking at, whether it be the type of even, car or the track itself, its another simple but nice touch that makes this game feel really polished.

Now DiRT is not a standard racer its all about rally racing and there are a few differences in the way rally cars handle as opposed to street racing. The main thing you half to get used to is the looseness of the cars, they really have a tendency to slide on you if your not careful about braking and accelerating properly. Once you get used to it though they really become fun to drive. There are a few different types of races to keep things interesting, and a wealth of different cars. The modes range from straight rally point to point races, to crossover races (you race around a track that crosses paths at the halfway point), to my favorite the Rally Raid which is 6 cars or trucks on the track at once in an off road race. The cars and trucks also came in many forms from standard rally cars to big rigs and each perform like you think they would (the big rigs for instance are slow to get moving and really really loose) it is fun learning how to handle each different type as you come across them.

Now graphically the game is nothing short of amazing, I thought Rallisport Challenge on the original Xbox looked good but this thing blows that out of the water. You can even see individual weeds along the side of the road as you go roaring past. Also the real time damage to your car looks good and behaves like it should, it will even throw mud onto the side of your car as you drive along.

My main gripe with DiRT comes in the repetitiveness, after awhile everything starts to feel the same, sure the cars change but all the events start to feel like the same thing with different pictures after a decent amount of time with the game. Also this type of racing is not for everyone it can be very unforgiving on the higher difficulties and for those reason's my recommendation for DiRT is going to be.........

TRY IT

This is definelty one you want to check out and make sure you like its style before taking the plunge.

Where's the Review?

well I am sure my loyal readership is clamoring for the next review there's just one problem...Gamefly is currently screwing me over. I returned PES on the 25th of October, the promptly shipped out DiRT two days later, well that never arrived I alerted them of this on the 3rd of November (after waiting the mandatory 7 days) the promptly sent another copy on the 4th, here we are on the 10th and guess what ....STILL no game. I contacted them on Friday to let them know that I was not happy as its basically 2 weeks now that I am paying for and getting nothing out of it, they told me that we had to wait until the 11th to report another problem but were nice enough to credit me 5 gamefly dollars for my troubles. Hopefully I can come home from work tomorrow to find that it has indeed arrived though I'm not getting my hopes up. So that is why there is no review, I guess I could bust out something older and do a quickie on it but nothing is immediately jumping out at me, hopefully I can whip something up on Thursday as I have the day off. So stay tuned hopefully something will be up soon.
Until then please click on over to The Spoony Experiment (see links in sidebar) and check out his "Lets Play" Video's of Phantasmagoria 2....its down right hilarious...