Initial D Arcade Stage 4

After a poor mood during the morning, I decided to pack up, and head on over to Tokyo Game Action to play some Wangan Midnight. Upon arriving, oddly enough... I decided to try Initial D 4. Let me tell you a little bit about this little gem that very few arcades have in America, and my feelings towards it.

For starters, you get a plastic card that is just like a credit card, that holds all the information of your character and cars. On the top, it shows the touge passes you have beaten, and shows your characters face. The card also holds up to 3 cars at once...Not bad if you get bored of one car.

Once you make a card, choose your car and start racing, you have to play either story mode, time attack, or in-store battle. Time attack is self explanatory, in-store battle is to battle someone next to you, and story mode is where you go through the touge courses 1 by 1, following a similar story to Initial D's main character, Takumi; except you are yourself. When you beat a racer, you earn battle points that you can use to purchase parts for your car.

It can be really fun at times, especially the dynamic tuning of the cars, ranging from tons of name brand body kits and wheels, to various levels of tuning of the engine, suspension, etc. What is NOT cool, is to get to tune your car, you have to quit after each turn. Every 3rd quit, you can visit the customize shop to edit settings on your vehicle. Every 5th quit, you can get a random dress up item for your driver. Just gets annoying, quitting after each race, pulling out your card, then putting in money, and doing it again.

My main dislike about this game is the physics. At first, they felt decent, the car felt grippy, extra fast but grippy. But then there are these turns that if you go in too fast, or at an awkward angle... Your rear literally kicks out completely, and you slide into the wall, then ALONG the wall..and you can't get out. Once your car slides off the wall, you are in second gear going about 30MPH. If you brake hard, you make up for it, but still, it gets really aggervating when you're doing good, and suddenly you go sideways and your car becomes a magnet to the wall.

All in all, it's a fun-terrible game. Fun because of the up to date selection of cars, the in depth tuning - especially the name brands from Japan, and the touge courses. Bad, because the terrible physics, computer cars pushing you aside and/or driving through you if you're in the way, and again, the ice skating physics. Apparently they are beta testing Stage 5 in japan now, and from what I hear, it gets rid of that lame slide and fixes a lot of things. We can only hope for a better game!

Wangan Midnight - Maximum Tune Series

I have been playing the Wangan Midnight - Maximum Tune series since Version 1, so I figure now would be a good time as any to review this latest version.

The game in general is a racing game based on an anime story that takes place mostly on the metropolitan highway in Japan, known as the Wangan (these highway battles are also known as Shutokou Battle). You have a neat, full 6 speed gear box shifter, with a leather wrapped steering wheel, racing bucket seat with a cushion, and overall great music to get you going. You purchase a magnetic card from the machine to save all your data on for that car.

Main features about the game is the tuning that is involved. When you play in story mode, you get the tuning bars that allow you to tune either the handling, or power of your car. After completeing the first quarter of the story (20 races), you will start to tune your car points differently. After a while, you can begin to distrubite the earned points into your car, where you desire before a race. Example, if you are going onto a route that has a lot of turns, you can choose if you want more handling and less horsepower. Or if you know there will be a lot of straights, you can choose more power, less handling. To me, that adds a sort of strategic approach, and always make the outcome different.

Has all name brand cars, both old and new ones, along with various body kits, wheels, and other goodies you can add externally by competeing in ghost mode. Ghost mode is where you battle another players ghost that he has left on one of the 4 linked machines. It is as if you are battling the player, only he is on a set line that he ran, last ghost run he did. From there, you earn dress up points to bling out your car.

The game features all the other usuals, time attack mode, battling, and outrun mode in which you simply have to pass 10 cars in a row, one at a time. The physics in my opinion are just right. It's easy to pull off a drift, but the real skill lies in timing your turn and controlling it. Smoothness is what is needed to play well in this game, not just speed. The graphics are great, but I personally feel that Version 2 had a bit of better graphics.

All in all, this is a great arcade game that has some epic 4 player battles, great ghost mode to challenge players while they're not actually there, and just tuning the cars and drifting on the highway in the game in general.

If anyone plays that is in the New England area, feel free to let me know and maybe we can go to Tokyo Game Action or FunWorld sometime and play.

Gran Turismo 5: Prolouge

Picked up a copy of Gran Turismo 5: Prolouge the other day and wanted to give my two cents on the game. Been playing it just about every night with Oleg and my younger cousin. Bottom line? It's a good game - for a while.

Sadly, there is only so much you can do before it gets old. 6 (or 8? I forget) tracks only, with certain events that you have to use certain cars for or you'll just never win...But to get those cars you have to redo old events to build up money, 20 times in a row, which becomes old. Some of the events as well, you can literally only do if you're either a pro at the controller (no mistakes...ever) or you have the ultra accurate GT steering wheel. So career mode really has it's ups and downs. Some are fun, some are hard fun, and some are just stupid to bother trying (aggervating too).

Graphics? Out of this world. Bought an RX-8 and on the idle screens when waiting to choose what mode you want to play, it looks real. Not just amazing, or really cool, it looks REAL (playing on a 42' 1080P HDTV). But insane graphics can't make a game, and I think we all know that.

Physics? They are as real as always, but with a simulation mode (arcade "real" like) and a professional mode (real as it gets). Simulation mode really helps in tights spots and when learning the game. It's a lot harder to spin out, or mess up in general. Professional mode, slightest thing you do wrong, you're going to pay and pay hard. A lot of time and patience if you really want to play in that mode.

Online Play? Garbage. Enough said. Every room almost ALWAYS lags. People will fly through you, crash into a wall, then teleport way ahead of you like nothing, then crash into you, and send you flying while they still drive... At the start of the race by the way. That became old, very fast.

The cars? As always the cars are amazing. Even though you only get something like 60 cars, some tuned for you and some not, it just still doesn't cut it. Not the selection department, but the fact you cannot tune any of them. Now, you can "quick tune" (unlocked when you get to S rank in career mode) and lower the cars weight, change dampening, gear ratios, increase power, etc. Thats great...But it's NOT Gran Turismo! I miss blowing money on insane exhausts, getting wheels that match my car, lowering the car and actually seeing it lowered, etc. Now granted, I understand this is like a "demo" of GT5, but they could have at least had a few wheels and some settings ALONG with quick tune, don't you agree?

All in all, the game is a solid GOOD. You can play with some REAL looking cars with SOME decent events on some nice, but few tracks. If you're big into online play (like me) then wait for the real deal, because this lacks heavily.