I’ve seen a couple videos recently where people claiming to be journalists sit on a stage with a business person and pretend to ask them questions. I say pretend because they don’t seem to care what the answers are or if answers are given at alI in fact. I would be so ashamed to be either of the people in this scenario. The useless interviewer brought on stage for the appearance of legitimacy or the vacuous executive whose only skill is the ability to speak for thirty minutes without actually communicating anything. It’s just a couple of people who suck at their jobs and for some reason expect me to watch. What a stupid little pageant.
Torko mentioned last week that I've been playing a lot of abandonware games recently and that’s true. I’ve also got my PS2 and Xbox 360 hooked up and I’ve been playing a bunch of old games on their original hardware. In the book 11/22/63 Stephen King writes about a time portal back to the 60’s and one of the recurring themes is that the main character is constantly blown away by how good food tastes. Modern food is a result of the environment it is made in and they just didn’t have all the chemicals and preservatives we have today back then. I think games are similar in that they are a product of their environment. Things like microtransactions and service games didn’t exist back then and as a result old games often feel ridiculously generous and fun. As game development costs have grown, developers have become less adventurous. Even major franchises like Need For Speed could be something wildly different from game to game back in the day. I think indie games are doing a great job of capturing some of this old imagination and excitement but it seems almost non-existent in modern AAA titles. So what have I been playing?
Blur
This game came out back in 2010 and combined real world cars with Mario Kart style weapons and battling.
I can’t believe how much fun this campaign still is 14 years later. Not only does it still look awesome but the controls and physics are amazing as well. I will warn you that it’s hard as fuck though and the difficulty might have had something to do with it’s lack of success at the time. It’s still a lot of fun though and a quick search for Blur, Abandonware, Reddit will get you in the driver's seat.
Need For Speed The Run
Originally released in 2011 this game is a wild race across the united states from San Francisco to New York. Today Need For Speed games are open world racing games populated with checklists of activities to complete but that was not always the case. The Run in particular takes place across a series of individually designed tracks. The cars in the game are great but The Run is really all about the tracks and even today they are stunning. Speeding through the rocky mountains along icey cliffside roads is a blast. I literally said “holy Shit” out loud when I got to a series of tracks that take you through the great planes complete with a major lightning storm.
Because of licensing deals with car manufacturers that tend to expire a lot of old racing games simply are not available to purchase anymore. The Run is one of these but a quick Google search for Need For Speed, Reddit and Abandonware will give you everything you need. The main campaign here (the coast to coast race) will only take you around 3-4 hours to complete but it’s a great ride from start to finish that I had a hard time putting down. There’s more to do once you beat that but “The Run” is really the star of the show here.
On my old consoles I’ve been checking out some cool stuff as well. On Xbox 360 I’ve got Race Driver Grid which I had never played before but easily has one of the best career modes I’ve ever seen. That’s something else awesome about these old games is how they structured their single player campaigns. Today it’s pretty much a given that you’ll be given an open world and told to drive around completing events and checking off tasks. You’re also usually given access to kick ass cars and events right away. In older games they did a much better job of starting you out in junker cars and giving you the experience of learning how to race and moving up into better cars and events.
I’m also playing a bit of Gran Turismo 4 on PS2. This is another game that does a great job of making you feel like you are working through a real racing career. Participating in low level events, slowly upgrading your cars performance so you can take on bigger challenges and saving money to buy faster rides feels very rewarding. It also happens to still have some of the best driving physics I’ve ever experienced in a game. Specifically the way these cars feel when diving into breaking zones is better than a lot of modern racing games and this is a PS2 game.
This is your sign to dig out your old consoles or hit up your local used game store!
-Gabe Out
