It only gets worse from here. My back has been
seriously hurting for the past few days. It's just a consequence of
getting older! I'm not even that old, damn it! Then again, maybe
I'm deluding myself, and I'm starting to leave the prosperity of youth and
enter the compromise of middle age. I guess it's only downhill from here,
right?
I kid because I love! Hahaha! I love that
line. Frasier is back on tv, before Everybody Loves Raymond. It's a
good show, I find the humour to my liking. But I am just unable to watch
Frasier anymore. Too many painful memories now.
HAHAHAHA! Oh god, I am listening to the track African
Vibes from the V-Rally soundtrack. God that was a good game. The
cars didn't handle all that realistically, considering they had the turning
circle of an elephant on skis heading downhill. But I played this at a
very young age, and I think I learned how to drive from here. My brother
and I used to race each other pretty much everyday at this game and battles
would become quite intense. We would just have this track on repeat and
it would feel like a full on car chase, as boost would allow the person behind
to catch up. The tension would build up as races would reach their
conclusion. I liked the different parts of the world you could race in,
too. Every country was different, hell, even all the tracks felt
different. Races would get hectic with other cars and thin passes, so you
would get a fair amount of rollovers at crucial bits of the race. I also
just love the music, it's so smooth! African Vibes is Santana-esque
guitars over African funk and tribal melodies. Give it a listen on
youtube, search for v-rally OST track 2, it'll be the first hit. Well put
together soundtrack I gotta say.
Well since I've started talking about driving games, I might
as well continue with a list, ala yesterday's post. YES, I know I have
work to do, and I'll get to it! So I have a special place in my heart for
V-Rally. That being said, I preferred it over Colin McRae Rally, despite
Colin McRae definitely being a technically superior game in terms of car
handling, setup, graphics and what not. I enjoyed the game, but I did not
play it very much.
Need for Speed 1 was a great game, and I enjoyed it
immensely. There was just so much fun to be had driving around cars I
could not afford around big cities and street tracks, as opposed to closed
circuit tracks. Just a damn good experience. Need for Speed 2
sucked so hard, so I won't talk about it. Need for Speed 3 was a great
game, and I loved the pursuit mechanics of it. But my fave of the series
(including the newer games), has to be Need for Speed 4 High Stakes. It
was a thoroughly engrossing game, despite being a poor man's Gran Turismo.
I progressed quite far, while my preferred soundtrack was At The Drive-In's
Cosmonaut. It enabled me to get into a good groove to just race. I
have a dislike for the newer Need for Speed games due to the ridiculous
unreality of how the cars handle.
One of my favourite series has definitely got to be the
Driver series. The cars don't go all that fast, but they handled quite
realistically, and you were in a big open world map. Therefore you had to
drive with a bit more of a brain if you wanted to keep your car in one
piece. As I've mentioned before, I would just boot the game up and play
the Just Drive mode and drive for HOURS all over the cities. My fave
place was definitely Chicago from Driver 2. Many a hidden car to be found
and fun to be had. It's a good one for young drivers to learn the basics
of driving on populated roads with reasonably powered cars.
Daytona USA was a blast, but only an arcade with a full
setup. This is an instant arcade classic, especially against friends, or
even better, a full 8 player linkup. I only ever mastered the first
track, and was barely capable on the second track. But who needs more
than that, right? If you can ever afford to buy an arcade machine with
this on it, I'd recommend you do it!
I'll also mention Sega Rally at this point, but again, on
arcade with the full setup. A brilliant game that was well
executed. The Celica automatic was my weapon of choice, and I was
unstoppable on the first track, even on the major hairpin last turn! I
learned the tracks due to playing the game on Sega Saturn, and was even
proficient at the second track. However, the last track was too much of a
challenge for me and I never finished it within the time limit.
I can't go past Mario Kart. Despite never owning the
game, I have played it numerous times on SNES, as well as Nintendo DS, and I
had an absolute blast with it. The simplicity and excitement of the
racing, as well as the added bonus of minor vehicle combat, it made things a
little bit strategic. A bad racer could win through luck, so races were
quite unpredictable. A good experience, and one you can play with the
family. What's not to like?
At this point, I'll mention the F1 series. I've played
the original, 97, 98 and a few seconds on 2011. For me, F1 97 was probably
the best, as it captured the feel of the races while I was in the midst of
really enjoying F1. These days I've got no idea what's going on because I
have no time to watch the races. F1 was good, and 97 improved it to
perfection, but F1 98 SUCKED. They changed programmers and the game just
became absolutely stupid. Cars handled too well, and would be able to
break from 250 km/h to 0 in the space of a split second. Really turned me
off the games. But I did play 2011 on a PS3 some time ago while I was
walking through a store and it was great fun. T-Boy tells me that the
latest F1 game is the best yet, and he thoroughly enjoys it and posts his best
times to youtube and competes against others online. Sounds pretty good!
For me, the series that I've had the most fun on has to be
Road Rash. Motorbikes, racing and violence. What more do you
need?! Deceptively simple at first, but to actually be good at this game,
you require skill and a crapload of luck with the traffic, the violence of
other riders and road positioning. Great for multiplayer binges.
Also insanely hard after very little time. After level 5 on single
player, the races just get a little bit too long, and the other riders a little
bit too good. It's a true challenge to get through to the end, let alone
even win a race.
On to another point now - coding. I don't know how the other can do it. I don't know how others do it! Like to build a system, or a functional piece of software, you just code -code, code, code. Like thousands upon thousands of lines of code. How is it possible to do that? How can you review all the lines of code? God, how does bug testing work? But then I start thinking that if you're fluent in the code, then you should be able to spew forth lines of code as easily as I do with these words. It's just the issue that I'm not fluent in it.
Hmmmmsies, that was a lot of blogging for just the first
part of the morning! I'd better get stuck into some work. More to
come later.
Ok wow, things are busy!! Haha, not like it was
yesterday, that's for sure!
Need to take a break from reading crap, so back to
this. What I don't get is parents who pay for nannies and au pairs and
what not. People who can't raise their own children deserve no
respect. Yes, I understand things are difficult with the rising cost of
child care, and everything else, which usually requires both parents to
work. But that's more of an indicative problem with the 'system' as
opposed to problems with people. As little as 20 years ago, one parent
was usually able to work while the other stayed at home to look after family,
but that's not even feasible anymore for longer than 1 year. We can
afford to give up so much, can't we? My prediction? We're going to
have a generation of people who are so disconnected from any sense of belonging
or loyalty, or even love, and they will be our next leaders. Just watch
out there. Parents should be able to have a LOT of time out to enjoy
their lives with their children.
There are just so many problems in the world. The
issue is that there are not enough people who can dedicate time to the
eradication of these issues (e.g. poverty, war, disease etc.). This is a
travesty, considering how much of what the world does is pointless in the
bigger picture. Common sense can prevail, and I bet things can take care
of themselves, and therefore we can dedicate our time and resources on other
more important things.
Almost penultimate week until I can get out of this place,
yes!
Ok, I'll try to aim away from the game related posts such as
this one and the previous one in the future. But it's interesting to note
that my post a few days ago regarding Athlete Kings on the Sega Saturn has
registered massive hits. I wonder what's the deal with that??!
Hahaha! Also looks like I won't be able to fulfil my goal of hitting 300
posts this year, unless I double post and also do some weekends, which at this
point seems very unlikely. But that's alright, it's not about the sheer
volume of posts, it's making sure I'm actually writing, and letting the anarchy
inside my mind flow.
Well I think I've gone as far as I can go for today.
Hope you enjoyed it. Take care.
Ummm, are you having a go at me? Not impressed.
Nobody sells Kinder Buenos in this town anymore. Life
is fail.
Just sitting here looking at things I can't afford, and
would probably never buy, even if I did have the money. I'm a strange
person.
So sleepy, so very sleepy. I need to eat something.
There's no more Hyacinth, is there?
Google! Fix Gmail damn you! Why don't paragraphs
format properly when you put a space underneath them? There's a gap, yes,
but there's no BREAK. Idiots!
