Virtual Adept

First of all I’ve only spent about two hours messing around with this and I haven’t gone online yet with it, and since this is primarily an online game take this preview with a grain of salt. The graphics for Test Drive Unlimited for the Xbox 360 are excellent, the cars all look realistic and the road and the terrain is very cool. If you go off-road you can start to see that the world isn’t quite as densely populated as it should be, but sticking to the roads and your illusion will be safe and quite believable.

The game is set on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and the game has the entire island mapped out. This is very cool, especially if you’ve ever been to Oahu and seen the places from the game in person. As I drove around I would recognize something I’d seen on our vacation a few years back and I’d go “Cool! That’s just how it looked!” Now, the level of detail isn’t at reality-level of course, so some things don’t look the same. But You can definitely get a feel that you’re actually there.

The game starts you off with 200 grand, 150 of which you’re going to have to spend on your first house (and there were only two houses offered in the price range at the start of the game). That leaves you only 50g to buy your first car. I recommend getting the most expensive car you can afford at the start. I went the other way and got the cheapest, thinking I’d upgrade to a better car quicker that way. Well, my car sucked too much and I had a really hard time winning races which is how you get money. So I would say pick something faster.

As you earn more money from racing and other little driving missions you will be able to buy new clothes, new cars, and eventually bigger houses that have more garage space so you can store more of your cars. You can also play online and race against real people if you want to. I found that the cars handle just-okay but that’s probably because I had a cheapo car, I’m sure the more expensive ones handle better and go faster. Sound effects and music were good, graphics really good, and I like this game enough that I’ll be playing it more on my rental and possibly buying it.

One of the best games I have found so far for the Playstation Portable is Burnout Legends, a racing game developed by Criterion Games, published by Electronic Arts. While I don’t really like EA, at all, I do love the Burnout games (which, btw, EA bought into). Burnout Legends feels a lot like Burnout 3 Takedown for the PS2, but it’s all in the palm of your hand.

Controls for Burnout Legends are pretty solid. You use the thumb stick to steer, and you gas with X and brake with [] and turn on boost with the right shoulder button. You fill up your boost meter by doing dangerous things, like smashing into or performing a “takedown” on your opponents, near-misses with other vehicles, drifting, powerslides, and driving against oncoming traffic. Boost makes you go really fast, and is important for being able to catch up when you fall behind and to more easily takedown opponents.

There are a bunch of different game modes and when you are doing the World Tour you will need to earn medals in all of them to progress to the next levels. You start off limited to compact cars, then when you complete enough objectives in that you can move up to muscle cars, etc. The faster the cars are, the harder it gets because you have less time to react to what’s going on. 

One of the modes you will play is Race mode, which is a straight up race where you just try to be the first one across the finish line (by any means necessary, so takedown your opponents whenever possible). There is also Pursuit, which places you in a cop car and you have to takedown a difficult-to-stop bad guy. There is a mode called Road Rage where you have a set limited time and you have to do as many takedowns as you can in the time available. There is also a mode called Burning Lap where you have to do a lap around the “track” and make it under a set time limit. In Face-Off mode you race against a single opponent and if you win you keep that car model. Eliminator mode is like Race except that after every lap the last place racer is eliminated from the race.

Crash mode is what sets the Burnout series apart from every other racer. In this mode, your object is to cause a spectacular crash involving as many vehicles as possible and wracking up as much collateral damage as you possibly can. You will be given a car and shown a little glimpse of the road ahead and then you will drive and try to cause as much mayhem as possible. Along your short drive you will pick up as many bonuses as you can by running over little icons. Crash mode is a really cool addition to the game and is one of the most fun aspects of Legends.

What keeps you playing Burnout is that every time you do an event you earn points, and the more you wrack up, the more cars you unlock. Also doing as many takedowns as you can helps you earn more cars also. And some events just unlocked new cars, new tracks, new events, etc. Every time you earn a medal you are unlocking something new, and this keeps you wanting to play more and more.

So, what about negatives? Well, I’ve found that pursuit mode is insanely hard compared to the other modes, so I hate those missions. The handling is pretty difficult at times, there are certain tracks that just seem almost impossible to do well on because the AI cars seem to be able to navigate them with ease while I crash almost regularly. I’m sure this is just a matter of me needing more practice. I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet because I don’t have a wifi connection at home, but hopefully I can test that sometime.

Production values in this game are great. The graphics are amazing for a portable, by far the best graphics of any portable game I’ve played except possibly Daxter and Syphon Filter. They look almost as good as Burnout 3 Takedown on the PS2. The sound is killer, it has a great soundtrack with lots of good tunes and the engine and crashing sounds are spot on. 

If you like racing games or even if you are just a casual racing game fan like me, you need to get this game if you have a PSP, it’s just that simple. My rating: A+, Must Buy!