Rock N' Roll Scrap Metal

I'm not sure how I'm just now hearing about Scrap Metal since it came out last week, but I'm glad I finally have. I know I've mentioned here before that I really enjoyed a game called Rock N' Roll Racing back in the Super Nintendo days, and I've always wanted some kind of remake. Well, this isn't it, but after listening to the most recent Xbox 360 Fancast from Joystiq, it's damn close. That's likely good enough for me to give it a shot. It also has an online mode, which means I can blow up cars that actually piss somebody off in real life... awesome.

For those of you who don't remember Rock N' Roll Racing, it was a racing game, obviously, that gave you a top-down view in the style of RC Pro-am or Super Off-Road. You raced on several different planets with several different environments, though the track layouts didn't vary much. As you progressed you would unlock new cars, weapons, and add additional speed boost tanks. The ultimate of these racing machines was a hovercraft that could carry heat seeking red balls of destruction. Really, I have no better way to describe these things. They were literally little red balls that tracked other cars and exploded on impact. I probably beat that game every day for a few months.

There really hasn't been much else going on outside of Bad Company 2. We're all still petty addicted. I'm unfortunately having to balance my play time with studying. I hope it's still burning hot in mid-April because if my study time goes anything like Chuck's, I'll be online with a vengeance after the test.

Inverted Y Axis Presents: It's a Trap!

Every so often we come across a game that pulls us into the deep dark depths of addiction (read awesomeness). It never came to full blown hand job(s) advanced in a back alley or anything (though Tag did mention a young man named Pedro), but we've all been pretty hooked before. Today we each take a look back to that dark period.

[Note: I think Poops is sitting this one out... we'll catch him on the next for sure.]

Aith:

There have been several games over the years that I have found myself playing over and over again... but addicted? I mean come on... I can quit any time... shit. I guess it mostly all goes back to one game:

That's right mother fuckers. Interplay's Rock 'n Roll Racing. Holy shit I played that game as much as Jack Thompson starts frivolous lawsuits. There was a period of at least 2-3 months where I played all the way through this game every day... sometimes more than once a day. I once wrote a letter to Nintendo Power demanding to know when the sequel would hit shelves (it never did... and like they'd know anyway). I listened to Black Sabbath on this game before I ever heard any actual recording of a Black Sabbath song. I didn't know who Black Sabbath was, but I knew it was fun as shit to blow up cars while racing and listening to them. Hey Blizzard, I know you fuckers own this game now... why don't you take a break from the WoW-fuled money enemas and get an updated version of this over on XBLA, Wii Ware, or the PSN? Seriously, daddy need his fix...

-Aith

Tagurit:

One of the games that sucked me in and didn’t let go was Mass Effect. I was never a big fan of role playing games but this one was considered epic and a “must play” to pretty much all gamers. I decided to take the plunge after hearing good reviews from my circle of gaming trust.

As most people know, there are six classes in the game; soldier, engineer, adept, sentinel, infiltrator, and vanguard. I started off as an infiltrator but didn’t like it so much and started a soldier. After I finished the game in about 43 hours of cumulative play I was hooked on the storyline. So I decided to try an engineer next. Somewhere around this time, I did more research into how you can set up your character. Do I want to be mean or nice? What kind of background should I have to facilitate being mean or nice? I thought if I’m going to spend more time with this game, I should try having my character be female and see if it’s any different (not much btw).

I beat it the second time with an engineer class in about 28 hours of play, then again with a vanguard, an adept, an infiltrator, and finally a sentinel. I also finished my first infiltrator. It became a textbook grind of a game and my final play through ended in 20 hours 23 minutes. I should note that each of my characters have finished the game at 100%, there’s nothing left to do in the game. I played through once more on the hardcore setting with my engineer and started on the insane difficulty with my adept. About this point, people started getting worried and I came to the realization, after 9 playthroughs of the game, that this was stupid. I put the game down at about 70% through insane difficulty (10 playthrough) and haven’t picked it back up since. I’ll estimate 240 hours of my life went to this game, about 10 whole days… jebus fuck.

-Tagurit

Fenris:

It’s tough to just pick one game to expound on about its intrinsic Cracky goodness. This may end up being a semi-recurring post topic. While I was mulling over whether to put forth a RTS, FPS, or other genera game and deciding on which generation of game title to talk up, the ultimate criteria came to me. Which made one game clearly stand out, I’m referring to Sickness.
I’m talking about when you’re so into a game and have been playing for so long that you get physically ill, but still can’t stop playing. Now a couple of game have fallen into this category for me over the years, generally older generation games who’s graphics are at least partially to blame. With newer generation games this Sickness may go away entirely and though I am using it as a gaming yard stick I won’t miss its passing. The top of my list is Morrowind: Elder Scrolls 3 (Ninja Giaden was a close second). This game comes from the minds of Bethesda which along with Bioware have cranked out some of my favorite games over the years.

This original Xbox title was one that I had originally stayed away from and I don’t think I even played it till it had been out for a year or 2. My college degree shall be eternally grateful that I didn’t start it earlier. The detail of character customization and sheer amount and variety of stuff to do in this game was staggering. Morrowind had the topography of an entire continent shoved into a good sized island; you could never know what you would find around the next bend. I was about 40 to 50 hours into my first play through when I found out that I was going to need some city guard to have the game take the course I wanted to go, unfortunately I had made the entire city guard so mad at me that they apparently had kill on sight orders for my character. Lesson don’t steal (get caught wearing the stole armor) from guards.

So I started over. I’m pretty sure I sunk a couple hundred hours into this game. It did have one unfortunate side effect, after spending all that time in Morrowind it made Cyrodiil (Oblivion :Elder Scrolls 4) suck. While Oblivion was a lot prettier to look at it was just missing something. A good analogy is to go from watching Predator or Conan to Junior (why Arnold why). But I have high hopes that Fallout 3 will be everything Morrowind was, Oblivion wasn’t, combined with lots and lots of guns.

-Fenris

So there you have it kids... stick to crack, it's safer.