L.A. Street Racing
To become the King of the Races in Los Angeles you'll have to face and win against the best pilots in the city. This is the simple and incisive plot of the single player mode of L.A. Street Racing. Unlike other games in the same genre, in LASR you'll be challenged and provoked by your opponents while you're parked in some corner in the city.
Besides the provocations, the interesting part of the challenges is the bet. The prize for every race will be a part of your car. The components can even be not particularly important such as body components, aesthetic upgrades etc. or more significant parts such as tires, nitro kits and the engine. But this "components earning" system takes to a limitation of your car's customization. In fact, you can get your car's performance better only by winning races. Besides, as being your own opponents, most of the times, better than you, you'll have to toil very much before driving a competitive car. So, you'll have to become cold calculators and carefully select your opponents not to risk to miss important components of your car. The better solution? Cheating! When you under stand the game's mechanic you'll note that, unless your opponent makes a mistake, it'll be hard for you to win the first races. Reason why you'll start planning expedients to make it crash against one wall or, even better, make it spin. All of this is frustrating if you think that the purpose of games like this is simply run. As it's not enough, to make your need to use these subtle expedients more frustrating is the fact that the gameplay in the races is of a good level. It would be very pleasant challenging the opponents in a real race.
By winning the races, you can unlock new cars, and you'll soon note the big difference between front and back-wheel cars, or between a new and old tires set. Most of the damages your car will suffer during the challenges will be aesthetic but if you'll have a much worse accident, then you'll be likely to get your car's performance much worse. But no fear, you'll have the chance to pause the game and use the "rescue and repair" function to renew your racing car.
Your opponents' AI (artificial intelligence) looks like the one of the Zombies in Resident Evil 4 , everything they can do is hitting your car. It isn't rare, in fact, that during one race in Bel Air level, your opponent badly calculates the distance from the borders of the curve and ends up against one of the several streetlamp. In fact, you'll be able to give this epilogue almost for sure during Bel Air's level, even if the pilot is your worst enemy, Matt Peacock. You'll expect the end-level boss to be the best pilot ever born on L.A. street in thousands challenges, instead his AI will be the same level as every opponent.
Every level of the four in the game is inspired to a famous Angeles neighborhood: downtown, San Diego Freeway, Palos Verdes Drive and Bel Air. Right, Bel air is the most difficult level, even if it's the one that was more badly realized. It's totally monotone and repetitive, trafficless and the night sections are of a low graphic level. The realization of the cars is of an average level, but we've soon noted the bad textures used for the images of the side and back rearview mirrors.
LASR's multiplayer mode supports up to 8 players and it's surely the best part of the game. At least here you'll be able to challenge some more expert pilots and your satisfaction in beating them will surely be higher. There's also a time challenge mode but oddly we haven't been able to enter none of the challenges, the game keeps guessing that every kind of car we got needs an higher upgrade. No matter what level your car is, you won't be able to accede these challenges, neither at the end of single player mode. Another bug in LASR is the impossibility to exit a challenge in the multiplayer mode, despite your opponent has an accident and can't continue the race.
We can't consider this game good, despite its good driving level gameplay. In fact L.A. Street Racing introduces itself for what it is: a cheap game. Bad AI and too many bugs, both in the single player mode and in the multiplayer one. The only thing we advice you to do is reading this review not to fall in a wrong purchase. |
FrancescoPontillo - 11/08/2007
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Title: Universe At War: Earth Assault
Platform: PC
Release date: January 2008
Genre: Strategy
Author: zsinger
Vote: 7.6
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Universe at War: Earth appears to be, at first sight, an attempt to deliver and old style RTS game, with some innovations. Petroglyph developers have introduced three new alien races, two of which never seen before in RTS gaming.
Plot
“And the earth stands on the brink of destruction…” it’s the year 2012 and the alien forces called The Hierarchy have descended upon the planet earth destroying everything in their path. As human force prepare for strikes back, a new mysterious alien force arrives: the Novus. Novus are sentient machines whose only will is to destroy their nemesis, The Hierarchy. .... |
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