You're going to have to fill me in on the Archer thing... whats the history there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Maclean

You are joking right? He's had a pretty solid run. IK+ was great, Jimmy White's was also pretty darn spiffy. I have Dopzone on a couple of formats and it's a very solid Defender clone with some interestng bells and whistles. Not played mercury, but the concept is interesting and the reviews were reasonable.

Speed Zone looks on paper to be pressing all the right buttons. I have no doubt it will get slated for its rather poor looking visuals, but as we know that does not a great driving game make.

I have high hopes that this is going to be a spiritual successor to San Francisco Rush 2049, but with less twitchy handling.

I don't remember things... took me 10 years to remember Myamoto's name. I can't even remember the name of the guy who made Sega Rally, you'd think I would have that tatoo'd to something by now.

No much movement on this that I have seen, but I thought I would post the official site for reference:

http://www.awesomeplay.co.uk/

On considerable study of that YouTube in HQ, the weight of the vehicles looks so close to SanFran 2049 its frightening, down to the way the vehicle appears to handle on two wheels, the float and the drift (lack of).

Tracks look FZero GXian too. Wish there was more info.

Obviously in LQ you wouldn't have been able to deduce even half that.

I'm still uber pumped for this game it could be an excellent party title. I don't think anyone has really pulled off >4 multiplayer single screen racing before (no Street Racer was shit and Pixel Junk is just slot cars). With modern massive TVs though it could work...

wait wait wait wait wait...

This is OUT?

http://www.amazon.com/Speed-Zone-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B0024OW23I

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/wii/speedzone?q=speed%20zone

Want to buy it for me Capt. PAL?

If I see it on my travels, I may invest.

An Open Senses copy, if you will.

Interesting. The critics seem to hate the control, which leads me to believe this is basically SF Rush on F-Zero style circuits. The Racing in SF Rush once you climb the handling learning curve is actually pretty decent. All of the cars in that game were mega twitchy, so it was always about careful control of speed and twitching into a drift to get the right line at the right time. You're not given the same nuance of control that other driving games have, but the twitchyness is entirely intentional.

http://wii.nintendolife.com/news/2009/10/first_impressions_wheelspin

Renamed "Wheelspin" by the looks of things.

...

Yup, official site confirms...

http://www.awesomeplay.co.uk/AwesomePlayHome2.html

Everything about that above screenshot is awesome.

Cooool, this review is brilliant! NSFW language.

And this for some flavour...

I can't believe there are people who there getting PAID for coming out with shit like that. FFS it really isn't hard to play other games and get a feel of what works - wicked that guy gave GX a mention, that game was and always will be Digital Cocaine.

That guy seems to exude an amazing superficiality and laziness yet he screws up the complete contempt for his opinion with his views on FZero GX... which is a shame, I would've liked to made that guy a nemesis.

Apropro those in game videos, it couldn't look more like San Fran rush with the Golden Gate bridge in the background... San Fran rush on pipes would be absolutely madness... infuriating yet delicious madness.

You see Jibblers that's my deal with this. I get that it's twitchy and tricky and wrong, but then so was San Fran 2049. Part of the appeal is that the control is so bloody hard to get to grips with.

As a kid I used to go RC model plane flying with my dad and there was this guy in our club who put lead shot in the tail of his plane to totally bugger up the weight distribution and make it an absolute bitch to fly and super unstable. I can totally see the appeal.

Fifteen english pounds sterling Sainsburys... glam... more.. us...

Wheelspin...

Not managed to play much, I am completely predisposed to like this game, genre, setting... but boy o boy so far its hitting all the right notes.

I need to play it more but I am 1 christmas party too many to stick it out right now.

The handling model combined with the silky simplicity of the Excite Truck controls (minus boost) is fab. The weight and grip is so so so much like San Fran its frightening... but its San Fran with banks and dips and loops and cylinders...

There are the dreaded upgrades, accel, speed and grip and a simple triangle thing.

Anyways, I've not even got past the SOLO races yet, which is just time trialing vs a ghost which is totally enforced... but I gotta gold them all before, well you just have to complete the task, but I gotta gold them all for my purposes.

Jibbering aside, I'll cogitate some more and hopefully have more excellence to report.

More impressions please. Is it worth 15 quid? Tempted to get it for that price.

So in so far as much as I've played. I have completed SOLO mode which is time trialing against a ghost. This gives you the tracks plus a ghost plus a "racing line". This racing line only really tells you which way is up, but doesn't really tell you when and which boost strips are premium.

I've also had a good go at the RACE mode, which is you vs 8 cars. Starting at the back of the grid you have to achieve a certain position to continue on. It has an idea of having to complete 2 distinct races which connect to open up a race in the next tier. These then create or unlock the pyramid with the difficulty increasing the higher up the pyramid.

There is a BATTLE mode that I haven't played, and I've not played multiplayer.

For the actual race and game mechanics its top drawer future racer stuff. The cars, and I think they are actual cars, handle with a real weight and have a determinable grip and contact with the "road". There appears to be a really interesting dead zone to the Wii Remote tilt to give you that required kineticism into the corners. The tracks are a wild combination of tubes, banks and slightly off camber wibbles. On the track are yer classic boost strips, a length of strip that gives you a speed / acceleration thrust to a speed that would take you ages to get to... or never get to without the boost (haven't worked that out yet).

It has the classic ingredients of off racing line, off camber speed boosts that have a good risk reward and a required concentration to actually attain. The game requires such a level of actual concentration that even looking at the map or any hud elements means you WILL fly off. Barely any of the tracks have barriers, and hitting those at anything other than parallel is suicide. The side of the tracks appear to have a fall off, you get dragged out of the track if you are within a car width of the edge.

What is really engaging is the steering and having to feed out of the banked corners, otherwise you'll oversteer immediately into the ether. Generally the steering is quite understeery in that San Fran way... progression is superfically limited through having to upgrade you grip, speed and acceleration of your car, but a half dozen successful races gets that maxed out pretty quickly... other than the engine noise and the shell, the vehicles don't appear to handle any differently to each other.

The RACES so far don't appear to be offering much in the way of challenge, it only takes a few mistakes to completely flake out of a race, but thats to be expected really in an actual challenging race. You can only afford 1 or 2 respawns before you might aswell restart the race completely.

There is a good amount of tracks, can't really remember how many, they are reversed and mirrored with a different coloured wash over the tracks and a different background with each variation.

It looks like an Extreme G game, plays like a San Fran game with tilt controls (you can use the Classic but I've not tried yet, tilt is alot more engaging generally, more precision too I think).

I think this should be bought on mere principle that its a slightly Indie future ribbon racer that is actually interesting to play.

I wonder what BATTLE mode is like.

Completoided RACE mode, which maybe because I went into an FZeroGX type zen trance I managed to polish off quite easily. Only the penultimate race caused me a rolling headache. Pwned it though.

So now I have the BATTLE mode to engage with. 8 cars driving around in circles, collecting powerups and getting points for damage. With limited time, thats the key, you get a good 90 seconds to "win" instead of just a first to a number of kills, so this works quite well to ensure a pace to the whole show.

Without sounding like a raging sycophant its all pretty good. There are 3 different powerup attachments, for left, up and right on the dpad, these are attached in a logical way to the vehicle, so you know which weapon it to which direction. All the weapons have a colour associated with them, and the pickup is primarily that colour and easy to see in the distance.

What isn't easy to see is the opponents, so I suspect its going to turn into a spam fest. But there is some kind of tactic to getting powerups and maximizing usage thereof.

So the big beef, is I was hoping for an UBERMODE... I bet that doesn't exist. Because its been 3 nights and its almost done people. Good fun and the multiplayer will get looked at.

...almost completed this like totally.

I have "finished" it, but not Golded it all yet.

It's worth a good golding too.

Battle mode, against the AI at least was simply a case of stalking the most homing of weapons and waiting for the AI to bundle past for maximum pointage. The points system seems to give you points for the amount of damage you took from an enemy, not a total kill count, and you can hit rolling corpses so its a bit tactical.

With some human interaction I expect the battle mode to degenerate quite badly, I can't see it working at all. We shall see.

This is all about the 8 player split screen for me. That feature alone is a killer USP potentially. Going to look into importing this one.

Based on your impressions Jibloid I've ordered a copy from Canada. VG+ don't appear to stock it, so had to go ebay. Picked up a new copy for under £15 delivered, which can't be bad

You're lucky I didn't bid on the same, I guessed that would have been you buying it

I went and nabbed a PAL copy in the end.

It really is as good as Jibs has been saying, bumper view ftw. The only real problem is the career structure which is a bit bust, it really needs straight difficulties/speed classes, but heck.

Hehe that would have been retarded getting into a bidding war with you. I've been ebaying quite a bit recently. Picked up a copy of The Jungle Book on the Game Gear for 7p delivered.

Copy turned up today Will give this a bash tonight if I get time.

ooooooo yeah, multiplayer didn't get that much of a look in, but what we played was a bit barebones. The interface is a bit counter intuitive so it was difficult to tell what was available, but as usual the splitscreen grunge and inability to see ahead because of yer typical view retardation was an issue. Framerate was rocking, but a Speed Zone vet vs a n00b was pretty unbalanced as you'd expect... i.e. it was 50:50.

Didn't find or look hard enough for the combat part of the multiplayer, maybe it wasn't available, I've let the side down, sorry folks.

I read the car crash gamesTM review.

The complaints appear to be that the collision detection isn't very good.

Now, I could sit here and whinge about that, but the general tone of the review is positive other than a good couple paragraphs maligning the mis understanding of the dead zone on the control and the collision detection with the barriers... both of which are wrong.

To criticise the collision detection, when you shouldn't be hitting anything is madness, and the control issues, what the heck?

That was a whinge, hey ho, just shame that they got it wrong and potentially scuppered a few sales through being a mollycoddled pseudo gamer... still, I don't think the gamesTM demo would be interested in a title like that?

So yeah, my latest moan is about how it isn't like it use to be in my day... but I think it still is my day, and I think nothing has changed... right, back to the whiskey.