(cont. from prev post)
But at least Microsoft had some sort of physics... some rigid objects while some could be knocked over... some mass on the cars at turns that reqd good usage of the brakes and allowed you to slide on gravel turns that made it realll fun (until an opponent car comes blasting through and you start cursing again.) Cuz then there came this ... this .... well ... sorry thing to be called a game called the Sega Rally. It was supposedly an arcade game... then an Xbox 360 game and now a PC game too.
I don't know who did the crossing over to the game, man.. cause the version I have isn't completely done. Why, you ask? Well.. firstly when I go to configure the controls (which sadly one can do only before actually going into the game) I see an Xbox 360 controller showing me all the controls that I can use to ..... THAT'S RIGHT... I CAN'T CONFIGURE THE CONTROLS BECAUSE IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CONTROLLED BY A KEYBOARD(???!!!!!). So anyway, having resigned myself to my fate I go on into the game anyway. I start a race and it's all well and good so far. Then the race begins... but my car is still there. I know I've pressed a button .. the universal racing default key for acceleration... the up arrow key but my car's still there.
Now I'm completely befuddled. So then I go onto the keyboard and start pressing keys at random. Suddenly my car jumps to life and then again slows down. Then I also catch sight of a sudden flailing of the car tyres like it's been given a shock. This exercise has now me scratching my head. Progress. Then finally after a full five minutes I realize what the controls are. It's A and Z for accelerating and decelerating and then the punchline ... the side keys?? The > bracket key and < bracket key. Well.. aren't the Sega people clever. What a joke has been played on me. I'm laughing hilariously at this utterly hilarious modification that has been hilariously thrust on me. Sighhh
Then I restart the race. It begins and as soon as my car starts it also starts flailing about helplessly bouncing off the sides of the road like a ping-pong ball. Now I'm intrigued, since having played my share of racing games I'm more or less acquainted with how cars deal in games but this wasn't something I expected: possibly the most sensitive turning device ever. Let's put this into a little bit of perspective... I could perform a 180 degree hairpin turn while going at a 100 mph while holding the side control down for all of two seconds. That's right... without pressing the decelerator. !!! . I grappled with the controls for the next three races only to find some semblance of a redeeming quality in its control... but I came out of that exercise an utter dunder-headed failure.
It was after my failed attempts that I noticed something else. All through my hopeless driving, the car had managed to fascinatingly stay on track and further not overturn even once. I never faced the wrong direction either. How was this possible?? The answer was simple. The boundary was set up so that it was completely rigid. It didn't matter if it was a simple wooden fence or rocks or a mountain slope... it was like you had two brick walls on either side... so all that would really happen is that you would lose a bit of speed. OOoooo.
The thing that actually angered me the most was that graphics were actually good, the cars looked good, they used the actual car models used in the WRC which would lead me to believe that they had some sort of permission from these car companies (or not.. who knows) and that the tracks were amazingly interesting. Rather than become a racing classic.. this game chooses to let the user grapple endlessly with the control while his car bounds of the brick wall boundaries on either side and then manages to make it past the finish line without as much as a scratch on it. I don't know if I have some whacked out version of the game but I would like to believe I would... if only to keep in my mind the fact that SEGA is not completely s*it.
Meanwhile however, I am on the lookout for the mother of all rally games... the Colin McRae Rally .. something that will run on my PC. Here's keeping my finger's crossed :D