The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

It’s the end of the semester. I wanted to shoot shit. Bang bang bang! However, Gamefly just won’t co-operate! Even though the top of my want list is filled to the brim with shooters, they keep sending me other stuff. For instance, they sent me Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

I guess I shouldn’t complain, as it was a really fun game.

Mechanically, the game left something to be desired. It was basically a traversal game, a la a Prince of Persia, with a similar level of combat and some stealth sections where you had to sneak around automated guns and take them out. It didn’t do anything that really revolutionized this sort of gameplay, but it was completely fine.
One issue with the gameplay actually related to one of the game’s greatest strengths. This game is drowning in the work of Andy Serkis, who is the voice of Monkey, the main character, and did most of the motion and face capture for everyone in the game, from what I understand. You’ve got a pro in there, and everything animates beautifully because of it. Conversations look real, to the point where they can use expressions to get their points across and accent jokes: no small feat in animation, and fairly rare in video games. However, because everything is so beautifully animated, it doesn’t always play smoothly. Walking, running, jumping, all of these have beautiful animations, but they’re all pre-canned, so if you accidentally do the wrong thing (for example, you aren’t close enough to an edge of a platform to leap to the next, and accidentally roll instead) then you have to watch the whole animation, and no amount of jamming on the buttons are going to help you get things done quicker. It’s a minor annoyance, really. The only time it was really a problem that affected gameplay was when it screwed me out of an optional achievement you can get for winning a race in game. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but had I kept trying to get that achievement, it probably would have really frustrated.
The only other problem, really, was a silly oversight on the controls. Left bumper is “tell Trip to do things” which pulls up a radial menu. However, something like 70 percent of the time, what you want her to do is use her decoy power. Tapping the button to use the decoy would have made a lot more sense, and you could then hold it down for the rarer commands. Instead you had to hold it down and move to the left every time you decoyed, and it was a little annoying.

What really sells the game are the characters. Again, you’ve got an acting pro behind the wheel, and the other voice actors for Trip and Pigsy are fantastic as well. It really shows, as the characters say very realistic things, and you really buy their relationship. There’s almost no repeated dialog in the game (there are a few, such as the warning Trip gives you when her decoy charge is running out, but I didn’t find that to be jarring or anything) and everything they say is entertaining and endearing, really. I never felt like they were “telling” me these characters were close. You see their relationships build, and that is awesome and just so rare in video gaming.

Note that I said the characters are great. The story… well, it makes a really ridiculous turn at the end. I’m sure it’s the kind of thing that sounded so high and artsy and deep on paper, but in practice, it was just kind of a “what the fuck?” moment. That is really JUST the epilogue, though. Everything leading up to the after the last boss cutscene is just fine, and powered by that awesome character interaction.

Enslaved is a game worth playing if you enjoy characters, story, and things like that. A little love for traversal games like Prince of Persia will help, too. Although a lot of the elements, looking back on them, are pretty standard game fare, the game really, really feels unique as you’re playing it, due to it’s art style, the fantastic animation, the voice work, and the interesting world that the characters are in. It stumbles a bit at the end, but the experience is great all around.

On a random whim I decided I was going to try some handwriting recognition on my iPad. I grabbed a stylus and an app called WritePad. This turned into a really strange trial and error cock-up that really made me wonder whether this is ever going to be a thing. On a first attempt, it really tends to impress. You scribble some shit on there and it appears like magic. All well and good. However, the moment I tried to really give a good write on it, things went to shit quite fast.

Here’s a sample of what a sentence looks like without me correcting it first:
I would really like to write ab log po A quickly by wrI2g on the sirun.
Honesty, that did better than usual at figuring out my words and such. Maybe it is learning my particular brand of scratches as I go along. It’s supposed to, so it would be nice if that was the case. I also find that the “one line mode” is a lot more usable than the full-screen mode that I wrote that sentence in.

Okay, back to a keyboard, fuck that noise.
But yeah, people were saying really good things about it, and the thought of being able to scribble words down would make writing stories and things on the go much more accessible. I mean, I’m not bad at writing on the on-screen keyboard at this point. I’m getting good at typing at an acceptable rate. At the same time, I still make a lot of typing mistakes, and I can’t go as fast as I’d like because of the lack of tactile feedback. Writing on the screen would solve that, as I’d have a different type of tactile feedback, that of the pen moving on the screen. Then I could get rolling at a good clip. I wanted it to work.
However, to make it register my words in a way where I’m not constantly having to correct, I have to be really precise with my handwriting. I’m never precise with my handwriting, and to do so makes me go slower than making those little corrections due to typing errors on the on-screen keyboard. In addition, using the previously-mentioned “one line” mode for accuracy makes writing go slower as well, as you can’t even fit an entire sentence on that one line. Being able to fill up the whole screen with writing would make it faster, but then you lose the readout of the program constantly telling you what it thinks you’re writing, which is important to being accurate. It just doesn’t work for me.

To be fair, though, it really might just be me. I use a very scratchy print style when I handwrite. My mother, who was a third grade teacher and thus has extremely clear natural handwriting in cursive, was much more successful when she used the app. It still wasn’t perfect, but most of the errors came from her touching the screen in other places than from the handwriting recognition. Maybe it’s just way easier to have it recognize cursive? I’m not sure. I haven’t used cursive in years, except to sign my name, and attempting it on the screen made me have to constantly think about how to do it, so that’s not an option for me. I tried disabling the cursive recognition in the app, thinking that might make it more accurate because it wouldn’t be looking for cursive letters when I swooped about, but it didn’t really seem to help much.

I remember back in the day when I had a Palm Pilot. It used a set of “Graffiti” gestures to write that used little symbols that were close to the letters, but not really the letters. That worked fantastically, once I learned them. I could play IF on that thing, typing up all kinds of shit. Something like that might work well, and they might want to consider using that in the program. I mean, I may be able to set up something like that in here, but I’m not going to fuck with it if it’s not supported. I’m just saying, things have done this stuff before. I’m sure there has to be a way for it to work. However, so far, it’s really not working for me. I will probably keep playing with it, just to see if it ever learns well enough to be useful, but for now, my dreams of scribbling down bits of stories on the go doesn’t seem like it will be realized. Oh well.

Near the beginning of this semester, I invited Cara over for an experiment. I was in a mood, reading more stuff about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and wanted to see another ending. However, I had answered honestly and shit, and it seemed like it would ruin the magic of the game to try to, well, game it to get a different ending. This is when I had the great idea to let Cara make all the decisions, and I just drive. Then I’d get to see another ending, as Cara likely wouldn’t get the sex ending I got, and she could experience the magic. We sat down, and had a great time. We stopped, though, when we got to the Nightmare sequence after the most dramatic wheelchair scene. That nightmare is, by far, the worst part of the game, and I just couldn’t make myself keep going, especially since it was late. So we tabled it for later.

Months passed, and Cara mentioned that she wanted to finish the game off. I armed her with an iPad with a FAQ pulled up for her to help guide me through the stupid nightmares, and we polished the rest of the game off, with Cole joining in as spectator. I got to see a new ending (I believe we got what’s called the “family” ending this time) and we had a good time, so that’s nice. I thought I’d put down a few thoughts about the experience.

First off, it was interesting how much better of a person Harry was in the Family ending. He was still a person with flaws. He wasn’t some unrealistic knight in shining armor like in the video at the beginning of the game, of course, but he had much more genuine feelings for his daughter. While, perhaps, the more “normal” level of problem that Cheryl was facing of her father dying in a car crash right after he separated from her mother makes all the supernatural shenanigans slightly harder to buy than the pretty intense “evil” I saw in the sex ending, it still fit, to an extent. It certainly seemed like a happier ending for Cheryl, in any case, as she learned her father really did love her, much more than in the sex ending, where she found that she should leave him behind and move on. Though the big strokes of the story stayed the same, the outcome really was affected. It was impressive.

I also learned some interesting things about Cara’s gaming sensibilities. She couldn’t stand the mystery of what was happening for the whole game. Nearing the end, she really wanted it to be over so she could “get” what she was seeing. She wasn’t willing to wait for the conclusion, which takes a lot of time to get to in a video game, I admit. Much more than a movie or whatever, even in a short game like Shattered Memories. She also lacked the general idea of what was “interactable” and what was not, especially early on, when she’d see things and want me to do stuff with them outside of “shine a flashlight on it” and “call the phone number written on it” which really isn’t what the game does. Still, that meant she was engaged in the narrative, so that’s fantastic.

The second playthrough really made the flaws stand out all the more, though. The Nightmare sequences are just flat-out bad, which is acknowledged. The rest of the game is so good, though. Great, creepy as fuck narrative, storytelling, and presentation. It was enjoyable to experience a second time, though having a fresh pair of eyes on the game really was a big part of my enjoyment.

Yesterday I ate at Buffalo Wild Wings. I never really make the place a destination, but I do tend to enjoy going there now and again, simply because of SUPER HINT TRIVIA. However, when we arrived, the worst thing occurred: the Playmakers, the ridiculous little machines with which you play Super Hint Trivia, were broken! I even attempted to download an app that lets you use your iOS device as a Playmaker in order to get in on the trivia, but to no avail. No trivia could be had. This led to a discussion of “Why do people go to Buffalo Wild Wings?” by Essner, and frankly, I agree with his confusion. Why do people go to Buffalo Wild Wings?

Clearly, trivia is not why people go. It’s only why me and my friends go sometimes. The place is apparently a sports bar, and sports games are on televisions, but man, I just don’t even understand that. If you cared enough about the game to want to watch it, wouldn’t you use your television? You could buy some beers or whatever the fuck, and hell, even some wings and make them in your oven, and have a great time at home with your friends or whatever.

Even given the idea that people want to go to an outside place and watch a sporting event, I still don’t know why you’d choose Wild Wings. The food is, honestly, not that great. I’ve always felt like I paid a lot for something I didn’t completely enjoy. Still, I’m not a wing person, but Essner, who is a wing person, backs me up and says the food isn’t all that great on the wing scale. As far as beer goes, I’m obviously not one to know about that, but I would think some place like, I dunno, Applebee’s would have about the same selection of alcohol. It would also have better food, and very likely would have the game on, and you’d spend a comparable amount.

Every night, Buffalo Wild Wings is packed with people. Seeing the trivia-less experience, I must say I am no closer to understanding why. I mean, I’ll go when people want to go and trivia the shit out of things, and I’ll surely enjoy the company, as I am friends with awesome people. I’ll have a good time. It’ll just be in spite of the restaurant, instead of helped by it, I suppose.

Tonight we played a game of things. That game is called The Game of Things. It is certainly a party game! We had a lot of fun with it, but I really wonder about how it’s built and if it could be built better.

A Game of Things is strongly based on that fantastic party game Balderdash. One player will draw and read a writing prompt. It will be something like “The worst thing to fall into” or “The best gift for a mother” or whatever. Each player, including the person who drew the card, will make up an answer and write it down. The person who drew the card is the “dasher” and will read out everyone’s answer, including their own, to each player. Play goes around the table, and each person tries to match one answer to one writer (the person reason is not someone you can accuse, so their answer is simply a red herring for the round). If you’re matched up, you can no longer accuse anyone when it becomes your turn. Each time you successfully make a match, you get a point and get to go again. Also, the last person to make a match gets two extra points, just because they weren’t already getting enough points for getting a freebie final point. Then you pass the reader role onward, and continue this way until everyone has read once.

On the surface, this seems like it could be a lot of fun. Trying to out-think what your friends would decide to write for these sorts of questions is a fun social game with a good crowd. However, it really lacks what Balderdash has: objectives.

In most of our games of Balderdash, things get super silly super fast, and we end up throwing around inside jokes and writing things down to make the dasher say embarrassing things and so on. That’s all in good fun, and why I enjoy playing so much, but all the while, there’s still an objective involved. There’s always going to be one or two people who actually attempt to create a fake definition, since you know there’s going to be the true one in there, and you might as well grab a ton of points from being one of the only two legit options. The basic game objective isn’t completely forgotten.

In Game of Things, there is really no motivation to actually responding to the prompt given. You can write anything, and it doesn’t affect the game at all. As long as your ridiculous non-sequitur could have been written by someone else, you’re home free. The “dasher” honestly has even more motivation to write something not at all related to the prompt, as it makes which one is the red herring all the harder to deduce.

Again, I will say, it was a fun time. We laughed a lot, and I was very entertained. But a game that kind of actively encourages not actually playing it doesn’t seem like a good game to me. At that point, we were just enjoying the witty brainchildren of the other players, and the game was just kind of an excuse. It wasn’t a game at all. At the same time, forcing everyone to play it straight wouldn’t have been nearly as fun, whereas I could see a “forced seriousness” game of Balderdash being quite entertaining and strategic. It just comes off seeming like a hollow excuse to socialize, instead of an actual game. But hey, sometimes, that’s what you need, I suppose.

Let it be known: I love my mother.

Let it be known: I do not really like my mother’s tastes in romantic comedies.

After having watched The Backup Plan last night and loving it, my mom decided that we should all watch it on Mother’s day. I think she just thinks the guy in the movie is attractive? He’s okay. Anyway, she thought it very funny, and put it on, and we all then watched it.

This sort of stuff just really makes me wonder about how I view media. I mean, I want characters, you know? I want meaty characters who are motivated by motivations. I want what people do to actually be how people react when put in situations like they are. I want things to work in a way that actually has impact. I love romances when they’re done with these rules, because they tend to be genuine and interesting. Sex and romance is just cool like that.

Every major issue in the movie that the characters had to come up with was almost totally caused by the female lead doing something completely nonsensical and then attempting to rationalize it. It’s just frustrating to watch something when all the tension comes from contrivances that only exist so that the couple can have some problems before they inevitably get together. The movie attempts to rationalize these actions by explaining that she is someone who wants to be self-reliant and who believes that all men will leave you always, and thus leave them first. I could buy this if this was played for laughs, but that part of her character was the realistic part. That was what we were supposed to empathize with as viewers. Then again, this is also a character who admits the only reason she got herself pregnant is so she wouldn’t be alone in the world. She admits this to her best friend, one of a large number of friends she seems to have. So, you know. Totally alone without kids.

The male lead’s major problem in the film was dealing with these random changes of heart, which makes him also pretty one-sided, though sympathetic. We see that he’s worried about having these kids. Like anyone would be. Also, he’s a male in a romantic movie. That’s pretty well all he is. I guess the fact that he’s a goat farmer living in New York City is interesting, but it doesn’t really play into his personality or anything. I probably wouldn’t date him.

All this is interspersed with scenes of this crazy single mother support group that’s funny in a completely over the top ridiculous way. Again, that would be cool, but the world of this movie is fairly down to earth, and thus they really kind of stand out. It almost felt like they were going too far for the joke for most of the movie, which was proven the moment the movie got to this ridiculous scene of a birth party where they’re watching this woman have birth and she’s making crazy animal noises because that’s funny, right, and everything got stupider from there. Thank god for that.

To be fair, the movie did try some things that almost worked. Her dog begging for food was an attempted symbol at how she’s not willing to give anything to anyone and keeps it all for herself, which is kind of fair, I suppose. Except, you know, she shouldn’t feed her dog scraps, so it didn’t occur to me as a symbol until they went OH HAY THIS IS A SYMBOL at the end of the film. There was a parallel between the female lead and her grandmother that would have worked had it not been incredibly heavy-handed. As my mom liked pointing out, the dog was very cute.

But yeah, it was mostly pretty painful to view. I don’t really mind that my mother likes it, though I wish I knew of a good counter she would enjoy. They have to be out there. There have to be good romantic comedies made for women out there in the world. Okay, I guess, like, Stranger than Fiction is, at its core, a romantic comedy, and that’s fairly fantastic. There’s a counter, though I suppose it’s not really aimed at the stereotypical female demographic. Still, they have to exist. They have to.

Afterwards, my general response was that I went back upstairs and watched an episode of Paradise Kiss to remind myself how you write deep, interesting, and complex characters wrapped up in romances. May I never have to watch a movie like The Backup Plan again.

Natalie, way back in the day, got me into The Sims. She was a big fan of fucking around with the original, and had all the expansions and so on, and in the course of dating her, I learned what all the fuss was about. I was never super into it, perse, but as soon as I got past what I thought everyone did with it (ridiculous murder of people) and figured out what people who enjoyed the game did with it (working to make characters and build stories around them in the dollhouse framework of the game) I started to dig it. I did so so much that I bought The Sims 2 the day it came out, and had a lot of fun with it. I never dug into all the expansions and shit, but I’ve played Sims products off and on, and I always tend to have a good time.

That’s the background to me playing The Sims 3, if you didn’t understand. Again, they’re not huge games I play forever, but I enjoy fiddling with them. Upon watching this Quick Look and learning that the console versions were full-featured this time around, I figured I might as well Gamefly it up and give it a shot.

I really must say, I was pretty impressed with The Sims 3 on 360. It really was the full-featured game. You had a full house-builder, all the menus and options of the full game, and so on. You could even design your own clothes and patterns inside the game, and if you had EA’s Project Ten Dollar code, could connect to their online database of more stuff to download and customize, which is not something you see on a console game very often. It even has pretty good support for controlling multiple Sims. From what I understand of previous console versions (I never played those), you could only really have one Sim in those. This game actively tells you to make a big family, which is certainly an interesting touch.

I had a good time, making my lesbian couple (Why do I always make lesbians, I wonder? My theory is because I want a household with romance, but I also want to personally associate myself with all my Sims, even though part of the game is telling stories about people who aren’t you. I guess I ignore that part.) and their son, and setting them out on their way. The little Perks system and Lifetime Goals actually add a lot to the game. It adds a more game-oriented system to what you’re doing than in previous games. Sims 2 had a “want” system where you had this list of constantly changing wants that you could succeed in to make your Sim happy, but these are much more far-reaching. The Sim will tell you their wants, and you can decide whether you slot them into the four “Wish” slots each Sim has. Complete a Wish, and that Sim gains Lifetime Happiness, and what wishes the Sim has come from the various personality Perks you pick when building the Sim. (It also affects their AI, of course.) It’s a lot closer to making an RPG character, actually, but not in a way that’s intimidating. Everyone knows what the “Flirty” perk is going to do, where they might not know what a skill in an RPG does. You can try to create a Sim that is perfectly suited for attaining their goals, or pick a weird variety of perks and see what happens. It all depends on your approach and what you want out of the game. Personally, I always just make my Sims grind lots and lots of skill points. I’m just wired that way as a gamer. It also just kind of shows off what I could accomplish if I wasn’t spending time with stuff like The Sims 3.

In any case, it’s obvious, no matter how impressively complete the game is, that this game is made for a mouse. Building a house is painful using a stick, as the interface just isn’t optimized for it. I had real trouble adding an extra bedroom onto the house I bought because it was just wanting me to use finer control than the 360 stick could handle. I found some workarounds eventually, but it took me way, way longer than it should have. If you’re one of the people who really likes building a dream house, this version may make you really frustrated. Similarly, there are a lot of load times in this game. I had it installed to the Hard Drive, but there were still serious loads while you jumped around town to get shopping and such done. One of the PC version’s goals, as I understand it, was to have a seamless world between house and town and such without load times at all. The console versions really don’t make that happen. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but when you accidentally pick the wrong menu option and have to go through two load screens to get back to where you were, it is sometimes frustrating.

In the end, I enjoyed fiddling with it, but I’m glad that’s all I did. Frankly, I got more enjoyment out of the one dollar Sims 3: Ambitions I bought on iOS. (Okay, that was an on-sale dollar, but come on, everything on iOS is on sale for a dollar fairly often.) It has most of the features of this full version (They split some features among three different versions for some reason, but as long as you do some research about what features each version has or doesn’t, it’s no problem) and has a much better interface. You can build in the iOS version much easier than in this one, and it still gave me more than enough of that Sims experience to sate my own personal craving for it. (Note that I’m someone who played a Sims GBA game to completion. This is much more a Sims experience than that weird game.) Sure, you don’t have quite the range of clothing and such in it, but it’s still enough for you to do some nice customizing. At the same time, if you’re a hardcore Sims fan, and do like having every option in the world, you’d be better suited just getting the PC version, I’d think. I suppose there might be people out there who liked the original Sims, but don’t have a good enough computer to run Sims 3, and I suppose the console version would be right up their alley. It’s not a bad product, but there are better versions of it out there.

I am trying to make the whole “If I want something done, best to just do it” kind of mentality make me life work. As such, I decided that, shit, instead of worrying about when I was going to make this Paranoia game I promised Cara happen, how about I just do it today? I send out the call, and go to the store and bought supplies and even baked a cake. And we played Paranoia.

Jonathan ended up as the team leader character I made, who was ordered by his secret society to basically be an internet troll, which he did constantly. He actively gave orders that inspired anti-team behavior, such as delegating all paperwork for the entire team to one person, and then punishing anyone who wanted to fill out their own forms. He also tried to enforce very strict communications chains to Friend Computer, seeing as “that’s the communication officer’s job.”

Essner spent his time as Loyalty officer constantly writing hilarious notes incriminating everyone (even himself sometimes) as well as higher-ranked citizens, which would not bode well for him. He started time-stamping his entries for awhile, at least, which was interesting to experience when going through the treason log at the end of the game. He also got to fill out most of the forms, and only drew a couple penises, honest.

Kevin tried really hard to follow orders. I mean, really hard. He took his dedication to equipment seriously, and his devotion to Friend Computer extremely romantically and inappropriately. He coined the phrase “fuck you in your ports,” but unfortunately attributed it to Essner’s character, so he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. He was also very dedicated to using a bucket of soapy water as a weapon, so there is always that.

Cara really, really didn’t want to use her laser and really, really wanted to stab people with paperclips. She insisted on using an orange pen, which is an ink her Red Clearance troubleshooter shouldn’t be using, to send all communications to Friend Computer, which was unfortunate for her health. She also may or may not have been named “Pete” and may or may not have been turned into a camera cyborg.

I basically decided that since I had picked a definitely short mission, I was going to be extremely lethal, and tried to kill everyone more than I find I usually do when we play. Even then, I couldn’t bring myself to do it as everyone worked themselves into bigger and bigger corners. It was too entertaining trying to see how they were going to attempt to bluff their way out of being stuck in an Infrared Dorm room with an army bearing down on them. (The solution was to make two of the guards they had knocked out look like they were kissing, while a third knocked-out guard was made to look shocked that this was going on while holding onto a Communist Manifest from a Communist Trading Vessel. Well, their solution, anyway. Didn’t actually work out well for them.) Still, more people died than normal! And there were quite a lot of laughs. It seemed like a pretty good introduction to Paranoia for Cara, and a fun time was had by all.

Also, I didn’t ruin the cake I baked, so that was nice.

There are threads on Talking Time which post random images, art, and whatnot, and I tend to check up on them whenever I’m bored, because they are normally laugh-inducing. There are countless great people on Talking Time with great tastes in such things. Every once and awhile, something less fun gets posted, sure, but it normally is fixed quickly, or scrolled past, and not really a big deal.

Last night, I decided to check the Random Image thread before bed, and I saw a horrific thing.

Now, I have seen some bad stuff on the internet. I mean, I run in furry circles. I like to think I can handle my gross, weird shit. But this picture… just… ugh. I’m sure as fuck not going to link you to it, but it’s apparently an older sort of meme where you take the super creepy mouths of Lampreys and photoshop them onto various body parts. The picture in question was on two fingers of a hand. It looked like those fingers had been frostbitten really badly, or something like that, and then hollowed out crudely with a knife or something. That’s the only attempt I’m going to make at describing it.

It made me physically ill. I felt like a complete wuss, but dammit, there was a bit after that where I really thought I was going to throw up. A link was given in the thread soon after for “context,” but it just led to other similar horrific pictures, and just made me feel worse. I posted about how bleh it made me feel, and then went to bed.

That should have been that, but dammit, that image has been stuck in my head. It keeps popping in here, and making me feel sick all over again. I can’t shake it. My fingertips will feel strange, like something is gnawing through them, and I know it’s because that stupid picture is on my mind and it’s playing tricks on my senses. Time and again, I am hit with flashes of it.

Again, I have seen so many terrible and disturbing pictures over the years. I can’t remember any of them sticking with me like this. Moments of being disturbed, sure, but they didn’t bring the feeling back again and again when my mind wandered to them like this picture does.

Just… fuck. I hope writing about it gets it out of my head once and for all. A silly hope, but dammit. Just… dammit.

Everyone was talking about Burnout: Paradise like it was super awesome. I didn’t like driving games, but I tried it, and dammit, it won me over. It was fantastic fun, even for someone not serious about their driving and racing. Now, everyone was talking about Hot Pursuit along the same lines as Paradise. Armed with this new Gamefly account, I really wanted to see what Criterion followed that game up with. I had to rent Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. So I did.

While not the kind of revolution that Paradise was, Hot Pursuit is a really, really fun game, especially in multiplayer.

The single player is basically just a bunch of race events. There are two side by side “campaigns,” cop and racer. Racer events involve, well, racing. They are the events I care less about. Some are straight-up races, and some have cops trying to shut down the race as you race, but basically, your goal is to get to the finish line first. Cop events involve attempting to bring the racers to justice. You do this by wrecking their cars and brutally murdering them. Sometimes you are trying to shut down a whole race, sometimes you are trying to shut down one individual racer, and sometimes you’re doing a stupid time trial in order to get on with it and unlock the more interesting challenges.
Everything you do in the game earns you “Bounty” as a racer or cop, depending on your role in the event. This is basically a different name for experience. As you level up, you unlock new cars, new tiers of cars, and new events for the side you level up as. I don’t know why there is different EXP for cop and racer events, but since I don’t much care about cars or what I’m driving, I didn’t find myself particularly compelled to level up much anyway.

Basically, I found the racer events fine, though I don’t care about races. The cop events were, for the most part, a ton of fun. They’re variants of my favorite modes from Paradise, only with some more toys. Each side gets a limited amount of unlockable gadgets that they take into each event. You can do stuff like call in road blocks, drop tire-destroying spike strips, and jam your opponent’s gadgets. This gives the racing some extra spice, but somehow manages not to feel like Mario Kart. Since you have very limited uses, every item use is super important. The moment right after you release a spike strip is super intense, wondering if you wasted it or not. It works really well.

The best mode is the mode the game is named after, Hot Pursuit. Four racers try to complete a race, while up to four cops try to shut them down. The single player doesn’t do this mode justice: the moment I took the game online (with the free trial. EA and their fucking online pass, goodness.) and tried the real deal, it was even better. Having real people behind the wheels makes everything feel less cheap and that much more intense. Of course, I was bad at beating human players, but the game does a great job of still making everything feel tense, with people swerving all over the road and into oncoming AI traffic, throwing items left and right. Because you have a life bar and can crash quite a few times before you’re totally out of the race, I didn’t find being not all that great at driving discouraging. I just picked cars with higher HP and enjoyed myself. It was a blast.

Multiplayer is where this game is at. Even the single player is honestly based around the “Autolog” feature, which matches you up with things your friends have done in the single player to set special challenges for you on each race as you play. I wouldn’t buy it myself, because I won’t have people I know to online with and while playing with randoms is fun, I know eventually my lack of skill will start to dull the fun-ness of it. Still, if you like driving, this game seems like a game you should own. It’s a bit arcade-y, but it’s constantly fast and fun.