As many folk know I do like my racing games. Xbox Live has seen many great racing games. Moto GP 1 & 2, Project Gotham Racing 2 and Race Driver 2. All were class games and had various strengths. However the driving model in each, although attempting to be sim, veered more to arcade so to keep the games as approachable as possible.
GTR is an entirely different beast.
Yes – spring has sprung. The first good weekend of the year weather wise has meant the garden can be appreciated without realising after two minutes it’s bloody freezing and time to get back inside. The bulbs planted last year are flowering well (daffs and tulips mostly) and it’s good to see that the plants we invested in last year have got new growth on them.
But the front lawn. Oh dear. Needs some serious attention over the next two months. I am on a mission. A mission to seed.
Finally I have achieved one of my long term goals. It’s not one of those vitally important life changing ones, but it brought a smile none the less. All 3501 songs in my iTunes library have now been rated and listened to at least once. Joy. The advantages this brings……mmm. Well, the playlists will be fully functional and at least I’m able to listen to all my top rated music. The radio playlist will also work 100% with all my music. And that’s it. Thank you for listening.
UK Online have now installed their LLU gear in my exchange. I know because in the last 4 days I’ve had two letters and two phone calls telling me all about it. That means I could have 8Meg downloads with 400k uploads for a mere £39.99 a month. That speed comes with a 500Gb monthly cap and a free wireless router – not too shabby a deal especially compared with NTL/Telewest who’s 3 & 4Meg deals seem dear in comparison, especially with the new caps introduced by NTL although it will be interesting to see how they implement them – kick people off who regularly abuse? (The cable company’s really should be offering far more to hammer home their fibre network advantage. Shame.)
Despite the temptation I will be sticking it out with PlusNet. From next month I will hopefully be on 2Meg for £21.99 a month. If the BT trials are successful I should then have the opportunity to move to up to 8Meg download and 1/2Meg upload later in the year again for £21.99. Bargain. Even if that falls through the UK Online deal will still be there – they just need to improve their performance if Adslguide forums are anything to go by. More speed – can’t wait.
Added a fair bit of ‘stuff’ to the website this weekend but all behind the scenes. The Archives are now a bit more funky and you should now see some Gravatar links if you post a comment. I’ve also been tweaking quite a bit of the php that drives the site – there should be context sensitive sidebars and also the times are a bit more friendly although I keep on missing dates as they are peppered throughout the code. I’ve also added in a Plugins page so you can see what’s been added to the default WordPress engine. Most importantly I’ve added in lots of interesting content. Ok – I’ve added a couple of drab posts but what do you expect?
Joking aside – I tidied up some old posts with images that weren’t displaying properly. I also removed some work posts that while I thought they were innocent enough with hindsight they were better off deleted – you never know who might read it.
So that’s it – I’m ready to add more dreary posts about the films I’ve been to see and games that I’ve played. Which makes you wonder why I and others blog…this quote summed it up for me.
“Blogging in itself is stupid, really, and self indulgent (or perhaps that’s just my approach to it). But it’s a hobby, and we are a nation who love our pointless little hobbies. It’s no more corrosive than other hobbies. Or rather, it shouldn’t be.�
Thanks for the quote Gordon – shame about the snide piece in The Sunday Times.
The much delayed GT4 was launched in the UK last week. I had no intention of picking this up – GT3 was a stale game that offered little over the previous titles that appeared on the PS1. The online section of the game had also been dropped – it is alleged that this will come out at some point but I doubt it.
However after playing Graham’s copy on Wednesday night I made my purchase…for the princely sum of 99p. Game are doing a bit of a bargain – trade in any 4 games (except for football and wrestling games) and you can pick up GT4 for 99p.
Onto the game – graphics are very impressive for a PS2 although the ‘edgy’ look is due to the lack of anti-aliasing. It’s down to preferences but I prefer the look of the Xbox racers. The options within the game are vast. You can get straight into some action via the arcade options but it’s the license tests and tune ups that most people will want to play. Here the game is massive with lots of car choices and potential upgrading. For me however this is the most flawed part of the game. It’s too easy to tune up your car and win races simply because your car out performs your rivals. To encourage the tuning aspect the handling and performance of the cars seem to be reduced so that you *have* to tune up whether you like it or not. The license tests can also get a bit dry. Handling is also more difficult with the PS2 pad – the lack of triggers forces you to use the right thumb stick for acceleration and braking – not the best. I’ve played GT4:Prologue with a steering wheel and if you have the room and the ability to set it up there really is no rival on any console.
Track selection is much improved over the previous games in the series. Highlight for me has been the inclusion of the Nurburgring (all 20.8km). This looks stunning – much narrower and twisty than the PGR2 version and with better textures than the Xbox game. Overall a worthwhile purchase for 99p – not convinced I would pay full price for it though.
There’s a torrent available of the brand new Star Wars Episode III trailer on Slashdot. The trailer, like the previous two, looks amazing but there’s seems to be more action and the film certainly looks more darker, but this was obvious as it is the birth of Vader. As disappointing as I and II were I can’t wait for III – roll on May 19th for it’s worldwide release.
Pretty much same old same old but I guess that’s to be expected when appealing to everyone. Ab Fab girls – please stop. Davina wasn’t too hot either. Peter Kay was comedy genius though – grab it here if you missed it. Comedy comes second though after watching some of the serious clips…and just how drunk were the Fame Academy students?
In the last few years I’ve never really had a problem with the Royal Mail. Sure some things took a while to deliver and it was a pain having to pick up parcels from the depot (the joys of Amazon) but I can live with that. Even one delivery a day didn’t bother me – leaving at 7AM for work meant I never get morning mail – it was always a 5PM event for me.
However the last few days have been….frustrating.
Finally got WordPress 1.5 installed. Nice. Freshened up the template as well which is the default with a different logo but it keeps things simple. Now got to go through the plug-ins I had installed to see what does and more importantly doesn’t work with 1.5 – the joys of early adopters! Did manage to hack through some Mysql to get the activity plug-in working – joy.