Xbox

Broken.

It boots in widescreen, which is good… but it plays the games in widescreen, too, which is bad. There’s an option in the menu to play the games in OAR, but it doesn’t actually seem to do anything. I don’t want my games stretched, thank you!

Rubbish.

Also, they’ve broken Rainbow Islands. The music’s rubbish and it just doesn’t seem responsive.

Bah.

So I hate to admit it, but I bought the Official Xbox Magazine today. For the demos, obviously.

I’m interested in giving Battlefield 2 a try – though it’s online only and I’m not a big fan of jumping into online multiplayer in a game I don’t know.

I was, however, more interested in the LA Rush demo. It’s the name. I loved Rush 2049 on the Dreamcast to death, played it loads in single player and the multiplayer gave good value, too. Now, I know LA Rush is completely different game. Your cars don’t have wings, for a start. And there’s far less neon. And it seems to have gone for a free-roaming, blinged-up, urban cool thing. Hasn’t quite it hit it, as far as I can see from the demo. It’s not cool or stylish. It’s what it should be – big, dumb, arcade fun.

There are three modes in the demo. First up, racing. Which does what it says on the tin. Race around city streets, grabbing shortcuts, avoiding traffic and coming second by the same distance every try, even when your times are twenty seconds different in a sub-two minute race. Still, it’s good fun and though the collisions are less polished that those in the Burnout series they do have a certain satisfying weightiness about them.

The next options on the menu are Cruise and Roam. Which both seemed to mean the same thing. But they don’t. Oh no, they don’t. Cruise should probably be called The Car That Couldn’t Slow Down, as it actually starts you on a stretch of a road, tells you not to drop below 55 mph and gives you a certain distance to run. My current best is thirty-six percent, which is rubbish. But it’s great, intense, annoying fun.

Like Race, Roam does actually do what it says. You just drive around the city annoying police and finally noticing the framerate (not as bad as Rush 2049), the deeply strange pedestrian behaviour (which consists of them running around like earth-bound fleas in an attempt to avoid your car, but don’t need to because if you manage to trap one you just drive right through him) and the way that sometimes you can drive through trees and sometimes you can’t.

I get the impression that it’s one of those games that I’d get annoyed with if I paid £40 for it, but would hail as a negleted gem if I got it for a tenner. So, right, as soon as it’s cheap, it shall be mine.