LA Rush Demo

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.

PSP Emulation & Homebrew

So, I got Doom working. Doom 2, to be precise. (Seems WADs should be called doom1.wad or doom2.wad – my doom1 is called plain simple doom.) Controls are a bit iffy – but I’m a keyboard purist for Doom – and it’s rather buggy, but, hey, it’s Doom. And Doom is The Best Game Ever. No, really. It’s always number one when I make a top ten games list. Ah, Doom.

Also tried Chrono Trigger. Now, every time in the past I’ve tried it I’ve got five or ten minutes in, got bored and left it for another year or two. Got five minutes in this time. But I did go wandering off where I wasn’t meant to be and got into my very first Chrono Trigger fight. I feel reborn. Or something.

What else?

::strokes chin::

Ah, yes, Zelda 2. Can’t find a candle. Have no idea what that Start Menu is all about. Got stuck. Tried to go through a cave without a light. Died. I AM ERROR.

PSP Emulation & Homebrew

I want to play Metal Slug! But I don’t own it. Nor do I have it. So that’s out. I should remove the Neo Geo emulator from the list, it’s only mocking me.

Anyway, the NES emulator runs precisely half the ROMs I’ve tried with it. Zelda works, Excitebike turns off the PSP, Metroid works and something I can’t remember the name of goes to a grey screen and then stops.

Tried one of the homebrew games. Can’t remember what that’s called, either. (Some diary, eh? Forgive me, I’m ill.) Anyway, it’s a Bejewelled/Zoo Keeper style thing with an unexpectedly disturbing lack of animation and expectedly annoying lack of stylus control. Actually, I think it might be called Polygon.

PSP’s on charge now. Doesn’t really need to be, but I want it away from me, to stop me playing with it.

Oh, and Doom still doesn’t work. Boo.

Alien3

In 1994 I was on the dole. I had a SNES with five games: Striker, Mario All Stars, Starfox, Street Fighter II Turbo and Alien3.

I loved them all.

And, now, through the miracles of technology, I have Alien3 in the palm of my hand.

Yes, it runs full speed on the PSP’s SNES emulator. It’s all right, too; my memory isn’t too far out of whack with reality. It’s a pretty standard 2D run and gun platformer, but non-linear. I just played a game, but couldn’t remember how to find out what different areas were called, so just ran around randomly killing aliens until I died. Bloody face huggers.

PSP Emulation

So, I downgraded my PSP from 2.0 to 1.5 last night. A dangerous procedure, but I think several days of being stuck at home with a dodgy stomach have bored me so much that anything to do seems like a good idea.

It all worked, but getting emulators on there has been problematic. A pack of emulators I downloaded works, mostly, but everything else I’ve tried fails. It’s very odd and annoying.

The Megadrive Sonic games run, but the display is a bit odd in a way I’m not finding it easy to explain. A bit blurry, a bit jumpy, but not in a dodgy framerate kind of way. Seems to be better now I’ve shrunk the size of the window they display in and turned VSync on.

Tried the SNES version of Super Mario Bros. Runs quite slowly at time, not great. Might be okay for RPGs though, I suppose.

I’ve been playing the original Zelda game on the GBA recently – one of those NES classics carts – so I tried Zelda on the NES emulator. Seems to work, but I seem to have a shield equipped without having a shield equipped. Some lovely hacked ROM, I guess. It’s annoying, anyway.

Beats of Rage works, but the initial load is incredibly long. Then it hangs between levels and I have to suspend and then turn the PSP on again to give it the kick it needs to continue.

Doom simply doesn’t work, which is annoying. And, yes, I’ve got a WAD file in there.

A very mixed bag, then. I’m not sure how worth it is from a gaming point of view, but it’s good time-wasting stuff from a sick geek viewpoint.