14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: There must be conspiracy surrounding the close launch dates set for ModNation Racers from Sony, Split/Second from Disney and Blur from Activision. All that was missing from the pile up of racing titles was the long delayed Gran Turismo 5 from Sony and Polyphony Digital.
I played quite a bit of ModNation Racers, enough to put up a review for it, and experienced a very solid game, which managed to offer both fun races and very complete customization options, although the cartoon-like style does not appeal to my sensibilities. This weekend, I plan to take the other two racing titles out for a spin and see how their very different approaches to competition destruction match up.
For those moments when taking another tight turn is just too much, I plan to turn to Neptune's Pride yet again, trying to stay alive in a game where three other players have ganged up on me, and to maybe get a few hours of Alpha Protocol, the new mix between role playing game and shooter from Obsidian.
Mihail Cernea: These days, I will continue the adventures I started this week in arcade racing land with Blur and Split/Second: Velocity, the best car games I've experienced since Burnout: Paradise. They are a blast to play through. I'm not a big fan of racing simulation, as I prefer to do crazy things at insane speeds rather than carefully negotiating the next turn on the racing track while using the best possible path.
What these two games achieve is quite interesting, to say the least. While not offering the depth of their older more realistic brothers, arcade racers have to appeal to cheap shots to increase the challenge and not make everything a boring cakewalk (check out Flat-Out: Ultimate Carnage for a very good example). Both games deliver great challenge, but, contrary to their nature, one never feels too frustrated to go on.