Next-Gen Driving Games #1

Burnout (2001)
By: Criterion Games / Acclaim  Genre: Racing  Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade  First Day Score: Infinity
Also Available For: PlayStation 2, Xbox

As many regular readers here may know, the demise of Sega’s fantastic Dreamcast took with it my enthusiasm for all ‘modern’ gaming as well. Consequently, a vast majority of systems and games released since then went largely ignored by me. Still to this day I’ve used a PS2 only very briefly, and I’ve never used an Xbox, but the GameCube is a bit different. My appreciation of racing games is also well-known and it was these games that consumed the bulk of my time with my shiny Dreamcast so my interest in modern gaming was again briefly piqued by a magazine cover I saw. The magazine was Edge whose cover was only usually awarded to notably important or prestigious subjects so when I saw one dominated by a new racing game called Burnout, I took immediate notice, particularly when I saw the text accompanying the image – "OutRun meets 3DO Need For Speed"…

F-Zero Series - Part 6

F-Zero GX (2003)
By: Amusement Vision / Nintendo Genre: Racing Players: 1-4 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Nintendo GameCube
Also Available For: Arcade

It's hard to say for sure what the most popular F-Zero game is, but for a good few, including me, it's F-Zero X. It truly was, and still is, an absolutely phenomenal racing game, and a rare recipient of a 10/10 score here at this very blog. If there's possibly one thing about it that could be improved though, most would agree that it's the graphics. Super-fast they may be, but they are also largely devoid of detail, especially the backgrounds. It seems Nintendo listened to this slight criticism of their otherwise flawless game, for when the series returned to their main console (accompanied by an arcade counterpart) after a brief GameBoy-related diversion, it was in this area of the game that they sought to impress, and they enlisted some help.

First Look GameCube #1

Animal Crossing by Nintendo EAD (2001) - Nintendo GameCube

Actually, this time it's not strictly a first look as I've already played this game quite a bit, but I've never 'taken the plunge', so to speak, and bought it myself. As some will know, I grew up as a Sega fanboy and much of my console gaming has been done on their systems, but an old friend of mine is the same except with Nintendo. He's the sort that buys every incarnation of GameBoy and DS the day they come out and plays every release of every Nintendo IP to completion, etc, and out of all of them the one he is most obssessed with is... Animal Crossing! After he showed it to me a few times I started to see why too - it must be the most chilled out game ever! I guess I'd have to categorise it as an RPG but it's more of a 'life simulation' really, and is quite unlike anything I've played before!