Tag Archives: Sega

Mario & Sonic at the Wii Flat

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

I think I’m with most gamers when I say that my biggest question regarding this unusual collaboration is what exactly Mario is doping to enable him to match Sonic in a foot race. After having spent an afternoon with the game at the Wii Flat in London, I’m even more confused. Mario was pretty brisk if you held the run button, but when Bowser, Wario, and Eggman can keep up…well…it’s madness!

Once I was over my apoplectic fit and could put aside my inner fanboy, however, I couldn’t stay angry with it. I was too exhausted to…

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Sega Rally Review

Being that it’s now available for as little as £30 (apparently going up against Halo 3 wasn’t such a good move), I’ve posted a review of Sega Rally. I personally thought it was better than PGR4 which got nothing but top reviews and briefly lit up my friends list in the way that big new 360 releases tend to do, so I implore you to try the demo and jump in if you like it.

I had a great time with it even without being a big racing fan.

A Childhood Fantasy Comes True

Sonic vs. Mario

So Solid Snake isn’t the only non-Nintendo character to make it into Smash Bros Brawl, as Nintendo has announced that Sonic will be pitting himself in mortal combat against Mario for the first time. Now we know how Sega got permission to put Mario into its Olympic game, then.

I was very indifferent towards Smash Bros Melee, probably because it came out at the same time as I was getting into Street Fighter III: Third Strike’s home debut on Dreamcast and, let’s face it, in a battle of fighting mechanics only one of those is going to come out on top. It was an enjoyable little fanwank but I find myself constantly baffled by lists putting it up there as one of the best games of all time. It’s not. Seriously, it’s not. It’s not even close to being the best game on GameCube, and that’s saying something.

As such, my anticipation for Brawl was almost nil. I still need to buy Metroid Prime 3, and that gets the nod over Smash Bros for having a proper single player experience in there. But this has changed things entirely. The original Smash Bros may have been wish fulfilment for a lot of people who grew up with Nintendo, but in making a fighting game with Mario and Sonic, Nintendo have gone and created my most wanted game from about 1993. Seriously, if I’d told 8-year-old self about this game my little head would have exploded.

So what are the odds on Snake slitting Sonic’s throat for that awful next-gen abortion? Don’t go all family friendly on us, Nintendo.

A Day with Sega Rally

Sega Europe HQ

I spent today up at Sega’s headquarters in London at a bloggers’ event to check out the new Sega Rally (aka Sega Rally Revo) which is due next month. Free stuff and the opportunity to play a new game is the only thing that will get me up in time to catch the 6:56am train.

However, when the last time that Sega attempted to bring a classic series into the next generation with its original title we got that Sonic abomination, so you could be forgiven for approaching this one with trepidation. Particularly so when Sega Rally had already had its equivalent of Sonic Adventure 2 – the warning that all was not well, if you will – but now that I’ve stretched that metaphor as far as it will go I can safely say that this won’t be another disaster. Far from it, in my opinion.

Since graphics are often the most salient feature in this generation, I’ll touch on those first. Sega Rally looks good, if only verging on great. The framerate could have done with some tweaking (bear in mind that the build wasn’t final and it was running on the PS3) and overall I didn’t feel like it had all the graphical bells and whistles of DiRT, the most obvious comparison to make. Even so, it certainly didn’t look unimpressive and importantly looked like Sega Rally, complete with the vivid primary colours and flamboyant touches that typified the old Sega arcade racers. Speedboats in the trackside water, gliders and helicopters popping up as you pass, etc. Alas no suicidal spectators like in Sega Rally 2, but you can’t have everything.

Sega Rally in action

The USP here is terrain deformation which, as they took great pains to point out to us, is the real thing here. Motorstorm’s wasn’t persistent, apparently, and other games don’t have it modelled in such intricate detail and with such great impact on the gameplay. It was definitely striking to watch cars carving grooves and divots into the track which were still there on the final lap, affecting racing lines and sending vehicles bouncing around as they negotiated turns and in turn affecting the lines taken by the AI, which in this relatively unbalanced build was monstrously hard. We played with the seriously impressive (and equally expensive) Logitech G25 wheel which went a long way towards completing the effect.

Most importantly, though, it still plays like Sega Rally. Despite the effort poured into the realistic track physics, it has no pretensions of being a sim which I find highly appealing. Racing against other cars rather than the clock, arcadey handling that realises that sliding around in the mud is fun and not something to be punished if you can’t do it perfectly, and proper online multiplayer (I’m looking at you, DiRT). Incidentally we were playing network games over the Internet with no discernible lag.

So for me Sega Rally has gone from a game that was barely on the radar – there’s some other 360 game out in late September, remember? – to a very probable purchase. I feel like I need something different in a Q4 that’s overflowing with shooters and a blast from the past like this could be just the thing.

Oh, and I can’t let this go without bringing up the little competition that they put on for us to compete for a huge trophy and a Sega racing jacket. They say a picture speaks a thousand words; this one speaks six. Out of a possible six :D

And they also may or may not have accidentally let slip what everyone knows but Sony won’t confirm: that a Sixaxis with force feedback is on the way. Someone mentioned supporting it in the PS3 version, at least.

Ryu ga Gotoku

It might not have been particularly huge news on all the main gaming sites, but I’m very excited by the news that Sega’s recent Japanese action game Ryu ga Gotoku (translates as “Like a Dragon”) will be released in the West under the more marketable name of Yakuza.

As you may or may not have guessed, the reason why I’m excited is not only that it’s supposed to be an excellent game and a return to form for Sega, but because it’s also been called a spiritual successor to Shenmue, a game that I’d rank as my second favourite of all time and that I’m borderline obsessive about. It’s not as slow and doesn’t have the emphasis on exploration and investigation, but it looks nice and I can’t look at this shot without being reminded of certain areas of Shenmue II by night. This is one I’ll be watching keenly over the next few months.

Let’s just hope that the localisation isn’t ruined by horrible voice acting again.