NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED

Overview

source : gamespot

Most Wanted is great fun, from its hysterical cut scenes to its extremely tense police chases.

Review

Positive

 

Outrunning the cops is extremely exciting
Outstanding sound effects
Sharp graphic
Tones down some of the over-the-top product placement found in the previous NFS games
Mind blowing full-motion video cut scenes. 

Negative

Racer AI isn't too bright at first, gets wicked smart later on
Not enough mind blowing full-motion video cut scenes. 

About

EA's long-running Need for Speed series took a trip underground a couple of years back when the developer refocused the game solely on illegal street racing. While the nighttime racing series was certainly successful, the lawless world was always missing one key factor: cops. This year's installment crawls back into the daylight. The actual racing hasn't changed too much, but the ever-present police make this game a whole lot more interesting. 

The game's career mode starts out with a hilarious bang. You take on the role of a nameless, faceless new racer attempting to hit the scene in the city of Rock port. An underground ranking known as the Blacklist governs who can race who, and when. You almost immediately run into a punk named Razor, who's definitely the sort of dude that lives his life a quarter-mile at a time. He's at the bottom of the list, but a few races later, he's sabotaged your ride and has won it from you in a race. Meanwhile, you're carted off to jail. Left with nothing but some mysterious help from a stranger named Mia, your task is to get back in the race game to work your way to the top of the Blacklist, which is now topped by Razor, who's using your old car to wipe out the competition. 

The game actually has a great story hook at the beginning that makes you want to see the career mode through to completion. The early story segments are told through some sort of unholy mixture of computer-generated cars and full-motion video actors. The acting in these early segments is awful...awful good, that is. You'll scratch your head and wonder if these segments are intentionally bad and meant to be played for laughs or if they're just unintentionally funny. Either way, they're great. Unfortunately, after a brief prologue, you stop seeing video sequences, and the story is conveyed via voice mails from various characters. Are you a cop? Will you get to utter the magic street racing words, "Mia, I am a cop"? Or is the plot twist even more painfully obvious than that? You'll have to see the story through to find out where every one's allegiances lie. 

Working your way up the Blacklist is a multi step progress. Before you can challenge the next Blacklist racer, you have to satisfy a list of requirements. You'll have to win a set number of race events. And you'll have to reach a set number of pursuit milestones and earn enough bounty by riling up the police. The cops hate street racers and will give chase when they see you rolling around the open city. You can also just jump right into a pursuit from a menu, too. 

Running from the cops is the best action the game has to offer. Chases usually start with just one car on your tail. But as you resist, you might find 20 cars giving chase, in addition to a chopper flying overhead. Losing the cops gets tougher as your heat level rises. Level one heat results in the appearance of just your standard squad cars. But by the time you get up to level five, you'll be dealing with roadblocks, spike strips, helicopters, and federal-driven Corvettes. A meter at the bottom of the screen indicates how close you are to losing the cops or getting busted. Stopping your car--or having it stopped for you by spike strips or getting completely boxed in by cops--is how you'll get busted. To actually get away, you'll need to get out of visual range...and stay there. The initial evasion changes the meter over to a cool down meter. You'll have to lie low and wait for that meter to fill up to end the chase. This is probably the tensest part of the entire chase, since you never know when two cops might blow around the corner and spot you, starting the whole process over again. It all sort of works like some sort of strange, wonderful cross between Grand Theft Auto's open city and Metal Gear Solids stealth mechanic. All the while, you'll be acquiring heat on your car. This means that you'll have to keep a couple of cars around, because acquiring heat on one car lowers the heat on your other ones. Also, getting busted too many times can result in your car getting impounded, though you can avoid that by resetting the system whenever you get caught (if that's more your speed). 

On the whole, 

On the sound side, the game has outstanding engine noises that change depending on which car you're in and which upgrades you have. The rest of the sound effects are also of excellent quality. The game uses quite a bit of voice acting in the story, which is good. But the best voices come from the police. When you're being chased, you'll pick up the police band and hear them communicating and cooperating as they try to take you down. The cop talk sounds awfully authentic, and you'll eventually decipher the police 10 codes and figure out when they're going to lay out spike strips, set up roadblocks, and so on. While the 10 codes used don't seem to be the actual ones the real police use (at least that's what a little basic research told us), they sound good enough to be realistic. The music included is the standard mix of rock and hip-hop you've come to expect from EA's games, including a few songs from Styles of Beyond. 

While the actual racing in Need for Speed Most Wanted is probably the weak link in the chain, it's still solid enough to keep you interested as you move from racer to racer, working your way up the Blacklist as you go. But the real stars of the show are the police, who give the series a much-needed shot in the arm. If outrunning the law sounds like your idea of a good time, you'll have a great time here. 


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You can download this version of Need for speed MOST WANTED and install by clicking on following link  Download Full Version

GRAN TURISMO 5

Overview

source : gamespot

This accessible but realistic driving simulation is both sublime and sub par.

Review

Positive 

Accessible and rewarding for newcomers and veterans alike
Uncompromisingly realistic handling
Loads of great cars to drive and varied courses to drive them on
License tests are no longer mandatory
Premium cars are incredibly detailed.

Negative

Quality of visuals is wildly inconsistent
Outdated and impractical online lobby system
Too easy to win early races simply by entering in a powerful car.

About

Like a classic car that has been lovingly but only partially restored, parts of Gran Turismo 5 look as good as new, while others are showing their age. Developer Polyphony Digital's latest "real driving simulator" introduces plenty of great new features to the long-running series, but it also recycles a lot of content. This is undoubtedly the biggest and best Gran Turismo yet, and despite its impressive level of realism it's also the most accessible, but aspects of both the gameplay and the visuals evoke deja vu, while the all-new online play uses a lobby system with about as many modern conveniences as a Ford Model T. If you love to drive, Gran Turismo 5 is a game that you're sure to enjoy; just don't expect it to have that new-car smell. 

Though things improve later on, Gran Turismo 5 doesn't make a good first impression. Lengthy load and install times, unwieldy menus, and music that should be swapped out for a custom soundtrack as soon as possible are early disappointments, and sadly things don't get much better when you enter the GT Life career mode. You're told to buy your first car on a budget that more or less forces you to check out the used-car lot, rather than one of the game's many dealerships, only to find that most of the rides there look incredibly rough. That's not because GT5 features faded paintwork, rust spots, or bumpers that look like they've seen some action, but rather because the vast majority of the game's 1,000-plus cars don't look significantly different than they did when they appeared on the PlayStation 2. These poorly textured, jaggy-edged "standard" cars also lack the interiors of the vastly superior "premium" models, so when you drive them there's no option to do so using GT5's new cockpit view. Climb into a premium car, on the other hand, and the attention to detail both inside and out is staggering. The cockpit view is ruined somewhat by nasty-looking shadows that move across the dashboard as you drive, but they're not overly distracting, and the exteriors on these cars are so stunning that you need to take them into Photo mode to truly appreciate them. 

Although the used-car dealer invariably has dozens of cars in stock, your purchases are limited not only by your available funds, but also by your driver level, which starts out at zero. You earn experience points toward your next level every time you complete a challenge or race, and as you gain levels you unlock additional events as well as the option to buy more powerful cars. You might think that being prevented from buying the most powerful cars at the outset keeps those early events competitive, but as in previous games, it's all too easy to win most races simply by entering in a car that's significantly more powerful than the rest of the field. The 45 different race series that make up the A-Spec (drive yourself) and B-Spec (give instructions to an AI driver) portions of your career all place restrictions on the kinds of vehicles that can enter, but they're rarely stringent. The result is that you end up winning races easily, which, while rewarding financially, isn't particularly satisfying. Even race series that restrict you to using certain car models aren't competitive unless you go out of your way to make sure that they are, because there are no rules in place to prevent you from upgrading that car in the impressively comprehensive and easy-to-use tuning shop. On the flip side, it's also possible to unwittingly enter races in cars that are hopelessly underpowered, in which case you're likely to quit before you even finish the first lap. 

It's unfortunate that the lax restrictions make competitive racing the exception rather than the rule in A-Spec and B-Spec events, because on those rare occasions that you find yourself driving in close proximity with AI opponents, it can be fun to jostle for position with them. AI drivers rarely stray far from the racing line, but they at least attempt to overtake each other in a somewhat believable fashion and occasionally get something wrong and end up spinning their car or driving off the track. It's good to see other drivers getting it wrong from time to time, not only because it's realistic, but also because it makes you feel a little better about the mistakes you inevitably make yourself. 

You can try to ignore cars that you have no interest in, of course, just as you can do your best to drive only premium vehicles, but less desirable and standard rides are everywhere. Even if you avoid buying them when there's nothing else at the used-car lot, you end up racing against them. It's not just the standard cars that disappoint visually; many of the tracks in the game are also recognizable from earlier games, and while they clearly look a lot better in GT5, they're still not up to the standards being set elsewhere in the genre. Taking advantage of GT5's 3D functionality doesn't help matters either; not only does it add little to the experience and occasionally cause noticeable drops in the frame rate, but it's tricky to calibrate correctly because you don't get to see what effect your changes are having as you mess with the parallax and convergence settings. Just as they don't look as impressive as premium cars, many of the standard cars don't sound great, and when the soundtrack jarringly switches between forgettable rock and forgettable jazz, it's hard not to wonder if so much attention was paid to the premium cars during development that other aspects of the game were neglected. 

On the whole, 

Regardless, if you've ever fantasized about a Ferrari or dreamed of driving at Daytona, Gran Turismo 5 is a game that you're sure to get a lot out of. This is simultaneously the most accessible GT game yet and the most uncompromisingly realistic driving game on a console to date. It's unfortunate that much of what makes Gran Turismo 5 so great is under the hood rather than on display for everyone to see, but a powerful engine trumps a perfect paint job every time. 



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You can download this version of Grand Turismo 5 and install by clicking on this link
 Download Full Version