The Past and Times of Yore: Need for Speed Carbon, the last great underground

Release Date: November 3rd 2006
Genre: Racing
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Electronic Arts
Platform: Windows, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable
Players: 1 and Multiplayer
Classification: ESRB: E10+

I must say I am loathe to review Need for Speed Carbon now but only because I have not yet reviewed the other two great Need for Speed games I have played as yet which are Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 and Need for Speed: Underground 2, which I have played previously so I’ll do a bit of a brief history for those games that I do hope to make a proper review in the future and my experience with the Need for Speed series itself.

Ahh the stillness of night NEEEYOWWW!

Though technically the first NFS game I played was Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit which when looking at some footage takes me back actually though this was back in 1998 when I didn’t really know how to player proper racing games (only knew Mario Kart lol) and didn’t have a gamepad, I also really didn’t have the best computer but the game back then was pretty rough with glitchy jaggedy sketchy graphics. The most fun I had out of the game was downloading custom cars which were anything from monster trucks to ridiculously fast hovercars and even a train, I now wish I could go back and try again just to see if I could play it right but I know just like with other old games you try to go back to it’d get old pretty quickly and would be pretty pointless anyway.

Ahh Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit, can't say it looked good, but was fun

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 pretty much spawned my love for semi-realistic racers, I say semi because although they had a lot more driving detail and realism then other more arcade style racers (similar to the Burnout series) they were still primitive with real-life details compared to the real simulators such as iRacing. But to me this was a healthy medium at the time the graphics looked amazing, a huge step up from the first Hot Pursuit, and I enjoyed racing properly and outrunning the cops or being one.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, one of the best I've played, car detail was amazing, this Holden HSV has some pretty damn good colours hah

 It wasn’t until Need for Speed: Underground that the series took the turn into the underground tuner world where it was great fun taking a relatively normal car and upgrading it into a beast complete with custom paint, bodykits, wheels etc. I did have fun with the game but unfortunately did not enjoy it completely due to the difficulty and steep learning curve the first game of this genre took. It wasn’t until Need for Speed: Underground 2 came that I got to truly appreciate an underground racing game, Underground 2 had a great learning curve and the difficulty setting were much better as if you were having trouble you could easily set the difficulty to easy (unlike the previous game where it didn’t really change much) it also was one of the first to feature an open world to drive around which was awesome and so were the graphics for the time, it featured an ok story but great customisation and race types inc drift and drag the latter which was missing from Carbon.

Underground 2 had an amazing amount of customization options.

The latest Need for Speed game that I did play however was Need for Speed: Most Wanted the version brought back police chases and was mostly set in the daylight though didn’t quite have the feel that I liked as the police presence in the game felt too pressed, I much preferred the racing against the other racers though I must admit the blacklist was pretty damn challenging and the customization wasn’t the best.

Man I'm so tense!

 So on to Need for Speed Carbon, this and Underground 2 were hard to beat but I think I like Carbon better for various reasons, I suppose between the two of them they had the best formula for the underground racing out of any other game available. I started playing Carbon quite late after the release, as after playing Underground and Underground 2 on the Playstation 2 I needed another game where I could drive Exotic cars such as Lamborghini and Ferrari’s and needed something to replace Hot Pursuit 2, so I discovered Test Drive Unlimited and played for quite a while that before wanting to go back to something more underground, and Carbon was the newest available at the time (I think).

Test Drive Unlimited, my replacement for Hot Pursuit 2

There was a few things I liked about the game compared to Underground 2 and Most Wanted, firstly it was night again not day, which was more suited to street racing though a mixture of the two would have been ok, I liked the crews with crew colours and leaders and making your own crew, I liked the three different types of car classes and how they differed from each other, I liked the difficulty and difficulty curve, but most of all I liked the customization especially the Autosculpt feature which was lots of fun to use. As I said before Carbon is the last true Underground games of the series which involved the Player though it appears that the newest edition simply titled “Need for Speed” (Sigh it’s going to be the ‘Alien vs Predator’ series all over again) seems like it’s going back to the underground roots after the series went for a silly turn with Need for Speed: ProStreet which put me off the series until now.

You could get some interesting results with the autosculpt feature

I didn’t actually know this before but after reading the wiki I realised that the original street racer Player that you play as through the Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted and Carbon games is the same person and is actually originally from Palmont City. As the game starts with a flashback of a race/deal gone wrong in Palmont City with the characters from Carbon, it’s then said that the player flees the city before going to Olympic City (NFS Underground) Bayview (NFS Underground 2) Rockport (NFS Most Wanted) then apparently heads back to Palmont where everyone is talking about what happened  when they left (though you have no idea about this at the time). So anyway the player (aka you) is driving through a Canyon in Palmont City after escaping Rockport with your reclaimed BMW M3 GTR from Razor when Cross who you may know from Most Wanted appears and rams you into oblivion wrecking your BMW. He then tries to arrest you for the bounty as he is now a bounty hunter specifically to try and stop you, before Darius shows up in his Audi Quattro Le Mans and gets rid of Cross. He then says to you that he’ll get Cross of your back if you take out all the other Gangs and take over their Territories in the city, there are four main crews in the city currently along with a leader and type of cars they drive who you did your original ill-fated race with. 

21st Street Crew - Angie – Muscle Cars

Bushido - Kenji – Tuners

TFK - Wolf – Exotics

Stacked Deck - Darius – Various

Intro video and introduction showing the current story.

There are also several minor crews who own turf which you take over, they can also challenge and take over other crews turf including yours. So anyway they have every right to be pissed off you with inc Nikki (who is apparently your former girlfriend but is now with Darius) though she agrees to help you and introduces you to Neville and gives you your first car which you get to choose from a Tuner, Exotic or Muscle style and then shows you the ropes. This bit takes place in an area called San Juan which I only found out now isn’t accessible in free roam, it’s basically just used for the tutorials and has some quick race events. The usual Nitrous and Speedbreaker make a return for this game though as with Most wanted I did forget to use most of the time which is more realistic in anyway even if it does make it easier for getting into shortcuts/dodging cars police etc. You are also shown the games crew racing features, basically you have 3 types of crew members you can take out on the track:

Blockers – Block a designated car to help you

Drafters – Create a slipstream for you to  “slingshot” your car from sort of like another Nitrous boost

Scouts – Find shortcuts for you which are marked on the map after found.

Nikki creates a "Draft" in front of me (I never really learned to use this properly)

You start off with Neville who is a blocker which I didn’t find too helpful, a lot of the time they have trouble keeping up and can’t reach rival cars to block them (often saying they just can’t reach them) Drafters are just too complicated for when you’re trying to race, I know they could be good when used properly but they muck up your racing line and you end up crashing into them. Personally I just used Scouts throughout the whole thing, Sal at first then Yumi (yum!) later, because of a few reasons: 1. They find out the shortcuts which are immensely helpful. They consistently drive ahead of you but although you end up crashing into them sometimes I found that half the time they ended up winning the race for you and a handful of times I wasn’t even in second place so it saved me, and 3. Yumi is damn sexy. Neville and Sal join your crew independently Colin, Samson and Yumi (and eventually Nikki) all join from other crews most of which do after you have defeated the crew leader.

Yumi's intro video, fwaorr!

Crew members give other benefits too and have an ability when they are an active crew member and another that affects race and winning races. You can only have 3 crew members active so unfortunately you can’t use all of their abilities.

Fabricator – These guys allow the use of the autosculpt feature, you need to recuit both Colin and Sal to make full use of autosculpt.

Fixer – Neville and Samson give you more money and less heat from the cops after each race.

Mechanic – Interestingly these are both girls (Yumi and Nikki) and they give you either more or a discount on car purchases which is very useful when purchasing the higher end cars.

Your crew window allowed you to organize which members you wanted to be part of the crew providing their career and race bonuses (if active)

You then need to create your crew identity, to start off I didn’t really bother doing the whole crew thing I just made a logo and gave a crew name racing with crew members but not thinking about it really. I think I’ve played the game at least 3 times now maybe 4 and using each car type once though I think it was the first time I tried the Muscle Car class I had noticed in the past that each crew had their own colours and paint type. So I decided I’d do it with my crew as well which was quite as there are 3 tiers of cars and once you obtain a car that is a higher tier so does your crew, meaning that you not only had to repaint your car in the crew colours but all your crew members too, well at least the ones you were using. The territory part is pretty self explanatory, you start with no territory and have to win races to gain ground (while other crews do the same thing) and eventually challenge the crew leader of that area, you also start in a different area depending on which car you chose. As you fight for territory you’ll take over areas though sometimes the smaller gangs challenge you to take them back and you have to defend your territory which is kind of annoying sometimes as when you just want to finish up.

So basically you’re on a mission to take over territories for Darius until things get ugly later on, your other enemies apart from the rival crews is the Police who make a return but are fortunately not as prominent then in Most Wanted, they still give chase close to the end of some races and you are forced to evade utilizing Pursuit Breakers once again. Your cars can gain heat which makes them more prone to police pursuits though you can bring down the heat by using crew member abilities, impound strike markers or get out of jail free cards that you obtain from beating the crew leaders. You obtain a number of rewards card when you take over each territory, you can choose two cards from the set which give you more car upgrades or the set with gives you random things like impound strike markers, free cash and/or the pink slip to your opponents car. I personally picked all the latter ones as you obtain the car upgrades anyway and it equalled more money as you could sell the cars.

Police chases make a return but are easily avoided or evaded, heat can be lowered especially when using the right crew members.

Racing in the game is not too different from before there are your usual circuit and point- point sprint races,  the sometimes difficult speedtrap races which I remember from both Most Wanted and Test Drive Unlimited 2 and the Checkpoint races which is basically time trial. To my great excitement Drift races make a return to the game since Underground 2 and there are two types, arena and canyon. Arena is the same as before set in a drift arena which you do two laps and Canyon drift is basically the downhill drift from previously except there is a danger of falling off the edge. Speaking of Canyons there is also the new Canyon duel mode where you duel the crew leaders after beating them in a circuit.

Faceoff with Kenji before the street Race

How Canyon duel works is that you start off chasing your opponent and trying to get as close as possible to them, the closer you are the more your score goes up (extra for shunting) if you happen to pass them you win automatically. On the way back down they are chasing you and your score is going down so you must get down the bottom before it runs out. I found this mode pretty challenging but fun at the same time, managing to pass and outrun some bosses in the process. The game modes consist of the Career mode, Quick race, Challenge series and the Reward cards, the challenge series is a set list of challenges encompassing pretty much everything you do in the game and the reward cards are like achievements, both of these unlock more content to use in the game and career mode.

Canyon Duel with Wolf, doesn't take me long to pass him

With the controls, I used the same setup I had from Test Drive Unlimited. Using my Logitech PS3 style controller I used one stick for accelerating and braking the other for steering, speedbreaker, handbrake and crew member activate were all on the top and the triangle button was for look behind (this is what mucked me up a bit when first starting to play GTA5 as I was repeatedly jumping from moving cars). The difficulty of controlling the cars depended on the type of course, the tuners cornered well but had low top speed, the muscle cars accelerated the fastest but weren’t quick in the corners though I found they were very tailslide happy which actually worked and I didn’t have too  much trouble with them in the Canyon runs. The exotics had the best top speed and I liked them the most as they were the best all-round.

Muscle cars aren't good on cornering but I fared ok.

The car customization in this game was one of the best yet rivalled only by Underground 2 which possibly had the largest selection of customization options available. One good thing about Carbon was that you could fast-track your performance by selecting the “optimise performance” which basically gave your car the highest all-round performance available for the car which is great for people like me who are all about visual customization and don’t know anything about tuning. You can actually upgrade and edit your performance yourself for example if you’d like to have a separate car specifically for drifting as it wouldn’t matter how fast/slow it was as that’s not what drifting is about but I prefer to just have it done automatically so I can use the car for everything. Carbon introduced the Autosculpt feature for car customisation, this was quite fun to do as you could basically choose a set of bumpers, side skirts, wheels ,hoods etc and which would then morph into the shape when you moved the sliders bars across.

Using the vinyl editing options you could make any vinyl a body vinyl really though technically you could see the difference when stretched.

Basically the way it works was that the part would start off basic looking then would get more and more cut/warped as the bar went across and if you pushed the bars all the way to the end that was the maximum the part could be changed. For example a spoiler could have 3 bars, one which changed the height of the spoiler, once which changed the length and one which changed how much it dipped. I used this mode in moderation though as maxing out these features often made your car look pretty damn silly, impractical and over-the-top however there were some very awesome designs and I loved seeing how some parts turned out for example the autosculpt bonnets for some Muscle cars often had pop-up engines.

The classic muscle cars had some of the best looking autosculpt hoods available.

As well as the autosculpt there was the usual aftermarket parts though the only difference was the wide body kits that were only available in the aftermarket section, and unfortunately you couldn’t quite mix and match bodykit parts between the two sections. This kinda sucked as when choosing a bodykit it automatically gave you a certain shape/size of exhaust tip for example but you couldn’t then edit the size of it as this option was only in the autosculpt section but this was a minor detail. The visual menu included a wide range of car paint including, gloss, metallic, matte, candy, chrome and pearlescent . The Vinyls probably got the biggest transformation as you could now move them around the car as well as mirror, flip, skew and rescale them, making pretty much any single vinyl become a body vinyl if you wanted it to, you also have the option to reorganise the layers as per usual. Apart from that though there is not much else apart from wheel paint, window tint and the ability to adjust the ride height, features still missing from Underground 2 were Neon and Spinners and also the very intricate detailed things Underground 2 had like Hi-Fi Systems, NOS Purge colouring, Custom Gauges, Split Hoods and Custom Doors. This was a shame cause unlike Most Wanted this game was entirely set in the night-time. Still it didn’t detract too much from making an awesome looking car, most of the time my cars had the same colours and similar design style as I was trying to simulate the crew colours to the crews had but adding my own personal touch for example my last tuner crew had a shark logo and were called “JAWS” XD and the colours were blue and light blue.

This is a shot from the end of the game where I have taken over all territories, proudly showing my "JAWS" crew logo

The graphics in the game were good for the time that they came out, though there was an awful lot of motion blur and screen shake used. Though I guess it did create a pretty good illusion of speed and chaos specifically because driving at 200km/h plus things might start getting a little blurry and very shuddery, the whole thing looked ok though it was perpetual night but that was ok as that suits the Underground style, the cars looked good and the special effects even more so. Some of the scenery and civilian cars a little basic but looked ok as you were speeding past them most of the time. The cutscenes in the NFS Underground series are some of the most unique I’ve seen, their so heavily CGI’d that even the live action actors look like they are CGI (which may have been the point I guess) also everyone seems to be wearing very noticeable designer suede jackets which looks kind of funny. The cutscenes are also quite funny with Darius mispronouncing Cross’ name as “Crock” and “Craw” and basically any scene with Neville in it.

Amusing scene with Nikki, Neville and Sal

Music was quite interesting with this one as the game had quite a large soundtrack which is played through the menu’s, cutscenes and when in free roam mode though when you are actually racing or being chased by police the game’s original score is played which in most races was actually context sensitive as it got more dramatic towards the end of the race. I liked the artist tracks of the game as I knew some of them inc (Ladytron and Lady Sovereign) and they worked well with the game’s cutscenes. The sound effects were fine, had no problem with them, a lot of sound (especially the police) was brought over from most wanted but that was ok.

The original score was very good especially in the opening scene of the "Race Wars" events

 Overall I’d hate to make this a comparison between Underground 2 but both games have their merits in different areas, Carbon has better and more recent graphics obviously though I would actually like to see how the PC version of Underground 2 looks with all the graphics cranked up to full. Carbon has the better storyline and much better cutscenes with actual live acting as Underground 2 just had moving storyboard art and the addition of the crews and the tuner, muscle and exotic class work well, I actually much prefer classic muscle cars then the SUV’s which Underground 2 had. Underground 2 though it didn’t have the autosculpt feature it still had a more detailed level of customisation for your car and also a larger list of game modes inc Street X and Drag. However Carbon was enough and compiled with an awesome storyline and career mode and all the extra bits it needed was a great package and one of the best of the Underground series.

JD

I like this shot a lot, looks slick.

Here in our cars

The Past and times of Yore: Grand Theft Auto 3, the new chapter

Release Date: October 26th 2001
Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: DMA Design/Rockstar North
Platform: Playstation 2, PC, XBOX, Android, OSX
Players: 1
Classification:M

Well this is it, probably the most influential and groundbreaking of the Grand Theft Auto games to date, Grand Theft Auto 3 one of the most popular games for the PS2 and one of my favourite games ever. As many of you might know Grand Theft Auto 5 has come out recently on PC which I am now avidly playing, so I thought it would be a good time to review the first of the series to pioneer the 3D aspect and one of my favourite games of all time. Having first played the original GTA and GTA2 It took me awhile to get GTA3 as we didn’t end up getting a Playstation 2 for awhile and I was stuck playing Driver 2. Not that it was a bad thing of course it’s just most of my friends had PS2’s so I was kind caught out and even when we had sleepovers/parties etc we did that whole “pass the controller around” thing playing GTA3 on the PS2 which I understand now why it’s good to do it that way because especially at parties you want to sort of have a go then chillout not be playing constantly. But I had brought my PS1 specifically with all these multiplayer games and all these controllers (and the multitap) and it seemed like a bit of a waste but anyway that’s what happened.

Our antihero, the then-nameless thug

We eventually got a PS3 and GTA3 was the first game we got I’m pretty sure, I think I’ve played it through about 6 times now including the one on my Asus Nexus 7 tablet though I didn’t make this a an Android and his Nexus post because I’ve only played it once on that and besides it’s really for Tablet games only. I suppose I don’t really need to explain this but in the beginning the original Grand Theft Auto was a top-down birds eye view style game which I loved but was kind of redundant with no ability to save and was pretty damn hard in some cases especially when you could die with a one hit kill and couldn’t really aim your gun. GTA2 made this a bit better with the same top down view but much better graphics and lighting inc the option to play the game at night. It also had a better weapon selection and of course saving ability. 

Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2

But this was nothing compared to what happened next, GTA3 on the PS2 brought true 3D, bird’s eye no longer. I can still remember the wonder we all had when it came out, it just looked so damn good, and even without ragdoll physics, running over pedestrians, stealing and smashing cars, shooting people, blowing stuff up and all the things you do in the game had never felt better. This was one of the games I loved playing for the first time as it had one of those start-from-nothing starts that I love so much though it can be argued that you never really amount to much anyway but we’ll get into that later. Other things I loved about most of the starting area was just randomly exploring and experimenting with the world and mechanics which is what made GTA great. While not being the first this game was one of the earliest and most popular sandbox for its time and the series was part of the reason for the massive success of the Playstation 2 console.

"My Stallion!"

So let’s get into it shall we, the story of GTA3 begins with you being betrayed by your “love” Catalina which most people will remember from the events of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which apparently happened before the events of GTA3. I’ll sidetrack a bit here to explain about GTA’s protagonist who you play, he is basically a no-name thug who was betrayed and jailed and escapes then works his way back up also never speaks for some reason. We didn’t really question this as we were having too much fun to care until San Andreas where we find that he is actually mute and when the 10^th Anniversary edition of the game came out that his name was “Claude”, but we didn’t know this back then and it didn’t really matter. 

Claude is betrayed by Catalina

After the betrayal you are travelling in a prison van when the bridge gets blown up in a prison break attempt by the Columbian Cartel in which you and your prison friend 8-ball are able to escape. You then basically go on a crime wave of various different jobs for a Variety of gangs inc the Mafia, Diablos, Yardies and Yakuza plus a range of other singular characters, the game had a much deeper and cinematic storyline then the previous games as there was actually full cutscenes and you also had a much bigger sense of presence being much closer to the action so basically any of your actions had much more weight to them, especially killing people which went from comical to slightly less comical but was still confronting at the time leading to various controversies.

Fist fighting (this shot is taken on the Android version of the game hence the action buttons on the bottom right)

The main weight of the story is you getting revenge on Catalina for her betrayal as she is the main antagonist of the story though you do make more enemies as you go along. This game does not have the previous “Respect” system that GTA2 had you basically do various missions for the different gangs with the end result of some attacking you on sight though unlike the previous game you cannot simply gain the respect back by attacking either gang making it much more dangerous to go back to old areas meaning that it was advisable to do nay alternate or collection quests before doing the story missions. 

The Triads from Chinatown in Portland

The game map is loosely based on New York City, starting on the Portland (Industrial/Brooklyn) district you gradually make your way through Staunton Island (Business/Manhattan) to Shoreside Vale (Residential/Staten Island) by doing the main story missions. This was the first of the GTA games to be on a single map and feature blocked access preventing you from gaining access to other areas, this is done by various methods inc: bridges being blown up or under repair, tunnels being blocked off and preventing the protagonist from being able to swim thus drowning if they fall into water. The map was notably bigger and obviously not split into 3 different levels/cities as per previous games though there was a short loading time when you switched islands. 

Map of the City from the game case, you can see most characters displayed around it.

The world was plenty big enough back then and there also seemed to be a little more nature areas then before though the main thing was the change to 3D and all of the experimentation that came with it. The graphics though nothing by today’s standards with polygonal faces and round balls for hands but back then it was pretty damn good, sure there’s was a bit of clipping and tearing as there were a fair few buildings and objects that the camera could clip through and there were some instances where the camera got a bit annoying  but for the most part it was ok, it was everything you could want in a  city really, lots of people, lots of cars, lots of cops :P the level of details was pretty good. 

The world was essentially fully working.

This was the first GTA on console and the PS2 controller worked absolutely fine, controlling your character was basically just like an RPG with one stick moving and the other stick to look around you soon got used to walking, running and jumping around, stealing cars, punching people and it all looking so much better in 3D. Although there was no ragdoll it was still fund to see the physics engine in motion with full 3D rendered models as you just didn’t get this in the previous two games. The aiming system though much better than the original two games did have drawbacks as it was relatively hard to free-aim at things and using weapons like the Sniper rifle were quite difficult which is why nowadays I usually play GTA games on PC with a PS3 style controller for backup.

Guns could now be aimed and you automatically followed your target when locked on.

As this was a GTA game there of course the weapons which contained basically all you needed inc a Baseball bat, Pistol, Molotov Cocktail, Uzi, Shotgun, AK-47, Grenades, M16, Flamethrower, Sniper Rifle Rocket Launcher. With most of which utilizing the “lock-on” feature by pressing one of the shoulder buttons of the PS2 controller whereas the others were either thrown or used scoped aiming, this helped immensely with aiming as basically before you just pointed yourself in the right direction and hopefully didn’t get shot first  or just sprayed your bullets though it did look kind of funny when using a one-handed weapon while running around and shooting as you bent your arm in all sorts of directions. But for the most part the combat was good, it was fun punching random people or smacking them with the baseball bat and blowing people up or setting them on fire, the weapons had a very punchy feel inc the Shotgun (obviously) an the Sniper Rifle.

Doing this was very satisfying the first time.

 I liked most of the weapons but my favourites were probably the AK-47 with its raw rattatat sound and animation, the M16 which was scope aimed for some reason (despite not having a scope) and was ridiculously powerful, it could explode a car in a second and made mince meat out of anyone who got it the way, both of the weapons could be fired straight and level without aiming too which made the great for multiple targets. The Flamethrower was another of my favourites due to the fact that it just looked so good, the particle animation was still way better than the ones in Vice city and San Andreas.

Fwooosh! it's burning time

This wouldn’t be a Grand Theft Auto game of course without the cars, driving was heaps more fun too due to the obvious fact that you could actually see the road ahead of you this time, though interestingly enough you could actually switch back to using the top down view if you wanted too though I don’t know why you would as you couldn’t see anything when under a roof or bridge and the Portland area had the railway line on the top most of the time. One of my favourite pastimes was doing doughnuts on grassy areas using the Stallion which was also one of my favourite cars, driving using the controller was quite simple you just used the triangle button to get in (or jack the car) accelerate with X, brake with square and the to shoulder button to handbrake, then there was the extra things like looking behind and to either side to do drive by shooting. Drive by shooting was a feature actually introduced in Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961 by way of a power-up but was not freely available to do at any time in most cars until GTA3 though only if you have the Uzi equipped as this was the only weapon that could do drive-by shooting. 

Drive by from "in-car" view

That wasn’t the only thing though, in the new 3D Universe (which the Playstation 2 era games were called) you could now roll and flip your car all over the place and in addition to this many Unique Jumps were placed around the city which were pretty awesome as you knew they were triggered by the slow-mo where you could watch yourself win (or fail) with style. Similar to GTA2 there were no motorcycles available in the game but the amount of cars was enough as with previous games you had a whole range of vehicles to choose from cars, trucks, emergency vehicles, gang cars and of course a solitary plane (sortof). 

The Dodo, probably the most popular vehicle in GTA3 and one of the GTA's most iconic vehicles in the series

GTA3 was the first of the series to have proper emergency vehicle and taxi missions. No longer do you just get into a Taxi and a random pedestrian just gets in and gives you money to take him wherever you want to go, this time around you can actually take fares, ferry people to the hospital and even be a Vigilante with various rewards such as cars, health and bribe pickups. These missions were kind of fun but very hard in a way too, especially getting top the highest level with them, the Taxi missions were only 100 fares so was pretty easy as you didn’t have to use the same car. The Police and Paramedic ones were incredibly hard as if you crashed your Ambulance it was game over, the Vigilante missions gave you 20 seconds out of your Police car to either shoot the criminals or find a new one but often there was none to be found and keeping yourself and your car intact was no mean feat especially when some criminals were armed with shotguns. 

Sometimes it's good to actually help people.

This also wouldn’t be a GTA game without the sound and music, yes the radio was back again and in full force this time with a variety of different radio stations inc the first ever (and possibly the most popular) talk radio station Chatterbox FM and was possibly the first appearance from Lazlow who has been in every GTA game since. The Radio stations unfortunately still were not updated with more popular music instead compromising of various lesser-known bands and music which was actually written and performed for the game itself. The lesser-known music was probably used as the licences for more popular and well-known modern music was either unavailable or too expensive however I was very fond of the Double Clef FM radio station which had a truly spectacular version of La Donna E Mobile and a great selection of other classics as well (damn I’m even sounding like Merryweather) and there was also rap, techno, pop/rock, 70/80s, drum’n’bass and Reggae stations. This wasn’t too bad as a lot of the music was pretty catchy and is remembered today and when Vice city came out GTA started having proper popular tracks in the radio. Each gang car had their own favourite Radio station too, such as Double Clef FM with the Mafia Sentinel

La donna è mobile!

The sound and sound effects were pretty much what you would expect, I liked all the gun noises and explosions though there really isn’t much to say as it sounded fine to me. The biggest addition of course was the dialogue as the previous two games had basically none at all except for the cutscenes, the game was now almost fully voiced (funnily enough except for the protagonist) and even the pedestrians say random things as you walk by and react when you steal cars attack other etc. I spent a few times fighting the police and it was fun to hear the banter of the two in the helicopter saying things like “stop police!” “just shoot him!” “I can see my house from here!”

Tony Cipriani, The Mafia Capo

Speaking of the Police they are back in force for this game, you have up to 6 wanted stars as per usual, the cops in this game are pretty annoying as you can't really have much fun without getting at least a 1 star wanted level as their pretty touchy. As with GTA2 the police have a similar level of escalation going from casual to serious to all out with a helicopter and roadblocks, then to SWAT Vans then to the FBI with fast cars and machine guns then finally to the Army with M16's Trucks and Tanks. I've only got to this stage a few times but you don't last long.

5-0 in force

  Gangs make a return for GTA3 though are not the main forefront for the game as in GTA2 they are involve a large part of the story missions, other gangs and random missions not in the storyline are accessed through answering ringing payphones in various areas, they do still patrol their territory and have their own vehicles moving around which you can make use of, the most prominent threat they create is that when you pass certain points in the storyline a different gang becomes hostile to you (for example the Triads after you blow up their factory) this makes travelling in that area difficult and trying to do extra missions such as Hidden Packages, Unique Jumps and  Taxi and Emergency Vehicle missions extra hard as you are constantly being attacked and pulled out of your car. Speaking of which there is variety of extra activates and missions you can now do in addition to the Taxi and Emergency vehicle missions which I have detailed below:

• Find Hidden Packages to obtain weapons at your safehouses.

• Go on Rampages and shoot as many gang members as you can with a different weapon each time.

• Find vehicles for the Import/Export garages.

• Jump the Unique Jumps in slow motion.

• Go off roading in the off-road missions.

• Blow up gang cars in the Remote control car missions.

Ah the elusive hidden packages, spent a bit of time getting these

 I tried several times to get the %100 but failed at %98 twice I think, after that the GTA games just got bigger so I didn’t even bother, the extra activities were a great addition to the series as they gave you something else to do as well as all of the random things. Other things I liked was all the easter eggs you could find inc one really strange one where you can drive through this old rail tunnel and find a bunch of bums with Molotov cocktails. But anyway GTA3 was one of my all time favourite games and although I got to it late (as with most games) I played the absolute hell out of it, I think I’ve finished it at least 6 times now, several of those going for %100 completion which was time consuming even then. The game was not free from controversy of course being banned in Australia (due to prostitution and bashing of hookers etc) shortly after release but of course that only increased the popularity.

Te "Liberator" mission

So the graphics may be outdated and the features may be small compared to the newer games, but all would agree this was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking games to come out of the 21^st century so far and has turned a already popular series into a massive one.

Well at least I think so.

JD

The free world

The Past and Times of Yore - Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy, Everyday I'm Lightsaberin'

Release Date: September 17th 2003
Genre: First/Third person shooter
Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: Raven Software
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox, Mac OS X
Players: 1 & Multiplayer
Classification: T (Teen)

Well how did I get this far without reviewing this one? out of all the times that I’ve played it. I believe I briefly mentioned Jedi Academy in my first The Past and Times of Yore post, as it’s definitely one of my most-loved games and I’ve played it through a good number of times. Jedi Academy was actually the third in the Jedi Knight series featuring Kyle Katarn none of which I actually played before but I am wanting to try Dark forces as I do like Doom clones.

But anyway Jedi Academy was possibly the first Star Wars game I played where you could be a Jedi, apart from maybe Super Star Wars series on the SNES, the difference here was it was a (mostly) third person game that used the Quake III Arena engine, making it the first game I played where I could swing a lightsaber around in a 3D universe, and boy was it fun. The story takes place apparently ten years after the Battle of Endor and is the first game where you don’t play as Kyle Katarn but a new Jedi named Jaden Korr who was part of a group of students flying to Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy on Yavin 4. This is a great setting as I love games which start you of as a mere student then as you progress you become more powerful and higher in rank with more abilities/weapons, this is the kind of thing I wish they would do with the next Tenchu game (if it ever comes out) though technically they did do this with Tenchu Z.

Luke addressing Jaden, Rosh and the Academy initiates

I'll make a quick note here that there actually is a multiplayer mode to this game as well but I only ever played it once and frankly don't know much about it so the review will be based on the singleplayer game.

When starting the game you can actually chose what your “Jaden” looks like and I did find it kind of strange that you could be a Rodian or Kel Dor named “Jaden” you could even be a female human, Zabrak or Twi’lek. I did have a go at most races though interestingly enough the human male brown haired and white skinned head that I took the first and last time I played the game I only recently found out was regarded as the canonical appearance for Jaden as he was actually used in several books and stories in the Star Wars extended universe. I also tried out some mods which changed the character model for the singleplayer game, one I used heavily changed Jaden into Quinlan Vos who actually had a Jedi cloak on and looked pretty cool, and even Darth Vader which I’ll admit was pretty ludicrous. Lastly someone made some voice mods for the singleplayer campaign so the Kel Dor and Rodian characters actually sounded the part (which made sense) I liked to use the Kel Dor one with Quinlan and Vader which made them sound pretty cool.

Character creation screen

Lightsaber creation screen

You can then pick your Lightsaber hilt and colour and as the game was easily moddable, I had a lot of fun finding different mods to use. There was quite a few out there but only a select few I used all of the time, one of which wwas the the ‘Lightkatana’ mod which obviously changed your sabre to a style more akin to the Japanese sword.

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Jaden squaring off against a Reborn cultist, notice the curvature and design of the blade making it look more 'Katana like'

Others were the ‘Bloody’ mod which as you would guess turned the lightsaber “sparks” to red and spills blood on the ground and the “Reebo Sabers” which changed the size, shape and length of the sabers.

I messily dismember a Snow Trooper in Echo Base

To start off with you have a single sabre but as you progress you can wield two sabers or a saber staff. The core of the game is mapped out into sections with you doing 5 side missions and then leading on to the major quest for that section, each time you finished a mission you got to add another point into the Light or dark force powers whereas the core force powers are updated automatically as you progress through the story, I’ll give a rundown of them below.

Core Force Powers: These powers start at Tier 1 once you start training with Kyle then advance along to tier 3 once you have become a Jedi Knight.

Force Jump: Jump Higher using the Force

Force Push: Push enemies off balance or off an edge

Force Pull: Pull enemies toward you to do a stab kill with your lightsaber

Force Sense: Use the force to see things more clearly such as hidden patterns and icons and eventually see enemies and items colour coded and through walls
Force Speed: Use the force to slow time and run faster

Lightsabre Offense: Allows you to do more damage with your lightsaber

Lightsabre Defense: Allows you to better defend yourself by deflecting blaster fire and lightsaber attacks

Lightsabre Throw: Allows you to throw your lightsaber for longer periods

Light and Dark Side Powers: These you can put 1 point in per mission completed.

LIGHT

Force Absorb: Absorb incoming force attacks

Force Heal: Heal yourself

Mind Trick: Force an enemy to stop attacking you or even fight for you for a short period

Force Protection: Shield yourself from damage for a short time

DARK

Force Drain: Drain health from enemies

Force Grip: Strangle enemies and throw them around

Force Lightning: Electrify all the things!

Dark Rage: Become faster, stronger and invulnerable at the expense of health.

Me choking an enemy to death, damn I evil.

I’ll take this point to admit that In later playthroughs I cheated at the game, mainly due to Jaden’s fragile nature and so I could mess around with all the dark side powers and not have to worry about protecting myself. Don’t get me wrong the light side powers are pretty cool especially when you’re trying keep yourself alive but as I went on I found that as you got into the later stages of the game and fought more Jedi with dual sabres and saber staffs and you had two as well and there was sabers flying all over the place so you could die in seconds as I also knew several ways to almost insta-kill enemies with certain moves.

Lightsabers gone wild

And speaking of moves there are several Saber styles that you can use, you start off using the balanced saber style then can choose either the fast or strong single saber styles and once you become a fully fledged Jedi Knight you have the option of learning a third single sabre style, using two lightsabers or using a sabre staff. I’ve used both though the sabre staff was always a favourite for me especially with the reebo saber mod as you can sabers of varying lengths and thicknesses with short thick sabers doing more damage.

My Sabre staff was at an average thickness (no pun intended)

Each style has its own moves that personify the style for example the single sabre strong style is for powerful and heavy hitting attacks (like this flying jump slash which I love) but may leave you open to enemy counterattacks and quick the style is for quick glancing attacks that do less damage. The dual saber and saber staff has their own style as well and are both pretty awesome from stabbing a grounded enemy with two sabers to slicing them up with a spinning saber staff attack. There are also various acrobatics you can do such as wall jumps and backflips and as you become more powerful in the force you can end up doing great leaps across chasms and run straight up walls, I must admit once you get your force powers up to level 3 they get pretty ridiculous, you can clear entire rooms in seconds with force lightning and throw otherwise deadly enemies such as reborn off a ledge with a well timed force grip. One of the other things I like doing is Mind Controlling an enemy into fighting for you and watching them attack other soldiers, the flying troopers are good for this as their so annoying to kill.

An example of level 3 of Force Grip/Leap/Lightning and Mind Control

So basically you’re an apprentice Jedi paired with an annoying companion called Rosh Penin who accompanies you from the start after your transport ship crashes and you have to journey through the jungle to get to a Massasi Temple to meet up with the rest of the students, you go through this area with Rosh and although you do not have any force power you have you lightsaber handy. After your brief foray in the Jungle you finally get to the Temple and your allocated master is none other than Kyle Katarn. I had heaps of fun doing the training learning to use the Lightsaber and do various tricks like force jump and speed which obviously make you jump higher and run faster and force sense which allows you to see various symbols and other objects. After that you start off doing the side missions which only slightly affect the main storyline to get the end missions for the tier which is both a major plot point and an increase in your Jedi skills allowing you to access tier 2 and 3 of the base skills.

Training on Yavin with Kyle

Throughout most of these missions I used the Lightsaber as you may as freakin well since you have it from the start, I never played any of the Jedi Knight games but apparently you only got your Lightsaber towards the middle of the game and there really wasn’t much use for the weapons in general combat apart from one level where your Lightsaber was stolen. I did however use a select few which I’ll detail below

DL-44 Blaster Pistol: Your basic blaster pistol that you automatically have for every mission, useful for blowing up explosive barrels or tripmines

Tenloss Disruptor Rifle:  Excellent for sniping at hard-to-get or unsuspecting enemies.

Destructive Electro-Magnetic Pulse 2 (DEMP 2) Gun: Basically one-shot most droids which made killing those flying ones a peace of cake.

Other non-essential but fun weapons were the two that were unlocked towards the end of the game:

Stouker Concussion Rifle: This was used by those really annoying hazard troopers and is pretty damn powerful shooting either a fast moving blast which exploded on impact and an instant blast that blew you backwards.

Merr-Sonn PLX-2M Portable Missile System: This had a lock on system which was excellent for taking out those flying troopers or large groups of enemies.

Using the Laser Cannon and the E-11 Blaster Rifle in first person.

All of these weapons had a primary and secondary fire for example the blaster pistol had a single weak fast shot and the secondary was a more powerful charged blast. The Concussion Rifle and Merr-Son  Missile Launcher weapons in particular were awesome for messing with other Jedi, for example if you shot a non-locking missile at a enemy Jedi they would force push it back to you and then you could force push it back to them and essentially play “tennis” though this was difficult to do, you could also do this with the concussion rifle but it was damn hard as it travelled super fast. I had a bit more fun using the tracking missile as when you fire it at enemy Jedi they jump around and sometimes fell of the ledge, ledges were a common source of fun as well as I couldn’t count how many soldiers and Jedi and Jedi I pushed, threw or tricked off a ledge to their doom, the levels on Chandrila and Taspir III are notorious for this.

Having fun in Chandrila with the Merr-sonn and Stouker Rifle, this was a notorious level as it was the first one you did as a fully fledged Jedi Knight and funnily enough it's incredibly unsafe being in a giant chasm and all.


Playing some Missile Tennis with the Merr-sonn

As I mentioned most of the time I  went on my merry way slashing way with my Lightsaber or killed enemies with force powers and I noticed they had this feature that if you killed the last enemy of a group with your lightsaber the game would go into slow motion and would pan around your character matrix style while you slashed or stab through them which looked absolutely awesome. What’s more was that I found you could change it so that it happens every kill you do with the lightsaber and also when you are fighting enemy Jedi and they dodge creating some awesome cinematic moments and kills, this feature alone could the main reason this game gets into my top 10 games of all time it’s just so good it’s made me play this game through at least 5 times.

Doin some bloody murder on Coruscant and demonstrating the slow-mo kills

So now back to the story finally...

The story revolves around a cult called the Disciples of Ragnos who are stealing Dark Force energy and generally causing chaos all around the galaxy. In the beginning you’re mostly fighting easy enemies with the occasional fight with a weak cultist, enemies include mercenaries, stormtroopers and some planet-specific enemies such as Tusken Raiders and Noghri. There’s also  some different kinds of troopers including flying ones which are really annoying and different types of droids, some of which use lightabres! One thing I love is that you experience a lot of Star Wars nostalgia, the first two levels are on Tatooine and you see the Millennium Falcon and meet Chewbacca, then in the next one you have to find some Jawas and kill some sand people. You go to Hoth, ride a Tauntaun get attacked by a Wampa and battle through Echo Base, you have to avoid a Rancor in a Hutt Cartel gambling palace, you race, chase and fight on Speeder Bikes, you co-operate with General Wedge Antilles on a Covert mission, you pilot an AT-ST and while on an Imperial Dreadnought you have to disable the tractor beam on your ship in a familiar looking but less dangerous setting.

Wow this looks familiar

So almost everything you do revolves around classic Star Wars scenes and scenarios, apart from right at the end where shit get serious. At the start of the game you’re basically fending off enemies  trying to shoot you with blasters and the occasional fight with a weak Sith, then after you become a fully fledged Jedi Knight there’s cultists and dual saber and sabre staff wielding Reborn all over the place, it’s like you’re starved with dozens of appetizers then had mountains of food shoved down your mouth. The last level is pretty intense as it’s an all-out battle between the Jedi order and the Disciples of Ragnos and there’s sometimes up to 6 different people in the one area with Lightsabers flying everywhere and it becomes pretty chaotic but spectacular especially when everyone’s dodging and setting off the slow-mo circle thing. I’ll say now that you do have to make a choice between Light and Dark near the end which slightly affects the outcome of the last level and final fight. The story itself is fine, I enjoyed the levels where you were joined by Kyle and kicked ass and laughed at the fact that he had a Lightkatana too.

Heeere we go again!

 The graphics in the game are based on the Quake 3 Engine and still look acceptable today I reckon, of course this was due to the fact that I had to tweak the game to run in 16:10 widescreen mode and 1680x1050 resolution so it looked fine really despite the fact that some of the animation and texture graphics were quite dated but what do you expect from a game made 11 years ago. One of the funnier aspect was when different characters gave you a mission briefing they’d just be a talking head on the console often (in Wedges case) with no other facial animation then their lower jaw making them look somewhat like a puppet when talking. also if you waited for about a second after they had finished talking they would pull a much more concerned looking face for no apparent reason. There were also other problems such as at one point the game went to a cutscene then appeared to freeze but with the characters still moving but not saying anything just looking around.

"So errr is someone going to say something?, gettin kind of freaked out here"

By far the most annoying problems though where made by what I think was the framerate issue that I’ve encountered before in certain games such as the first Dead Space and GTA4, in both of these games I experienced bugs where I got stuck on a certain part such as hanging off a moving helicopter and pulling self up or walking through a door and only by turning on the Fraps recorder and getting the framerate down to 30 or below. I’m not sure why this happens but it’s something to do with my computer being too fast for the older games.

Part of the cutscene where you can still see me frozen where I left off, made it look pretty damn ludicrous.

 Unfortunately in this instance I wasn’t able to overcome the problem and had two separate incidents at what could be the two most crucial plot point moments ruining them in the process. The first was when you get to the end of the second chapter and instead of cutting to a cutscene you see yourself run out of yourself and act out the whole scene with you there watching, luckily I was able to continue the scenes loading by attacking and killing frozen enemies. The other point was probably the most crucial in the game, the part where you had to choose between the Light and Dark Side but before you can get to the choice the screen goes black and you can’t even continue. I ended up having to cheat to load the last level, man what a goddamn letdown. Though I have experienced the whole thing before of course and I guess I could try the Steam version but I think I’ve had enough of the game for now really.

The scene right before you choose the Light or Dark Side, then the screen goes black and then freezes.

 In any case the game looks fine, I loved the look and feel of the graphics back then and I still do now for the nostalgic feel, the effects and the textures were fine I reckon, sure the character models were funny but you never really noticed that when you were swinging your Lightsaber around. The best things about the game was the way they re-created all the planets and it’s been done well, I felt very immersed in the Star Wars Universe and it often felt much bigger than it actually was, especially in the Chandrila, Zonju V and Coruscant levels as there were drops and floating platforms all over the place. There was also some rather nice water effects but the general look and feel of the graphics and the awesome level design was way ahead of its time, the game obviously looked even more brilliant playing at a previously unheard of resolution like 1680x1024.

Pretty water on Yalara

As for the sound well it’s fwoorsh-waaorwn-zishskt-tastic, all the right sounds are in there, of the Star Wars characters from the original movies there is Luke, C3PO and Chewbacca, funnily enough Luke isn’t actually voiced by Mark Hamill but I didn’t even notice, in the first level you see the Millenium Falcon and Chewbacca but no Han Solo, probably because they  either couldn’t get Harrison Ford or weren’t allowed to find someone to speak like him. In any regard the voice acting though kinda cheesy is fine as it could be a lot cheesier the sounds have all the right bleeps, bloops and slashing someone in half with a lightsaber really has the right effect with the screams from the enemies and the bloody mod installed goes right back to that infamous dismemberment of Pondo Baba’s arm of course this being much more deadly. The music is basically what you’d expect from a Star Wars game, almost every bit of score you can recognize as being Star Wars and it sounds great, great yes that’s really all I got to say.

"Hi Everyone now first of all I'm not Mark Hamill, I may look like him but it's someone else speaking here"

Yes that indeed really is all I have to say Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy really was awesome and still is awesome, I haven’t played the previous Jedi Knight games and probably never will just keep playing this one again and again but frankly I’ve had enough for now I think unless the Steam version has somehow cut out the bugs and allowed for widescreen viewing etc but I dunno. All I know is this was one of the greatest games I’ve ever played and I haven’t found a game quite like it since. It was definitely the best Star Wars game I’ve played with the second being Jedi Power Battles for the Playstation, its one of those games that never gets old no matter how many times you play and I love it.

JD

10/10

What I like:

• You're a goddamn Jedi trainee in an Academy and you can even create your own character.
• You have Lightsaber throughout the whole game and can eventually use two or a Saber staff
• The game has a start-off-from-nothing approach
• Force powers are awesome
• Great slow-motion circle killing effect which almost wins the game for me.
• Great Star Wars immersive graphics, sound and characters
• Game can be easily modded (or hacked)

What I don’t like:

• Bugs have popped up as the game gets older
• Can die too quickly in the later game.
• Needs more Academy interaction i.e walk around the Academy RPG style
• Story needs more sex and romance (NOT with Rosh)

This is my Saber, this is my Sword.