Mission accomplished! ...but not with a good end!

Start date: 22 May 2008
End date (supposedly): 8 June 2008
Duration: 17 days (School holiday)
Mission: Gain the next level up from battle (400 stars)
Start point: 100 stars (22nd May 2008)
Ended with: 415 stars (7 June 2008)
Total stars attained: 315. (average: 18.5 stars per day)

With the school holidays approaching I figured it would be the best time to bump my star count up (and rank up: I'm planning to go for S class for my R32). Actually, this wasn't even in my initial plan, seeing that I WAS supposed to go Penang with Team -KS- but in the end that didnt work out for me because of some "problems".

It started off badly on the first day. The first half of the day yielded only five stars out of five games. Totally lost form, kept getting 3rd or 4th...consecutively. Later that day my form improved though it didn't really "come back".

Then later, I was at my best. For the next 10 - 11 days, races kept going my way (luck played a really huge part in some of them), and I easily hauled up to 20-30 stars a day with just ten bucks. Last place finishes were a rarity. I was definitely at the peak of my game, even more so than when I used the RX-8 to battle.

Then when I reached the 370+ star mark, my form started to slide. It started as a slow downhill, then today, it became a steep cliff. I've never had a form this bad that I had literally screw myself out of sure-fire stars just because I was greedy. I did eventually reach the 400 mark on the same day, but still, there were stars that was as good as mine, only to be thrown away at the last 1km.

Nevertheless, mission accomplished. Although the end wasn't such a good thing. I wonder if I need to lay off on Wangan for abit, it seems that my form is on the slide now that its not really a good idea to battle...not for now at least.

Well, at least I managed to come close to beating my personal best of 12.11.9 with Kenji's R32 with my own...came up short by 0.2xx but its my first ever successful TA with the 3rd person camera view...so I guess there are better things to come :)

What's next? Hmm...I guess the next level up (1000 stars) isn't too hard..but that, will be for another time. :)

Thoughts of the Week #1: Initial D Arcade Stage 4 : A game that fails to live up to its predecessors.

It figures that I can't leave this blog dead for too long. So I'll be active again :)

So, lets see now. It's Initial D. It has wide screen. It has better graphics and sound. Surely the game would be as successful as its predecessors.

Apparently, not.

Take a look at ANY arcade with Initial D 4 and you will find it mostly dead. In contrast, Namco's arcade racer Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3 (hereby referred to as WMMT3 from now on) has taken over the arcade as THE racer to play.

What has certainly gone wrong. Well, I managed to find reasons for it.

1) Lack of courses.
When Initial D 1 came out almost 4 - 5 years ago, arcade racers were given four course to choose from. When the sequel came out, it became even better, with two new courses, totalling six. And when the third installment came out, it became even better, with three courses added. Now certainly, you'd expect the fourth one to have more than that?

Not quite the case.

Sure, the fourth installment introduced 3 new courses (Lake Akina, Myogi (now a mountain based course and not the circuit one in the three previous versions) and Tsukuba), but as a trade off they removed Usui, Akina Snow, Shomaru, Tsuchisaka. Thats FOUR removed. Sure, the game engine changed (ID4 uses the Sega Lindbergh board unlike the other three), but surely Sega could have readded them? Unless they are L-A-Z-Y.

And it doesn't end there too.

2) Certain car models removed.
Yes, I know they have added the Evo IX and GDBF.

But did Sega have to remove more cars than they add?

The original lineup in the Japanese release was seriously lacking cars it wasn't funny. In V3 there were at least 30+ cars in the game. And when V4 came, at least 8-10 were missing. That included the "king" car of V3, the RX-8. Sure, they fixed things up for the English version when they re added three cars back (Miata, Altezza, RX-8), but come on, is this an upgraded version or a downgrade.

3) No transferral of cards from previous version.
This one takes the cake as the main reason why people just simply did not want to play V4. Previously you could have transferred your cars to the next version at the expense of the cost of the new card. Which is cool. You keep your points.

Then when V4 came out, you couldn't transfer the card - mostly probably because the tuning system has changed. Lots of people didn't like it coz they had to start over.

4) Tuning system was tedious.
One FT car will set you back RM450. Why?

The tuning shops that improve the car performance comes every six ejects. No, not games. Everytime you pull out the card counts as an eject. That's tedious.

Then there's thirty five performance parts to install 35 x 6 = 210.

Yup, you pull the card 210 times. Whoopeedoo.

And the card only holds 150 plays...so you have to renew the card at least once. Which brings me to my next point.

5) Error 403 says hi.
If you read my blog before, I've got this before.

You insert your card.

You pay the amount required for a new card.

Your invalid gets spit out.

.....

Nice red sign comes out saying license couldn't be dispensed. Call the technician!

Sucks doesn't it? Now most arcades know how to fix this error, but seriously, if it happens often enough, it's a problem. Considering point number 4, this is serious.

6) Lack of battle auras.
Yes, I know the Japanese have them.

But we don't.

See, the reason people battle nowadays is because they want to get to see some cool ass flame that rises up before the start of the race perhaps as super intimidation or coolness factor. I wonder why Sega did not fix the battle auras to be included. This reason alone is the reason why all the battlers stuck to the last version.

7) Weird physics that makes it difficult to play.
From those videos you see on Youtube it looks like you could try full gassing all the way and it works, right? Well yes, you can. But then halfway thru the turn you get this funky understeer. And even if you do avoid hitting the wall, you still get a funky accel penalty. WTF?

That's where penalty cancel comes in play. Perhaps the most retarded physics exploit ever. With a simple tap of the brake coming out of the turn/understeer, the accel gets restored.

Except it's not easy to execute in theory. If you don't do it right, it won't work.

So what does that mean?

a) If you don't know what is this, you're screwed in PvP battles.

b) If you don't know how to execute this properly, you're...still screwed in PvP battles.

The gap between those that know how to play and those who don't are so wide new players are deterred from playing. This also effectively makes this game have an unusual high learning curve. Sadly, the physics might look easy to play, but in theory it's not.

Conclusion
So much failure reasons that deter this game from being the game to play. I play it because I can adapt to it, but not everyone can. It's not really crowd attracting. Just shows that graphics don't drag the crowd. Just look at Wangan if you don't believe me.

Thanks for reading Thoughts of The Week #1 XD

Deal or No Deal?

Does anyone watch that show? It's on NTV7 (Malaysia) on Mondays and Tuesdays at 7pm, in Mandarin. I think in the US NBC shows it (in English obviously). Basically the premise of the game is this. After being the one selected from the contestants, the contestant has to pick a case (from about 20 over cases) for the contestant to keep (for the duration of the show obviously). Then, the contestant has to choose from the remainder of the cases to open, revealing the sum of cash to be "deleted" off the score-board. The main aim here on this portion of the game is to have the lower sums removed from the board (e.g RM0.10 [yes THAT low is in the game too]. And here's why:

After a number of cases are removed, the "Banker" will call, offering a sum of money to the contestant to purchase the briefcase he/she earlier chose (the very first one), in which either the contestant can either choose to "Deal" or "No Deal". The amount the banker offers will be based on the contestant's performance - Do well by getting rid of the lower amounts and the amount offered will be high, do bad by getting rid of the higher ones and the offer will be lower. Regardless, if Deal, the case will be sold to the banker for that sum of money, if no Deal, the contestant has to open more cases to delete more values.

And then the banker calls again, with a higher/lower value to offer for the case (dependant on performance) and the option to Deal or no Deal comes up again. If "No Deal", the contestant has to open more cases. The banker calls more often towards the end of the game where there are only few cases left to open (usually by then it's pretty clear whether the Deal or No Deal option is better).

Once the contestants chooses "Deal", the contestant has to answer a further question - failing in which the contestants will take home only 20% of the amount offered by the bank (though I don't think this is in the US version of Deal or No Deal...). And at the end of the game, the value of the very first case chosen by the contestant will be revealed (to show if it was a "good deal" or a "bad deal" - It'll really suck if the contestant sold off the briefcase containing RM100,000 for a lower amount the banker offered LOL).

Anyway the game is based on luck as you don't know what cases hold which amount (and they are not preset obviously), by all means you could have Lady Luck with you and open up all the low amounts forcing the bank to offer you absurd amounts of cash for whatever value it is inside the case or in most cases, have luck turn against you and you are stuck with lower values (and in turn, lower banker offer). It's still fun to watch as a TV show.

If you want to play this online, NBC (US) has a flash version of it on their site here. Of course this is just for fun and you won't get real money from it.

What I don't understand is what drove the idiots named Golden Star Software (whatever company this is) to release a DS game based on this game show when you can play the flash version for free. And to top it all off, there's no reason to buy it anyway - There is nothing to do but open cases and reject / accept the banker's offer. Fun to watch as a viewer, fun to play as a REAL LIFE contestant where you win real money.

But in a game where I probably will get a "CONGRATULATIONS YOU WIN US$(insert amount here)" at the end of the game and then get booted back to the title screen? At least Who Wants to be a Millionaire has a point to be released on the PC/PS because it tests your knowledge. But this? LOL. I pity the idiots who buy it.