Spike TV’s annual Video Game Awards is set to take place on December 12 and as you can expect, one of the most hotly-contested categories is that of the year’s best driving game.
After what we could imagine as months of deliberation and thousands of hours playing these games, Spike has whittled the contenders down to four games: Gran Turismo PSP, Forza 3, Need for Speed: Shift, and DiRT 2.
We have to admit that it’s a little tough to pick out a winner especially since we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time playing – and enjoying – all of these games so deciding on the best one is like choosing who your favorite kid is. Not easy, right?
Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your perspective – the notable absence of Gran Turismo 5 has made the inevitable choice a tad less difficult. But then again, we really wouldn’t know because GT5, for all of the hype and posturing, hasn’t been released yet.
At the end of the day, we’re going to have to come up with our own vote, but suffice to say, we probably wouldn’t cast it until a few hours before the deadline passes.
There’s something innately kooky about being an contemporary artist. For the most part, a lot of these people have come with the weirdest and most oddly-sighted creations known to man.
Take Garnet Hertz, for instance. He calls himself a contemporary artist and his latest creation is definitely more than just ‘contemporary’. What he did was take a Sega Outrun arcade game and fused it with a three-wheeled scooter to create – yes, you guessed it – a drivable arcade game.
To spice up his new creation, Herntz also added an iPhone and a customized GPS software in his creation. What for, you ask? To the best of our rationalizing capabilities, the GPS software finds the vanishing point of the road ahead and, with the use of Google Maps, puts the game’s Testarossa into a live-action setting.
According to Herntz himself, the whole project was born out of two concepts: Un-Simulation of Driving and GPS Navigation Parallax & Mixed Reality.
You’re playing a racing game and you’re beating all challengers that come your way. In the middle of you dominant run, you start thinking to yourself, ‘hey, I can totally do this in real life and make everyone eat my dust’.
Well, for better or for worse, sometimes you get what you ask for.
This is what a couple of Need for Speed gamers found themselves in after being picked by Ford’s Mustang 10 Unleashed to unleash to burn rubber on a real race track. After hosting a tournament that featured the best Need for Speed players in the world, the four gamers who came out on top were treated with a very special prize: racing a real 2010 Ford Mustang.
But before being exposed to the world of real car racing, the four gamers were taught at the Fast lane Racing School about the nuances of real car racing – and not those that they’ve dominated on the video game circuit. After their crash course, the four gamers were then put the test against the 2010 Mustang.
Just in case the wait for Gran Turismo 5 has left you chomping your nails in anticipation, it’s always a good idea to remember just what you’re waiting for. These new screenshots of the game come in 18 megapixels, which, if you don’t know, is as crisp as it can get.
The realism is uncanny, even for our pretty lofty standards, and seeing these photos does beg the question: how much longer do we have to wait?
Seeing these photos has made the wait that much more excruciating.
In order to promote the launch of the new Golf GTI on the US market, Volkswagen is offering the model on a mobile device in a free version of the popular Firemint Real Racing game. Most importantly, the users of the Real Racing GTI App in the U.S. can compete for the chance to win one of six, limited-edition 2010 GTIs that are fully-customized inside and out.
The free Real Racing GTI App is available worldwide and spares no detail, allowing players to experience every thrilling aspect of the all-new 2010 GTI right in the palms of their hands on iPhone and iPod touch. From the redesigned exterior with more aggressive headlights and the famous red-striped grille, to the sporty interior with a race-inspired steering wheel, the all-new 2010 GTI races its way to life on the screen for a thrilling gaming experience.
The latest Gran Turismo PSP commercial features two of the greatest supercars of all the times: a 1969 Corvette Stingray and a 1988 Lamborghini Countach. And what is even greater is that they are scraping sides on a race track. But, what do you think? Is this for real or just a computer generated scene? Let us know!
While we all still fret over the still-to-be-finalized release date of Gran Turismo 5, another equally important question has surfaced recently: which car will have the privilege of gracing the cover of the most hotly-anticipated car racing game in five years?
Well, if you take the word of GT5 Creative Director, Kazunori Yamaguchi, then he has an opinion on one car that’s in the running – so to speak – to grace the cover of GT5: the Mercedes Benz SLS AMG Gullwing.
Sony has not made anything official as of yet but according to Yamaguchi, the SLS AMG is one of the favorites to be featured on the cover of GT5. “"The foremost reason is that the SLS AMG will probably be the most exciting car in the world when Gran Turismo 5 is released ... Also, in terms of styling and driving performance as well, it’s probably the hottest car around right now," he says.
We’re not arguing the fact that the SLS AMG is right up there at the top of a lot of people’s holiday wish list and in the event that it does end up as the face of GT5, then we have no oppositions on that too.
There really aren’t a lot of F1 games available for the iPhone – actually, with the exception of this one, there’s none – so when one becomes available, you take them any way you can get them.
And for just $2, we think the new BMW Sauber F1 game for the iPhone is as good a two-dollar investment as you can find anywhere.
Let’s face it, a lot of people in America aren’t very familiar with Formula One. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy it, even if it comes to us as an iPhone game. The game, by all accounts, caters to a lot of different racing game nuts. Those who want instant gratification can choose to play the quick-race mode in the game while the championship-starved fellows can opt to give the championship mode a shot. There’s also a professional mode, which gives you control of the pit crew and once you’ve gotten deeper into the game, the engineering mode will become available, which, eventually makes you the principal of your team where you will be tasked to make all the decisions for your drivers and cars.
You won’t mistake it for Gran Turismo 5 or even Forza 3, but nevertheless the new Need for Speed: Nitro for the Nintendo Wii is about as fun a racing game can get. Sure, the graphics are nowhere near GT5-caliber but that’s not exactly what the Wii is all about. The Need for Speed: Nitro is about racing cars and having fun doing it, not racing them while gawking at the uberly-detailed graphics.
That being said, EA recently released the first batch of cars that are
scheduled to appear in the game. Like we said, don’t take it against these guys if the realism is not up to par with your standards. Take into account that with the Wii, it’s not entirely about the graphics, but more so, on the racing experience.
And if you know you’re video games, you know that when it comes to gaming experience, the Wii doesn’t take a backseat for anybody.
We don’t understand too much Japanese, but we do know that we were caught by surprise to find out that the recently-revealed Toyota FT-86 Concept is actually a playable car on Gran Turismo 5.
Shortly after the concept car was revealed to have a ticket for the Tokyo
Motor Show, a video of it joining its predecessor, the Toyota AE86 Corolla in an all-out run where both cars end up sliding sideways.
Now since Sony was kind enough to share us this video, it makes us all the more excited to cop the game as soon as it comes out. You never know what other yet-to-be-unveiled concept cars GT5 has in store for us.
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