Elite 4

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Elite 4

Post by pinback »

The "Premium Beta" went on sale last week for HALF-PRICE! That's half-price of the Alpha, so instead of $300, it's only $150.

Was anyone <s>stupid</s> forward thinking enough to take the plunge, and if so, can you give us some first impressions or something? This is still my #1 most-looked-forward-to game of the year (decade?!), so any info is welcome. I'm just not <s>dumb</s> manly enough to pay $150 for a game that's going to cost 1/3 that in a couple months.
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Great question, great post.

Let's be honest - if we do nothing else but wait, the thing will be selling and finished for $50 soon, with the inevitable Steam sale after a few months.

All we have to do is wait and definitely drop $150 that we don't have on an unfinished game.

Did anyone d-d-do that? If so, I would also like to ask ... how is it?
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Guys! I have a great idea!

Why ... why don't we talk in this thread as if we DID both spend our grocery money on Elite? Ha ha! Just a little bit of ha-ha creative writing maybe?

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Post by AArdvark »

Is any game worth 150 smackers? Never played Elite but heard things, mostly good, about it. Maybe if Elite was in an arcade cabinet or something..



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Post by RealNC »

It's not a good idea to get into the beta, imo. It would just spoil the finished game.

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Post by Flack »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Guys! I have a great idea!

Why ... why don't we talk in this thread as if we DID both spend our grocery money on Elite? Ha ha! Just a little bit of ha-ha creative writing maybe?
I’m pretty good at Elite 4. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I scored like 53,000 points in the halfpipe on my first try. How did I do this? Not too sure exactly, but it happened. For better or for worse, this seems to be a standard experience in the new skateboarding title from Activision. Just when I thought I was starting to master a certain mechanic, the inconsistent gameplay inevitably turned each session into whirlwind of tears and frustration. While the skateboard-as-game-peripheral idea may have sounded like a hit on paper, the truth of the matter is it doesn’t translate into the real world.

Starting a game of Elite 4 feels pretty familiar. Players begin their careers creating a new custom skater from a set of templates, which they can then edit at any time. The standard fare of unlockable items is present, so a skater can eventually be decked out from head to toe in custom gear. Like many Elite games before it, Elite 4’s main character is an up-and-coming pro that hangs with the best of the best in skateboarding – P-Rod, Stevie Williams, and even the Bird Man himself. Traveling to six cities along the path to stardom, each destination contains around four areas to ride. These are broken down into speed, trick, and challenge runs, with the occasional special event like a competition or demo. Upon completion, players get points towards clearing out an area to unlock the next. It’s a fairly short, linear career that could easily be taken down in a day.

Many perceive Elite 4 as a skate game on rails, which is true for the easier difficulty settings. The player chooses a path based off of on-screen arrows and a yellow path. At any given time, there are up to three choices when the path branches and different lines are created. Choosing a line without the game changing its mind on you requires an uncomfortable, awkward lean either forwards or backwards. It rarely goes as planned.

I’d like to point out that the $120 price point for this plastic skateboard is more than twice as much as a real skateboard complete with all of the fancy trimming like trucks and wheels. The controller has a bevy of embedded sensors that try to determine what actions the player is attempting. Steering and ollies use accelerometers, while grabs use visual sensors. Advanced tricks like 360 flips rely on both types of sensors simultaneously. The build quality is surprisingly high, and for the most part these sensors work pretty well. Unfortunately, your intended actions ultimately get lost in translation.

Since I’ve been skateboarding for well over a decade, I thought I would have a leg-up on this game. Not so much. Flip tricks, one of the most basic skateboarding techniques, require the most advanced movement – popping the nose up and leaning forward or back. Clearly this was done to try and bridge the game’s control with real life movements, but your pissed-off ankles won’t care after a few sessions. The only tricks that truly resemble real skateboarding are reverts and manuals. One of the big reasons most of the tricks in skateboarding work so well is because of forward momentum. With manuals this is especially true. While the stationary-friendly shape of the controller helps, manuals are still muscle-tightening battles with gravity. Play long enough and the cavalcade of confusion that your body goes through eventually turns into a strange, yet familiar awkwardness.

Totally rad skaters can use the hardcore mode, which ditches the rails and lets you skate your heart out. Developer Robomodo added the ability to loosen or tighten the steering, but in the end, trying to skate a planned line requires so much focus and concentration you’d be hard-pressed to find some fun along the way. Instead, the reward is usually a quick, painful faceplant into a wall.

As a skateboarder and as a gamer, Elite 4 is a curious idea but a letdown in practice. The huge level of frustration is not worth the time it takes to master the awkward gameplay idiosyncrasies. Instead, it’s more tempting – even as someone with experience – to just spam the waggle movements for a passable high score. With the huge price tag and uncertain future of software support for the peripheral, Activision has one of the toughest sells in video games in a very long time.
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Post by Garth's Equipment Shop »

Didn't he mean the space game?
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Post by Garth's Equipment Shop »

Elite: Dangerous Premium Beta offers total freedom as you trade your way through the star systems, pirate, hunt for bounties, and become immersed in exploration and combat with a choice of ships and weaponry.
Wow, it seems everywhere I look now a days I'm seeing another new game inspired by my old favorite wwiv bbs game. Woah! Just did a search on it out of curiousity and found that development of the original game never stopped! Check out the latest incarnation Tradewars Rising!
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Post by pinback »

Flack wrote:
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Guys! I have a great idea!

Why ... why don't we talk in this thread as if we DID both spend our grocery money on Elite? Ha ha! Just a little bit of ha-ha creative writing maybe?
I’m pretty good at Elite 4. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I scored like 53,000 points in the halfpipe on my first try. How did I do this? Not too sure exactly, but it happened. For better or for worse, this seems to be a standard experience in the new skateboarding title from Activision. Just when I thought I was starting to master a certain mechanic, the inconsistent gameplay inevitably turned each session into whirlwind of tears and frustration. While the skateboard-as-game-peripheral idea may have sounded like a hit on paper, the truth of the matter is it doesn’t translate into the real world.

Starting a game of Elite 4 feels pretty familiar. Players begin their careers creating a new custom skater from a set of templates, which they can then edit at any time. The standard fare of unlockable items is present, so a skater can eventually be decked out from head to toe in custom gear. Like many Elite games before it, Elite 4’s main character is an up-and-coming pro that hangs with the best of the best in skateboarding – P-Rod, Stevie Williams, and even the Bird Man himself. Traveling to six cities along the path to stardom, each destination contains around four areas to ride. These are broken down into speed, trick, and challenge runs, with the occasional special event like a competition or demo. Upon completion, players get points towards clearing out an area to unlock the next. It’s a fairly short, linear career that could easily be taken down in a day.

Many perceive Elite 4 as a skate game on rails, which is true for the easier difficulty settings. The player chooses a path based off of on-screen arrows and a yellow path. At any given time, there are up to three choices when the path branches and different lines are created. Choosing a line without the game changing its mind on you requires an uncomfortable, awkward lean either forwards or backwards. It rarely goes as planned.

I’d like to point out that the $120 price point for this plastic skateboard is more than twice as much as a real skateboard complete with all of the fancy trimming like trucks and wheels. The controller has a bevy of embedded sensors that try to determine what actions the player is attempting. Steering and ollies use accelerometers, while grabs use visual sensors. Advanced tricks like 360 flips rely on both types of sensors simultaneously. The build quality is surprisingly high, and for the most part these sensors work pretty well. Unfortunately, your intended actions ultimately get lost in translation.

Since I’ve been skateboarding for well over a decade, I thought I would have a leg-up on this game. Not so much. Flip tricks, one of the most basic skateboarding techniques, require the most advanced movement – popping the nose up and leaning forward or back. Clearly this was done to try and bridge the game’s control with real life movements, but your pissed-off ankles won’t care after a few sessions. The only tricks that truly resemble real skateboarding are reverts and manuals. One of the big reasons most of the tricks in skateboarding work so well is because of forward momentum. With manuals this is especially true. While the stationary-friendly shape of the controller helps, manuals are still muscle-tightening battles with gravity. Play long enough and the cavalcade of confusion that your body goes through eventually turns into a strange, yet familiar awkwardness.

Totally rad skaters can use the hardcore mode, which ditches the rails and lets you skate your heart out. Developer Robomodo added the ability to loosen or tighten the steering, but in the end, trying to skate a planned line requires so much focus and concentration you’d be hard-pressed to find some fun along the way. Instead, the reward is usually a quick, painful faceplant into a wall.

As a skateboarder and as a gamer, Elite 4 is a curious idea but a letdown in practice. The huge level of frustration is not worth the time it takes to master the awkward gameplay idiosyncrasies. Instead, it’s more tempting – even as someone with experience – to just spam the waggle movements for a passable high score. With the huge price tag and uncertain future of software support for the peripheral, Activision has one of the toughest sells in video games in a very long time.
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Post by Fryd Rhys »

Hi I found this forum when I was doing a google search for elite 4 discussions although now I'm confused why people are talking about skateboards??

Anyway I assume you actually meant Elite Dangerous since you talked about the $150 dolllar beta. I actually did buy it for a couple reasons. One you get all future expansions and additions and DLC to the game and I am guessing since they have talked about this being a "platform" for new content for years to come that there will be a lot of that and in the end the 150 might not seem like two bad a deal. Also I was actaully recently a contestant on Wheel of Fortune and while I did not win the game I did win about $8000 (with taxes basically cutting it in half to $4000) and I have been an Elite fan for years and was really looking forward to this so I didnt have a problem treating myself and supporting the developers at the same time...

The beta basically comes with two flavors: 10 single player missions which teach you the basics of dogfighting and other systems in the game, and then the free-form "multiplayer". I have seen other players in the game but I'm not yet sure how this multiplayer mode is going to play out in the end. For the most part though the universe is pretty empty so you're not running into a thousand other ships fighting for one landing pad.

Now even though I spent 150 and have been an elite fan, i do hope you'll believe me when I say, from a totally unbiased perspective (i was as skeptical as anyone) WOW. WOW WOW WOW. So far this game -- i almost don't want to call it a game because it feels like a true simulation -- is everything I was hoping it would be and way way more. The graphics are a thing of beauty, the SOUNDS are beyond incredible, the flight model of the ship is near perfect, and everything just feels like it has mechanical WEIGHT to it. Clunky things CLUNK and feel heavy. Missiles feel more frightening and deadly than ever, and in the midst of a dogfight with contrails (however unrealistic they might be) drawing loops in the "sky" with stuff flying everywhere and you frantically managing your ship's systems while trying to outmaneuver... it is exhilirating beyond words...

...and almost as fun as just successfully docking in a far away space station and selling a few bottles of booze for a tidy profit. :-)

The beta only offers five star systems out of an eventual total of "400 billion" (though how they are going to do that i have no idea), and while there are a few glaring, noticeable bugs, virtually everyone I've found is already on their "known issues" list, so I am confident it will just get more and more stable as the beta continues...

Its hard to recommend that unless you're really rich or really impatient that you should spend $150 dollars on a video game but if you were going to do it, this is totally the right one to do it on.

Totally mindblowing!!!!!!!

Fryd Rhys

Post by Fryd Rhys »

RealNC wrote:It's not a good idea to get into the beta, imo. It would just spoil the finished game.
Hahaa maybe but like I said your only getting a handful of tutorial missions and 5 out of 4,000,000,000 star systems so I dont think you'll have much spoiled (and in the meantime u can get your piloting skills in good shape so you can pwn noobs lol)

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Post by Fryd Rhys »

Oops thats supposed to say "400,000,000,000". Is there any way to edit posts in this forum??

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Fryd Rhys wrote:Oops thats supposed to say "400,000,000,000". Is there any way to edit posts in this forum??
Yes, tell us about your experiences on Wheel of Fortune and what Vanna is like and we'll see what we can do.
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Post by Garth's Equipment Shop »

Fryd Rhys wrote:Hi I found this forum when I was doing a google search for elite 4 discussions although now I'm confused why people are talking about skateboards??
Welcome Friend Fryd! Always a pleasure to see a new handle here at one of the oldest and most under-appreciated rest stops on the information highway. Very suprising that Google crawled and indexed the contents of this thread so quickly. Especially considering the forum is still in the original first version of phpBB, not phpBB version 2 or 3, and I highly doubt Ice Cream Jonesy bothers to set up tags and such on every thread or post if there is even an option for that on this old version. But just for shits and giggles I'll play along. ;)

The Collecovision Skateboard game review could be explained a number of ways. My first guess would be that Flack was responding to Ice Cream Jonesy's tongue in cheek idea to just pretend we spent the 150 on the demo and post our review of it. Many of us here are into retro gaming (starting to show our age) and so Flack, like any good fiction writer, was simply writing what he knows.

Or perhaps it was a thinly veiled impression (razz) of a well known Jolt Country character who calls himself TDarcos who has been known to post thread hijacking off-topic essays from time to time. It has become the stuff of legend now and constant source of amusement when there is nothing better to talk about.
Fryd Rhys wrote:Anyway I assume you actually meant Elite Dangerous since you talked about the $150 dolllar beta. I actually did buy it for a couple reasons. One you get all future expansions and additions and DLC to the game and I am guessing since they have talked about this being a "platform" for new content for years to come that there will be a lot of that and in the end the 150 might not seem like two bad a deal.
Sounds like $150.00 well spent then. IDK, I think I'll wait till it hits the bargain bins where all things eventually end up. Till then I'm getting more and more addicted to the 2d graphics and sound enhanced interwebs version of my old favorite bbs door game Tradewars which originally used ASCII or ANSI graphics and had no sounds. The new online (as opposed to dialup) version is called TradeWars Rising.
="Fryd Rhys"] Also I was actaully recently a contestant on Wheel of Fortune and while I did not win the game I did win about $8000 (with taxes basically cutting it in half to $4000) and I have been an Elite fan for years and was really looking forward to this so I didnt have a problem treating myself and supporting the developers at the same time...
Interesting indeed, I have never met anyone who has been a contestant on a game show. Please share this strange experience with us. Especially any details we would never have guessed from watching the show. How the heck did you end up on the show? Did you do something to get yourself on it? Or do potential contestants get "called" similar to jury duty and then a screening process to select the contestants they think will contribute to a good show? Speaking of which, you would make an excellent guest for a Don Rogers radio show. Maybe if your still around for it, you can be a guest on the next radio show the denizens of Jolt Country put together.
Fryd Rhys wrote:Now even though I spent 150 and have been an elite fan, i do hope you'll believe me when I say, from a totally unbiased perspective (i was as skeptical as anyone) WOW. WOW WOW WOW. So far this game -- i almost don't want to call it a game because it feels like a true simulation -- is everything I was hoping it would be and way way more. The graphics are a thing of beauty, the SOUNDS are beyond incredible, the flight model of the ship is near perfect, and everything just feels like it has mechanical WEIGHT to it. Clunky things CLUNK and feel heavy. Missiles feel more frightening and deadly than ever, and in the midst of a dogfight with contrails (however unrealistic they might be) drawing loops in the "sky" with stuff flying everywhere and you frantically managing your ship's systems while trying to outmaneuver... it is exhilirating beyond words... ...and almost as fun as just successfully docking in a far away space station and selling a few bottles of booze for a tidy profit. :-)
You should write up some more game reviews or chime in on some existing game review threads here. I like the way you describe stuff. I almost wanted to shell out the $150 bucks just then till I came to my senses.
Fryd Rhys wrote:The beta only offers five star systems out of an eventual total of "400 billion" (though how they are going to do that i have no idea)
Sounds like its going to be a procedurally generated ever expanding sandbox similar to Minecraft, except its nothing at all like minecraft. ;)
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Post by Fryd Rhys »

Garth's Equipment Shop wrote:Very suprising that Google crawled and indexed the contents of this thread so quickly. Especially considering the forum is still in the original first version of phpBB, not phpBB version 2 or 3, and I highly doubt Ice Cream Jonesy bothers to set up tags and such on every thread or post if there is even an option for that on this old version. But just for shits and giggles I'll play along. ;)
Im glad you did, not sure how google found the place so soon, although maybe since the beta was released elite 4 is a "hot topic". Not sure if search engines take that into account or whatever. Anyway, glad to be here, sounds like my kind of place!! :-)

(starting to show our age) and so Flack, like any good fiction writer, was simply writing what he knows.
It was pretty funny! Confused the heck out of me but i know that when you come to a new intenret forum there are some inside jokes which you know ur gonna have to learn, I figured this was just one of them. Hopefully we're all on the same page now??
Sounds like $150.00 well spent then. IDK, I think I'll wait till it hits the bargain bins where all things eventually
I feel like it was, of course I had the money to waste so I kinda have to right?? Pretty quickly you realize the beta is pretty limited, and does have a lot of random bugs but just being back in the "elite universe" as (some of you old guys and) we were in 1984 and having it realized so expertly is just awesome, and I trust the devs to knock out the bugs and make this what we're all looking forward to. SO FAR SO GOOD is all I can say. Already ive had more fun with this beta than most finished released ive played in the last couple years.
Interesting indeed, I have never met anyone who has been a contestant on a game show. Please share this strange experience with us.
I think Ice Cream JOnes asked something similar to this so I'll answer both of you here I guess. Every few months they do online "qualification" tests which I always did and never got any answers, until one day when I guess I finally showed up at the top of the pile (or picked randomly, they would never really tell me how they pick contestants, probably so nobody can "game" the system.)

The main thing you dont notice I guess is how SMALL the theater is that they do it in. They weren't doing one of their remote things from Hawaii or whatever so this was all in the regular LA studios (where I live), and they must make it look five times bigger on TV from the camera angles. Five times shinier and cleaner too. Much more of a "low rent" atmosphere than I was expecting but they film like 3 episodes a day there so not hard to understand. My show was the second one they did that day.

DID NOT MEET VANNA -- i learned to start with that because everyone asks that first. You really don't have much contact with the hosts other than what you see on the TV. An "advisor" visits you backstage before the game to sort of remind you how everything works, gives you some "dos and donts" and whatnot, and then they lead you out there and it goes pretty much how it looks on TV.

Pat is shorter than I thought. lol. But he seems like a good guy, I mena he's done 10,000 of these things but he'll still chat with you in the commercials, nothing big, just, you know, are you having fun, you're doing great, etc. etc.

I dunno. It was great and I'd recommend it to anyone. LOTS of time afterwards dealing with paperwork though, that is definately the worst part. At one point I was like jesus keep the $8000 so I can go home. (Glad I didn't, otherwise, well, I guess I wouldnt be here!)
would make an excellent guest for a Don Rogers radio show.
Hah! Okay, sure! Hopefully one of you can tell me what that is. I'm new here!! Sorry! :-)
You should write up some more game reviews or chime in on some existing game review threads here. I like the way you describe stuff. I almost wanted to shell out the $150 bucks just then till I came to my senses.
Thanks ! Maybe after I've been here a while and people still think anything I have to say matters i can do a few more reviews. :-)
Sounds like its going to be a procedurally generated ever expanding sandbox similar to Minecraft, except its nothing at all like minecraft. ;)
I hope so I'd hate to be the guy in charge of coming up with names for 400 billion stars... LOL

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Post by Flack »

Wow, am I embarrassed! We were just horsing around before. Here is my real review of Elite 4:

---

“But do you think it’s better than Sonic Racing All-Stars Transformed? Whatever that one is called? You know, the one with Sonic.”

He thinks for a minute. I don’t have to think. I already know the answer. But he’s thinking.

“I mean, yeah, I can understand that you like Elite 4,” I continue. “But better than Sonic Transformed All-Stars Racing?”

He’s still thinking.

After the jump, here I am, discussing the comparative merits of kiddie racing games.

Elite 4 is certainly cute. And it looks great. And it’s slick in that Nintendo “hey, come on, just jump in!” way. But it’s come along too late. Because the kart racer that finally overcame my mild disdain for kart racers — why does anyone need a big cartoon character head sticking out of a tiny car in order to play a rough-and-tumble racing game? — is Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, a superlative package of racing on wheels, on wings, on water, across imaginative levels that would change with each lap. It has the usual trappings of kart racers and then some: various types of challenges, and scads of game types, and a campaign with collectible stars to unlock stuff, and characters you can level up to modify their vehicles, and, uh, stickers. Yeah, stickers. Unlock stickers and choose three for your profile. There’s a trippy Nights into Dreams level. There’s an Afterburner level with jets zooming around an aircraft carrier and its fleet. There’s a level where flying galleons blow up a whole town. There’s a flooding underwater lair. You can be the monkeys from Super Monkey Ball and the foxes and hedgehogs and what-not from Sonic. You can be some crazy Japanese dancing chick from some music game I’ve never played. You can be John C. Reilly from Wreck-It Ralph. What a big splashy thorough generous komplete package. It is the pinnacle of kart racing and even a flat-out great racing game. But Elite 4 is just another iteration of Nintendo’s usual formula, right? Here we go again, right? Where are the special challenge levels? Where is the campaign where I earn stars to unlock new levels and characters and tracks? Why doesn’t a flying galleon come along and blow the crap out of the whole track? Why can’t I level up my dudes? I think it does have stickers, though.

“Well, I think Elite 4 is better,” Jose finally says. He’s a writer for IGN who wrote their Elite 4 review. Why would he say that? Why would he buckle for Nintendo so easily? Why does everyone buckle for Nintendo? Why the soft spots for the big N whereas I’m mostly just annoyed by Mario himself? Nintendo fans. They’re so predictable. I want to get to the bottom of this, but I haven’t read his review yet and besides, we’re at a press thing and I have to go look at a terrible demo of a Sony shooter, so we don’t get to talk more specifics. I’ll read his review after I’ve written this and then send him an email to let him know he was wrong, that Sonic All-Transformed Racing Stars is obviously the better game for the following blah-blah reasons blah blah.

And over the next week or so, as I’m playing Elite 4, wishing it was as good as Sonic Racing All-Transformed Stars but still enjoying it, I find myself wondering how I would answer the question of which game is better. How would I respond to that in a meaningful way? Such as in a review, like this one. How can I explain that Sega has closed the book on kart racing? To prepare myself, with Elite 4 fresh on my mind and fingertips, I spend some more time with Racing All-Sonic Transformed Stars. And it’s good. Very good. Great, even. I love it. So much variety, so many ways to play, such wildly inventive tracks with their airplanes and boats and cars and massive destruction and changing paths. I mean, jeeze, a flying galleon blowing up a whole town! It’s inspired.

Elite 4, on the other hand, is mostly safe. It’s an iteration of the previous Mario Karts. I mean, half the tracks are from older Mario Karts. That’s Nintendo’s way and I’m sure they’re disappointed at their own lack of innovation all the way to the bank. But innovation, which I’ve always said is overrated, isn’t Nintendo’s strength. It’s barely even in their top fifty things to do. It’s, like, number 47 on their corporate checklist. A game like Wonderful 101 will come and go, unheralded, unsung, a way to cross off the 47th thing on the list for another year or so. But with Yet Another Mario Property Number Whatever, Nintendo will bang the biggest gong they can find. “Now in Elite 4,” they proudly announce as if it’s as cool as a flying galleon blowing up a whole town, “you can stick to walls!”

But as I start to swap back and forth between the two kart racers, as I start to look at the fun I’m having with something approximating a critical eye, I come to the conclusion that, okay, Elite 4 is very good. Very very good. Very very very good. Maybe even great. The actual physics of the racing — lordy, I’m using the words “physics” to talk about a game where several of the drivers are actual babies sucking pacifiers — are so solid, so gratifying, so grounded, so imbued with personality that I’m even doing time trials. I don’t mind driving around and around on the same track trying to get a better time, checking what components a ghost is using, changing my car and trying again, working out where to use my limited boosts, finessing a shortcut. I sure didn’t care to do that in Sonic All-Racing Stars Transformed because the driving physics are mostly a matter of whether you’re the car, the boat, or the airplane. And although I’m sure it’s a major failing that your kart can’t turn into a boat or an airplane in Elite 4, I can’t help but wonder that there seems to be a significant difference among the handling for an ATV, a kart, and a motorcycle, all of which are distinct chassis types. Is that really the case? I certainly feel different skidding around a tight curve on a motorcycle. Maybe it’s just the animation. That amazing animation. Peach kicks out her leg and drags it on the asphalt as the motorcycle leans over. The characters turn to look at each other. They wave and clap. The wall clinging segments have their own new rules. Is that Peach’s ponytail going straight up because I’m driving upside down? These looping vertical and inverted tracks tie the tracks together like tidy fancy bows. I guess wall clinging is worthy of a bullet point after all.

And as much as people tell you games look good, boy does Elite 4 look good. It’s the stuff of high-def dreams, of childhood memories scrubbed clean of imperfection and rendered in Pixar-perfect imagery, of speed and precision going hand-in-hand, of vision and clarity and undeniable infectious ebullience. Frankly, it’s the stuff of single-platform development, where someone makes a game only and specifically for one machine. And Nintendo knows enough to give it a flexible but easy-to-use replay option, pre-plugged into YouTube. Here are a few highlights of me as a solid gold Princess Peach giving a bunch of people in Japan and France the what-for. When did it happen that I cared enough about Elite 4 to upload highlights because I placed second in an online race?

And try as I might, I can only cling stubbornly to my supposed preference for Sega’s excellent kart racer for so long. They’re both good in different ways, but Elite 4 embodies what Nintendo does so well. They take something that works well and they eventually make it smooth and great and absolutely irresistible. Okay, Nintendo, you got me. For now. Let’s see what you can do with a new Super Smash Bros. later this summer. There’s no way you’re going to get me to write a review without whinging that Super Smash Bros. Brawl was all I ever needed in a party brawler. Is there?
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Fryd Rhys

Post by Fryd Rhys »

Okay I guess your all making fun of me. That's cool, I'll leave you to it. Ive been on the internet long enough to know when to move on.. :-)

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Fryd Rhys wrote:Okay I guess your all making fun of me. That's cool, I'll leave you to it. Ive been on the internet long enough to know when to move on.. :-)
Fryd, I shall be playing Elite Dangerous again shortly. I had to remap all my controls though and the pain of that is stopping me from starting it again!
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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Garth's Equipment Shop
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Post by Garth's Equipment Shop »

Fryd Rhys wrote:Okay I guess your all making fun of me. That's cool, I'll leave you to it. Ive been on the internet long enough to know when to move on.. :-)
I wasn't. I would probably have made up a silly fictitious game review by now but I didn't because we suddenly had a new guest and so I was on my best behavior. Actually, I guess I'm usually pretty well behaved so you can at least count on me for that if you have a low tolerance for antics. But if you stick around I think you'll like it here. When I first joined Jolt Country it was just for the Adventure Creation Kit subforum and pretty much minded my own business there for a few years.

I started to lurk now and then in these other subforums and like you I wasn't sure what to make of it at first. But eventually as people became more familiar I began to appreciate the rather unique blend of personalities. It is somewhat like a dysfunctional family at times. But even that aspect of it is not like most forums that might use that description because on those drama takes on a serious tone and tends to take over. Not here. Here even the worst disagreements or fights I've seen are some of the funniest shit I've ever read online.

One thing you'll notice pretty quickly here if you stay a bit longer is that this forum is not like any other your likely to find in that it's moderators do very little moderating. In my experience on most forums the moderators take themselves and the forum far too seriously and act like police or feudal lords. You wont find that here. I've never once seen anyone here pull the moderator card for any reason. Not even the admin takes his title seriously. There is real freedom here.

And as you've already discovered you don't even have to have an account to post here. Anyone can post under any name they wish as a guest, even if you already have an account. As you might expect this does get exploited in humorous ways.

There are even fictitious characters we've all come to know and love who show up under certain circumstances. Like Bradly who hands out demerits for certain things. For me at least he never gets old. I laugh every time. Especially after so many years wasted on serious forums where the mods get on a power trip all the time - Bradly is a welcome mockery of that.

Anyway, I've only just scratched the surface of Jolt Country so you can get a little sniff of what its about. But it's like an ice burg. You only see the tip sticking up right now. Theres so much more just beneath the surface. And it's bigger than just this forum too. http://www.joltcountry.com/index.html
Which of you is interested in my fine wares?

Fryd Rhys

Post by Fryd Rhys »

lol it did take me about a half hour of mapping the controls before I could even fly a ship more than ten feet so I know your pain... Once you get it just the way you like though-- I will say the default thrust controls are just right... W faster, S slower, Q/E strafe left-right, R/F strafe up-down, and then just use the joystick (or whatever) to control roll pitch and yaw. Thats just the way I'm used to flying spaceships though I guess :-)

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