So between buying a tree, decorating said tree and getting paged five times for work issues  (all after 2 am and before 7 am over a 24 hour period) I've been neck deep in racing games.  As I've mentioned before I've been drifting around the tracks of Project Gotham 4.  I'm still playing PGR4 but I decided to do the Keep It option from GameFly and at the same time update my account to have two games out for rental.  Naturally at the top of my list was Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed so I figured I'd probably manage to get one of those titles. Nope, I got Dirt and Sega Rally Revo instead.

Now Dirt has been in my queue for a long time but never managed to get to the top as more interesting games have come out.  Dirt is a rally racing game that is a lot more popular across the pond than it is here in the states.  I've never tried a rally video game and know very little of the sport expect it often entitled off-road racing.  So far I'm liking Dirt with it nice controls and it's use friendly approach to driving.  I'm playing on one of the easier levels till I get the hang of the game but turning and breaking is very forgiving so far.  Unlike other racing games you are never out of a race if you make an early mistake.  The pack never gets too far ahead of you and often you can still win the race after a bad crash. 

As it would turn out Sega Rally Revo is also a rally racing game.  Imagine that!  This title was released last September and has been drowned out by several larger titles (Halo 3 affect).  I download the demo back then and for some reason decided to add the game to my queue on GameFly.  Well the game is visually impressive and the track physics is very impressive.  On muddy tracks you'll grove your path and such.  The main problems I had was with the controls and nice invisible walls around the track.  I found this game almost impossible to control with a controller until I switched to first person view.  Cars should drive at their wheels, not their center axis, so you don't over turn slam into walls all day.  The cars don't have any weight to them as they bounce their way down the tracks.  SRR really is a 90's arcade racer dolled up for the beefed up consoles of today.

So Project Gotham Racing 4 is now part of my game library and filling the need for a nice mix of arcade racing with more realistic controls.  I'm making my way through the career mode and have decided I really hate some of the new race types.  In PGR3 the game was split between racing drivers and completing skill challenges.  it seems in PGR4 there is a much higher emphasis on the skill challenges.  There are way too many cone challenges, kudos time challenges and hot lap races.  In a racing game I want to race opponents not hope my time around this cone track is better than the rest.  I wish I could have PGR3 in the PGR4 engine because dam these cities and cars look good and I enjoy having all these new tracks.

To close out this racing game post I'll share some tips I've learned from others over time.  First off you should always be racing in First Person View that is just the RPM and MPH gauges on the screen.  It's nice to look at the car and see how pretty it is but it's not easy to control a car that way.  The cockpit view is another nice one I will occasionally switch to.  Second tip is unless you have a prefect setup you using the racing wheel don't bother.  Most games are optimized for the controller and you'll have better success with the controller vs the wheel.  I hope those two tips help you.  I'm by no means a good driver in racing games but these tips really helped me.