General Vidya

Ross_R More news at whenever I'll get myself one of those adapters.

I actually got myself two adapters for NegCon: one is stated to work with XBox 360 specifically, and another one with PC. But I had not time to test any of them so far.
Anyway, I've thought about posting the following stuff in "Fun games only you have played" thread, but thing is, I cannot call the following games particularly fun.
In a nutshell, I decided to search for some short games just to take a break without dedicating myself to yet another several-weeks-long project. And at this point, most of such games I've already completed, so had to dig somewhat deeper.
And so... I've got Supercar Street Challenge and American Chopper 2.
I'll say it straight: both of these games are rather bad at being racing games. Supercar Street Challenge has invisible obstacles spawning in the middle of the track out of all things. And in American Chopper 2 - it's just... bad. The only good part is the sound of the bike, and everything else is wrong. You barely feel like driving and you do not feel speed at all. Even at supposed 150 MPH it feels like you are riding a turtle.
But since these games can be completed literally in one evening - and that's what I did - both of these ended way before they started to be anyhow unbearable.
And, well, for the good parts of these games... Well, Supercar Street Challenge is pretty much the only game in the world that allows you to drive 1999 Pontiac GTO Concept.

This fact alone is rather cool in my book.
And then Supercar Street Challenge offers you an interesting customization menu: instead of taking a car and swap around bumpers and whatever, the game proposes you to create your own car. You have an assortment of front and rear halfs (about ten each), and each of those halfs can be mixed up. I'm not even sure how to explain it, as the system is really unique, but to put it straight: you choose one bumper, and then you can choose another and apply it... a little, as there's a slider going from 0 to 10. And then you can choose the third bumper and add a bit of that. And so on.
And then there's a small selection of accessories as well.
It's... very unusual, to say the least, and I dig new ideas, if anything. I guess, such a thing is truly a product of a time: rather low amount of polygons is what enables such crazy model warping in the first place.
Ah, and the end result... kinda looks like this:

As for American Chopper 2 - once again, it offers a very decent bike customization menu. It's just your usual "pick a part" thing, nothing really special like the game above, but... I'm not sure if any other game allows you to do that with american choppers. I never really touched any racing games after 2010 or so, and so maybe some modern racing game has chopper customization? But none of the racing games I know of have one. The best alternative out there is Midnight Club 3's selection of pre-customized american bikes from West Coast Choppers and Hotmatch, but you can only change rims and paintjob on them, so not much of your own choice in them.
All the while American Chopper 2 allows for a somewhat decent amount of thought and personality to be put into your bike. The game kind of pushes you towards gimmicky TV-show bikes, but, luckily, you are free to ignore all that and do whatever you want to do.

So yeah, the amount of combinations is decent, and if you'd ever wanted to customize a chopper - this game might be about your only choice. Those things are more rare in video games than hot-rods.
And yeah, turns out American Chopper 2 has been developed by a russian studio... and it all comes together, really. There are no good russian racing games, period.
Quite appropriately, the only disc I managed to find online is a rip from a russian version. Surprisingly or not, the russian language in it is... uh... period correct, so to say. It is obviously a bad translation from english. Hell I know how it happens in the big game dev, when someone orders a token game under a big trademark...

Ross_R I actually got myself two adapters for NegCon: one is stated to work with XBox 360 specifically, and another one with PC. But I had not time to test any of them so far.

I guess, the story has come to its conclusion, as I finally got to check the adapters with my NeGcon. Well, one adapter. The PC one, that is.
And it works! What can I say about NeGcon now... It's awesome. Out there tech. Killer. I love it.
I'm not fully used to it so far, but it already seems like everything they've said about this thing is true:

This gamepad is about to destroy all my old lap records. And my wrists.

I've been noticing a lot of remakes recently-- silent hill 2 for example-- or persona 3 reloaded. I tried to play SMTP3 Reloaded on my brothers Xbox and not only did it look sort of cheap ( as Lumeinshin mentioned in a previous post), but also the whole art design was just... off. The characters have different proportions and the textures are obviously changed to meet the new models. The 'vibe' (is that the right word ?) is just generally different and the environments are much brighter than they were in the original SMTP3 .

I understand that companies want to capture a new audience for a game, but when they are changing so much of the experience of the originals (the music in persona 3 reloaded for example) it's difficult to support these endeavors. Not a console player so correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems there is no way to buy the original or HD remasters on an PS5. I played Silent Hill 2 on the pcsx2 emulator a couple months ago and i just don't see why this game would need to be remade; it plays perfectly fine and the game still manages to be engaging and immersive without 'Fog Simulator VII GTX RTX fuck 30' or whatever the latest thing Nvidia has put out is called.

For the sake of nuance though, maybe it's good that newer audiences get to experience art that is more relevant to them. I'm not sure if its selfish that i want people to experience art in a way that i see as superior because i grew up with it, it's not like the originals are going away. Regardless, i'm always interested in others opinions; if these new titles should be more faithful to the originals, or if it's good to have new interpretations of art.

edit: this image just pisses me off, go love yourself konami

sanner I played Silent Hill 2 on the pcsx2 emulator a couple months ago and i just don't see why this game would need to be remade; it plays perfectly fine and the game still manages to be engaging and immersive

Worth playing for the first time in 2024 for someone with no nostalgia for it?

I'd like to shout out my favorite indie released this year, instruments of destruction. Physics sandbox where the player controls fantasy construction equipment and just breaks shit. There are two campaigns, one where you pilot prebuilt equipment and one where you have to create your own vehicle for each mission. The vehicle builder is crazy detailed and the build potential is endless. There are also custom maps and stuff. It's fantastic and only $20 USD.