Move over Initial D, I have Initial G

In high school and college, my exposure to motorsport was limited to watching Formula 1 and playing driving games like Gran Turismo and the Initial D arcade game series.

I remember how it was such a big deal back then, especially to the Initial D crowd, to understand the idiosyncrasies of the game's physics and how to successfully exploit them to make the fastest possible course time records. The first three games in particular had this ridiculous "eraser" trick that involved abusing the sequential gear shift to "erase" speed and understeer.

When the fourth game came along with revamped physics, each corner had an arbitrary speed limit. If you exceeded this speed, the game would impose a "penalty" on you, force your car to understeer, and hit the corner's outside wall. Aficionados later discovered a technique called the "penalty cancel," which involved fancy pedalwork this time. Initial D Arcade Stage 4 also basically drifted and decelerated the car for you as long as you made a certain style of corner entry - look Ma no downshifts!

As you can see none of these things was terribly realistic. If I wanted realism I had the Gran Turismo franchise and Forza Motorsport 2 to fulfill that.

Then along came my trackdays in Subic and Batangas...which I've talked about at length in previous posts.

Last Friday, while wating for Mav to arrive from work, I took a spin in the Initial D Arcade Stage 5 machine - the latest installment of the arcade racer. This game is the most realistic of the series yet, with no stupid "eraser" or "penalty cancel" tricks to exploit. You really have to downshift to second gear for the mountain hairpins, as you would in real life, and depending on your car, you WILL understeer if you overcook the entrance of a turn.

It's actually amazing how my perspective has changed. Now that I've proven myself a handy driver in actual circuit time attacks, I look at Initial D Arcade Stage 5 and don't really consider it a big deal any more. Taking to Akina and Irohazaka, I appreciate how the game's driving physics are finally correctly realistic, but because I do not feel any of the G-forces of cornering and braking, I am all the more aware that I am just playing a game.

By the time Mav arrived, I had set my personal best times at Akina and Irohazaka, slashing two or three seconds from my beginning attempts. It definitely felt like I was driving at those two infamous mountain passes, and as before, I was sweating from the concentration and effort. However, it just did not compare to the visceral thrill of carrying speed through Brian's Corner, properly attacking the double apex of R-Bend, or successfully hooking up at all the little corner gutters around Subic International Raceway.

Initial D aficionados can keep hogging the machines. Aibo and I race for real.

Lazy daisy

One of the things the package from Uncle Butch and Auntie Carole had inside it, aside from the usual clothes and foodstuffs, was JB's old PlayStation 2. It had been a while since my beloved PS1 (itself a hand-me-down from Tita Hedwig) bit the dust, and I was getting by using emulation to play my old PS1 favorites.

It's funny how late I am with the console gaming industry party nowadays. Two years since the PS3 came out, I just got my own PS2. Not that I'm complaining. I'd rather have a PS2 than an overheating XBox 360 or a PS3 starved of good games.

Seeing how late I obtained the PS2 I was concerned about getting games for it. I don't mind paying for the legit thing now, but if the games are too hard to find that's it for me right there. Surprisingly, DataBlitz's more popular branches have a healthy catalog of genuine PS2 games. I got Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection, and pretty soon I'll be getting Gran Turismo 4 and the Devil May Cry box set.

Suddenly I've rediscovered lazy Saturday afternoons.

Hitching a ride, a game and a dinner

To cap off my week-long vacation leave, I spent a lot of time with my buddy Paolo Campos. Conveniently, he had arrived from his three-month post-graduation vacation in the US, and he invited me over for a few games of Forza Motorsport 2 on his brand-new Xbox 360.

Forza is just about the most realistic driving game I've ever tried. I had to relearn how to play using the Xbox 360's gamepad and how to drive using the game's physics. Driving there isn't as simple as just holding down buttons mindlessly; you have to feather your throttle and brake inputs and stay smooth throughout the course. Depending on your car's drivetrain and power characteristics, stabbing the throttle too hard too soon can cause your car to fishtail, while being clumsy with the brakes can send you straight to the barriers. It took me quite a while to get used to it, but on my second day I was driving pretty well already, cornering on part-throttle and making smooth entry with the brakes.

It wasn't all gameplay too. Yesterday we went to Greenhills, while today I hitched along with Pao and his dad while laughing along in their Pajero. They even brought me to Shinjuku, an authentic Japanese restaurant in Makati with the best gyoza dumplings in town, and their kakiage tempura udon is pretty damn good.

Not a bad way to cap off a week-long vacation, I reckon.

Battle Gear 4 for me, thanks

I tried Initial D 4 again. Sure enough, my suspicions of "invisible walls" are confirmed, at least on Akagi and Shin-Myogi. Colliding against these things slows me down to an inexplicably sluggish pace that I have so much trouble recovering from.

This isn't stopping the game from gaining relative popularity though. Well, the players can have it. At this point I can say I'm through with Initial D 4.

As far as I'm concerned, if I wanted a satisfying driving game I'd play Battle Gear 4. No invisible walls of frustration, no sluggish response from the wheel and a much more realistic driving experience make this my arcade racer of choice for realism.

Besides, I already have my own car and I've slain more than my share of giants in real life. People can harp about realism and my sucking in arcade driving games all they want. However, I've already humiliated a fair number of hotshot drivers on the streets---I have nothing else to prove.

Bumming out is healthy

My ten-day vacation comes to an end tonight. Tomorrow it's back to the same old Tuesday grind, waking up at 6 am to haul my ass to the office by 7 and avoid the MMDA.

What did I do the whole time I was out?

I had my "live" facial mole removed, for one. I'm now living with the post-operation idiosyncrasies: not wetting the wound for three days, applying antibiotic ointment, and contending with the Tegaderm bandage that refuses to stay still because of the location of my mole. It's so conveniently located on the corner of my mouth. After two weeks I'll see if this was all worth it.

A visit to the HMO clinic was also in my itinerary. I had a blood test done, but the doctor was quick to rule out anything wrong with my endocrine system. The proof's going to come tomorrow with the result of the blood test.

Yes, I went to Trinoma again...and you already know my impressions of the place. You also know what happened during the party last Saturday. Watching the Turkish Grand Prix was also on the menu but that doesn't need a vacation to do.

One of the things I said I missed was playing involving video games for hours on end. It turns out I didn't have to look very far. I already had a few pretty good games here I just didn't get to play anymore, most notably "Super Robot Wars: Original Generation" on the Game Boy Advance. That turn-based strategy game is so demanding of micro-management it turned me off the first time I played it, but now I finally understand how it all works. It takes me hours to get through individual missions, though.

It was a good vacation, and the break from work was much appreciated despite the lack of money for a trip or some other event of the sort. Unfortunately all things must come to an end, and too much of a tension-free time like this will make me dull.

I think I'll do this again in a few months.

Oh, and did I mention I managed a surprise 13.521 km/L?

Initial D 4 vs. Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3

Initial D 4 is finally out and I've just tried it.

First thing's first: the game is ridiculously expensive at PhP30 a pop. Okay, that's fair enough, but the thicker newfangled IC Card costs the equivalent of four games. Gulp.

Okay then. I buy a card, put in my usual car (a black Mazda RX-8 Type S) and go take it for a spin. There are a number of new courses now: Lake Akina is the new beginner loop track, while the previously looping Myogi has become a downhill/uphill mountain pass and thus much harder than before. At the very end of the difficulty ladder is Tsukuba. For my first few games I tried Myogi. It's much wider than the other mountain passes but it's also pretty challenging.

Unfortunately this is the biggest failing of Initial D 4: it feels almost artificially hard. While battling against Takeshi Nakazato and his R32 Skyline GT-R, I found it too easy to lose control of my drifts and I was colliding against invisible "walls" that logically should not exist. I kept losing against Nakazato no matter what I did.

I appreciate the fact that actual drifts are now part of the game, but it's nowhere near as intuitive as it should be. I doubt it's just the learning curve.

My gaming money goes to Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3, thanks. Cheaper, more intuitive and faster to boot---the only thing I don't like is the horde of game hogs that load up PhP1000 on their cards and play the whole afternoon away.