Buying Baby Stuff
Even though tomorrow is the first public sale day at the Kid's Kloset (*flinch*), a local gigantic used baby stuff thing that happens at the Jaycees building, we bought a walker for Nina at Target yesterday. For something like that, I'd rather have a new one that I can, among other things, pick out the fabric and general motif of the thing. Besides, the freaky clear plastic dinosaur with red LEDs in it that plays dinosaur mooing or soothing ambient music when you touch it, that was just too over the top.

But tomorrow, it'll be the first time non-helpy people can do the Kid's Kloset thing. I'll be driving Alison's Focus, as I am doing today, just to see if it works right, and it appears to. Alison will be in her Mom's Camry and we'll actually go separately, but at 10 a.m. when it first starts. I'll be trying to get pants, etc, wintery stuff. I'm not so much looking for toys. Heck, Nina has enough toys.

R: Racing Evolution
I bought this game at a super discount from EBGames, $10.5ish delivered. It's OK. The cars are odd feeling. I'm used to the pure arcade feel that's in the old Ridge Racer (which this would be Ridge Racer 6, but it's not too good and they didn't want to soil the good Ridge Racer name again like they did with Ridge Racer 5, which is very difficult to control the cars) or in games like Grand Theft Auto, or the simulation feel that's in Gran Turismo, but this is an odd, freaky feel.

One of my pet peeves on it is that when the cars accelerate, they don't rock backward as the weight is transferred to the back causing the front suspension to lift the car slightly and the back to lower slightly. It really makes the driving experience artificial. However, the dumbest thing ever in the game is the brake assist. This isn't ABS. You can drive around the entire track totally floored and it will slow you down to the correct speeds for the turns. I had to turn this off. Not only is it blatantly cheating, but it's not that good at braking for my grippy driving style. Heck, I'm not sure it the cars in this can do the arcade style drift thing.

Now, the game that want (and has been marked down to $15 at Amazon) is Freedom Fighters. Reminds me a little of that classic game I loved in the early 90s, Syndicate. But since I did 17% of R:RE in about an hour, I think I'll win this puppy.

I really like two different titles in the Ridge Racer series. The third installment, Rage Racer, was great in the fact that you had money involved. I'd much rather be given money to upgrade my cars or buy a new one rather than having that choice already made for me. Also, Rage Racer has great track design. Granted, it only has five or six tracks that you run either forward or backward, but what do you expect for 1997ish.

R4, or Ridge Racer Type 4, is my favorite. They don't have money, which is a strike against it. But they do have wonderful tracks and the cars still handle as brilliantly arcadey as they did in Rage Racer. Of course, 5 messed all that up. And 6, if you'll call R:RE that, is a little better than 5, but they have real world cars. One of the great things about R4 is that you had some freaky three wheeled cars, a hovering tank-like thing, oh, freaky freaky crazy crap. And it was fast and tight.

And, while mentioning Playstation 1 racing games, I would be remiss (I think I'm using that word right) if I didn't mention Wipeout 3. The Best Wipeout Game! I have all four and I'll only play W3. Wipeout Fusion, the PS2 version, blows chunks in it's crap track designs.

Oh, and another reason R4 is better than Rage Racer is the analog support. I need to play Rage Racer, then R4, again.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 12:30 PM