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03/01 - Halo 3: ODST (Master Chief Collection)
06/01 - Halo 3 (Master Chief Collection)
09/01 - Hotshot Racing
25/01 - Halo 4 (Master Chief Collection)
29/01 - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
03/02 - Heavenly Sword
05/02 - Need for Speed: Carbon (Battle Royale)
09/02 - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
20/02 - ICO
24/02 - Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD
25/02 - Halo 5: Guardians
05/03 - Asura's Wrath
09/03 - Shadow of the Colossus HD (Normal mode)
30/03 - Shadow of the Colossus HD (Hard mode)
30/03 - Forza Motorsport 3 (100%)
01/04 - Muramasa: The Demon Blade
11/04 -
Forza Horizon 2 (100%)
Finishing FM3 100% got my mind on this game again, and so I went and did the same thing, making the final push towards finishing 100% of the career mode. I wasn't too far away from it already, as I had tried before, but dropped off just before the final stretch. I remembered the reason for that is because last time I tried to make a serious push with this game, it was because I wanted to do another cycle of the usual career mode and do the big finale race again, around the big Goliath track. I had done it twice already, but then after putting in a lot of time and getting suspicious that it hadn't shown up a third time, I went to look it up online only to discover it never happens again. So that took the wind out of my sails for that attempt. This time though I just wanted to go back to this game and clean off some unfinished business. Although I did look through the menus and it seems you can't even lap around that track for the Rivals mode, so if I really did want to see it again, I'd need to start an entirely fresh file. But I still had fun going through the last of the career anyway, not expecting something I knew wasn't coming.
This game is still a real looker, even if there are little subtleties that future games have improved on. This one is still impressive, and has a style and feel to it that later games in the series don't have. The geography and architecture of the Mediterranean setting obviously has its own character to it, but it also has a certain quality to its lighting that I like a lot. A really strong glow to the sunlight, that sells the feeling of the heat of the bright sun, and brings out a lustre to the metallic paintwork on cars. The way it does weather effects is really good too, and the rain effects in particular are arguably still the best in the series. Better than FH3 and 4 at least. The way the sky darkens so much, and thick rain drops collect on cars, scattering light in a million different directions. It looks really nice. You can tell that this is one of those games that come around in the early years of a console generation, when the developers go a bit crazy with all the new power they have to do fancy effects, but before things have settled down in to the best practices of what games of that generation "should" look like. So maybe some parts of the world look a bit sparse, and some of the effects are a bit excessive, the overall look and feel it creates still impresses, and has its own personality.
To actually play it is starting to show its age a bit however. The handling model, while still good, feels pretty unrefined compared to later games. Especially FH4 and 5. Cars generally feel pretty unstable, and require a lot of wrestling to keep under control, especially under breaking. Differentials are often set way too high by default, and putting a wheel off the road by even a tiny bit can lead to disaster very suddenly. The AI is really aggressive and frequently rams you or divebombs in to corners. None of this is new to me though, I've always been familiar with it. These issues were the downside of being early in the console generation, part of the growing pains the series was going through at the time. This game being based on the engine of FM5, that had these same problems but even worse. But this is the first time I've put serious time in to this game since FH5 came out, so it stands out more after having two games in a row that are so much more refined and forgiving when it comes to the actual driving mechanics.
The way the career mode is structured stands out as being a bit unusual too, and reflective of this transitionary time, at least in retrospect. It moved away from the more traditional structure of FH1 that unlocked an increasing number of individual races in the world that had car class restrictions that got gradually higher. This time they tried to marry the online and offline modes in their general design, by structuring the career like the online Road Trip game mode that has since become somewhat disliked by the playerbase in later games. The career is split in to short championships where you have to do four races around a specific area of the world, in a specific type of car. Three championships in a row together make up one Road Trip. You don't have choice over what type of race you do, but your car can be of any performance class. During this endgame run it also lets you choose what specific car type you use, but if I remember rightly that isn't a choice you are given before the first finale. It's been so long I'm not entirely sure though. It's supposed to emphasise how the open world now has no barriers on the side of the road and you can just drive across anywhere to the next event, as well as making each Road Trip feel like a fun adventure where you go on a sightseeing tour of the world. I do like it for that, as it still has some structure and a sort of ebb and flow to it that later games don't have, and sells the holiday atmosphere the game is going for. But at the same time it also does feel a bit flat, at least compared to FH1, given how every single race type gets thrown in to all the championships without much distinguishing them. Unlike in FH1 where the street race stuff is set aside as being not officially part of the festival, making the setting feel a bit more fleshed out. Also of course with there being no limit on car class, it doesn't have the smooth difficulty curve of FH1 either. Then again, FH1's career was in general somewhat conventional for the time. This style stands out more as its own thing.
I didn't intent to compare this game to the first so closely, but that one just seems to come to mind much more readily. I guess it's because I did a playthrough of it not so long ago, and it feels like a closer comparison of games of a similar era. The series has morphed in to something else now, and even though I did play FH5 more recently, honestly that game felt like basically just more of FH4. A game I have moved on from a while ago already.
That got pretty rambling towards the end... Well anyway, FH2 is fun still. Good nostalgia trip, impressive aesthetically, good soundtrack, starting to feel a bit janky to play these days though.