Added: 07.10.2014 14:00 | 1 views | 0 comments

It exists, it's pretty, and you race cars in it. Such an analysis might be terribly reductive, but it's difficult to work up excitement over Driveclub, a simple racing game in which frustration is common and thrills are in short supply. This is racing in its most straightforward and driest form, free of frills, free of celebration, and free of pressing reasons to invest your time in it for the long term.

No, in spite of its attempts to drive competition by way of automated and player-issued challenges, Driveclub is a short-term game, one that gets you onto the track with minimal fuss and tests your command of the vehicle whose wheel you grasp. Select your race, select your vehicle, and take to the track, unlocking new vehicles as you progress. There is no under-the-hood tinkering, and thus less sense of ownership than you would feel in a game like Click above for more Driveclub images.

These are nice, basic features, but Driveclub fails to present them with much energy or excitement, and Electronic Arts' Autolog, the community service that ties its driving games together, is teresting, more prominent from moment to moment, and richer in features. The dull menu music signals Driveclub's dull overall presentation; it's for the best that the soundtrack is turned off by default, allowing you instead to bask in the beautiful roar of your Lotus Exige. The cars and environments are inarguably gorgeous: Norway's snow-capped mountains bring to mind melodramatic sagas and triumphant symphonies, and the lochs and castles featured within Scotland's many pastoral tracks might inspire you to call your travel agent and book a European vacation. They're beautiful places, but in Driveclub, they are as lifeless as postcards; if there any sagas left to tell in those mountains, this game isn't telling them. An occasional small crowd might politely applaud as you rush by, waving flags, or maybe even holding balloons, but a requisite audience or even the occasional fireworks display do not alone a celebration of car culture make.

In fact, it's hard to find any true celebration here. Driveclub is ordinary menus and ordinary races, standard time trials, and a few drift events. Driveclub is bland social competition. Driveclub is the fear of risks and the embrace of the ordinary. It's basic racing in basic packaging, beautiful and inert and full of attractive cars. It is not, however, an argument for a new generation of driving, given how it fails to exceed the standards of the old one.

Added: 07.10.2014 7:16 | 12 views | 0 comments


Why does video game violence continue to receive a reoccurring negative stigma within news articles and headlines? Rather than focusing on suggested negative effects of video game violence, The Noobist takes an alternative look. This article predominantly focuses on the potential for violent gameplay to develop knowledge and understanding of gamers and also takes a look at what video game developers Cliff Bleszinski, Ken Levine and David Cage have to say about the use of violence within their games.