1. you have LOTS of self control
2. you have NOTHING else needing to be done
i've failed on both counts
hence......... a little photo story....
it was a sad day that winter in '88 when i had to finally move on from my beloved autobianchi. it was simply becoming too old fashioned and expensive to run, pretty as it was in that fantastic shade of vomit beige.
i needed something modern, something fashionable, something imbued with the go-getting spirit of the now.... and something about as quick, or at least with tuning potential. The Fiat Panda answered the call. I went for a quick ride in my new lurid red baby, throwing running-in periods to the wind - it's italian after all!
Who says you can't drift in a FWD car? Unfortunately, the afternoon's peace and tyre squeals were soon to be shattered and ruined, like my windscreen and grille.
I parked up for some proscuttio sandwiches and a thermos of iced ragu as a picnic at the side of the road, but before I even found the door release, some drunken idiot in an old triumph came screaming round the corner on the wrong side and braked just in time - to give the bumper a gentle tap.
Sadly, I had just begun to count my blessings when the two even more sloshed mates who he'd just run out on from the pub, to avoid getting his round in, caught up in their little wheelchair van and beat-up purple mini - and all hell broke loose.
ahem..................
great stress buster, is driving round the track backwards.
where were we...............
network play, i think, you buy a network adaptor for each PS2 (££££!!!) and just patch them together through any common or garden router.... a four port one is probably most sensible, unless you really want 6 TVs clogging the place up (or you do it distributed through a building, which takes some of the fun out of it when you cant shout at the guy next to you*) ..... wonder if it still has the GT2 & GT3 option of going half-link, half-splitscreen, where you can have two players per console if you like?
I'm for writing them a letter actually, putting out the grievences that it would be nice to fix in GT5, as one is presumably already in preproduction.
EG ------ the courses and the actual car models/textures are easily spanking gorge enough already, so no need to work on those any more. However...
* Get the ethernet and internet play sorted. now.
* A lot more location specific cars rather than all that 80-different-variants-of-the-same-boring-japanese-family-car nonsense. Because seriously, a/ how many europeans or yanks are going to give a crap about driving a nissan silvia vs an almera ar whatever other models they have? b/ how many of that already small set know what the difference between a Q's, K's and Tom's is anyway? (I had trouble, looking at the stats). Its not as marked as 1.0 - GT - G40, for example. And certainly a lot less interesting. The current "local" cars appear to have been picked and chosen in a rather haphazard fashion, and sparingly compared the huge number of samey jap buckets.
* Allowing photo-replay shoots in the pitlane! It looks great, but you're not allowed to snap it!
* Sorting the sound out
* Sorting the gearboxes / clutches out
* Car-specific dials would be nice
* A working horn!
* In-game select of the music track/jukebox and volume control. Even better, being able to plug a pendrive of your favourite MP3s in and have it play them as accompianment. I've got the freaking Hives and Franz Ferdinand stuck in my brain now, with just one song each! (back to the GT2 / GT3 method of playing it with BGM mute, and tunes playing from elsewhere..)
* an establishment of a decent "class" system for arcade and GT mode races, or just an improvement on the current one, which seems to get it right most of them time - just it will occasionally chuck a 400hp Dodge Ram into the midst of a microcar event, that mauls everyone and especially yourself. Rather than one based on the colour of your seat covers or something. How else can you reckon a BMW 120i coupe is a suitable 5th-place starting grid opponent for a Panda?
* not releasing it until it's ready - there's a little more spit and polish could have been done to the progam, stuch as making the BHP counts match in all places, and properly converting the economy guage on the prius from litres/100km to miles per gallon, rather than just altering the label and hoping no-one would notice it gets 5mpg on a gentle cruise, but 25 when caning it hard off the start line! (ditto the fuel usage guage - now confusingly marked in gals. when it's still plain counting 0L
* the micro-machines - or, in PS2 terms, the "mashed" effect.... no matter how simplistic the racing game, if it gathers two or more people together to play it, sat 3m or less apart, and the basic dynamics are sound, it will be the most amusing experience ever, mainly from the interaction as much as the onscreen skill required to win.
