I’m getting totally immersed in The Getaway, which involves a lot of driving around in London. I’m from New England, so driving on the left wasn’t very easy to get used to.
I’ve been playing quite obsessively, and I’m getting used to driving on the left. I’m fine everywhere but complicated intersections and roundabouts.
Unfortunately, sometimes when I look at roads now, (real ones, mind you,) I have to think hard to remember what side I should be driving on. (Not while I’m driving. Yet.)
Do any serious gamers get a little to serious for their own good? The Getaway for Americans and Grand Theft Auto 3 for Brits?
Not really, but after playing Vice City for a few hours straight I had a bizzare desire to jump the curb and run over some people I saw walking on the sidewalk the next time I drove.
Driving games, side of road doesn’t effect me, but sometimes on a quite interstate I want to take the racing line arround a curve.
After playing a lot of Doom, I do find myself looking arround when in large open space to ensure no monsters are trying to shoot at me from a balcony or something.
Sim Life doesn’t harm your brain, but after playing it to death I am seriously considering hireing a maid to clean my appartment once a week.
P.S. about The Getaway, how far have you got? I love the game myself, especially since I have lived and worked in London. It really is incredably realistic, to the point of being able to recognise where you are from the shops on the streets. For instance on the missin to soho, you pass Soho-soho a swish new chinese resteraunt which I have eaten at, in it’s correct place on Frith street.
Bah. I’m only up to the fourth mission. I never know how far I can go before the autosave kicks in and prevents me from having to sit through the long, long, long cut scene again.
Anyway, I got the cheat code for free roaming mode, and that makes me a very happy boy. I can live without the actual game.
I read an amateur review that said that the cars were glued to the ground. Not so. I jump all the time, and I’ve rolled a few vehicles, including the tank.
No, what you need to do is get the Sims Live Action Role Playing expansion pack. Instead of controlling figures on a screen, you actually walk around a house, fix meals, clean rooms, sleep and go to work!
I play it all the time, but the physics model leaves something to be desired and I’m not sure how realistic it is…
I knew I had been playing too much GTA when a while back a vehicle zoomed out in front of me at a crosswalk and my first thought was to turn around and blow it up with my rocket launcher.
After some near-obsessive GTA3 playing, I had to go to the store one afternoon. A minor traffic jam in front of me had me thinking “there’s enough room on the sidewalk to go around.”
Didn’t have the stones (or the insurance, or the death wish) to actually do it though.
I’ve driven in all 4 possible configurations (left/right side of the road, and left/right hand drive cars) in real cars on real roads. It takes a few minutes to get oriented, but it’s not hard. It actually helps to have a little traffic on the road to follow by example.
Aw jebus, this takes me back. For a while when GTA2 had just come out, I had to keep reminding myself that:
Nudging cars in traffic was -not- an acceptable way to get them to move so I could get around them
Violence did not, indeed, solve -everything-
In real life, there is no ‘COP KILLAH’ bonus
Didn’t help that I was playtesting a demolition-derby-style game for work at that point. (Okay, no, I shouldn’t be trying to ramp myself off the curb for distance. That would be -bad-)
I was up on the roof of a high building a while back, and I found myself peering down at surrounding rooftops, looking for hidden packages and jump ramps.
Dave Chapelle actuallly joked about this on his last show. Said he played too much Vice City that he feels like playing it out in real life. Decent sketch overall, but I got a kick out of how he shot a driver. He was standing straight up with his arms by his side, then his arm was immediately sticking out with a gun, then replaced by a grenade, then both arms sticking out with a machine gun.
