RichieIncognito

I paid $9.99 for the deluxe edition of this game. I feel like I overpaid by at least ( dollars.

While the setup is certainly intriguing, The Crew 2 never comes anywhere close to sticking the landing. The second iteration of The Crew sees your bland protagonist switching seamlessly between, street, offload, air, and water races that span the entire United States. Obviously, the map isn't to scale, but one of the few high points in my play through was watching the scenery change as I traveled from coast to coast. While each city definitely has a distinct look to it, each environment is so completely lifeless that the only difference between racing through Norfolk and racing through New York are the visuals. Speaking of things that are completely devoid of personality, the voice acting in this game is absolutely atrocious - think Matthew Perry in Fallout: New Vegas, but instead of just one guy that you have to talk to a few times, it's every character and they never stop talking. Just awful. The vehicle selection is fine, but the prices on a lot of the vehicles seem artificially inflated to tempt you into buying Crew Bux or whatever they're called. The only problem with that is that other than speed, just about everything that I drove (comparing vehicles of the same type, of course) felt very similar. Also, as other reviewers have mentioned, The Crew 2 features some pretty egregious rubberbanding, so don't be shocked when that shiny new GT-R you just bought gets overtaken by a Fiat. The artificial difficulty curve felt a little less heinous in the plane and boat races, but I gave up on those pretty quickly because they were just too dull to hold my interest for very long. Perhaps the devs can fix some of these issues in a future patch, but for now I can't recommend this game as anything other than a "rent - but only if you're really desperate and there's nothing better to choose from." utterly lifeless and devoid of personality. From the egregious rubber banding to the cringeworthy NPC chatter that is seemingly in your ear at all times,

Say what you will about EA, but I was pretty excited when they picked up the UFC license and released the original EA Sports UFC a few years ago. With a sport as complex and fluid as MMA, I thought they had the best chance to get it right. After a solid first attempt with the original, I was even more excited for EA UFC 2 to come out to see where they were headed with the franchise. The roster feels like it has a lot more depth right out of the box, with several lesser-known international fighters in the mix with big name stars. I'm indifferent towards the Mike Tyson, etc. DLC fighters, but for people that like that sort of stuff it gives the opportunity to create some fun fantasy matchups. The rendering of each fighter in the game is fantastic - probably the best representation of a real-life athlete in a video game. Fortunately, they also applied a similar level of detail to the refs, ring girls, and even ole' Uncle Dana White However, my excitement started to fade once I started actually getting in the cage in the custom game, career, and online modes. The stand-up game is still largely the same as the last installation, but improved collision detection and an increased focus on parrying/countering keep things fresh and dissuade people from just button mashing. Once the fight hits the ground, though, everything goes out the window. I found the new grappling system to be really annoying, with each encounter feeling like more of a frustrating guessing game than a tense jiu-jitsu battle. Of course you could avoid the whole thing altogether with the new knockout mode, but at that point you might as well dust off an old copy of Fight Night. Ranked/unranked online connections were consistently pretty pitiful, with lag throughout and more than just a few mid-match disconnections occurring right in the heat of battle. Career mode is a little more streamlined in this iteration, partially due to UFC's Reebok sponsorship eliminating individual sponsors from advertising all over your walkout or fight gear, so all there is really left for you to do is train/fight/repeat. I'd really like to see EA fix career mode in the future because in its current state it isn't terribly realistic. Whether you're riding an 8 fight win streak and still fighting unranked scrubs on the undercard, or you're being forced to retire in your mid 20's, there's not a whole lot that makes sense here. If the devs want to extend the length of the career mode, it would make a lot more sense to have some sort of fictitious minor-league promotion to get the basics down before moving on to TUF and then onto the UFC. Lose too much in the UFC? Go back to the minors and perform to get resigned. The absence of having the opportunity to join different fight camps, do press, etc. also adds to the monotony of the train/fight grind. The challenge curve in career mode can also be pretty brutal, with actual fighters progressing their skills as time goes on as well - it's a little jarring to go up against a guy who is a lower to mid tier fighter in real life, but is suddenly 99 OVR in-game. Seems like that sort of thing should be relegated to ultimate team. All in all, UFC 2 isn't a bad game, but certainly isn't a great one. The overall blandness of the career mode, online connectivity issues, and sharp learning curve burned me out well before it probably should have and left me with a strong case of buyer's remorse.

As read in the summary above, "easy to learn, hard to master" is the best way to describe Trackmania's gameplay. Similar to games like Trials, Trackmania relies on a Bronze/Silver/Gold medal system to progress onwards toward bigger and badder tracks. Bronze is usually attainable enough to achieve in 1-2 run-throughs, which is great for pick up and play sessions or more casual players, but the real meat and potatoes of the game revolves around playing the same maps again and again to improve and go for the gold. However, unlike Trials, each race series is restricted to one type of car so you can't refine your approach or adjust based on your driving style. Rather, you're forced to master that particular car on that particular track to get the most out of your experience. That might be appealing to some, but with only four cars and not a whole lot of customization options there wasn't enough here to keep me interested enough to bother with a particular track again once I had already medaled and moved on. The lack of a real online multiplayer component is also a bit of a letdown, but the inclusion of the two driver mode makes for some pretty fun couch co-op experiences. Visually, Trackmania Turbo succeeds in feeling like a throwback arcade racer with lots of bright color palates and highly stylized signage throughout each course. Unfortunately this didn't translate as well to the create-a-track mode, but someone with better design skills could probably compensate. Overall, I would definitely recommend TT to arcade racing fans, perfectionists, and high-score junkies alike. For those of us that fall in between, it makes for a good weekend rental but not much else.

After owning this game for just shy of two weeks, I'm sad to say that it is already inching it's way off my entertainment center and on the way to being traded/sold. The reason being that I feel like EA rushed to get a product out that feels like an incomplete package, which is shocking considering the relatively long development cycle. Although they can be frustrating, I wasn't so much bothered by the various gameplay glitches as I was the sheer lack of gameplay options/replayability. Realistically there are only so many things you can do in a sports game, but glaring omissions like not having the ability to create your own PPV event (or Fight Night, etc.) are kind of mind boggling. When combined with long load times and short matches, local competitive play becomes tedious very quickly (choose weight class, choose fighter, wait, fight, wait, route to main menu, repeat) as a result. The single player experience isn't much better, as I was thoroughly disappointed with the career mode - in fact, I think this is EA Sports UFC's weakest point. In a perfect world, creating a fighter and bringing him up through the ranks as you attempt to build a HOF-worthy career should be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Whether you're creating a fighter that looks like you or a 5'2 flyweight with a beer gut, you should be compelled to care about your creation - celebrating every win, cringing at every loss, and making key decisions each step of the way to develop a sense of connection with your character. However, EA manages to accomplish none of the above. Throughout the course of my own career, I fought Cub Swanson approximately 10 times for the featherweight title. Why is that even a thing? Is he paying someone for these rematches? Did he think I was an easy target because I was still being forced to do beginner level Muay Thai drills at every other training camp while Greg Jackson yelled "You're gonna win a world title someday!" News flash, Greg - I've already held the title for 5 years and the UFC has now gone bankrupt because they're forcing the same rematch down everyone's throats every 3 months. Also, tell Michael McDonald to stop video messaging me three times a week - it's creepy. All joking aside, with a sport as dynamic as MMA, the options should be seemingly endless for where you could potentially take your virtual MMA career. Superfights, trash talk, press conferences, changing camps/weight classes when things aren't working out, all of these options should be available to make the game feel "as real as it gets." Instead, the whole experience feels a bit like a flawed summer blockbuster. You'll ooh and ah at the visuals right off the bat, but once the novelty wears off all you can focus on are the problems. 6/10