The Crew Motorfest (PC)

Developer:

Ivory Tower

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Release Date:

2023

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Systems:

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally back after a five month break and I'm writing about a racing game! The fifth racing game in a row! This wasn't my original plan, but a free trial came along and to be honest I didn't really have an original plan so I figured I might as well put some words underneath the screenshots I was taking.

Everyone calls this The Crew Motorfest, not The Crew: Motorfest, so I'll be skipping the colon too. In fact, I'll probably just call it Motorfest. Or MOTORFEST  if I feel like adding a bit more style to it.

The game was originally going to be called Motorcamp. In fact, it wasn't originally going to be its own game at all, it was going to be DLC for The Crew 2, but the ideas they had were incompatible with the game's capabilities so they just made it its own thing. With an upgraded engine and shinier graphics.

Okay, I usually play through the first hour or so of a game and write down what's happening as I experiencing it, but for racing games I give them more of a regular review, so this is going to be something a little different. Except I just reviewed four other racing games, so this is actually extremely normal now, I guess.

Far Cry 5 (PC)

Super Adventures has been a bit quiet recently, due the huge pile of work I'm busy digging my way out of, so here's a picture of me sniping a Spitfire in Far Cry 5 to give you something to look at while you wait.

Super Adventures in Delisted Racing Games Part 3: Forza Horizon 3

This week on Super Adventures, I'm reviewing one last racing game you can't buy digitally anymore. First I played The Crew, then I played Need for Speed: Undercover, and now this one's a Forza game. Most of the Forza games are gone now, but I'm checking out Forza Horizon 3 specifically because I grabbed it just before it was delisted and then never quite got around to trying it.

The logo looks like it's saying "FIII" for Forza Horizon 3, but it's actually "FM" for Forza Motorsport, the main Forza series. It would've been such an easy edit to change it to "FH" but I guess it makes sense to have one logo for the whole franchise. (The E in The Crew isn't a 3 either).

Super Adventures in Delisted Racing Games Part 2: Need for Speed: Undercover

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still writing about racing games you can't buy digitally anymore. I was inspired by The Crew being shut down earlier this year, as it got me thinking about all the other racing games that have just disappeared over the years. Well okay, most of them are still in someone's game library, they still work (unlike The Crew), but you won't find them on the PlayStation store or on Steam.

It's a problem that affects this genre more than most because of all the licenced cars and music. Those licences have a time limit and when that's up the game can't be sold anymore. As far as I can tell, the first 18 Need for Speed games are all either gone now or never were, unless you can find them on disc, with only 2010's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit getting a remastered rerelease. And playing PC games off a disc has only become more of a pain in the ass over time.

Fortunately, I was able to buy a few of them before they vanished. In fact, I've already written about the first 10 years of Need for Speed games, going from Need for Speed to Underground, so now would be a good time for me to cover the absolute highlight of the sixth gen console era: the original Need for Speed: Most Wanted from 2005!

I can't be bothered going through the hassle of installing it though, so instead I'm downloading one of the most hated games in the series: 2008's Need for Speed: Undercover!

Super Adventures in Delisted Racing Games Part 1: The Crew

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing racing games you can't buy anymore, not online anyway. In fact, you can't even play The Crew anymore as Ubisoft shut the servers down last March! They just took a game people bought with money and made it entirely non-functional.

I struggle to write about racing games as basically all you do in them is get in a car and turn left or right. Sure the process of winning races is a little more complicated than that, plus I can talk about the types of races they have and their various features, but if I go down that route I'll pretty much end up writing an instruction manual and no one reads manuals anymore.

But screw it, this is my last chance to write about The Crew while it's fresh in my memory, so I'm doing it. Plus I'm throwing in Need for Speed: Undercover and Forza Horizon 3, because it's easier to see what makes something distinct when you put it next to the things that it's similar to.

The Lion King (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Developer:

Westwood Studios

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Genesis/Mega Drive, SNES, MS-DOS, Amiga

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm voluntarily playing a movie tie-in game from the 16-bit era! Maybe this is one of the good ones though. I mean, there have to be some good ones, right?

I've actually played The Lion King before, so I already know what I'm getting into here... and I know I won't be getting very far in it. Games were generally more challenging in the 80s and 90s, so when you load up one that was notorious even back in its day for its extreme difficulty, you know that you're in for a bad time.

The game was re-released for modern platforms a few years back by Digital Eclipse, so I'm sure it has all kinds of new quality-of-life features now (or at least a gallery to look through when you're stuck). I'm not going to be playing that one though. I'm going back to the original games with all the original frustrations.

Disney's Aladdin famously got two different platformers, a Sega version by Virgin Games and a Nintendo version by Capcom, though it also had a third version for 8-bit systems. For The Lion King, all the 16-bit systems got the same game, by Command & Conquer devs Westwood Studios, and that's what I'll be playing. Though I'll also take a look at the 8-bit games as well, because I'm curious.

Alright, I'm going to see if I can finally get past the graveyard stage for the first time in my life.

TimeSplitters (PS2)

Developer:

Free Radical

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

PS2

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out a game I haven't really played before: the original TimeSplitters for the PlayStation 2! Not Time Stalkers for the Dreamcast, that's something very different. (Just to make it more confusing, in the EU the two games came out less than two weeks apart.)

TimeSplitters was created by Free Radical Design, a company that has had a bit of a rough time of things over the years, as it's been killed off at least twice. The first time was in 2014, after they'd spent some time in disguise as Crytek UK, the second was last year after the Embracer group decided it would be better for their shareholders if we didn't get a fourth TimeSplitters game made by the original founders.

Free Radical was originally formed in early 1999 by staff that left Rare during the production of N64 FPS Perfect Dark. So it's pretty impressive that they got this out in late 2000, just a few months after Perfect Dark came out, especially as it was for a brand-new system. Rare had been focused on N64 and Game Boy games during the latter half of the 90s, but this was a launch title for the PlayStation 2. So I guess I'm going to see what Dr Doak and the GoldenEye team could do in 16 months on unfamiliar hardware.

I won't be seeing it on any other machines though, as to this day the game remains a PlayStation 2 exclusive. It's a product of that horrifying period of history where first-person shooters sometimes never got a version with mouse controls, and unlike its sequels it never made it to a system supported by backwards compatibility like the Xbox.

Alright, I'm going to check out the single-player for a bit and see if it's still fun in 2024. Assuming it was ever fun. And assuming it even has a single-player mode. It's going to really screw up my plans if it doesn't!