Test Driving a Toyota via the Xbox

The Toyota Yaris is out for Xbox 360, as a free download from the Live Arcade. This is how I stumbled onto the game; I don’t know how long it’s been up there, but I just downloaded it yesterday. Actually, I had been trying to download it earlier, a day before or so, but the download wouldn’t complete for some reason. Anyhow, I figured it’d be a commercially churned out game with product placement as the main concept. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but would gameplay be lacking?

You can really complain about a free game – as far as pricing goes. However, if it’s not worth your time, then, well, time is money. Actually, time is far more valuable than something like cash. Anyway, I’ve had the game for less than 24 hours, but here are my initial impressions…

First of all, it reminds me a whole lot of the Chaos Emerald stages in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. You drive through a half-pipe, moving from side to side, but turns are automatic; you’re never going to fall off the path. While you collect rings in Sonic 2, you collect coins here, and these can be used to purchase upgrades. There’s a bunch of obstacles and enemies you can shoot down (or vice-versa). You can control the aiming of your gun (a tentacle thing in front of the car), but there’s a good amount of auto-aim (convenient, since otherwise, it’s really hard).

The game itself is pretty fun… In fact, side-by-side with the Sonic 2 minigame, this one might win out, though to be fair, the Sonic 2 was made many years ago. This Yaris business is quite a challenge, though; I’ve played for a decent amount of time (maybe 30 minutes to an hour all together), and I’ve only made it to the third stage of eight. Stage three is insanely difficult, and I’m not even close to beating it. Stage two is pretty hard as well, but I’ve passed it a time or two. Stage one, the introductory level, is rather easy, and I find myself replaying it for more coins. I’ve upgraded to the most expensive car already, the 4-door S sedan, and I want to max out its stats before working to that $1,000,000 cash saved achievement. Yup, they didn’t make the achievements easy. Playing the first stage – rather well, I think – I can get more than $1,000 but less than $2,000. Unless I get good at later stages (and unless those stages pay out more cash), I’m looking at maybe 500-1000 replays of level one (my best time is a bit under three minutes). That’s a maximum of 50 hours.

Thereare some multiplayer options, but I haven’t tried them yet.

I have to give Toyota some props. It’s not a generic “look how awesome this car is” game. Actually, it is, in that the car can shoot lasers and whatnot. I like how they playfully take the game to this level. The concept is kind of ridiculous, and the car itself, while pretty cool, isn’t invincible. Basically, the product placement does not impede gameplay, but rather enhances it.

For example, a TV show in which every character drinks, say, Coca-Cola, and constantly says “Boy, I do love me a refreshing Coca-Cola” is something that might impede the show’s story. But a character who causally is drinking some Coca-Cola (and sure, that character can make positive remarks about it) can fit right in with the story, and it much preferable to someone drinking a can with an unrealistic label saying “Cola” that kicks down the realism as much as someone giving out their 555 number.

Back to Yaris, though. For a game about Toyota and its cars, I would have liked to have seen more details on the actual car itself. Maybe they could have let you customize it more in close-up detail, allowing you to purchase cup holders and such. They could have used that to showcase more features of the actual car and simultaneously give users more ways to make their own cars unique. Customizing things in games is usually a fun part of the process.

All in all though, I’m pleased with the game. It’s free, and it’s fun to play. Maybe I won’t play it long enough to make that $1,000,000 achievement, but I’d say its worth taking the time to download it and try it out.

Mrs. Pac Man for the Xbox 360 Is Difficult

Of all the old-timey arcade classics, Mrs. Pac Man has long been my favorite. In fact, if I were to get any arcade machine, it’d be the Mrs. Pac Man one, (or actually, the one with both Mrs. Pac Man and Galaga, but maybe it’s not fair to choose a two-games-in-one package). Back in the day, I was able to zip through much of the beginning of the game, getting to the last fruit stage (banana) with ease. A score of 100,000 was the score I would try to achieve at the very least – anything less would be unacceptable, like bowling less than 100. (Yeah, I know a score of 100 a great bowler does not make, but for a run-of-the mill bowler, I like to set that as a minimum goal.) I want to say that my top Mrs. Pac Man score was around 150,000, or maybe I think that because my top bowling score was, I think, 153. Anyway, I was not a great Mrs. Pac Man player, but I was pretty good and probably better than most people I know.

Naturally, with the Xbox 360’s Live Arcade, Mrs. Pac Man was a priority. I had never had much success with console versions of the game, and this is no exception. In fact, a quick look at my gamer profile reveals that I don’t even have all 200 gamerscore achievement points! I’m missing 30 points for the “Perfect” achievement in which one must eat all ghosts four times within the same stage. This is a task that, for the first couple of levels, used to be extremely easy for me to do in the arcades. My overall high score on the game is a mere 37,070. I guess some of the blame must go to the Xbox controller, but then again, I’ve been pretty bad at other Mrs. Pac Man ports to home consoles in the past. I think I just need the actual arcade version, which is another reason why my first purchase of a real-live arcade machine would have to feature this game. Perhaps my skills have dwindled in the past few years, but I don’t think that alone would account for a high score of only 37,070.

On the other hand, I have done well at the Xbox 360 port of Galaga. I managed to get around 99,000, which is probably higher than I’ve ever gotten in the arcade.