Racing with flying colors in Forza 2

When jRySix joined the Xbox Nation recently, the first game he bought for himself was Forza Motorsport 2. It's been out a year, and he found it marked down to $15. I bought it so we could race each other online.

I missed this game when it came out, and I was really missing something. It's freaking great. It's a lot like Gran Turismo 4, which jRySix and I both liked immensely, but Forza 2 is much better.

The racing is fun, but the customization features really stand out for me. I love customizing the cars. I painted some like my old Hot Wheels I had when I was a kid, in a metallic green-apple color, but then I thought of creating a theme of fighter plane paint schemes and markings on various cars. My first effort is displayed above, with a Corvette decked out in F-15 colors.

I'm starting to get the feel for some of the graphics editing features, and now I see that I can do almost anything with it. Below is a slide show of some of my cars. I'll see you at the finish line!

I know what you have to do now ...

"THAT ... was the coolest thing I've ever seen."

-- Lt. Col. James Rhodes

"Iron Man" is fantastic. Go see it this weekend, so it will make enough money to build a dozen Mark III suits, and they'll make another movie immediately.

All Sythbane Squadron members should consider this a scramble alert. We are locked down in full geek mode.

Stay for the scene at the end of the credits.

An inept criminal in GTA IV

It might be that I'm just terrible at Grand Theft Auto IV.

After all, I was hopeless as a "rogue" in Mass Effect. Even when I tried to play as a bad guy, I ended up making good guy decisions, so I gave up on the red meter. Nor did I have the stomach to ever play as an assassin or thief in Oblivion.

So far, as Niko Bellic, I have taken a woman on a nice date to go bowling, and later took the same girl out to a cabaret show (which was terrible). I also went to play darts with my cousin Roman.


I am, however, a terrible driver, a sure-enough menace on the road. I've "parked" by knocking over a group of pedestrians on the sidewalk like bowling pins as I fumbled for the brake button. Happily, they stood up, dusted themselves off and resumed their conversion, none the worse for wear. I was impressed by their forgiving attitude toward my appalling lack of skill at parallel parking.

I find now that I'm being forced to perform a few nefarious acts at the bidding of an odious fellow named Vlad, but it took me 15 minutes just to figure out how to throw a brick through a window. I haven't even found a gun yet.

On the bright side, I did get a polite kiss from my date after I took her to the cabaret. If I keep behaving like a gentleman, perhaps she will grow fond of me.