Tiger Woods Pro Tour 11 and the online voucher

Whilst I'd read about this new "online voucher" idea in the games press, this is the first title I'd bought that included the feature. In practise it works very simply, you get a code that you put in and it lets you use the on-line parts of the game. Buy a second-hand game or get your game without the code for some reason, you have to pay some money for the "voucher" (a new code) and you can go on-line too.

This is the games industry monetising the second-hand market and presumably an attempt at monetising piracy on those platforms which allow it. Many think it will destroy the second-hand market - not an area I know or care much about - but as far as I can see it'll just devalue your second-hand game by a few quid.

Morally it's less easy to justify. Without consulting us, the industry has taken away what we thought was ours and gained from the move themselves. Whatever they believe is the legal case - we never actually own these games remember, just a licence to play them - is frankly immaterial. In addition, it's not clear what will happen should your console break and you need to re-install your game.

On the whole, I believe that the games industry is right to bring in the vouchers. It doesn't effect the original owner (as long as new console reinstalls are allowed), it might keep costs of games down slightly and frankly it's a great idea from their perspective. And compared with the complete prostituting of the rest of Tiger Woods Pro Tour 11 it really is nothing.

Modnation Racers - a review of sorts

No-one of sane mind is ever going to claim that Modnation Racers (MNR) is the best game ever made. I don't even know if it's the best kart game ever made, having not played them all myself. Certainly plenty of other reviews have mentioned the rubbish attempt to add a story into the career game, the difficult career passage as the AI becomes mentally aggressive and above all the long loading times.

But it's a good game, there's no denying that, and to me, it's a great game. Those other reviews will tell you the cartoon graphics are great, sounds fine, menus workable and will then almost always turn to the modding tools, which are excellent.

That they miss out on the aspect that makes the game great is no surprise. The lot of the professional or semi-professional game reviewer is not always a happy one. There's not always time to spend dissecting the game as much as they could, as much as the games player does by the natural dint of his playing, for example.

So, I'm 517 on-line games in and have just won the trophy for winning 100 games (silver, btw) and would like to report in. What makes this game great is how balanced the on-line racing is. Seemingly every race ends with a tight finish, good players will always fight one another and you're never left miles behind simply going round an empty track. And this all seems a perfectly natural part of the game, not leveraged by any deus ex machina but just something that happens.

So if you have a PS3 (or PSP) and fancy a blast, get a copy of MNR and join me on-line.