Midnight Club: LA Remix

Our youngest son, Ian loves playing "Midnight Club: LA Remix" on his PS2 console. This game depicts a free style street racing on L.A.'s famous dwellings. You earn your street champ's reputation by winning each race from the beginning level with car's choices such as Pontiac Firebird, Lamborghini Galardo and so forth. Obviously your car also reflects your earned reputation, standard looking car with equally standard specification.

A suitable race event for the beginner is fairly straight forward to find, there is an indicator telling you on the screen as a greenish highlight. Find this location and subsequently go there to race on time. A race is on at a particular time, just make yourself to be there before the starting time. "Practicing makes your driving perfect", this is undeniably a good old proverb to implement yourself. The more effort you put on your study the better you're mastering on the subject, the higher passing mark you'll end up. Don't forget to get your study and homework done before you pursue your "street race championship", for those student readers!

As you become familiarized with race's condition as well as your car's handling, winning the race is just a matter of time and...opportunity. The winner at this beginning level normally earn around $ 500 to $ 800, then you'll have the options to modify your car. Pick wisely the sort of modification you are really in the needs so as to win the next race, once you got the right specs you could focus on modifying your car's look.

Now, here is the interesting parts. Ian as a fifth grader is barely 11 years old, yet he already has the right imagination to apply on his car a decent looking art piece. On technicality stuffs he has learned quickly the jargon of engine modification, such as; Nitrous, Turbocharger. And into handling department things like; Chassis mod, braking and suspension upgrades. On the look side such as; body mods (including flare, side skirt, spoiler etc.), neon (under carriage lighting), windows tint, color match combination etc. This is where it seems he enjoy a lot. The modification changes are immediately shown. Should he not like the mod he could redo it over and over by clicking the stick.

I myself hardly play this particular game, yet I do enjoy just by looking at the modification he does. The look of the car is simply awesome! By the way as there are different kind of mission as well, you should be able to match your car's specs accordingly. Say a sprint race differs to that of a cup or circuit series (or free roam in that matter, to a drift event). One circuit series may be held at different places, as the driving condition differs so is the spec requirements!

For example the Lambo may be perfect for a long stretching circuit, but for those narrow one that is a different case. To further enhance your experiences, you may want to consider other PS2 gadgets or a new game; best sales games 1.

Australia Open 2009

Tennis is one of prestigious sport gaming, Wimbledon being one example. Here is one sport activities that I used to love, even I did refuse taking a golf lesson once for the sake of tennis. I have to admit I was not terribly good at it, but when you play in pair for a double it is a good damned fun. Double tennis playing with your own peers are those memorable leisure activities, it is one of attractive social activity that could strengthen a "team" unity. Kind of many corporate has opted for team building on Outbound outting, where you do that silly but popular fox flying, bungee jumping and so forth.

Tennis tournament is also a very competitive event that held around the globe annually. Like many other sport activities it is created by a British guy, today it is not a strange things to see people from the Commonwealth countries play an assortment of sport according to their seasons. Winter sport they have rugby, where as in the summer cricket. Tennis like badminton are played all year round.

I have been busy watching Australia Open and particularly Obama's inauguration ceremony, that there is hardly time to get further crack on WRC 2003. Unlike badminton, Formula 1, boxing and golf, the euphoria of Obama's slogan "You can change" has yet to break Caucasian's dominant champs. Male tennis world-champion is one good example, while Williams sisters had made it through to some. Today we would find that Serena has made it to the quarter final.

People do have choices to compensate for his/ her best, it is a humanly habit. As I have stashed my racket long before Borris Becker did, I turned my compassionate to play tennis on consoles. I play tennis game on WII for a while untill my kids decided to switch into their PS2 again. Instead of joy stick, WII's nunchuck is quite a close resemblance to the real thing. Swinging nunchuck is very much alike tennis racket one. My kids have never learnt tennis, yet to my surprise they could easily beat me! Then I realize that they have been mimicking Badminton swing instead of a tennis long swinging.

On PSP it is even harder to enable myself some sort of real tennis playing on those tiny buttons, yet I must admit its graphics is really good. This gadget could also produce fairly close tennis game noises, the sound of serving as well as when the ball hit the ground. These traits are enough to get me going. My choice of players would be Roger Federer and Nadhal. We shall see how these two players making through to the Australian 2009 championship.

Reward your kids

How's your kids doing at school? One is making remarkably good progress, while another manages to get lower rank. Is it good then? The younger one who shows progress last semester had been in much lower rank in the past. On the other hand the eldest one who persistently scores in the top two, has just recently been admitted to Junior high as a 7th grader and it seems still need more time to adapt to the new school.

Kids need to be educated we all agree and when they do make genuine effort, they should be rewarded. A taste of little success would encourage them for more hard study. Does it work? We have pampered them with all kind of gadgets including PC, PS2, PSP, DS and WII. Once a while there is a time where they bluntly refuse to study. "Ok, kids listen up unless you get work to study you would not have access to your gaming consoles for 2 consecutive week-end period!"



For us, this kind of reward and punishment works all the time. Would you do it for your kids?

2nd Crack on WRC 2003

Today kids are resourceful indeed! Rather than wasting time on following the game's own rule, they instead go about finding cheat code from the net. One or two manages to crack without, but mostly would further compare the notes with their peers based on the found cheat codes. Some games have no cheat code available, and they then collaboratively cracked together. Borrowing dad's flash disks or memory media, kids exchange their game-cracks.

PC's version medal of honors is one of kids victim. Just go into the system by invoking "tab" and type dogod or whatever, now you're immortal with no running out of ammo. However it is different story on WRC 2003. To unlock more powerful car to win you would need to be in top five on every podium stage, and win the championship as a professional player. Otherwise some of stages in certain countries are locked. And you need to participate on every single stage of each country challenge. The stage takes normally 5 minutes to finish. This excludes the console's downloading. Depending on the condition of laser reading device.

Despite of PS2 Sony ruggedness, this device weaken as it take abusive long hours usages. Kids's game are notoriously demanding, their sense of awareness of electronic's vulnerability is almost none. Consistent parental's monitoring is virtually a "Mission Impossible"! Yes they are degrading and the console has been serviced more than twice. Replacing an original laser module is a costly alternative, it may cost as a new slim PS2. The slim PS2 is also a no match to our existing console's reliability. Being slim it makes them difficult to dissipate heat out, hence shorter life time expectancy.

Another good alternative is to install a PC harddisk instead. I have already a spare 150 Gb samsung HDD to throw into the console, yet modification requires networking module. With the advent of the downturn crisis our exchange rate is not currently favourable now to buy such module card. It is not a wise investment right now, at least we would have to wait. As the expert says the crisis would need two years to recide, we expect sooner though!

Hence cracking WRC 2003 manually on a weak laser tip is a logical way to do it, albeit at much slower pace. It takes time yet somebody has to do it! Last night I just finished those stages on Argentine series. No luck yet to be the within the top ten, but on previous series at Finland's last stage I managed to win.

Just may be that the car choice is not suitable. The Pug 206 has proven to be hard to control. WRC 2003 only allow three main settings on suspension, brake bias and gear ratio. As I recall on similar game by Mc Rae has a setting on steering sensitivity, so that you could make adjustment. Still though three by three adjustment is nine permutation possiblities! Practice makes you win. But kid's agility is surely a no match to an adult without practice at all!

By adjusting both suspension and brake bias to mid settings, and leave the gear ratio to long or maximum top speed attack. I finally, got the optimal driveability to compensate for the lack of PUG 206's handlings. On that long section the Pug managed to attain high speed and as the result a win. Imagine just this one win I now could brag about my skill again to our kids. Our kids used to be at lower rank than mine. This is the drive for me to practice where ever I could! A dad's egothistical way for a raw driving model!

Video games

Playing video games are kids territory? Many adults find these games addicting indulgence. How many hours do you spend on gaming? On a good day with lots of spare time, you would spend at least 2 solid hours. Once you're rolling, you would build up the knack of cracking it further. The deeper you're on it, the more you attach to. Then it is spiraling with no ends. You would have to crack it now, since there is no tomorrow.

Monopoly, scrabble, card playing even chess are the things in the past! Are they? See how you're doing playing Medal of Honors, Need for speeds, WRC and Collin Mc Rae Rally on either PC or Sony consoles. Attractive graphics, action and feel its feedback on that joystick. No slick urban kids have not joint the norm. PSP, PS 2, gameboy, DS, WII and more.

My favorite game on PC is solitaire. It fits the between lagging time for the browser's upload and hence download, whilst the download is running I play solitaire. Next agenda while not browsing is one person shooter type of game, the medal of honors.

On PS 2, whenever our kids play rally game it is hard to pass the invitation. From time to time on and off we do it together as a family quality time. Certainly we have strict rule to allow them play during the week end and holiday, period. But dad could have a bit more ample time in his spare time, if there is any.

The last new year holiday apparently has presented itself for the dad to replay WRC. It's an old version of World Rally Championship of 2003. Though we have together with kids finished WRC years ago, we found the chalenge resurfaced again. And without knowingly I have found my self fully immersed to have a second go cracking it. It used to be a breeze getting in the top five winners, but now to be included in the big ten is horrendously difficult. Hence for the last couple of days I could not resist to play after work. How is two hours gaming into midnight on three consecutive days? Any one has a good decent suggestion to alleviate this habit?