Remembering Bizarre Creations
Bizarre Creations is closed since yesterday (18 february 2011) and it was a really great studio to my eyes. I played a lot of their games and that's always sad to ear that kind of news. So let's go back to what they've done.
Formula One (Playstation - 1996)
The second F1 game I bought (the first one was Grand Prix Circuit on Amstrad CPC), that was a thrilling experience: Real drivers and real races, all in 3D with changing weather (The races through the rain was incredible). I played it a lot, and I remember playing it "in real time", with the same number of laps than in real life (between 1 & 2 hours to finish a race). Since then I didn't play a F1 game as good as this one, even if the last Codemasters game is great.
MSR Metropolis Street Racing (Dreamcast - 2000)
That was surely the best racing game on Dreamcast. Moreover it has its own special personality: you drive with style in real-life cities listening to radio stations that seemed real too.
The game introduced the Kudos system, the game currency. To win Kudos you need to do stylish tricks during the race and finish in a good position. If you want to win more Kudos you can change the difficulty, but you take some risk cos' if you lose, the previous amount of kudos win for the race will decrease.
To unlock chapters you need to reach a certain level of Kudos. This system was original but made the game hard for me at that time, that why it has been simplified in the PGR series.
The real cities, the almost real radio stations (which music has been written by Richard Jacques) and the fact that the hour in game depended on the real-life time (set in the console options) created a very special experience. If you wanted to play at night in London you needed to play at night to if you live in France (where i am). That's why I usually drove in San Franscico in the morning and in Tokyo at night (corresponding to the afternoon in France). You really had the feeling of travelling through each city, more than in any other game since then.
The PGR series (Xbox & Xbox 360)
I played PGR2, PGR3 & PGR4. To me the gaming experience was less memorable than in MSR. Despite this, this series added a lot of great ideas in a racing game: photo mode, solid online & a visual benchmark in HD racing games.
Geometry Wars (XBLA - 2007)
It was the first big game on the new XBLA platform proving that this new way of buying games could be interesting. Also, The TRON-like design has been since used by a lot of others developers in XBLA games.
For further information you can go to the wikipedia page or the official page.
The second F1 game I bought (the first one was Grand Prix Circuit on Amstrad CPC), that was a thrilling experience: Real drivers and real races, all in 3D with changing weather (The races through the rain was incredible). I played it a lot, and I remember playing it "in real time", with the same number of laps than in real life (between 1 & 2 hours to finish a race). Since then I didn't play a F1 game as good as this one, even if the last Codemasters game is great.
MSR Metropolis Street Racing (Dreamcast - 2000)
That was surely the best racing game on Dreamcast. Moreover it has its own special personality: you drive with style in real-life cities listening to radio stations that seemed real too.
The game introduced the Kudos system, the game currency. To win Kudos you need to do stylish tricks during the race and finish in a good position. If you want to win more Kudos you can change the difficulty, but you take some risk cos' if you lose, the previous amount of kudos win for the race will decrease.
To unlock chapters you need to reach a certain level of Kudos. This system was original but made the game hard for me at that time, that why it has been simplified in the PGR series.
The real cities, the almost real radio stations (which music has been written by Richard Jacques) and the fact that the hour in game depended on the real-life time (set in the console options) created a very special experience. If you wanted to play at night in London you needed to play at night to if you live in France (where i am). That's why I usually drove in San Franscico in the morning and in Tokyo at night (corresponding to the afternoon in France). You really had the feeling of travelling through each city, more than in any other game since then.
The PGR series (Xbox & Xbox 360)
I played PGR2, PGR3 & PGR4. To me the gaming experience was less memorable than in MSR. Despite this, this series added a lot of great ideas in a racing game: photo mode, solid online & a visual benchmark in HD racing games.
Geometry Wars (XBLA - 2007)
It was the first big game on the new XBLA platform proving that this new way of buying games could be interesting. Also, The TRON-like design has been since used by a lot of others developers in XBLA games.
For further information you can go to the wikipedia page or the official page.