By about 3am, the new guy and Mike have to be split up because they've been kicking everyone else's ass. There’s a sort of Zen sensibility about Midtown Madness where you have to stop trying to drive and just point the car and let it run roughshod over everything in the way. Peter has long since gone home, announcing that Midtown Madness 2 is "so buggy it's unplayable". I've tried to talk everyone into moving along to Carmageddon, but no one wants to play if you can't run over the pedestrians.
"That's really lame, that you can't have peds in multiplayer games," Trevor says, as the ball bounces between his legs. We're playing Virtua Tennis, waiting for our turn at Midtown Madness. Trevor and I are on the same team now. He’s been oversteering all night even though I explain he just needs to move the wheel a little.
"Duh, I know how to use a steering wheel," he says. But he keeps running into buildings. Sometimes he inadvertently gets in the way of the other drivers.
"Well, you can't have traffic in Midtown Madness," I say, easily returning Trevor's gentle lob. "That's one of the best things about the single player game, the way you have to move among all the cars. But it's a ghost town in multiplayer."
"No it isn't. There are peds all over the place. They're like locusts."
"Well, but they're just graphics. You can't hit them. The pedestrians don't have any effect on gameplay."
"What do you mean you can't hit them?" Trevor asks, hitting the ball in a slow high arc.
"You can't hit them. Microsoft made the game that way," I smash the ball into his side of the court, "They always jump out of the way at the last second."
"Damn. Are you serious?"
"Yeah." It occurs to me that maybe Trevor wasn't driving into buildings because he was having trouble with the steering wheel.
"At least it's easier to drive in Midtown Madness,” Trevor says. “You get banged up in Carmageddon and you're screwed."
"The physics are a lot better in Carmageddon. Midtown Madness isn't very realistic. There's no real reason not to run into stuff." I'm waiting on my side of the court, jiggling left and right.
"I don't know. That one time we played Carmageddon, you could drive off a cliff and not take any damage when you landed. But whack a curb the wrong way and you lose serious health."
Trevor's right. For all its wonderful collision detection, the latest Carmageddon has some really screwy rules about when you take damage and how much you get hurt. The graphics in the series have gotten better, but it's wonderful physics and gameplay have never quite lived up to the first game.
"Besides," Trevor adds, "No one cares about physics. Look at them." He jerks a thumb at Mike and the new guy plowing through London with impunity, their cars bouncing over obstacles like rampaging pinballs. "Physics is a dead art. Trespasser killed physics. Realism is dead. We just want to play games."
Trevor stares at the screen.
"It's your serve," I tell him.
"It is?"
"Yeah, you're on the bottom."
"Oh, I've been thinking I was the guy on top the whole time. Man, Virtua Tennis is pretty complicated for such a simple game."
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