While not quite as popular as Twisted Metal Black, I personally thought Vigilante 8 the better game. It was silly, it was goofy, and it had flying saucers and souped-up schoolbuses. Also, it ran on the N64, which was an important distinction - I didn't own a PS1.
Many years later, I was pleasantly surprised to find V8 on the 360 Arcade - and for just $10. I had long since lost my copy of V8, and was happy to find that I could now use a giant subwoofer to blast my opponents into submission in glorious 1080i resolution. Until I realized that about half the game was missing.
The original V8 was a truly gargantuan game - big levels, loads of characters, tons of weapons, and some reasonably good music besides. There was even a trippy Nintento-themed bonus level. Beating the game took ages (especially since I hadn't figured out how to use combos).
However, when V8 was released to the Arcade, almost half the cars and several of the levels were nowhere to be found. (They also remixed the music. Badly.) Even if I buy the DLC, I'm still at the mercy of LucoFlux - sorry, "Isopod" - to bundle up the last few bits of the game and charge me another $4 for 'em.
Then we hit the issue of the 2nd V8 game, for which I will no doubt be paying a further $18 - and that's assuming they don't find some way to bill me even more for playing the 1st game's levels and cars in the sequel.
DLC is a perfectly valid idea: Make a game, sell a game, give customers even more content to maintain interest in game and continue earning money until you release a sequel. There are many games that seem to have made fair use of it - Guitar Hero, for example, is fun right out of the box and Fallout III also works just fine as-is.
However, too many game companies are exploiting it, deliberately removing necessary components of games, fully developed at time of release, in order to further bleed their customers dry. Playing many FPS games online without expensive DLC packs means being kicked out of game lobbies every few minutes, with the exception of a few for which DLC maps are never actually played at all.
From now on, I'll probably stop buying new games that make use of DLC. Buying used means that all downloadable content will be available from day one, I'll save a bunch of money and, best of all, I legally get the game while preventing its' publisher from receiving a penny. This approach is likely only usable if you don't play a lot of FPS games online and is no good for use with the Xbox Live Arcade, but it is an extremely efficient way to vote with your wallet.
Many years later, I was pleasantly surprised to find V8 on the 360 Arcade - and for just $10. I had long since lost my copy of V8, and was happy to find that I could now use a giant subwoofer to blast my opponents into submission in glorious 1080i resolution. Until I realized that about half the game was missing.
The original V8 was a truly gargantuan game - big levels, loads of characters, tons of weapons, and some reasonably good music besides. There was even a trippy Nintento-themed bonus level. Beating the game took ages (especially since I hadn't figured out how to use combos).
However, when V8 was released to the Arcade, almost half the cars and several of the levels were nowhere to be found. (They also remixed the music. Badly.) Even if I buy the DLC, I'm still at the mercy of LucoFlux - sorry, "Isopod" - to bundle up the last few bits of the game and charge me another $4 for 'em.
Then we hit the issue of the 2nd V8 game, for which I will no doubt be paying a further $18 - and that's assuming they don't find some way to bill me even more for playing the 1st game's levels and cars in the sequel.
DLC is a perfectly valid idea: Make a game, sell a game, give customers even more content to maintain interest in game and continue earning money until you release a sequel. There are many games that seem to have made fair use of it - Guitar Hero, for example, is fun right out of the box and Fallout III also works just fine as-is.
However, too many game companies are exploiting it, deliberately removing necessary components of games, fully developed at time of release, in order to further bleed their customers dry. Playing many FPS games online without expensive DLC packs means being kicked out of game lobbies every few minutes, with the exception of a few for which DLC maps are never actually played at all.
From now on, I'll probably stop buying new games that make use of DLC. Buying used means that all downloadable content will be available from day one, I'll save a bunch of money and, best of all, I legally get the game while preventing its' publisher from receiving a penny. This approach is likely only usable if you don't play a lot of FPS games online and is no good for use with the Xbox Live Arcade, but it is an extremely efficient way to vote with your wallet.