I've been setting up for this since Saturday morning as I was woefully ill-prepared for today's pre-arranged multiplayer extravaganza. I (what with not owning and Xbox 360)am an absolute XBox 360 neophyte, and I had no idea how to get the loaner console prepped for the online racing. Chuck and John pitched in and got me configured, so this afternoon I was ready to go. I've spent the last couple of days ensuring that the XBox would connect to my wireless router when I needed it to, and I've practiced racing in single player quite a bit.
So, this will come as no surprise: this afternoon when I went to connect in multiplayer, I couldn't. A reboot or two later and all of that was cleared up and I was in. As far as the racing goes, all I can say this is that this was a lot of work just to get pwned. And I mean "dead last in every race" pwned. I got good starts in most of the races, but got caught in first turn pile-ups a couple of times, and had an unfortunately timed phone call mid-way through another race. Oh, and remember how when you used to study for a quiz in school and you'd skip a subject because you don't like it, and sure enough it would be on the quiz? Well, that's me and Endurocross. Endurocross is a sadists dream; the tracks are almost universally covered with boulders, logs, jumps made out of huge tires, and mud. The average race speed on one of these tracks is like 2 mph. I've seen Columbus drivers go faster in the snow than that (but not often). I didn't practice it because, well, I'm not a sadist. Needless to say, I didn't do very well in that race.
Even though I came in last (or nearly last) in all the races (and really, I gotta think the game developers were more motivated to win since they were playing for their very jobs; can you imagine what it would be like for one of those guys to lose to a mere
reviewer??), I figure I'm in the running for some of the non-traditional awards:
- Furthest distance flown before digging a face-divot
- biggest face-divot
- most distance raced going the wrong way
- longest distance raced without being able to see a single competitor in front of me
- most times crossing the track separator into oncoming traffic
- most times knocking over another rider
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