By Hot Shots Golf Open Tee
First, the positives: HSGOT is a beautiful looking game on the PSP. The golf courses, while entirely fictional, are animated very realistically. They even seem to use paintings or photographs for the background. The golfers themselves are the typical “big-head” Japanese characters. By winning tournaments in the single player challenge mode, you can unlock new golfers, new caddies, and new accessories to customize your golfers. These unlockable features are what make HSGOT so compelling; it’s almost like a role playing game. The trick in leveling up your golfer to release new golf courses is to enter the challenges that have a solid gold star next to them; an empty star or no star just means you’ll unlock a small item. It took me a while to figure out why I never advanced to level 2 even though I had played thirty games. But once you do concentrate on the starred challenges, you’ll level up quickly. There are six golf courses, but HSGOT tries to divvy them up into 9-hole experiences that can be played in 10-15 minute chunks of time. There are other modes, like a putting challenge, which is a bit interesting, and multiplayer modes (that I haven’t tried) for the local wan, not the Internet.
On the negative side, HSGOT has only 6 courses, and I haven’t seen anything as interesting as the wilder courses (like the desert course) on the console version. The caddies are present but you can only hear them and not see them; I really miss that Jerry Lewis Nutty Professor guy following me on the greens. The golfers on HSGOT seem to be all new—I’ve never seen them, at least—and I’ve got half of them unlocked. I haven’t seen any of the usual suspects like Tiffany, the Hollywood guy, Granny Goodness, or the Samuel Jackson type from HSG3 or HSG4. The lack of courses, the missing caddies and golfers make this lose a star in my book; I hope that Clap Hanz will fix this in the next PSP version. They really need to add a multiplayer mode thru the Wi-Fi Internet connection as well. The unlockable items need some work as well; they change your appearance but don’t affect your game experience in the slightest.
All in all, this is the best golf game currently available for the PSP. While I love Tiger Woods’ on PS2 and Xbox, the TW PSP game had terrible load times and choppy graphics. Hot Shots Golf Open Tee has incredibly fast load times and almost no delay when going to the next hole. The graphics are HSGOT are very sweet and smooth. If you like golf games, this one’s for you. Even if you don’t like golf in real life, you should check it out. Nuff said.
, as I’ve already said, is the new king of Xbox racers and works perfectly with the ForceShock. Fanatec made the wheel with 4 preset values, S1-S4, and on mine S3 was preset with Forza values. You can tune any and each of these values to adjust the dead zone, force feedback, or steering sensitivity (6 values in all). In addition to Forza, one is preset for Need For Speed Underground, while another is set for TOCA. The fourth is left for you to set, but you can play around with all of them. The settings stay in memory even after you unplug the wheel. 
. This game came out last year in 2004 and got rave reviews, but I am not sure how many people played it. I bought it and ignored it for far too long. With the ForceShock my interest has returned in full force (ahem). RSC2 offers something that no other racer does—off-road racing in breathtaking environments like the Australian outback or the forests of the United Kingdom. There’s also night-time racing and ice racing. The races are long and quite challenging, as you find yourself sliding off the road because it’s muddy and slippery as hell. The force feedback signals are strong and send intense vibrations to the ForceShock. I’ve come to love this game as much as Forza. There are some things that RSC2 does that I wish Forza did—like having the spectators on the side of the road move and cheer you on, or having the rain or leaves fall on your windshield, or showing animals on the side of the road as you pass by. There’s an incredible amount of content here, and you can buy this for $20 or less.
