I finally got around to playing racing game and quasi-MMO "Test Drive: Unlimited" on my XBox 360 to discover what's so good about it... and why it's not so good now that no one else is playing it.

What I also learned and wrote about at the MTV site today: it's the road not the cars that can pull me into a racing game.  Why don't more racing games get pushed that way? Aren't there enough promoted with what you drive? How about selling me on where I'm going to do that driving?

As an added bonus I provide you, the reader, a list of every racing game that I ever got sucked into. Every single one. You could read it at MTV Multiplayer but I'll at least throw a bone and provide my racing list here. Again this is every single racing game I ever really liked, which should tell you something about how I feel about racing games:

"1080 Snowboarding"
"Burnout 3: Takedown"
"Excitebike 64"
"F-Zero 64"
"F-Zero GX"
"Wave Race 64"
"SSX 3"

None of these had much to do with cars. I'm not a car person. I don't like tuning stuff. Give me a crazy place to race, a weird vehicle and if that all fails, then at least reward me for crashing the realistic cars you're forcing me to drive. I probably would have dug "WipEout" back in the day if I'd ever had a PSX. Just don't give me "Gran Turismo", "PGR" or "Mario Kart." I appreciate their excellence. I just don't find them fun.

(If you're reading this entry after the week I posted it, you'll have to flip through the multiplayer.mtv.com site back to the Jan 29 entry)