A seriously amazing driving game
Burnout 3 is still better :P
It’s no Flying Heroes. :D
I’m not sure if there is such a thing as complex speed, but it hardly matters as Test Drive: EoD doesn’t have any sort of speed whether it’s simple, complex or compound. It also doesn’t have online play or decent graphics. But if slow, sluggish brown jalopies tootling around a dirt track in single player mode is your thing, than EoD ought to do. I’ll stick with Burnout3’s Road Rage mode online.
Ok…sorry that was needlessly dickish. I actually kind of like EoD. It reminds me a great deal of Pitbull Syndicate’s Demolition Racer - No Exit, one of the best driving games on the Dreamcast. And it certainly has more personality and coherence than just about any Test Drive game I’ve ever played.
However, praising Test Drive: EoD and sneering at Burnout 3 strikes me as saying you’ve got this really great cup with a handle and it’s attached to a ball with a string, and damnit, scooping that ball up with the cup is so much more fun than your shallow pinball table with its lights 'n bells.
I could be wrong though.
I’m not sure if there is such a thing as complex speed
Some of my favorite racers have combined going fast with a sense of being on the edge of control. They make going fast feel dangerous. They make you want to maybe ease off the accelerator. I don’t get this from Burnout 3, which is pretty consistently about just holding the accelerator down and jinking around to avoid crashing. Since the AI will rubberband up behind you no matter how fast or slow you go, it sort of lowers the stakes anyway.
As for the graphics in Eve of Destruction, I think they’re great. Have you seen the track with the fair in the background? What about the animated nighttime freeway, or the bridge with the train? Driving around the town is pretty pointless, but I like the look. The artwork has a sort of warm heartland glow and the cars are pretty consistently amusing. C’mon, you gotta give props to the ‘Going Down’ and ‘Dirt Nap’ hearses!
And I really like the way the graphics engine renders completely wide-open 3D arenas with interactive obstacles rather than just long ribbon tracks stuffed with busy details and EA p1mpage. :)
-Tom
Tom’s right that Burnout 3 isn’t a very good arcade racer. This is mainly because like the TRON 2.0 lightcycles, successful play of Burnout 3 actually discourages speed. The only races where it pays to drive full speed are the Burning Laps (which sounds like a venereal disease). Otherwise, since any speed gains will just rubberband the AI up to you, it is better to drive slowly and carefully to avoid crashes, then take out any AI that approaches you. This is especially true in the Head to Head races.
Cornering in B3 is a joke, too. The best way to take a turn is to enter it too fast to make it, cut the throttle, hit sideways into the wall (apparently only the front of your car really triggers a crash sequence), then boost out of it back to full speed. If you are not on the throttle when you hit something and are at an angle less than about 75%, you will bounce off it.
I do prefer online racing in B3 to the SP, since that eliminates the rubberband problem. Collision treatment is still odd, though.
If you skip the racing, isn’t everyone disappointed in the Crash mode camera? NO camera control? NONE? Who made that decision? I miss seeing so many great collisions because of that! I’m about >this< close to buying Burnout 2 CE to get better crashing back.
B3 is also EoD’s bitch when it comes to art direction. For example, I have to squint to tell the difference between the Coupe and the Compact classes in B3, but in EoD there are many different body styles (most based on actual cars) for each class. B3 even uses the same color palatte for each type of car. Would it have killed them to give me some Dominator paint jobs other than black & flames? It really loses its impact on the Sport or Muscle version when the Compact has exactly the same paint. EoD has many different paint jobs, including four distinct paint themes on the hearses, for goodness sake (Dirt Nap, Going Down, Dead Sled, and Ridin’ With The Reaper)
You have to play EoD for a while to get to the fast cars, but they are far more terrifying than anything B3 can throw at you. 125mph in a rusty Camaro on a dirt track really gives that edge-of-control feeling. In career mode, I finally decided to downgrade to a slightly slower car because otherwise I was blowing into turns too fast all the time.
As one who has many races in BO3, I’m UNconvinced that there is a “rubberband” AI. I’m stupid you say? I don’t think so. My experience has been that if you give yourself turbo juice, and USE it, they do NOT catch up. I find that when I’m in the lead, and have no turbo, they catch up. If I get turbo, say by driving in oncoming traffic, and keep using it, I maintain my lead. Sure, if you just drive around with normal gas, you will get beat. The key is the turbo.
And to say that Burning Laps are the only races it pays to drive full speed is just … well, wrong. It pays to drive “slowly”? Are we playing the same game?
The game ALWAYS rewards speed.
I won the Sport class Dominator race on the first try only using three short (less than one second) burst of boost. Each one was just to increase my impact speed when I would take out the other car. Those head-to-head races have played out exactly the same in each class - drive carefully, and take out the AI car three (sometimes four) times. Slow & steady (& mean) wins the race.
It isn’t like I haven’t played the game much, I have gold medals in 61 events. I’d have given it up long ago but my youngest daughter will fall asleeep while it is playing - worth the $50 right there. :)
Watch closely for AI rubberband gliches, they are a dead giveaway. I can think of three separate occasions where a combination of circumstances propelled an AI car past me at double or triple my speed. In one Coupe race, the car shot past me going easily over 300 mph, hit a wall, and just bounced off & into the turn.
Finally, for more evidence of rubberbanding, what is the largest lead you’ve ever had on an AI car, and what is the largest lead an AI car has had on you? I got my lead up to a blistering eight seconds once. There are many times that the AI has been 30 seconds or more ahead of me. I can stay ahead with an eight-second lead as long as I don’t crash more than once, but the AI’s 30-second lead is completely insurmountable. They never seem to crash when they are far ahead; I’m trying to decide if the game even simulates their travel when on another portion of the track from the player, or just changes their position based on a formula.
Hmmm…gonna have to disagree a tad there. While this is true with many of the early cars you unlock in the compact and coupe series, once you get to the more exotics, they are so goddamn fast and the sense of speed is so well done in the game that you (and by you and I mean me) can’t just boost through the whole race because you will rearend a car that’s poking along at 50mph. Corners can be tricky in many races as well.
That’s a fair point. That’s why I think EoD has a great visual consistency with plenty of humor to give it the perfect tone it needs for its subject
Ok, I’m perfectly open to some EA putdown (I’m surprised Catwoman isn’t referenced more) but c’mon, complaining about the signage is just a little silly. Of all the genres in videogames, driving games have the longest history of “real” ads. From Pole Position to Ferrarri 355 to Burnout 3, there has been the need for billboards along the side of the road and instead of thinking up fake ads or Greeking up real ones, why not just hawk the other products? Would you prefer ads for non-EA products? We probably could swing another Old Spice Red Zone deal in there. :-)
Actually, on the design side we don’t so much refer to this as a glitch but as gameplay. In other words, we can call it rubberbanding AI if we want, or we can call it AI that conforms itself to the ability of the user, constantly providing him with a challenge. As Warren Spector correctly points out again and again, it’s easy to code perfect AI but it’s terrifically difficult to code challenging AI.
Let’s try to imagine some of the complaints if the AI was too good (“Ridiculously difficult, EA has managed to drop the ball by creating opponent racers that never crash, never miss a turn and blow away the humble player turning what could have been a great game into one of the biggest disappointments of the year.”) or if the AI was too bad (“Ridiculously easy, EA has managed to ruin a potentially great game by having stupid computer opponents that don’t know how to drive and apparently don’t realize there’s a boost bar at the bottom left of the screen. Nice job, EA.”)
We have the same challenge in sports titles. While typically we let the user determine the AI setting by adjusting the difficulty, that only effects a few variables like speed and awareness. There is still the problem of learning and adapting to a user’s tendencies, which is incredibly difficult to code.
I know that the AI in Burnout 3 conforms itself to my performance. If I am sucking the leaders slow down so I can catch up, and if I am winning they are suddenly back on my tail again. The result is that just about every race is a close one, but the results are not predetermined. It often comes down to the last lap, with me trading spots with a computer opponent that has been dogging me for miles. In the end it is usually a close race with me driving against the flow of traffic to keep my boost up for the last white-knuckle dash to the finish line. I guess having that sort of experience is a “glitch”, but isn’t the way you want the game to play?
If I am sucking the leaders slow down so I can catch up, and if I am winning they are suddenly back on my tail again. The result is that just about every race is a close one, but the results are not predetermined.
The results aren’t predetermined, but the closeness of the race is. The AI is an artificial construct that doesn’t abide by the same rules as the player, designed to contrive a close race, regardless of the player’s performance. Which is pretty close to predetermination in my book.
If that’s what you like in your racing games, cool. It’s certainly not unique to Burnout 3; plenty of racing games do it. But you should know better than to pretend it’s a design necessity. I can think of at least one recent racing game without rubberbanding AI that worked just fine: Eve of Destruction. :)
-Tom
jeff, I don’t know what to say other than that we really must not be playing the same game. You’re the only person anywhere that I’ve seen come out and try to say there’s no kind of rubber-band AI at all.
The driving slowly trick (no boost) doesn’t seem to be as consistent of an advantage as it was in Burnout 2, but I’ve seen it work too. Must be different games jeff.
Correct. And that’s a good thing, presuming most users want to be challenged by the AI.
When you say “same rules as the player,” do you mean “same rules as another human being would play by” or “the rules of the game world.” Because if it is the former, I would agree, the AI slows down when ahead to give you a challenge, which no competitive human would do. But if it is the latter then I completely disagree – I haven’t seen the AI clip through walls, hit cars and not crash or warp from last place to first.
Regardless of that distinction, it seems to me the difference is over how game AI ought to challenge the player. There are two basic ways that I can see: one, it can set an absolute standard that the player must perfect his play to match; or two, it can set a relative standard that adjusts itself to reflect the player’s performance. (In reality most games are mixture of both, but with an emphasis on one.)
One example of the first is Ninja Gaiden, and the second is of course Burnout 3. I just don’t see “rubberbanding AI”, or opponents that adjust to your ability, as a weakness in a game. Were you challenged by the game? Did you enjoy the races at the end? I just find it hard to believe that gamers would want more blowouts (either for or against) in their games. Hence, I don’t see it is a legitmate criticism despite its near ubiquity.
Anywho, I can let this drop as we don’t disagree too greatly. I really dig Burnout 3 and like EoD, it’s just not my thang.
This kind of thing is hard to prove indisputably, but there are plenty of times when I’ve been in the lead by a margin big enough that the computer should not be able to catch up as fast as it did. Slowing down to let me catch up doesn’t break any real rules, but when I’m in the fastest car in my class driving a near-flawless lap and the computer still finds a way to pass me, and pass me a lot faster than it should, that’s pretty suspect.
I don’t think I said there was no rubberbanding AI. I said I was unconvinced there was. I did say that that if you do not turbo, it will catch up to you. Perhaps I should rephrase. It’s just been my experience that the game rewards the collection and use of the turbo boost, and if I maintain that, I do not lose my lead.
Jim explained it in terms of the concept of gameplay, and I agree with him. I have played many many racers over the years. Everything from hardcore sims like GPL and Papyrus’ Nascar, to goofy futuristic racers with guns mounted to the cars.
BO3 is, IMHO, the type of game that would not be much fun in singleplayer if it didn’t allow some sort of bounceback, especially given the number of crashes in this game. If you couldn’t bounce back, you’d be erased from the race after a crash, and that just wouldn’t be much fun.
I never really had much fun running Nascar racing, because it was so hardcore that it required lots of practice to compete. One wreck and the race was pretty much going to be over for you. That’s what BO3 eliminates, IMO.
That said, I will rent Eve of Destruction, and see what Tom is talking about.
Some people enjoy close races, others (like me) want the AI to abide by the same rules that the players has to play by. I find it incredibly annoying not to be able to predict what the AI is capable of based on the rules of the game as they apply to me. I’d rather have me trash the AI if I’m better, and have the AI trash me if I’m worse. The challenge for the game designers in such a game is to make AIs that can reasonably simulate a wide range of human skill levels.
My complaint about the billboards is that they are ads for real things in an imaginary world, so they cause me a mental distraction that takes me out of the game. The worst one was a huge billboard for Axe Body Spray that is visible from the starting point of one of the crash intersections. It took me a while to get gold on that one, and that sign became a huge annoyance. On a side note, in the real world billboards are an eyesore. Why spoil the scenic vistas with those goddamned things? If you need an obstacle, use some rocks or something.
Actually, on the design side we don’t so much refer to this as a glitch but as gameplay. In other words, we can call it rubberbanding AI if we want, or we can call it AI that conforms itself to the ability of the user, constantly providing him with a challenge.[/quote]
I understand why the AI is made that way, I was pointing out some evidence of the AI in action as a refutation of the assertion there’s no rubberbanding. It is usually done out of the view of the player, but a few times I’ve actually seen the AI move the cars in ways that are impossible for the player.
To me, this spoils the experience of the rest of the race. Why have more than one lap? All of my little victories along the way (a nice pass, a perfect lap, a take-out at a key point) that should add up to an overall win instead are turned to ashes in my mouth because they basically don’t matter. If I drive like a champ, the AI gets to magically appear behind me. You have made me the Sisyphus of race drivers.
I guess I have a different attitude from the masses of players, but I don’t like the AI slowing down If I screw up. The races are short, I’d rather just restart. To me, it is like permanently playing against a kindly and condescending parent. They’re just letting me win, and that doesn’t feel like a victory at all. I get far, far more satisfaction from a gold in a Burning Lap or an online race because those leave out the AI games - doing everything right in those guarantees a win and crushed opponents in my wake.
Fair enough. However, I would like to point out that in some cases, not having advertising is less realistic than having it (i.e. NASCAR, FIFA). However, that’s not the case with Burnout 3.
Again, this is a fair point. I feel this way about NBA basketball – no lead is safe so let’s just cut to the fourth quarter! But I so much enjoy the actual racing in Burnout 3 (dodging oncoming traffic, skidding around corners blindly hoping I can react in time, and, of course, I never get tired of the Takedowns) that I don’t mind that laps 1 - n are going to be essentially warm-ups for the final dash. This isn’t too far off how most realworld races actually end up: 195 laps of pack running with 5 laps of mad dashing to take the checkered flag.
Do you get a win every time? I don’t, but you may be a much better play than I am, in that case I can see why there is no sense of challenge. In the end, if you just don’t enjoy the game I can’t change your mind. I only want to dispute the notion that “rubberbanding AI” is a glitch and not a design decision. I hate most turn-based RPGs, because I just happen to hate the turn-based mechanic; but I don’t think it’s a design flaw.
I was at a friend’s house yesterday, and we needed something to play. He has a “special” xbox with a bunch of games already on it, and since Burnout 3 wasn’t working for some reason, I recommended EOD since I heard such good things about it from you guys. I tell ya, for the next 3-4 hours, we had nothing but a laugh-out-loud good time.
I think this game might be MORE fun than Burnout 3. I was surprised at how sheerly brilliant it is, and how imaginative some of the game modes are. I mean you have the usual races, but capture the flag is a blast. One of my favorite modes is Detention, wherein one player is in a school bus and has to destroy all the other cars (who have to race normally in a figure 8 WHILE AVOIDING THE BUS) before any of the drivers reach 5 laps. Also, there’s another mode to which I forget the name of in which each car has a trailer on it and the objective – besides winning the race – is to knock off the trailers from the other cars.
Overall, this game is brilliant, fun, and chock filled with variety. I want an Xbox now, and this game is one of the reasons I’m going to buy one soon.
My complaint about the billboards is that they are ads for real things in an imaginary world, so they cause me a mental distraction that takes me out of the game. The worst one was a huge billboard for Axe Body Spray that is visible from the starting point of one of the crash intersections. It took me a while to get gold on that one, and that sign became a huge annoyance. On a side note, in the real world billboards are an eyesore. Why spoil the scenic vistas with those goddamned things? If you need an obstacle, use some rocks or something.
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Honestly until I heard the complaints about them here I didn’t really notice them. I think the only one I noticed was a Tiger Woods one on a pillar on one of the Asia levels. Now I only notice them because they have been such a point of contention here. As I am powersliding around a turn I think to myself, “Oh there is one of those billboards people at QT3 complain about.”. The game has some annoyances but overall it is great.
– Xaroc