I tried the demo on the 360. Holy shit, what’s with the horrible frame rate in that intro? Luckily the game was smooth once I got control of the car. The lack of a cockpit view means I was playing in bumper cam the whole time (the only other view is a pulled back 3rd person camera high above the car). Holy shit! I haven’t raced in bumper cam for a while. Tom wasn’t exaggerating at all when he said on the podcast that all the cars feel like driving a rocket. Oh my god! It got my pulse racing, that’s for sure. It is an appealing game but my god it does remind me that as much as I started thinking of Forza Horizon as an arcade racer, it is a hardcore simulation with a PhD in physics compared to this game. Other than their open world nature, it feels unfair to even put the two in the same genre.
You’re not, it drives me nuts. It wasn’t in Hot Pursuit either, my friends and I would instead pass the controller back and forth and watch each other do multiplayer matches. Fun (unsurprisingly these games are still pretty good as spectator games), but would’ve played it waaaay more with some actual local multiplayer.
I don’t mean to sound like the hater I am, but has any of you genuinely found something new in this game?
I played it for 5 minutes. Granted, that may not have been enough for me to come to the conclusion that it’s the same copy and pasted crap all over again.
Plus I think EA is the brains behind the conspiracy that brought down Test Drive Unlimited.
Kinda off-topic question but does anyone remember the first Need for Speed: Most Wanted on the 360? It came out in 2005 and it seems like it supported split-screen multiplayer. My sister is looking to get a 360 and wants racing games that she can play with a friend. She would probably be more into arcade racing games, although I might get her Forza 4 as well just for balance’s sake. :)
It’s really a shame that few racing games support this feature nowadays. Other recommendations are also welcome.
I think Amazon is going to sell the download of this for $20 soon.
You might find this useful for your sister, it has a list of split screen games too, I think.
Not sure about NFS Most Wanted, sorry.
Looks useful. Thanks!
Were the PC framerate problems ever addressed?
So the repeated praises on the Qt3 podcast by Tom had an effect on me. I got this at the sale on the MS store.
A few notes from my first evening of play:
- Intro still had a horrible frame rate until I got control of the car, just like in the demo.
- Game was smooth after that
- Bumper cam is still the only way to drive the car in first person
- Bumper cam is really confusing when you’re getting rammed by police cars
- Best way to navigate in this game seems to be to stare at the mini-map the whole time
- If you miss a turn toward a checkpoint, you can end up going down a wrong street and completely losing the race
- Why no Restart button when you lose a race? Luckily, you can fiddle with the menu using the d-pad and get to starting the race again, but they purposely chose not to make it easy
Here’s where the notes end, because the first mission in a Lamborghini I found was a race during which I was being chased by the police. So I didn’t purposely piss off the police, it was just part of the mission. And when I came in first, the PoPo was still on me. Fine, I’ll just outrun them or something.
Ok, so the Wanted level went up, now they’re everywhere. How they hell do I outrun them now? Oh look, Wanted level went up again, and now there’s roadblocks everywhere. Now I’m just getting frustrated and bored. I want to do some racing or something, but I can’t get rid of the damned Police.
Fine, I’ll switch cars, that will get rid of them. Hmmm, no, that didn’t work at all. Now they’re still chasing me. OK, maybe if I go through a repair station and change paint jobs. Nope, still chasing me. Hey, here’s a faster car to switch to, maybe I can outrun them on the highway? Cool, I think I finally am going to outrun them at level 4 wanted level. Oh crap, there’s Police coming down the other side of the highway towards me. How can I ever lose sight of them this way? Now I’m wanted level 5.
Alright, I turned around on the highway, I’m no longer getting confusingly rammed in Bumper cam by the Police in an indeterminate car with an indeterminate color, and I think I might lose them finally. Yay! Entering cool-down period! They’re telling me to hide. Fine, I’ll go get off the highway and hide behind the barrier on this railway track, hidden from view from the highway. Oh look, the Police is on the other side. Wait, whey didn’t they just fly past? Why are they look around in this particular area? Did I leave tire tracks or something? WTF? They found me?!?! And I only cooled down to Wanted level 4 in that time. OK, time to go down the railway tracks.
Oh look, there’s some gates and another car, and oh god, it’s all a big blur in this big meaningless city that I keep “exploring” while running away from these god damn never ending clown cars. At least in Far Cry 2 I could pull out some weapons and end this fucking parade.
Hey look, I got away enough to get down to Wanted level 3. Sweet. Now, if I can make it another car color, surely they won’t know it’s me if they don’t see me switch car colors. So I do that, then casually drive down the road as the Po-Po comes thundering down the road. SHIT! They know it’s me! HOW!?!? FUCK YOU COPPERS! Oh my God, I hate this fucking game.
Maybe if I can switch cars while in the cooldown period, they won’t know it’s me? But before I could try that out, I ran out of railway track this one time and went deep into a dead end narrow railway track with barriers on three sides. So there was no way out. I got busted.
And… that got rid of the cops. So that’s all I had to do? Get caught? Was there a downside to getting caught at all? Next time, I’m just going to get caught then. Running away from omniscient cops isn’t much fun in this boring bland city. But hey, at least it gave me an excuse to try to go fast through some speed cameras and find some cars, I guess. Maybe in my next play session I can actually get to some races where I don’t miss a turn and can intently watch the mini-map and win some races that way.
Yay! Mini-map racing!
Just so that I don’t leave the impression that I dislike everything about the game so far, I will say that I’m fairly impressed with the city design so far. Not from an aesthetic point of view; it’s just a generic looking city that I can’t even remember now as I try to picture it, but for a city in which racing circuits are set, I liked the fact that unlike the Project Gotham games, the twists and turns within a race are not almost exclusively 90 degree turns through city blocks. There’s lots of little bends and angles for roads throughout the city that make the “circuits” that we race more organic looking.
It’s still not as interesting as the turns and bends in Forza Horizon, but Horizon isn’t set in a city either, so it can get away with building really interesting courses with lots of different types of turns. But Most Wanted does a decent job in at least having a city that isn’t just a grid.
Don’t try driving in bumpercam. This simply isn’t that kind of game. It’s just not worth it for how much it drops your view closer to the ground and robs you of important situational awareness, both at your sides and in the distance.
The cops thing can be confusing, since we’re used to having to pay some sort of penalty when the cops catch you. No such thing happens in Most Wanted, as you discovered. From some fanboi’s list of ten cool things about Most Wanted:
- Farming the five-oh
Ironically, the police add a little anarchy to Most Wanted. Some of the races include cops getting in your way and messing you up. Yeah, it can be annoying. Deal. In the open world, when you break the law in front of a cop, he chases you. But since there’s no money in Most Wanted — this is a game without an economy — what’s the penalty for getting busted? There isn’t one! As cops chase you, as you rack up damage, as you elude them, you build up a point value to add to your pool of experience points. But you don’t bank that point value until you’ve eluded the cops. If they bust you, you’re simply reset to your car’s starting point, no harm, no foul, no points for escaping from the police. The police in Most Wanted are an opportunity, not a penalty.
I really dislike the city, and about 80% of the world. It’s just so flavorless. Anytown USA is really Notown USA as far as I’m concerned. You also hit on my other least favorite thing about the game: how you have to watch the minimap to learn a race. Those two things – the city and the way you can ignore the minimap when you race – are why I ultimately prefer Midnight Club: Los Angeles, which I know you’ve already played.
By the way, feel free to try to steal some of my billboards or speed cameras. I think EA’s goofy AutoLog Big Brother Social Networking Boondoggle will send me a Tweet or something to let me know!
-Tom
But … but… I’ve been racing in first person since Sega GT, back in the year 2000 (Cue Conan O Brien’s “In the year two thouuusaaaaaaand…”). It’s just not easy switching back to 3rd person. I keep trying to turn too late because I think of the camera as where I am, instead of the car.
The multiplayer in this game is so amazing. The zero loading playlist stuff feels like it is from the future.
This game is very loud.
I played exclusively in 3rd person today. Surprisingly, my brain was able to adjust rather quickly.
I purposely tried to ignore the minimap today and just learn the courses by retrying them, like I do in Forza. It kind of worked. But it was very unsatisfying nonetheless. Most of the races consisted of me crashing into brick walls, then crashing into oncoming traffic, then crashing into other racers, then crashing into traffic going the same way as me (whatever happened to Burnout Revenge’s system of always shunting aside traffic going the same way was you? That was awesome), then crashing into other walls, and then winning the race (because of the rubberband) or sometimes not winning the race (crashing near the end of the race means even the rubberbanding doesn’t help you win). So it just all seems really random to me right now. There’s no satisfaction in winning, and there’s no real satisfaction in beating people on my speedwall. Because often I will beat someone on the speedwall, but come in 5th or 6th in the race itself. And then the next time, I’ll be much, much slower than tomchick’s time, which I beat last time, but this time I’ll come in first in the race.
And then there’s the pursuits. God, it’s all just so loud and so hectic. And some cars are so much harder to drive than others. But there’s no rhyme or reason or sense of balance in which cars you drive, it’s all random.
To illustrate what I’m talking about, I’ll compare it one of my favorite open world racers: Midnight Club LA. In MCLA, they slowly advance you from the slower cars, where you’re watching the mini-map in the beginning, to the faster cars. By the time I was driving the supercars, I KNEW the city backwards and forwards. I didn’t need the mini-map, and I knew the shortcuts and the potential routes around Mullholland Drive, and the downtown area, and I knew my way around Santa Monica. By the time I progressed to the faster cars, I was equipped with the knowledge I needed to make it a smooth, exciting experience.
In Most Wanted, none of this balancing takes place. You step into whatever random car you find, which can be a balls-to-the-wall supercar that I’ve never heard of, which I then proceed to crash into every wall or oncoming car that I can see while being chased by cops or while racing other people. It’s the opposite of the tailored experience from MC:LA. Maybe I could have gotten lucky in Most Wanted and found some slow cars until I learned the city. But that didn’t happen.
Maybe I need to provide my own balance in this game, and go car hunting before I do anything else. Go find some Porsches. Maybe some Austin Martins.
That’s not entirely true. The balancing is there, but it’s arguably compromised by the degree of freedom you have. Most Wanted’s counterpart to the usual progression from slow to fast cars is how each car has a set of races, progressing from easy to medium to hard, each clearly labeled. You can teleport from car to car to car to keep doing easy races if you want, or you can push ahead with one car into the more difficult races and better upgrades. You can stick with the “slower” cars like BMW M3, Ford Focus, or Evo, or you can jump straight into whatever goofy supercars you find if that’s your bag*. You’ll eventually figure out some of the races from doing them a few times, like continental drift around the museum, or the excellent airport course, or the flat-out top-speed highway races.
-Tom
- Like you, I’m not really into the supercars, but I’ve upgraded a couple of them specifically for speed traps and billboard jumps.
I wish I could find cars like the BMW M3, Ford Focus or Evo. All I’ve found so far are supercars. And believe me, I am jumping from car to car, trying to do the easy races. Those are the ones in which I’m crashing constantly into things.
I wonder if it’s because I’m just not used to the game yet, or if it’s the fact that I’m going straight to the supercars, or if it’s the fact that I’m playing 3rd person in a racing game for the first time since Need For Speed High Stakes (aka Need For Speed 4, released in 98 or 99). It could be a combination of things.
Maybe I need to look up Gamefaqs or something and find out where the Ford Focus and M3 are. Or maybe I should play the game naturally and hope I run into them. Not sure yet.
The city is pretty densely packed with collectible cars, including multiple instances of most cars. Turn off the soundtrack and just drive around. All the collectible cars have their radios playing loudly enough that you can hear them from about a block away. Also, drive through any security gates you see. You’ll often find cars parked back there.
-TomArise, O Thread!
Hey, is the PC downloadable version of this only available through Origin or something?
Arise again, thread!
I just got this for, like, $6 on Green Man Gaming (which gives an Origin code, so yes Papa, Origin only), and just played a few races. FUN! I really dig the different races for different cars thing. I totally need to get used to its driving model though because wow do I keep hitting walls.
Did anyone else have controller lag problems while playing on the PC? I turned all the graphics options low and fraps is reporting my framerate at 60, so I don’t think it is a performance issue. There seems to be a delay from when I steer to when the car responds. It does seem improved after I turned all the graphics settings to low, even though my framerate was good before I turned them low. My Microsoft Speed Wheel seems to have more lag to the point I couldn’t really use it. With the controller it is still driveable, as I can still win the easy races, but something just doesn’t feel right. I tried ti use the Lock30FPS=true in the config file as suggested in a post somewhere, but that didn’t seem to help so I changed it back to the default.