I’ve been enjoying the single-player seasons in GRID Autosport, but their attempt at some kind of persistent online mode is just weird. Limited garage slots for buying cars you can only use in fairly narrowly defined race types and the only real advantage is having them in 100% condition but you still have to repair them afterwards anyway…?
Is Grid Autosport worth it if already own Grid 2? Yet to play Grid 2, currently stuck in my Steam backlog…
How’s the cockpit view and the FoV? TrackIR support?
Here’s one for you old farts:
50 minute video unboxing old Geoff Crammond games
Worth skipping around to see the old manuals and such.
I didn’t play much of Grid 2, but the general consensus is that it’s different enough to be worth it. Grid 2 got a lot of flak for being too arcadey and focused on street racing, while Autosport has better driving (still not really a sim, but better-feeling) and much more variety. You’d probably get a lot of recommendations to just skip Grid 2 and go straight to Autosport, but who knows, some people might actually prefer the gameplay in 2.
Unfortunately the cockpit view is pretty weak, with just a generic, blurry interior and no look-to-apex. There’s a second partial-interior camera that puts you up near the windshield, and that might also be okay for some people. (See around the 14 minute mark in here for what they’re like.) FOV isn’t directly changeable in the options, but reportedly you can tweak it in a config file.
Project CARS slightly delayed.
Slightly Mad Studios and BANDAI NAMCO Games Europe S.A.S today announced they will be moving the release of Project CARS for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC to March 20th 2015 in Europe and Australasia.
The move positions the title away from the competitive holiday scene dominated by household names while affording the team at Slightly Mad Studios additional time to extend and polish their ground-breaking and accomplished next-gen racing experience that’s been created alongside a community of over 85,000 racing fans and real-life professional drivers.
“Our goal has always been to deliver a landmark title that encompasses the wishes and desires of racing fans from all around the world; something with features and content powered by the community that provide a truly unforgettable and pioneering experience” said Ian Bell, Head of Studio at Slightly Mad Studios. “Whilst a tough decision to make, the change in release date allows the game the greatest chance of success and visibility, and the opportunity to polish the game even further to the high standards that both ourselves and our community demand and expect. We’re eager for you all to see what we’ve been working on in just a few months.”
Full AC release is out on Steam. I know it has its own thread, but belongs here. Come back AC!
Really enjoying the tire model and cars of that game. The damage and pit stops seem tacked on to get a release however, and need work.
Stunt Car Racer is one of my all-time faves. That’s a real thrill seekers racing game!
I think that’s a good call on the Project Cars delay.
I played Live for Speed on the Oculus Rift DK2 and, wow, virtual reality really fits racing games, especially when you add a wheel and pedals.
I never made it to AC this weekend. I think I have early access fatigue. I was right there with them for a while, but I’d rather wait for 1.0 final or beyond, especially since the hill climb is a quick port job. If I’m going to drive the hell out of it, I want to see it at its best.
I recently found a decent used racing wheel, so I can finally get back into driving games. I’m pretty sure the most recent thing I’ve got is F1 2012, but that’ll tide me over until the gaming budget comes back and I pick a good driving game to grab next. Any recommendations on that?
I think Mr Bismark posted a quick snapshot of all the decent options (proper simulation wise) somewhere around here, but I can’t seem to find it.
Hopefully he will reply, but if you want proper sim and potentially want online competition as well, then your best current options are probably:
Life For Speed
rFactor
rFactor 2
Game Stock Car
iRacing
Assetto Corsa
Netkar Pro (no idea what state this is in these days, support and content wise)
Though maybe I am missing a few. Project Cars is pretty close to release as well and is quite playable, but the more I have read, the more it seems to have an arcade leaning, maybe like NFS Shift. On that note I can say I much prefer the physics in Assetto over Project Cars. Most of those don’t have much of a career mode either (to my knowledge), so if that is what you are after, they may not suit.
Game Stock Car looks like it has an absolute ton of content, which is a plus, and the wide selection of Formula cars is a big draw to F1 fan me. Not to mention the Mini Challenge, given that I have a Mini for real and haven’t yet had the opportunity to throw it around a track.
Assetto Corsa is gorgeous, and the sound design seems to be amazing, too.
AC sound is getting an overhaul with the fmod system. Some cars will sound amazing, others have yet to be updated.
If you can get past the focus (?) on obscure Brazilian racing, GSC seems like a nice complete package. Unfortunately for me, I was tapped out of interest in last-gen race sims when it came out. You won’t have that problem.
Right now I’d suggest Game Stock Car Extreme. It’s open-wheel focused and Brazilian track focused, but it’s also built on the roots of rFactor1, meaning there’s an absolute shed load of mod content available. I spend most of my time with GSCE flipping between the hilarious Formula Vee and the Ferrari 458 or McLaren MP4-12C GT3 from the simply excellent Blanc Pain mod.
In the past week I’ve been throwing the Vee, (official content), around Nurburgring Sprint, (mod), and the Blanc Pain Ferrari 458, (mod), around the Red Bull Ring, (official content).
Also, the Opala Stocks are great, wobbly, counter-steering boats and the Minis are brilliant in a large field.
I like Assetto Corsa, but even in the current release candidate the AI isn’t good and that’s important to me as if I’m going to race multiplayer, I’m probably going to do it on iRacing.
Edit.
Here’s some videos of me throwing the content about in GSCE and earlier builds of AC, [SUB](these are simple gameplay videos with no ads or anything, I’m not pimping my own wallet)[/SUB]
The Vee at Taruma. (GSCE)
Formula Retro at Londrina Long. (GSCE)
KTM XBow hotlap at Nurburgring Sprint. (AC)
In car view of above hotlap. (AC)
Thanks. It looks like I’ll be grabbing GSCE, or at least the demo, when my wheel gets here next week. The deep mod support seems really nice, and the variety of open-wheel stuff makes for neat step-up training as I get to grips with the game. Formula 3 is particularly intriguing. I, too, could be a few years away from getting that valued F1 test driver slot!
My wheel got here, so I decided to jump into something I’ve played a lot of already: here’s a lap at Istanbul Park in F1 2011. I took turn 8 way better on the next lap, but I also went way wide at the kink in the penultimate straight, so I grabbed the on-the-whole cleaner lap.
I fired up the Lite version of GSCE, too, which was a good time. Flogging the Formula 3 car around Cascavel was great, but I need some more practice to get used to the driving model. I like that part of it quite a lot, but I may end up sharing Tim’s concern about last-gen racing games in the end.
Hurray! And don’t let my comments get you down. The engine is still solid and it’s the basis for some of my favorite experiences in simulation. The problem is there were a bunch of games that used it last gen and I got tired of looking at it.
It’s all shallowness on my end–I like pretty. We’ll see how well GSCE gets me through the next month, though.
Well, if you like pretty, there’s always Race Room Racing Experience.
“R3E” was such a terrible idea that it killed its own dev (the legendary SimBin), but the dev that came back from the flames, (Sector 3), seems to have some better idea of what to do with it, (even though I think it was really just a name change), and recent paid content has given the game some legs.
Now, if you can squint long enough to get by the free to play model, (using real money to buy steam money to buy virtual currency… oh dear), too-expensive a la carte pricing, a content-delivery style that means the game is 9GBs, and one of the worst UIs man has ever conceived, then there are some real, recent shoots of promise here.
Those mainly come in the form of two recent “packs” - the ADAC GT(3) Masters and the WTCC - both of which finally bundle some of the expensive individual content together into slightly more reasonably priced collections of cars, skins and tracks.
I’ll cut to a video here, to show you the sorts of ridiculous fun that’s now available.
The WTCC pack is five car models, 23 liveries and three tracks.
The ADAC pack is seven car models, 24 liveries and six tracks.
Having done my best to put you off before the video, here’s some of the things R3E has going for it.
[ul]
[li]It’s shiny pretty - the different times of day are nicely done, with excellent light and shadow and the tracks and cars look nice.
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[li]The sound is fantastic - the ADAC SLS Mercedes sounds like the heavens are splitting open.
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[li]The CHALLENGE system - Pick a car, track and difficulty level and the game will show you everyone who has raced that combination. Click “Challenge” next to any name and you’ll get that ghost, (and dynamic race line), show up in your game for you to race. It’s a great way to challenge yourself, to learn the tracks and to see if seriously fast drivers are taking different lines.
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[li]That dynamic race line - this is a thing of beauty. A line that changes colour depending on if the driver who laid down the line was on the gas, off the gas, or on the brakes. With white horizontal lines showing gear changes and upright red exclamation marks to show where the driver started braking. In challenge mode, it’s the person you challenged. In hot lap mode, it’s your own lap. This is great for learning tracks and for working out exactly where your brake points should be. Learn them from the big red exclamation, then translate those into roadside scenery or other markers, then you can go race, where you won’t have the line to watch.
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[li]Apex Hunt - a game mode that gives you a car and a track and challenges you to hit the apex of a certain number of corners in a certain amount of time. Each time you’re successful, the amount of apexes required goes up and the time limit comes down. Another good way to learn new tracks and to teach newer drivers how sometimes backing up a corner and braking earlier to make sure you have your line right is actually faster.
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[li]Test drives - the smartest thing they’ve done recently. Individual cars can be expensive and, having stumped up the cash you may not even enjoy driving them. Now you can click “test drive” next to any car in the store and take it out in the game first and make sure you want to stick down your money. I wish Rise of Flight had this. I’d never have bought that stupid Pfalz D.XII.
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[li]Finally, perhaps most importantly, the Adaptive AI. There’s a slider to set the AI from 80 to 120ish, if you want to be precise, but you can also just set the AI to adaptive and let the game work things out. At first, it’s a bit all over the place, like using speech recognition software, but then it finds your pace for a track and it’s just marvelous. It’s not quite as good as GSCE, because the talent files in GSCE give you such a fine level of control there, but the AI in Assetto Corsa, for example, is an absolute travesty. Do three, short, five-lap races against the R3E Adaptive AI on a track and then go do a longer race and just enjoy.
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[li]
[/li][/ul]
It’s tough to be evangelistic about R3E, because the F2P roots will instantly turn some people off, (and oh my god that UI), but it’s definitely worth a shot and, because it is F2P and it has the test drive feature, you can find out how you like it for the princely sum of none dollars.
And really, everyone should take the opportunity to go hoon about in the turbo charged FWD Honda Civic. It’s spectacular.