Racing Sim Thread, Part II

[pk500]

Forza Motorsport -- HOLY F*CK, this is what I expected next-gen games to look like. Jaw-dropping visuals. Stunning.

[dbdynsty25]

Jaw dropping yes. Also sterile as hell. The game has very little personality. I’m trying to push through the boredom. Maybe when there are more friend lap times up to chase.

And all this 60fps stuff even in performance mode is false. I just raced at Lime Rock and it was at best 30fps around more than half the track. Very distracting.

[GB_Simo]

Man.

I like the handling. There's impressive weight and heft to the cars. The tyre modelling, with its extra 67000 layers of fidelity or whatever it was, allows for gradual loss of grip so slides are more progressive than in older entries, where the transition from having grip to losing it was rapid and more violent. You still can't give the brakes a decent squeeze without locking up and that's still not how braking systems work, but you can goose the throttle and stand a chance of saving the resultant mess. An XBox controller is nothing like as communicative as a PS5 pad in those situations, but the controls are so tight, so well-tuned that it doesn't matter.

Last night, I tried a multiplayer race and enjoyed that as well. These are still public lobbies and people are still cretins but there's an introductory series of races in spec cars, you have practice and qualifying available and the structure of it seems good. I accidentally qualified with a full load of fuel at Laguna Seca (the original layout, or an approximation of it), wrecked myself in a straight line on lap 1, had someone PIT me as I passed him on lap 4 and still, despite spending more time in the sand than a razor clam, finished 2nd. That was fun.

So much fun, in fact, that I saved the replay. I was interested to see how the game looked outside of the initial set pieces; for the most part, the graphics in the prologue and the Builders Cup Intro events are gorgeous, though the cars look oddly dull, flat and lifeless in the headlights of a Kyalami night. In my replay, they look ridiculous, because the race never starts. I can rewind the video, which lifts every car into the air as if held in a tractor beam, then drops them to the ground when I press Play. When they fall, they fall as if the physics engine is acting on them, so they're facing the pit wall when they land, or somersaulting through the air and landing on the vertical, stood to attention.

Shortly before that, I'd tried to Quick Resume the game from the XBox dashboard and had it fail to resume at all. In the Rivals event at Maple Valley, the game's response to me using a rewind was to switch all assists on and then start driving the car for me. I've had AI cars pull straight onto the racing line as they exit the pits in practice, with no thought given to my car being about to hit them at racing speeds, and I've had them drive off the track en masse as if their pathfinding had gone on strike.

I'm not at all convinced this game is finished, in fact. Not in the "game as a live service with more tracks and cars to come" sense (one way of making the relative lack of available tracks at launch palatable, I suppose), but in the "we've made sure all the fundamental mechanics work" sense. There are people who've shelled out over 100 quid for premium versions of the game and who probably didn't expect it to pay regular tribute to Project CARS at launch...

[dbdynsty25]

Clearly they are doing the Flight Sim model, but with cars. Release a game, update indefinitely. Hey, as long as it's on Gamepass, I'll deal with it.

[pk500]

Man, I was spoiled by starting with a free VIP version of Forza Motorsport 7, with every available car in my garage at launch. Now I cringe when I look into my garage and see only four cars.

Loving this game, warts and all!

[TCrouch]

I finally gave it a shot over the weekend...maybe it was just my non-existent expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It still has that trademark Forza understeer, like you have this digital switch you flip, but it's more so on corner exits than entries now. I didn't expect to like it much, and then found myself doing the first 2 or 3 series in career mode and lost track of time. It's definitely weird only having a couple of cars at the start, but at least the FWD and RWD drove very differently. Throttle would "pull" the FWD through a corner and VERY easily understeer from apex out, even if it was just a 2 or 5% difference in throttle application. It acted like I just floored the throttle and pushed like a dump truck, but that's really the only thing I've noticed that made me go "meh".

It's also predictable and easy to work around, so it's been fun just giving up a little lap time and being a little later on throttle to make sure I don't push out off the track on exits.

Not sure how I like the "level up the car a zillion times to upgrade anything", but since I don't really care about multiplayer or anything...just for career mode play, seems like no big deal.

[pk500]

I'm drooling over EA's WRC game, which drops this week. Looks fantastic.

[pk500]

Couldn't resist buying EA WRC in advance for early access. It was only $44.99 with the EA Play discount, and early impressions say this is the Steal of the Year for racing games, even at its full price of $49.99.

Don't be mistaken by the low price -- this is not a budget title. Not at all.

I think this game best represents what we hoped the fusion of EA and Codemasters could be. It features the great gameplay of DIRT Rally 2.0 with the polish and bells and whistles of an EA game.

The driving model is a bit more permissive than DIRT Rally 2.0 without being basic like the incredibly overrated Milestone WRC games. There is no "center spike turning axis" model for steering here, thank God. The Milestone games' physics still have a slight edge on asphalt even though Codemasters has improved its sealed-surface driving model, but EA's game curb-stomps all the Milestone games on loose surfaces.

It's easy from the menus that EA has made this game more accessible than Codemasters. There are three levels of assists, which are all customizable. But I STRONGLY recommend anyone with any rally game experience to immediately turn off all assists. Even the lowest levels of traction control and ABS make the handling feel weird and unrealistic. Rally cars lock their brakes, and they're supposed to dance around without traction control, with changes to the differential settings and suspension helping handling.

WRC feels like a slightly easier DIRT Rally 2.0 with all assists off, and that's a good thing. AI also is adjustable with a slider, with 50 as the default. I'm kicking everyone's ass at 50, so I need to play with that slider to find a setting that is competitive and makes me work hard and drive cleanly to win stages.

Another tweak I suggest is to turn off voice in the menus. Every time you move your cursor over one of the many game mode options in the main menu, you hear the admittedly lovely WRC presenter Molly Pettit say the name of that mode. Her English accent is sexy, but it gets annoying as f*ck after about the seventh time.

There's an impressive amount of cars unlocked in the base game. Current Group Rally1 cars, drivers and teams, current WRC Junior and WRC 2 cars drivers and teams. Super 1600s, Group B, Group A, 1990s and 2000s WRC cars and more. Every WRC rally from last season I believe is in the game. Robust offerings.

The game is gorgeous on the Series X. Stunning. A framerate hiccup here and there, but nothing even close to a showstopper.

I was afraid EA would f*ck up a franchise that has roots all the way back to the iconic Colin McRae Rally series. Fears assuaged. This is a fitting new chapter in Codemasters' long, proud history with rally games. Sublime so far.

[dbdynsty25]

100% agree PK. I had gone into it a little scared. Always been a fan of the WRC franchise even with the less than realistic handling model so I was interested in seeing what some more money and development could do with it. Happy to say it's one of my favorite driving rally games ever. So smooth and predictable.

The tire sounds and feedback is probably the only real issue I have with it after an hour or so of play. Easy to overlook when the entire package is so awesome. I'm still in the EA Trial currently because I was so scared so I'll be grabbing it this weekend once that's exhausted. Weird they only give you 5 hours with it and 10 with the rest of the EA games. Better than nothing I guess.

[Wilk5280]

Relieved to read that it’s gorgeous and smooth on the series X. I’m traveling for work and only got to play a little on a series S I borrowed for the trip (knowing this would release while here) and it’s anything but gorgeous or smooth.

With that said, I’ll wait to fire it up at home on my X before realizing my early disappointment lol. Fingers crossed

[Wilk5280]

DP

[dbdynsty25]

Yeah supposedly it's crap on the PC and the Series S. So yeah, gotta get it on the PS5 and Series X I guess.

[AcemanPR]

I did a few rally races with the WRC Trial last night and I walked away very impressed. The game looks better than I thought it would and the controls and physics feel great! Like pk said, there is alot of beef to this game for sure. I did run into some stuttering on the Xbox Series X, more of a minor annoyance than anything, but the developers are aware and should probably have a patch for it in the next couple weeks. I'll definitely be purchasing this over the weekend.

[DChaps]

DSP Forums Rally Club is now live:
https://racenet.com/ea_sports_wrc/clubs/2722

I am absolutely loving EA WRC on Xbox Series X right now. I had been kinda regretting my decision to finally purchase a series X for Forza Motorsport a month ago, but this game is making me feel much better about it now. Still trying to get the best wheel/force feedback settings dialed in, but so far really enjoying this one. Club above is cross-platform so won't matter if you are Series X, PC, or PS5.

[dbdynsty25]

Literally just got on DSP to see who was creating it. Haha. I'm joined up!

[pk500]

Joined as pkcny! Thanks, Don!

[Wilk5280]

Joined

[DChaps]

I am going to setup a test championship on the DSP Forums Rally Club starting today and going to the end of the week as a tribute to our Sports Reviewers Fantasy Rally using CMR 2.0 on original PSX from 20+ years ago!

Some Old Posts on the SRFR:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020112125 ... o=top41645
https://web.archive.org/web/20020305002 ... o=top50927
https://web.archive.org/web/20020529014 ... o=top82732

[pk500]

Cool. Thanks, Don!

[dbdynsty25]

I am guessing the clubs don’t work on the trial because I can join the club I just can’t go into it. Keep missing the $30 flash sales. lol.

[GB_Simo]

I've just spent half an hour or so in the Moments mode pretending to be Colin, or "this Scottish driver" as the in-game blurb dubs him, during that famous Rally Finland where he felled more trees than a juiced-up lumberjack. This handling model, familiar from but more compliant than DR2.0, gave me confidence to have a proper go on a stage where you hardly ever dip below 4th gear. Then another go, because surely I could do better. Then another one, because I'd intended to miss that sapling. Then another, then...

Then the game marked the scene of my most recent failure with an immobile cloud of dust I couldn't see past, leading me to fail again for as many tries as it took me to figure out what was behind said cloud, which was odd. I also wasn't keen on crashing because the game stuttered - froze, hung, whatever you'd want to call it - while I was in the middle of making a control input. Since the stutter is in the same place on every run, you at least get to anticipate it after a few tries, but even then, having it happen while you're sideways on the lock stops is still a recipe for disaster.

The replays stutter in exactly the same place as the in-game action too, either through being an entirely faithful recording of the scene or through being triggered by the same shader or graphical asset. That I can make sense of. Why exactly some of the live-action videos also stutter when you play them, I've got no idea. I know they shouldn't, partly because that kind of thing should be fixed before a game sees a mass release, and partly because a game which looks worse in some ways than DR2.0 shouldn't be taxing a Series X.

I mention these things only because some folk are understandably put off by a lack of polish (I still play Indianapolis 500 Evolution, so let's assume I'm not put off...), while others might be looking to EA WRC for a "next-gen" experience, a marked leap forward from past titles. This is not that leap. Instead, for a very reasonable price, it's a game that concentrates on making sure you always know what your car is doing, whether you'll like what it's going to do next and how you might correct that once you've decided that you won't like it at all. It's a game that lets you do all of that perfectly well on a gamepad without feeling like it's keeping the good stuff back for wheel users, more readily accessible than its predecessor but not compromised by that. Once you're in a rhythm, have been through the optional driving school and are powersliding from turn to arcing turn, it's a game that makes you feel like an absolute hero.

It is, in other words, a game which absolutely nails the core experience, bloody good fun and only going to get better. Download the free trial and see if I'm wrong...


Elsewhere, in news none of us saw coming, the IndyCar game from Motorsport Games would appear to have been canned. As would the BTCC game. As would anything not called Le Mans Ultimate, which might still make it through on grounds that it's basically rFactor 2 and so largely exists already.

[Wilk5280]

DP

[Wilk5280]

Well said! On my Series X at home I am still seeing a lot of screen tearing and stuttering. I am going to play the s*** out of it because there is a lot here to like, but if you want the spit and polish of a true next gen experience I don’t think this is it.

At its core, however, it’s a great rally game. They need to fix the frame rate issues though, it’s really bad and for me it does affect the experience.

As for the DSP Club, I’m in and can see I’m a member, but that’s all I can do. I cant enter the club area and do anything.

[AcemanPR]

A patch is coming out soon to address the stuttering...maybe today.

[pk500]

A patch is coming out soon to address the stuttering...maybe today.

GREAT news. I have noticed more framerate issues as I have explored different locations. It's my only beef about this otherwise terrific, fun game.