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DRIVECLUB |OT| Cloudy with a Chance of Jaw Drops

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You are the level-headed champion of this game! I also own and love FH2 and was really excited to try this on PS+. I even signed up for a club. Is there an ETA for the Freebie version? The only critique that worries me is the harsh penalties for going a bit off the track coupled with overly aggressive AI. But, as I've not played it I have no idea how they play out in the game.

The servers are still unavailable for most people, I haven't been able to get online once since the game launched. The PS+ version won't open up for people until they stabilize the servers (and I suspect they'll simply crash again when the million people or whatever download the freebie). I know people want it sooner but I'd be surprised if you see the PS+ edition before the weekend.

The aggressive AI can be a nuisance, but I've found it simply forcing me to be smart about my moves than simply try and just gun for the lead. When going into a corner I kind of hold back a few feet and see what the AI does, sometimes they bump into each other or cause havoc. I wait for an opening and try and make my passes when opportunity presents itself, haven't had too many issues thus far.

I've barely even noticed the penalties for going off track, but they don't seem particularly harsh and haven't impacted my ability to win races. At worst you lose a tiny amount of fame points.
 

Jimrpg

Member
I don't think the game has changed at all during development. It was never enjoyed by a large amount of the press at the events it was present, and even though it didn't look at its best it was always presented with the social element of competing with and challenging others.

But the gaming press as a whole don't really enjoy racing games, I've never seen any in top 10/20 lists, so the reviews just become a box ticking list of what should be in a modern day racing title. Like "tuning should be in it because it's a racing game?" but for DC that ends up up making a farce of the whole point scoring system, unless they segregate all the challenges and point scoring system into categories based on different tuned cars ... and it would end up being "race this car I tuned around this track." with most players fucking up the car because they don't know how to tune it.

That's my point is that reviewers had expectations that weren't met. There were REAL cars but no way tune them suddenly became a flaw when the developers were after a racing game that was more about driving ability than tuning ability. Amirox mentioned it earlier in his post. There's a consensus that players shouldn't have to fail, and that failing eliminates the fun. I guess its just a difference of philosophies. Gamers love RPGs these days, because even when you fail, you can level up your character, level up your weapons and stats and go back and get it done, regardless of your actual playing ability. But in Driveclub you can't tune your car to get better or add stats to your driver so he goes faster, its about player ability. When players continually fail and they aren't even interested in the game anyway there's probably a feeling of not having any fun.
 
DC deserves better than that 72 on meta. It's not that I think that is the wrong score on a truly 0 to 100 scale, it's that so many shite games have scored higher than 72 over the last few years.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
You can't in good conscious say that visuals in this game seem outdated or an uprezzed last gen gen. I'm sorry, but that's just straight up BS of the highest order. The game not only looks gorgeous, but objectively it's doing thing technically that I've never seen another racing game do.
 

red731

Member
Going to invite friends for time trials and fun.I just can't let this just for myself.

Also just half hour at work and I will propably do nothing due to brain being on the 'How fast do you wanna go" note.

THIS FUCKIN GAME
 

Vroadstar

Gold Member
I just played it for about 2-2.5 hours. So far, it's half-decent, but too basic in my opinion.

Thoughts/Questions:

- The servers are a broken mess. I couldn't have played any multiplayer if I'd wanted to. I connected to the servers a few times, for about 30 seconds each.

- The server status warning/ticker at the bottom of the screen is annoying.

- The game's physics aren't very good. The cars are stiff and feel a bit tank like.

- While the overhead vista cams are nice, the game's visuals feel outdated. Parts of tracks are too dark and limit visibility.

- The driving feels dated, too.

- After playing Forza Horizon 2, this is a notable step backwards.

- Is there really no way to change difficulty?

- No way to turn the ticker off or make a driving line show up?

- The A.I. is kinda crappy. They don't deviate much from lines and just run into you. No avoidance. Plus, they're catch-up programmed. Makes things frustrating.

- No rewind makes them crashing into you and screwing you over annoying.

- Still somewhat fun, but hard to really recommend.

After 264 pages of fairly good discussion about DC, we finally got a winner. I hope this doesn't turn into like any previous DC threads because it's been a great read so far.
 

Navy Bean

Member
The servers are still unavailable for most people, I haven't been able to get online once since the game launched. The PS+ version won't open up for people until they stabilize the servers (and I suspect they'll simply crash again when the million people or whatever download the freebie). I know people want it sooner but I'd be surprised if you see the PS+ edition before the weekend.

The aggressive AI can be a nuisance, but I've found it simply forcing me to be smart about my moves than simply try and just gun for the lead. When going into a corner I kind of hold back a few feet and see what the AI does, sometimes they bump into each other or cause havoc. I wait for an opening and try and make my passes when opportunity presents itself, haven't had too many issues thus far.

I've barely even noticed the penalties for going off track, but they don't seem particularly harsh and haven't impacted my ability to win races. At worst you lose a tiny amount of fame points.
Thanks, it sounds like the tried and true driving game strategy of cutting inside on a corner and using the AI cars as a bumper is not viable. Not really a huge issue for me as I have never figured out how to "drift" properly in these games so I tend to brake early...

Hopefully they release the game sooner rather than later.
 

Jimrpg

Member
My full version got delivered today. I played it for about 60 min. This game will be really fun.

There is no driving line. Initially this really made me hate the track. However after looking at the flag colours and entering the corners at the apex, I really started to love this system. It kinda makes you focus on the road instead of a coloured line.

One annoying thing is that the AI don't deviate from the racing line... at all. So they will always push you into the wall if you don't make space or get out of the way.

.

Yeah I really like the coloured flags, its like in rally games where the guy calls out pace notes. It eliminates a lot of looking at the mini map.
 
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lh3OMAD.jpg

Dat P1.

Finished off the Rookie series last night, so about 45 stars I think.

Looks great, but we already knew that.

Menu UI, load times, cars etc, are all fantastic, everything is really polished.

AI is woeful, I agree with the sentiments in here; I've had the inside line sooo many times and they'll just drive right through you. Same goes for being on the outside line (seems like the only way you can pass cleanly sometimes), but it doesn't stop them just driving you off the road - even more annoying when you get a corner cutting penalty as a result of the collision.

There's definitely a "sort of" rubber-banding in there too, despite them saying to the contrary. I actually tried it out last night; Parked up on a corner, did a couple donuts and I was able to catch and pass the entire pack in half a lap (and they had all bunched up conveniently). Despite me easily getting back to first they were able to hang on within 1.5sec for the rest of the race.

I'm sure DriveClub will be a bit of fun for a while though, just hasn't really "blown my skirt up" yet.
 
LOL. Keep dreamin

This stream is just Rushy secretly broadcasting under a fake japanese alias. He's racing against the rest of the Evo team while they sip back drinks and bask in their bags of money, laughing at the poor schmucks who got suckered into buying the game.


sadly someone out there on GAF actually believes this
 
In case anybody was wondering you can paint your car a solid color. It'd be one of your options for designs when starting a race, Just go to the garage (touchpad gets you to the home screen quick), and go into modify one of your design slots, and select no design at the far right - then you can select a solid base color (matter, metallic or gloss).

That seems to be the only screen where you can check out your rides too, spinning the camera around and the like.
 
You can't in good conscious say that visuals in this game seem outdated or an uprezzed last gen gen. I'm sorry, but that's just straight up BS of the highest order. The game not only looks gorgeous, but objectively it's doing thing technically that I've never seen another racing game do.

I second this. I just got the game a few hours ago and so far I'm loving it. The lighting, shadows etc. are stellar. I'm playing on a 60" plasma sitting back about 8ft.and the graphics are awesome! The sound is also spot on. I have Forza 5 and Horizon 2, and those games are lookers in there own way too , but I have to admit this is on another level. I'm very impressed and it handles like a dream too, in my opinion. Just my 2 cents worth.
 

Navy Bean

Member
I think the worst server blow-up I can remember is COD 4 over Christmas week the year it released. It was a shit-show and everybody was off work/school and ready to play. Anybody remember that? This is nowhere near that yet, but hopefully they get it together by this weekend.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
probably because it came out after Forza Horizon 2? Because of FOrza Horizon 2, Drive Club was a little bit of a letdown to me. Drive Club is good, but FH2 has just spoiled me. The open world aspect of FH2 has made it seem much better than DriveClub to me. Of course not being able to play online yet with DriveClub hasn't helped either. I would prefer to race with people online than the solo stuff that I have only been able to play so far in DC.
The lack of an open world is precisely why many of us are enjoying it. It makes for a much more focused experience.
 
I think the worst server blow-up I can remember is COD 4 over Christmas week the year it released. It was a shit-show and everybody was off work/school and ready to play. Anybody remember that? This is nowhere near that yet, but hopefully they get it together by this weekend.

Was it really worse than Sim City? People bought the game and some of them legitimately could not play it at all for over a week.
 

Jimrpg

Member
DC deserves better than that 72 on meta. It's not that I think that is the wrong score on a truly 0 to 100 scale, it's that so many shite games have scored higher than 72 over the last few years.

I don't normally care about review scores because I buy games I like, but a 72 is pretty harsh on DC all things considered and could ultimately cost people's jobs.

The gaming industry is a pretty dirty industry when you think about it. We've already seen the closure of Bizarre Creations when Blur flopped, the Wipeout team (Studio Liverpool?), the Pure/Split/Second team, and obviously numerous other mid tier developers too. Sure a lot of them closed down because their games were terrible or sold poorly, but there's been a lot of collateral damage too.

What we have here are full degree IT and graphic arts professionals doing a professional job and having their work judged on and scored by people who are not. I'm not saying people need a degree to review games, but I do think the lack of some standards in the review process and because its a purely subjective opinion of a game can do a lot of damage. And I understand, you can't really have a set of standards or a checklist when reviewing games, but my point is when an engineer in a different field is doing his work, he's judged on the quality of the work where he follows a set of standards, a doctor too, a lawyer, an accountant etc. In the entertainment industry no such thing exists and its just based on sales. The fact that we have a really inflammatory medium such as the internet that is always ripe for complaints of any kind doesn't help either. It's a messy situation which I don't have an answer for.
 
I'm not a PC guy so maybe it was worse. COD 4 was an issue for ME...lol.

Haha fair enough. The problem with Sim City was that the entire game, including the core single player, relied on the servers to do computations associated with simulating things like economy and traffic. This meant that the server capacity being reach immediately resulted in people being unable to so much as launch the game.

It was probably the most bungled launch I can recall.
 

Jimrpg

Member
Was it really worse than Sim City? People bought the game and some of them legitimately could not play it at all for over a week.

And Diablo 3 was pretty bad too if I recall. This coming from people who created WOW (which also had problems) but they should have been aware of it.

Honestly it just comes down to budget. Driveclub doesn't have it.
 

MavFan619

Banned
Yeah I really like the coloured flags, its like in rally games where the guy calls out pace notes. It eliminates a lot of looking at the mini map.
I've started to go full on no HUD and the flags help a lot. I'm still bad but I'm happy my screen is just showing the environment and the cars.
 
And Diablo 3 was pretty bad too if I recall. This coming from people who created WOW (which also had problems) but they should have been aware of it.

Honestly it just comes down to budget. Driveclub doesn't have it.

Yup, this is why I think people need to cut them a little more slack. Evolution is not as large as some of these huge developers and they don't really have a ton of experience with strong online networks, Motorstorm was never really seeing big amounts of traffic even though it did have a following.

I fully expect they'll learn from these mistakes and be better prepared next time.
 

bes.gen

Member
man, whats with the opponents constantly bumping me, feels like motostorm a.i lol

other than that having good time with the game. it sits at some kind of sweet spot between sim and arcade.
 

Wynnebeck

Banned
The lack of an open world is precisely why many of us are enjoying it. It makes for a much more focused experience.

This so much. I couldn't stand the open world approach of Burnout Paradise, TDU2, Forza Horizon, and NFS Most Wanted (2012), but I loved NFS Hot Pursuit, Gran Turismo, FM4, Burnout 3, etc. for their tight focus and well realized gameplay. Driveclub take out the fluff and gives it to you straight and uncut.
 
This so much. I couldn't stand the open world approach of Burnout Paradise, TDU2, Forza Horizon, and NFS Most Wanted (2012), but I loved NFS Hot Pursuit, Gran Turismo, FM4, Burnout 3, etc. for their tight focus and well realized gameplay. Driveclub take out the fluff and gives it to you straight and uncut.

The tracks also feel so well designed, especially the point to point ones. Perfect mix of sharp turns and big straightaways. Keeps me on edge all the time.
 

Navy Bean

Member
And Diablo 3 was pretty bad too if I recall. This coming from people who created WOW (which also had problems) but they should have been aware of it.

Honestly it just comes down to budget. Driveclub doesn't have it.
Yeah, I mean Horizon 2 had a ton of issues for the first several days too. I think part of it is the lower budget for racers and part of it is Microsoft and Sony not appreciating how many racing game fans there are and not allocating properly.
 

fernoca

Member
Is the T80 a decent wheel at least?

Not a big budget, but seems nice, small and compatible with the PS3 too.

Want to play this outdated/upresed last-gen game with a wheel.


EDIT:
vvv That pic below lacks soul and color. No personality. 5/10 vvv
 
Welp. At least I got a few points for the club today. It was exciting to play online for those 3 minutes. I really hope the servers are in better shape tomorrow.
Off to bed.
 

bes.gen

Member
The tracks also feel so well designed, especially the point to point ones. Perfect mix of sharp turns and big straightaways. Keeps me on edge all the time.

yeah the first couple of point to point races were amazing. both visually and track design wise.
just couple hours in but
really had a strong first impression with the game..
(might had to do with the racing game drought on ps4)
 
This game=sooooo good. I don't know why I'm really liking this so much. I'm having fun playing the same events over and over trying to perfect them.

The graphics are simply amazing when you turn off all hud elements and play with the dash cam. Oh and streaming your own music in the background through music unlimted makes the experience even funner imo. I have GTA V's popfm playing and it's just a joy.

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JAYSIMPLE

Banned
The lack of an open world is precisely why many of us are enjoying it. It makes for a much more focused experience.


So you guys have all played fh2 and prefer driveclub? I want the Ps plus version to arrive as I need to play it. The Ai sounds downright terrible tho
 

hamchan

Member
Does this game feel barebones in a way that the first Motorstorm did to anyone else? Like, I understand that multiplayer will help flesh this out a bit, but it still feels a bit less of a game than Forza.

Right now, it's basically do this race and customize your car with limited options. Seriously, you can't even make body modifications.

Yep, this game does seem barebones to me. I wonder how much the extra year of development added since it still feels like a launch game to me. At least I feel the core driving is pretty fun.
 

Semper88

Member
So.. It allowed me online last night BUT i couldnt find any multiplayer? I was only able to drive vs friends which in my case they dont play DC. Is there no matchmaking of some kind?! Or I'm just blind..?

Also for €39,99 i think its a great buy. Advanced into the german racing cars and i loved the audi. Having trouble to see where I'm going when im using the beautifull cockpit view tho.
 

Jimrpg

Member
Yeah, I mean Horizon 2 had a ton of issues for the first several days too. I think part of it is the lower budget for racers and part of it is Microsoft and Sony not appreciating how many racing game fans there are and not allocating properly.

I'm no expert at IT, but there's gotta be a huge difference of players on day 1 when compared to say day 60 (2 months into the games life). Of course everybody is going to try and connect but I can't see Sony buying new server equipment, extra bandwidth to cater for the enormous intial influx of players that will probably outweigh its actual population by a significant margin during most of Driveclub's online life.
 
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