The Games we play...

[marc]

Problem is Furie 2012 worked ok until they updated it and broke it. They denied they broke it and have a work around which let me steer but due to the feeling I was then half a second slower a lap than I was, on some tracks more.

2014 is their last contracted game so will see what happens then.

I'm looking forward to the extra part, the older cars from the 80's and 90's.

 

[furie]

So two crap games and one that was good until it was broken by them? Why support it on release? Just wait until the price drops and the bugs are either ironed out or made known.

There's no way they will ever change their strategy of releasing half arsed games (or patching them to half arsed) if everyone still just keeps on buying at release and full price.

I too think the add-on looks superb and I'd love to play in the halcyon days of F1, but not if it means Codemasters gets a penny from my pocket.

 

[nealbie]

No, furie, 2010 was brilliant!

And I still play that one haha

 

[marc]

The problem with f1 games is the online stuff. If you leave it for a few months you are miles behind and you have a rating of 1 so people think you are crap and do not let you race. Yes the same happens when you get a high rating.

Codemasters know this and like most companies take advantage of it.

 

[furie]

No, furie, 2010 was brilliant!

And I still play that one haha

Was that the one where you followed cars into the final chicane in Spain and watched the other cars clip the kerb, but the moment you went within an inch of it, you were spun around?

Yeah, not so brilliant in the slightest :roll:

Marc, I can understand your plight, but I'd still make a stand :lol:

 

[nealbie]

No, furie, 2010 was brilliant!

And I still play that one haha

Was that the one where you followed cars into the final chicane in Spain and watched the other cars clip the kerb, but the moment you went within an inch of it, you were spun around?

Yeah, not so brilliant in the slightest :roll:

If you want I can give you tips on how to set up an F1 car? Everyone complained about 2010 (in general), but when it came to online league racing, no-one had a problem and only sang the highest of praise.

I think this is why I (and hardcore F1 enthusiasts) really like the 2010 game and despise the latter ones. Yes, the AI was still **** on the career mode even at the hardest level, but when it came to the basic engine, it really felt like an F1 car (or at least how we'd all imagine one to be like). 2011 and 2012 were FAR too arcadey, it was totally counter-intuitive, you'd set up the car and gain NO time. They're both pick up and play. Which, understandably, appeals to a wider audience because then everyone isn't complaining that they're really struggling trying to control a Formula 1 car (something they will flip to praise the drivers in real life commending them on being able to control what must be a tricky beast); but something that has pissed off serious racers the world over.

 

[furie]

Every other kerb in the game was fine, it was just that one kerb in Spain.

If you hit it at 2 mph, it would spin you off at 50 mph. It was just ridiculous. It was worse that it was just the tiniest of clips too, not even full belt over the thing.

In no car, ever, did you clip an inch of kerb at walking speed without any throttle on and spin. I checked online at the time and it was a commonly complained about bug.

You should never have to go through a complex setup routine to be able to make it around a circuit without spinning out when the AI cars can mange perfectly well.

I guess that's why they made it accessible, because unless you're a 1000% F1 nerd, you simply couldn't play the game. My usual racing friends just said "oh, I always just skipped Catalunya, the rest of the game is great though."

I just found it frustrating and pointless.

[Edit] Just to continue the rant a little :lol:

It's something I dislike about "realistic" driving games. I've always said it. On games like GT5 or Live for Speed on the PC, you head into a decent corner at 20-30 mph and find that the car either locks, or just skids off the track. Even driving the actual car I have, they do the same. Yet there's a corner just down the road from here which is steep and tight, but great fun to pile into at 30 mph and test your nerve, suspension and tyre wear :lol:

The ONLY time I've ever had a GT5/LFS moment on that corner is when there was six inches of fresh snow on it. Then suddenly all my laps on both those games came in very useful

If you watch the Top Gear with Hammond trying to drive an F1 car, you can see how even an exceptionally experienced driver can struggle monumentally driving a real F1 car. In fact, even getting the thing off the line is a massive burden.

So, the problem then is "how do you simulate the realism?" The answer is, you don't. Quite simply, you take all the arse-ache out of driving a car and simplify things massively. THAT'S why the chicane was so frustrating. Every other aspect of the game allowed you to jump into an F1 car and get to the first corner at full pelt - a task which would be completely impossible for 99%+ of people playing the game in real life. The <1% who could would most likely ditch it into the gravel at the first corner.

So why then have such inconsistency? The game is already helping you with throttle and steering (even with assists off, it's still doing it), so why not have it consistently helping? That's where the issue comes in. They have to balance realism with "making it feel like you're driving an F1 car". It's impossible to make it realistic, so it's all about the charade, the smoke and mirrors to make you believe.

What most people want, is to watch an F1 race on TV and then jump into the game and capture the same feeling as they play that they got from watching the race. The professional drivers don't spin out (often), or have to slow to a snail's pace through a chicane. It's fast, exciting and manageable.

I agree that the game should be able to be scaled up in difficulty to appease those who want more, and certainly if you excel in tuning, you should be able to improve performance. That's fine, but it's still all pretend and what may "feel real" for one person, feels awful to another and none of them offer the true experience in the slightest.

 

[marc]

Tbh it was a setup thing as Neal said for most of it.

For me it was Monaco, in real f1 they all go up a curb but in 2011 and 12 you could not.

Nothing beats the Grand Prix games that were on pc for simulation.

 

[furie]

If you HAD to have a setup to do a lap on the track, then the game should, at that point, introduced setups and told you how to set it up.

You can't say "here's a game with the complexity of being driven around in a tricycle" and then all of a suddenly throw in that you need intimate knowledge of racing car setups - especially when every other single kerb you could go up without an issue.

It just didn't make any sense. If you MUST have a setup, then force the setup universally in the game and show the players how to do it.

Otherwise, you have to dumb the game down and make it annoying for people like Neal

 

[Brookes]

After getting PS+, I downloaded Lego Lord of the Rings for the Vita. It's not a game I would normally go for but I really enjoyed playing it and got platinum last week. It really is a fun game

It's great isn't it? I found it a little aggravating trying to get to the next story point. You'd go down a path following the pointer, then find you couldn't get there because you needed a character you hadn't unlocked yet. Instead of the pointer knowing that, it put you in the wrong direction. I'd rather it forced you to do the story, then introduced the open world when you've got all the characters you need. Still, good effort for their first attempt at something a little different.

I totally know what you mean. It was a bit confusing knowing where to go next but generally it worked ok I think. Running through all the levels again got a bit frustrating to get all the character tokens and treasures but it was fun playing them again with all characters available. My only gripe is that for a while you have nowhere near enough studs to buy all the extras, then once you get all the stud multipliers you get loads really quickly and unlock everything all in one go and can buy all the remaining characters. I think I'd prefer it if you unlocked things more gradually without going from having nowhere near enough studs to having way too many so suddenly. Still though, as you say, it was a nice game.

 

[marc]

What does piss me off on the f1 games is online is totally different to the main mode.

All of a sudden you have more grip more speed can brake later and take corners totally different, it's the same in the time challenge. I just think it should be the same all the way through.

I set the car up in time challenge then go to use the setup for real and it's way off.

2010 was good but I did not like the fact you could change your setup before the race. It was not meant to be like that lol.

Anyway from what I've read they have gone back to it being more for people like Neal and I, this is due to poor sales.

 

[nealbie]

If you HAD to have a setup to do a lap on the track, then the game should, at that point, introduced setups and told you how to set it up.

You can't say "here's a game with the complexity of being driven around in a tricycle" and then all of a suddenly throw in that you need intimate knowledge of racing car setups - especially when every other single kerb you could go up without an issue.

It just didn't make any sense. If you MUST have a setup, then force the setup universally in the game and show the players how to do it.

Otherwise, you have to dumb the game down and make it annoying for people like Neal

It DOES though. As soon as you turn it on, it chucks you into the career mode and the very first practice session it goes through setting up the car and what everything does to affect the car. It even leaves a helpful reminded each time you highlight something what it's going to do for the entirety of the game.

So it does force the set up on you. Which isn't even something new, Liverpool studios used to do it too!

Circuit de Catalunya has always been an odd one. The AI cars are much more competitive there (and this has been the case since EA sports got hold of the franchise in the late 90's), I think it's because the layout of the real-life lap time is always a lot quicker than it "should" be, so the highest level of difficulty always used to be ridiculously hard (the worst being F1 2006/Championship Edition), or now because Codemasters' AI is slow it then becomes a challenge and you have to fight for the win instead of automatically getting it.

The curb on the final chicane is just at a higher angle on 2010 (or, how it actually is and is no problem when you set up the car for the demands of the track). Hungary is also famed for high angle curbs and if you try to follow the AI cars around there without setting up the car it spins, most notably being the 3rd to last corner (a 90degree right hander).

So, yeah, it does force feed you. :lol:

2010 was good but I did not like the fact you could change your setup before the race. It was not meant to be like that lol.

Anyway from what I've read they have gone back to it being more for people like Neal and I, this is due to poor sales.

And totally agree, Marc. I wouldn't do it when in my career mode because it's morally wrong and unnecessary, but when it came to online, you had to or you were nowhere. It WAS fun to see which people in my league were qualifying specialists and who was good on race pace.

I'm genuinely quite excited about 2013. We'll see!

 

[furie]

There's no way it had enough detail in that talking bollocks in the first practice to give you enough information to set up the car to deal with an obscure kerb in five races time. At all. It may have mentioned setup, but if setup is viral to racing, it needed a pit engineer at the start of each race offering suggested setup or default track ones. If you don't, you lose all your casual audience (as with me). And I do know how to set up cars, I just never thought it would be required to do a lap on a track in casual mode. It's not made clear and it's a failure on their part. Obviously different if you're a hard fan, but that's quite a limit to put in your game (as studio Liverpool found with Wipeout as previously discussed)

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

[tomahawk]

Re: RE: The Games we play...

So I picked up GTA V, the first one I have ever played in the series. I want my **** money back. Played for about two hours, and it has literally done nothing for me. Then again, I can't return it because it's unplayable without downloading disc 1, which it says is a one time use only.

So pissed i bought into the hype and got this instead of Madden 25 or just waiting until Battlefield 4. Might try playing a bit more tomorrow, but yeah, nothing that is keeping me interested.

 

[furie]

So I picked up GTA V, the first one I have ever played in the series. I want my **** money back. Played for about two hours, and it has literally done nothing for me. Then again, I can't return it because it's unplayable without downloading disc 1, which it says is a one time use only.

So pissed i bought into the hype and got this instead of Madden 25 or just waiting until Battlefield 4. Might try playing a bit more tomorrow, but yeah, nothing that is keeping me interested.

You've seriously never played a GTA game before? That's incredible :lol:

I'm trying to think back to the games and I suspect that the games have a very slow opening. It's a drawn out introduction each time to the new characters, city, and going over the game play mechanics again. So it tends to be several hours before you actually start to hit the guts of the game.

Mostly, it's about the sandbox. It's the fun of stealing cars, mowing down pedestrians and epic police chases. I find the story tends to be hit and miss per game. GTA IV was too much socialising with your cousin, Vice City was too much car salesman and San Andreas was, well, I loved that one actually

I wasn't going to buy V simply because IV was so dull, and I had a feeling that it would be 12 hours of boring bollocks before the game actually got going, and then you find that it's all a bit dull anyway.

Though I have to say that the two add-ons for GTA IV were really good fun.

Yeah, it's going to be a life of "get a call to go here, hit a cop on the way and get chased, eventually reach the next cut scene point, get told to go there, hit a cop on the way and get chased, mission, die, repeat". The killing can be good fun and the car chases (if they've kept the ace physics), but it's generally lots of fetch and carry, but that;s also kind of missing the point I guess, but there's only so much mobster story I can take.

Anyway from what I've read they have gone back to it being more for people like Neal and I, this is due to poor sales.

I just checked and yes, 2012 is about half the sales of 2011 (which was only a little below 2010 sales). Now, the question is, is it dropping because hard core fans like you and Neal (who are buying it anyway without even seeing reviews), or because 2010 and 2011 weren't accessible to causal players like me who just want to bomb around an F1 track and not worry about the complexities of individual track set up, etc? I'd suspect the latter, mixed with the fact that there's not enough to differentiate between each yearly update. Why buy 2012 if you've already found you can only manage half a season on 2011 (even making it easier)? What will 2012 really give you? I'm not going to buy it to find out, I've already wasted money on 2010

I think the legends idea is great though, and it shows that there's more than just a yearly update on the game, that Codemasters are adding into the package. It's just a shame that I wouldn't trust Codemasters to actually put out a game which works out of the box.

 

[marc]

2011 was poor so I think people stayed away from 2012.

 

[tomahawk]

So I picked up GTA V, the first one I have ever played in the series. I want my **** money back. Played for about two hours, and it has literally done nothing for me. Then again, I can't return it because it's unplayable without downloading disc 1, which it says is a one time use only.

So pissed i bought into the hype and got this instead of Madden 25 or just waiting until Battlefield 4. Might try playing a bit more tomorrow, but yeah, nothing that is keeping me interested.

You've seriously never played a GTA game before? That's incredible :lol:

I consider it a really good accomplishment! I mean yeah I've played at friends houses and we just got the cops to chase us for about half hour, but I never played any of the "actual" game. I'm gonna give it a couple more hours of play and see what happens.

 

[ATTACKHAMMER]

I got GTA V and I think it's brilliant! You can drive up mountains and the vehicles are awesome!

 

[Kebab]

Re: RE: The Games we play...

So I picked up GTA V, the first one I have ever played in the series. I want my **** money back. Played for about two hours, and it has literally done nothing for me. Then again, I can't return it because it's unplayable without downloading disc 1, which it says is a one time use only.

So pissed i bought into the hype and got this instead of Madden 25 or just waiting until Battlefield 4. Might try playing a bit more tomorrow, but yeah, nothing that is keeping me interested.

You serious!? I'm about 5-6 hours through and it is one of the only reasons (aside from The Last Of Us) that keeps me being a gamer. And I was a hardcore gamer back in the day! But for the past 3-4 years it's been a very tedious and depressing time for the fellow hardcore gamer, flooded with copy and pasted Call Of Duty's, FIFA's that have been the same since '07, Guitar Hero's slowly going into denial and don't get me started about how **** Final Fantasy has become since the release of XI...

Nothing has brought the gaming world forward in my opinion, it's been a continual straight line of progress (or lack of, for better word). I just think companies have been holding back for the release of the next-generation besides two in particular. The Last Of Us has proven that a game can be both cinematic and compelling throughout its gameplay without the need to skip through tedious amounts of talking, everything feels tight and I haven't been so much on edge since I played the original Condemned.

But with GTA V, I think its a huge breath of fresh air if anything. Its really shown how far gaming has come, and how much a system like a 360 and PS3 can really push itself to, so God-knows what we're expecting with the release of the next-gen! The whole game is just huge, and they've really gave us everything you'd possibly want in a GTA game. Saying this, I really didn't like GTA IV, I thought it was a snooze-fest and a turn in the wrong direction from San Andreas (which was unbelievable for its time), so seeing GTA V going that extra mile once again has given me a lot of hope.

I think it's definately the best in the series, its incredible how far they've come, even from GTA 3 which was revolutionary at its time, GTA V makes it look like ET from the Atari.

So I'm a happy gamer for the next couple of months, eagerly awaiting for my PS4, not so looking forward to the lacklustre selection of release games (they look pretty **** if you ask me). Give me Kingdom Hearts 3 and I'll be even happier!

 

[kimahri]

Re: RE: The Games we play...

But for the past 3-4 years it's been a very tedious and depressing time for the fellow hardcore gamer, flooded with copy and pasted Call Of Duty's, FIFA's that have been the same since '07, Guitar Hero's slowly going into denial and don't get me started about how **** Final Fantasy has become since the release of XI...

You just ain't lookin'!