As some of you might know, DriveClub was released today.

It's a PS4 exclusive racing game that tries to be midway between arcade and sim. It has caused quite a fuzz, as it doesn't support the Logitech or Fanatec racing wheels, but then, that might also be due to Sony's unwillingness to support those periferals. Which irks me, as I use the G25 myself for years now. But we digress...

So here's my verdict after a few singleplayer races:

Grahically, it's awesome. While it doesn't reach ProjectCars level of gloss and polish, it's still beautiful. And it drives reasonably well with the controller, because it isn't a sim. Physicswise it reminds me of the NFS Shift series, but without the strange slippyness of the wheels. So, it's fun to drive.
The AI is rubbish, but then, which racing AI isn't? The only problem I have with them being basically mobile roadblocks is that colliding with them deducts from your points, which in turn determine your level, and thus the access to cars. Even when they bump you. Also, as you might have guessed by the former statement: leveling system. And it has two layers: you and your club.

Also, the points system, and a harsh penalty system that slows you down, actually reward clean racing and punish cutting corners, which, as soon as multiplayer works, will hopefully lead to fun MP racing.

And as I mentioned it earlier (and also, it's in the name!) It has a strong MP/Social focus, with Clubs of 6 players competing against other players being the core part of the game. thus I have created an invite only club named "Live for Speed". If you wanna join, just drop me your PSN name and I'll invite you. I plan on racing rather casually, but still, I might kick idle racers if there's demand for a slot (at least, if the club is full at that point).

Also, you can contact me directly via PSN, where I'm known as ColeusRattus (surprisingly).

Hmmmm, 'midway between sim and arcade', but, doesn't support wheels/pedals.........
So, arcade without attempting to support real controllers.

So I take it that's this is Sonys answer to Xbox racing games........ And how much does it cost ?

But consoles are so much cheaper and better than PCs, 1080 and 60 fps minimum............
Mutter, Ridge Racer, mutter other PS1 games, mutter............

Sounds awesome !

I'm gonna be the negative guy here again...

What did convince you to buy the game? It was clear before release it's not gonna be very good. Mediocre arcade racer. People who bought it are saying it's "meh", including the graphics and gameplay...

I guess i'm just fed up with this new console deal... make new consoles that have slightly better hardware, rave about 1080p and 60fps, sell mediocre shit games because people will buy anything since they are so starved of games that are actually fun to play instead of hyped up shiny turds that aren't even that impressive graphics wise if you take a closer look.

I almost bought Forza Horizon 2. But it's just a shiny new Forza Horizon... i've played the demo, it's fun for a few minutes, but it's exactly Forza Horizon... just more shiny and now you can race through fields... wow...

The only game that looks decent is the new alien game because it seems they put some love and details into it.

There's good games to come in the future, but half of them will be overhyped and not live up to the expectations... some will be decent.

Should i buy all their shitty games because there's nothing good to play? Fuck no. But you go ahead and enjoy your driveclub... :P

Console gaming (or gaming in general) is in a sad state. In a few years games will be even more shitty, and they'll make us pay for the demo, then the 30% of the full game, and THEN the rest of the game in form of DLC, and it will suck and be no fun to play after two hours...

People found halfway finished DLC hidden on the destiny discs, it's accessible in the game through a simple glitch. There's a season pass for The Evil Within on the xbox marketplace, the game isn't even out yet.

Maybe i'm negative and sarcastic... but it's sad to see people throw their money at these money hungry companies, just because they are bored out of their mind and will buy any shitty games to distract themselves from the fact there's almost no good games to play and their new "next gen" consoles are collecting dust.

I'm still enjoying Dark Souls 2. started playing Bioshock Infinite again... my xbox one is collecting dust.

But hey... 1080p, 1080p, 1080p!!!!!! :P

Remember Danowat? He's an xbox guy. He's still in my friends list... i see his "activities" and he gets every single new game that comes out, even the arcade ones.... he must be bored out of his mind. Shadow of mordor, destiny, watchdogs, all of them... and he plays them for a day or two and then the next one, never to return again. 60 bucks for 2 days of mediocre fun... better than to be bored i guess...

Despite knowing full well NOT to talk to Racer X, I might add a few things:

Pricewise, it's a full price game (69.99€), unless you have a PS+ subscription. then it's either "free", allbeit severely limited (10 of the 50+ cars and 10 of the 50+ tracks), or you can upgrade to the full content for about two thirds of the price of the retail version (39.99€).

BUT, the free version isn't out yet, as the servers are completely overloaded, and the devs want to reduce the demand on them.

Also, because of that, the social systems don't work as of now. Just once I had luck to create the club, but I haven't been able to establish a connection ever since.

So all in all a bad start, that could've been avoided, because ALL the online games have had wonky starts. I mean, the decs should've known pretty accurate preorder numbers, so they could've judged the demand better and put up more servers. Also, they could've released the free version earlier to test the server infrastructure, and thus iron out issues until the release... but I digress.

Back on track: The cars could offer a tad more variety, as all of them are european (except one), with a strong focus on german cars. So there's a lot of hothatches and premium/sports saloons, but very few small and nifty roadsters.

The tracks themselves are all fictional. There are both racetracks and point to point races, and they're reasonably fun to drive, but lack really distinctive features, like memorable turns etc.

And concerning the "sim" level: It does support the thrustmaster range of wheels, which I don't have, so I cannot comment on that. But even with the cotnroller, it drives more realistically than the latest Need for Speeds, while not reaching GT/Forza levels of realism. So, from a PC Sim racer standpoint, it's obviously an arcade racer, but for the general public, it sits between what's marketed as realistic and arcade racers.
All in all, cars behave predictably, and driving sim-like (as in following the racing line, avoid contact or going offroad) is generally the most advantegous way to race. Still, it's simple enough to be fun and relaxing for a quick spin on the couch with the controller.

As for performance: it's full 1080p, but limited to 30 fps. Still, the controls are responsive, and the framerate doesn't drop with a lot of cars/effects on screen. And the lighting engine is impressive. But certainy it cannot deliver the graphical fidelity of projectCars on PC. So it looks reasonably well, and runs smooth enough. I don't know where RX got the notion that someone it would be better than PC, but whatever...

And for it being Sonys answer to Xbox raacing games: well, nope, and it's not marketed as such. It's marketed as a social racing game, that, as of yet sadly lacks the social component.
And I would actually regard the Forzas as Microsoft's answer to Gran Turismo, for what it's worth.

EDIT: For the few races I've done (all the rookie ones in SP), it's reasonably fun. I don't regret shelling out the 40 euros, and I think it'll become better once it works as intended. But it's not something that I would hassle with setting up my wheel in front of the TV. For that, it's too sterile and too "safe". All in all, it's a solid arcadish racer, that actually puts it's emphasis on mulitplayer racing. Nothing more, nothing less.

So in Short: it's like a good pop-song. Inoffensive, might be even a little bit pleasant, but easily forgetable once something else comes along. Still, I'm going to play it casually, as nowadays I lack the time for serious sim racing, and with the simple, yet predictable physics, you don't need much practice to be competitive.

Have to admit I was thinking about buying an xbone for Forza Horizon 2, then I read it only runs at 30 FPS.

F that.

Here's a short gameplayvideo by me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZaLSgM36_U

Quote from jibber :

Console gaming (or gaming in general) is in a sad state. In a few years games will be even more shitty, and they'll make us pay for the demo, then the 30% of the full game, and THEN the rest of the game in form of DLC, and it will suck and be no fun to play after two hours...

People found halfway finished DLC hidden on the destiny discs, it's accessible in the game through a simple glitch. There's a season pass for The Evil Within on the xbox marketplace, the game isn't even out yet.

That is not even bad. What is bad that all big companies are pushing micro transactions into single player games. Not only do you need to get dlc after finishing 1/3rd of the original length of the game but that 1/3rd is basically 1/9th of the lenghh of the game but is stretched to 1/3 by slowing down your progress so you can buy exp/credit boosters, items and in-game money with real money. It all adds into one big fail when you notice that in order for such system to work you practically need always-online drm... among other things...

Future of consoles and big games is just one big money grab. Only real next gen feature of ps4 and xbone is microtransactions in single player games. And it will only get worse..

Well, it has been like this for a few years with xbox360 and ps3. DLC is nothing new, their strategies are nothing new... people voted with their wallets a few years ago and bought this DLC marketing scheme... they only gave the green light to the industry by doing that. From a marketing persepective, it's really genius.

I remember exactly how i said back when it started: "Are they serious? Who is gonna be stupid enough to pay for these things???"... then people started buying DLC and accepted it as the new reality.

I'm already talking about the next step... convince people to buy shit games that aren't actually any good or fun to play. Destiny, Watchdogs, this driveclub thing... basically 95% of the "next gen" games are garbage, but people still buy them and then try to justify their wasted money by defending those shit games.

I understand those marketing guys... if you can ass-rape all these sheep and milk their wallets, hell, i would do it too if i were in their position!!

The justified critique of modern Triple A game publishing strategies aside, I finally had the chance to dabble a bit in online play. Racing itself is fun, and for the few races I did, people generally tried not to deliberately knock each other off the track, even though some tended to perform somewhat unethical blocking maneuvers.
Warping and lag was not a problem whatsoever, but what was a problem is the race and car choice. There are predetermined car/track/racetype combos that switch around every few seconds, so it can be hard to find what you're looking for. Also, if you stay in one lobby, the car type can change from race to race, even to cartypes you haven't unlocked yet. You do get a "loan" vehicle, but you cannot progress your accolades (basically bragging rights badges) in one of those, so that might be a turnoff.

Also, another quick video, demontrating the dynamic change of time and the quite good looking lighting:
http://youtu.be/jGBEZtGFs60

Dat shifting animation.

Online seems to work now, so if anyone wamt's to join th Live for Speed club, hit me up. Psn ColeusRattus or apply via the in game club selextion

Drive Club is a big shit! lol

I'm glad to own a Xbox ONE and can play Forza Horizon 2

Quote from Matrixi :

Have to admit I was thinking about buying an xbone for Forza Horizon 2, then I read it only runs at 30 FPS.

F that.

30 FPS? lol ...GTA 5 on my PS3 has 30 FPS. FH2 on my xbone has definitely more than 30 FPS!

Sorry to disappoint you:



30.

Digital Foundrys article

That was painful to watch. Also, those physics...

Quote from Matrixi :

Have to admit I was thinking about buying an xbone for Forza Horizon 2, then I read it only runs at 30 FPS.

F that.

Quote from Xone :

30 FPS? lol ...GTA 5 on my PS3 has 30 FPS. FH2 on my xbone has definitely more than 30 FPS!

GTA 5 having 30fps is a rare sight, most of the time its about 25 and drops under 20 pretty regularly

Quote from Matrixi :

Sorry to disappoint you:



30.

Digital Foundrys article

fail. YouTube videos has 30 FPS limit. And the GameDVR app is recording only in 720p at 30 FPS.
this video says nothing about the FPS on the Xone

i know the difference between 30 FPS (GT6 on PS3) and 60 FPS. FH2 is in 60 FPS, believe me or not!!

Quote from Xone :

fail. YouTube videos has 30 FPS limit. And the GameDVR app is recording only in 720p at 30 FPS.
this video says nothing about the FPS on the Xone

i know the difference between 30 FPS (GT6 on PS3) and 60 FPS. FH2 is in 60 FPS, believe me or not!!

Oh boy. Not sure if troll or stupid.

Firstly, it doesn't matter if YouTube supports 60 FPS or not (it actually does as of couple days ago) Digital Foundry videos exist to show the framerate of a game and how stable said framerate is.

Here's their Forza 5 (which is actually true 60 FPS when driving, unlike Horizon 2) video for comparison:



The reason why you think FH2 is running 60 FPS and bring PS3 in to the discussion, is because those PS3 games actually very rarely run at stable 30 FPS, they're more like 25-28, often dipping in to low 20's.

Horizon 2 delivers stable 30 FPS combined with motion blur. Run it side by side with Forza 5 @ 60 FPS and the difference is obvious.

And straight from the game developer:

Quote :

"I think what we did on Horizon was demonstrate that, and this is really important, a locked frame rate that's absolutely solid and never drops is the most important thing for our game," Playground's Ralph Fulton told IGN. "30 [frames per second] actually enables us to realise that experience."

Do you still want to insist it's running at 60 frames a second?

Quote from Wenom :

Do you guys think this is worth 25€? Might need to grab this because it is currently on sale for PS+ members.

Edit. Bought it and maybe I like it after all. Nothing special but nothing too bad either. Need to give it more time tomorrow.

If you wanna join my still 1 person LfS club, feel free to apply. I for one don't play it that often anymore, as both GTA Online and Destiny have a pretty tight grip on my limited gaming time, and the difficulty of the single player races in the later levels borders on unfair.

Still, I think 25 Euros is quite a good deal, as it is a looker, and quite a solid, yet not stellar, racing experience.

If anybody still cares, the free PS+ Edition for PS+ subscribers came out... but it lacks the only thing that makes it somewhat bearable: the online functionality. It's to be added "later".