Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago.
Posted by: Kohl
The title says it best — Very likely there is nothing spectacular to look forward to in the upcoming simulation releases of SimBin’s RACE ON, EA’s Need For Speed: Shift, and Codemasters’s F1 The Game.
So, what should you expect?
SimBin took such an enormous step back with Race 07 and GTR Evolution that they likely have completely lost a large percentage of their closest followers to other much more impressing simulations such as rFactor and iRacing. It’s still tough to believe they will ever get back to the simulation market dominance we saw with GTR2. There is some hope with Race ON after the release of STCC – The Game. STCC took the Lizard physics engine that has completely disappointed with Race 07 and GTR Evolution and made it much more drivable. It still has its massive flaws though, as the cars still plow like a jackhammer through corners. In that department though, there has been a great amount of improvement over just how bad Race 07 and GTR Evolution were. With STCC – The Game, you don’t quite have to have the car driving on ice to be fast. You can strike more of a balance, the issue still lies in the fact that with the Lizard engine, it’s virtually impossible to strike a happy medium between being too loose and just tight enough.
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Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago.
Posted by: Kohl
BATracer is an English Formula One racing management game. It puts the player as the driver, and does setups, race strategy, and driver style. The game is very fun, for me, but it isn’t for everyone.
The first thing you need to know about the game is that although it is free to play, for about 20$ you can get Kool Tools, which adds many features to your game. The big problem without KT is that you will sometimes not be able to log onto the site if you don’t have KT, but this doesn’t happen too much, particularly because US time zone compared to Europe. Without KT, you get three slots for games, 1 public game, one mid-season game, and one private game. KT ups it to four each. With KT, you can jump right into any car set, but without you end up having to get through the Academy training system, which means playing either the current F1 (09) or BTCC until you get enough good results to move up to pro. When you have KT, you can’t live without it, but you won’t miss it if you don’t have it. If you do start off with KT, don’t jump into too many games and overwhelm yourself.
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Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago.
Posted by: Kohl
I must first point out the truth of the matter. The greatly hyped rFactor mod by the Enduracer modding team has finally come out, and as great as it is, I have to admit I’m pulling hairs here. There are some minor issues, which I will point out, but don’t get me wrong, these minor issues are far outweighed by the quality and time these guys put into it.
The EnduRacer’s Endurance Series mod seeks to simulate ALMS type prototype and series. GT1, GT2, P1, and P2 classes are available with a wide variety of cars from different series. I was disappointed that some of the most popular cars fan-wise weren’t included — The Peugeot diesels of Le Mans, Audi diesels of Le Mans, and the Acura’s of ALMS. Equally though, the prototypes are spectacular. Certain prototypes favor certain tracks, which makes it a lot of fun and a great challenge to figure out which prototypes work best on which tracks. For example, the Epsilon tends to work better on the rFactor stock version of Circuit de Villeneuve over, say, the Penske Porsche.
Graphics-wise, the lighting and shading are incredible. The shadowing on dashboards in particular are so impressing, I didn’t know it was possible to get that type of detail within the rFactor realm.
The largest drawback are some of the sounds. The engines are incredible. They sound bad ass, they sound realistic, and if you have a 7.1 surround sound system and are trying to talk to another friend on Ventrilo while racing, it isn’t going to work very well(guilty…). Running through sand, it sounds perfect, spot on. Same with if you run over the rumple strips and ground out the car, the scraping is just perfect.
The problems are few, but very noticeable. The prototypes idle very very silently, which in some ways is understandable, these cars aren’t very loud when just idling. But when you spin the car out, it takes an extra second to make sure you didn’t stall it, you have to check the tach because you can’t hear the engine. Every second counts gentlemen — This is racing. I’m not saying it should be ridiculously loud, but when you can’t hear it at all — That’s a slight issue.
Also, tire squeals — There basically aren’t any. When coming off a corner, you can’t hear the back end swing around at all. Again, I’m not saying it should be overly loud, but those tires aren’t silent when they’re slipping. It’s very hard to know you’re losing it if, say, you have a sub-par wheel to race with.
Lastly on the sound issue, many of the cars have exactly the same sounds. Not a big issue, but I thought many of these prototypes had vastly different engines. Does the Epsilon have the same engine as Penske’s Porsches? I don’t think so, but I may be wrong.
All in all, there’s a reason why there is 70+ servers running right now with this mod. It was hyped, and it lived up to it. It’s realistic, it takes talent and patience — It’s a true sim. Now we just have to wait for the next SP to release, I want my Acura damnit! Good day gents.
