Tag Archives: Driving

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Need For Speed (2015)

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As someone who doesn’t drive nor own a car in real life, I feel like I’m probably missing something when I play most driving games. I certainly don’t get into the whole tweak this setting to make the car run at 1 horse power over its registered limit so the car goes 3 km/h faster than it normally would. I don’t get making the car look like it’s been thrown up on by an artist with a fetish for plastic airplane wings. What I do like is the sound of the engine and the feel of speed generated by the game. If there is a cop car chase and a cool soundtrack thrown in, then I’m happy.

So I should be delighted with the new Need For Speed. After taking a year off to develop for the new consoles, the Ghost crew working with the Frostbyte Engine have put together a really nice looking game. It’s quite possibly one of the nicest looking games I’ve played in this generation. The environments you drive around are beautiful, although most of the time you’re travelling too fast to notice. The only disappointment is you’re always driving at night. There is a moment where the sky brightens as if it’s going to be dawn, and then dawn never comes, but it’s still beautiful.

The cars themselves are spectacular. There are moments when the FMV cuts from the actors to your car, and it’s near impossible to tell the car is rendered in 3D and not actually there on set. And sound wise, this game pushes all my buttons. The cars sound as good as they look, with the V8s being particularly growly. The music is a cool blend of EDM, newer DnB and some rock, and thankfully not a dubstep track in earshot.

“Wait!?” I hear you cry. “Did you say FMV?” Yes, yes I did. And yes, I mean Full Motion Video, like Night Trap and Mad Dog Mcree, games that came out on Arcade or CD Rom in the early 1990s. And no, this isn’t any better 25 years later. Well, ok, that’s not very fair – they certainly look better as the 3D integration between the actors and non-physical assets is now seamless. This would have been completely shot on green screen, and much like modern movies, it is near impossible to tell what’s real and what’s rendered.

The actors do a valiant job, talking into the camera at “you”, but it feels very amateurish. The script is nonsensical and doesn’t actually contain any coherent story, which means any connection between you and these actors is difficult to form and maintain. There is no plot, no usual story elements, no “bad guys” to battle against. There’s this crew of misfit road racers, and you decide to drive around with them, and there’s kind of a love triangle or hexagon that’s hinted at, and then you meet someone’s idol (who is apparently a real life racing identity – who knew? *shrug*) and race with them, and that’s kind of it. Oh, and fist bumping. So much fist bumping. Every time there is a new scene, there is a fist bump. Every time someone leaves a scene, there is a fist bump. This game should have been called “Need for Fist Bump”.

It seriously baffles me why they decided to go with FMV. I imagine, however, the conversation went a little like this:
Mike: (Management Type Dude) “Holy Fuck, we forgot to include a story! We have Monster product placement but forgot to write a goddamn story for that product placement! John, run out and make some people and scenes for us! Dan, write a story”
Dan: (Lead Designer who once studied English/Journalism) “My job is try to make games fun, not write the story. I don’t know anything about the underground racer scene. I haven’t even seen “Fast and Furious”!
Mike: “It doesn’t need to be War and Peace, Dan, it’s a game about driving fucking fast cars at night. Just copy the F&F synopsis online, but take out the sex and violence… this game needs to be PG. Write it now or we’ll put you back on the match 4 mobile games team.”
Mike: “And put fist bumps in it. Kids love the fist bump.”
John: (Lead Art Producer Type dude) “Mike, we make cars, not people, and you’ve promised another 150 cars for DLC. We don’t have the time nor the team. But we are working with EA, so go get an animation team from another studio to help out.”
Mike: “Shit, we don’t have any animators free – everyone is tied up making Madden 16, Sims 4 and FIFA 16 – it has women in it now you know! Remember what Activision said… it’s TRUE!!”
John: “Damn the FIFA team. Well, shit, I don’t know, get some voice actors or something, and some real car dudes, but we’ll film them on green screen.”
Mike: “Fantastic idea! You’re promoted to Studio Head! Fist bump?”

The driving itself is rather fun, which is good, because at the end of the day, this a driving game, not a fist bump simulator. But let’s get something out of the way first – Need For Speed is an arcade racer. The driving is ‘loose’ and ‘unrealistic’. Your car will slip and slide and turn and do things it probably wouldn’t do in real life or in other car games. It’s meant to be that way and is not, and hopefully never will be, a simulator. Having said this, overall there is a little unresponsiveness when turning that is apparent in all cars. It feels like there is a lag between moving the joystick and the car reacting, and it’s not fixed through tuning the car. It is, however, a minor annoyance that will become less noticeable as you play the game.

Similar to other Need For Speed games, you rack up points when driving, and need these points to pass missions and unlock levels to upgrade your cars. There are a variety of skills which you can score against when driving: Speed, Style, Crew, Build, and Outlaw. Speed is self-explanatory – pull off speed tricks like 0-100 and maintaining your top speed. Style is maintaining good driving lines and drifts around corners. Crew is earned when you drive in concert with your AI opponents, like chain a drift around corners. Build is based on your build, and it’s suitability to the type of race and manoeuvres you pull off. Outlaw is about causing destruction and how long cops will chase you. I really like this system, as it’s fairer to drivers like myself who aren’t always the best drivers, but do enjoy silly things like knocking down street signs.

Points aren’t the only currency to earn in races though. You also earn cash, which is used to purchase new parts or new cars once they’re unlocked by points. It’s important to own at least two cars and get them early, upgrading and tuning them to different specs – one as a drifter to help you slip and slide around corners, and one built for pure speed. I initially wanted to “save” money by only having one car and modding it, but you end up spending more money on tuning and retuning rather than just having two different cars, and there are races which simply cannot be won with the wrong specced car.

The world you inhabit is Ventura Bay, which is apparently based on Los Angeles. I’ve never been to LA, so can’t compare. It does feel very similar to Los Santos though. It’s an always online world, much like Burnout: Paradise City, and you’ll see other players driving about, usually on the map or parked at the garage. We’ll get to more into that in a moment, but apparently a lot of people were bitching about this when it was announced. I don’t understand why, I’ve never had any issues with connection nor drop outs and only once was my experience negatively impacted, when Xbox decided it was time to update in the middle of a race, but that was ultimately my fault.

The entire map is unlocked at the start of the game, so you can drive around to your hearts content. Driving around earns you points just the same as the missions, and although you can always teleport to the missions, I suggest driving to the missions at first to give you some much needed level advancement. The game story is where you earn cash, and designed around five main characters who will fist bump you in the FMV story scenes to give you missions, corresponding to the five styles of driving. For example, Spike is usually represented by a green icon, which is Speed, so most of his missions will be races. Yellow represents Style races. Purple is Build races, so usually you need a specific type of car or motor or mod. Blue is Crew, so these always involve racing in teams, and Red is Outlaw, so usually mean racing causing destruction or with cops chasing you. The characters sometimes shift in what they want you to do, so there’s plenty of variety in the story missions.

Some missions you need to come first in either the race or by amount of points earned, whilst some are there just to further the story and placement doesn’t matter. The ones where you have to earn the highest points are usually quite fun, because it’s all about how well you drive. You make more points drifting in a pack than alone and feel more inclined to take unusual risks, like jump ramps, drive into on-coming traffic, and hand break turns.

The races where you have to win outright are downright annoying, because the rubber banding is extreme. You can be winning by a huge lead and then slow down to avoid a collision, and then be overtaken by not only the second place, but third and fourth. It’s controller throwing frustrating. There’s one race in particular which I’ve found impossible to win, and looking online I’m not the only one. Another annoyance is the other road traffic. There’s not much on the road, which is good, because it’s moronic. It deliberately veers into you and it also glitches – it can appear one moment and disappear the next, meaning you can swerve to miss something which is essentially not there.

I mentioned cop car chases, and they’re quite annoying too. As you break more laws, you rack up a higher fine which you pay on getting caught. The cops will set up road blocks and so on to stop you, which you can normally get away from, until they drop tire spikes, meaning you lose speed and control if you run over them. In free mode, this is fine, because you normally don’t spend a lot of time near the cops to warrant tire spikes, and the cops are stupidly easy to get away from. However, during an Outlaw race, where you have to do the race whilst being chased and rack up lots of Outlaw points, the degree of Outlaw-ness continues after the race. So whilst it’s rare to get tire spikes dropped during the race, after the race when you want to go to the next mission or whatever, there are tire spikes everywhere and you will lose any cash you earned from the race in fines.

I’ve only done one race in multiplayer, and the player took the first turn and glitched out, taking the opponents out with him. I was incredibly grateful to that player, as it was the race I have not won yet… however the extreme rubber banding meant the AI cars came and overtook me at the last corner. If you’re in a story mode race and haven’t opted to race with another player, you appear on the map to them, but you can’t see them. So on the map you’ll see what is clearly a race with the little arrows going around a course, but if you’re in the locality won’t see any cars or players. I guess this is to stop players trolling each other and parking cars along the route, but it’s very odd situation and creates a lack of cohesion between single and multiplayer. If you’re going to do this, why not make a single player and multi-player version of the maps, and allow one to be offline?

Conclusion:
Need For Speed lost its footing some time ago, and is still trying to find it. Whilst the game looks and sounds amazing, and the driving is fun for the most part, there were a lot of odd decisions made with this one – the FMV, the Always Online, Driving at Night, No Weather – which would have been expensive in terms of time and money but don’t really add any value to the game. My advice for the developers is to scale back the game, focus on what made Need For Speed so good back in the day, and forget trying to shoehorn in this and that to appease the masses.

Pros:
Amazing looking game
Great car sounds and good soundtrack.
The points system is far fairer than other driving games
Good variety in types of races / missions

Cons:
Car turning is a little unresponsive / sticky.
Rubber banding is ridiculous
Glitches of cars vanishing
Glitches in multiplayer races

60/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Midnight Club Los Angeles

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Midnight Club 3 Dub edition was one of my favourite driving games. It was just so much fun racing around the city in blinged out cars, bikes and suvs. It wasn’t too easy, but it had just the right amount of difficulty to keep you interested. Although Midnight Club Los Angeles differs from Dub in that it is bigger, better looking, better sounding, and the online functions are smoother, the extreme difficulty of the game puts you off that “just one more race” feeling of its predecessor.

The story set up is you’re a hotshot from the east coast come to LA to participate in races and score lots of loot. As you race, you gain reputation which will unlock more races, unlock parts for you cars, unlock new cars and bikes, and reward you money so you can afford to upgrade your vehicle. Pretty standard fare really.

There are different colours of races – Green, Yellow, Orange and Red, meant to indicate the toughness of the race. I say “meant to”, because there doesn’t seem a whole lot of difference between green and red in reality. The difficulty of this game isn’t hard, it’s brutal, so be prepared to lose. Often. Be prepared to be leading a race from start to finish, and losing at the last second because you slightly swipe a car in traffic and go careening off the road. Often it’s better to just let go of all the buttons and come to a stop. Or select Start > Restart Race.

I found the physics to be really detrimental to my efforts at driving. When you drive really fast the camera blurs and the cars get speed wobbles, making it really hard to drive at speed, especially down curvy streets with parked cars on the side. If you so much as skim another vehicle you will lose control and start to spin. Of course once this happens, the natural instinct is to compensate, which makes everything much worse.

Moreover, even when you’re in the clear in a race, out in front by a number of street blocks, the ridiculously tight rubberbanding – the AI code used to make the other cars catch up to you – kicks you in the pants and will overtake you, even though mere seconds ago the car wasn’t even on your radar. Although I didn’t find myself ahead often, I was beaten enough times after leading the entire race that I’m positive the cars teleport metres behind you when you get too far ahead. AI Controlled cars seem to never hit parked cars or on-coming traffic as often as you do, either, but instead take perfect lines through traffic and obstacles. Even if you try and follow them, you’ll find often they make gaps that a normal driver could simply not make.

What makes this the more frustrating is you’ll get to a point where you simply have no option but to race the same race again and again and again. Yes, you’ll learn the race and the lay out and the shortcuts (the AI cars take these too, however) but it seems that no matter what you do, how well you drive, that it is simply luck that sees you win or lose, and not your skill, patience or knowledge of the tracks.

Another problem with the game is the map. The overhead “google maps” type navigation system looks quite slick, but it’s wearisome to use. You can’t get GPS style readouts at all, and often it’s not entirely clear where to go, especially in some of the “open” races or delivery missions. And the game has the problem of having some obstacles looking like you can drive through, and others which will bring you to a dead stop.

The annoying thing is not all the races are as bad as each other. Time Trials are ridiculously harsh, and races with more than 2 cars are controller throwing maddening, but it is the Delivery missions take the cake of everything that is wrong with the game. You’re just racing the clock; you are given a marker on the map, and told not to damage the car – what could be simpler? Yet the slightest bump will knock a huge slab of the damage meter, the time is preposterously short, and all the while you’re constantly pulling up the map to see if you’ve taken the right road to get to the location.

However Freeway races are really quite fun, as there’s only one other racer and up to 8 lanes of freedom to weave between traffic. It’s also easy to know where to go – simply stay on the freeway. And simply cruising around looking for the hidden packages to unlock the cheats is awesome fun! Cop chases are a thrill – they’re supposed to be right behind you! And swiping a car, spinning around, and zooming off in the opposite direction is often a godsend compared to the rest of the game.

Online racing is fun as well. Of course, being human opponents, you know the races are much farer, and lag never seems an issue. You can opt to simply cruise around Los Angeles, chatting with people and then propose a challenge which gets you into the races. You can also jump straight into a race from the menu. Races take the forms found in the offline game, but you’ve got the option of turning traffic off, as well as making your own races. There’s also capture the flag races, when you race to capture a flag and then race to another point to win. These can take the form of team games, and is comparable to my favourite xbox game – Midtown Madness 3.

No doubt about it, MCLA looks sweet. The city feels realistic, even if the driving doesn’t. There’s enough variety in the city to make you want to explore, from long highway straights to windy hilly roads. As you cruise around, you’ll notice advertising, but it’s subtle, like 7-11 branded service stations and the occasional Pizza Hut. No idea if these are in the same place in the real city of Los Angeles, but it does aid a little in navigation.

The cars all look great, but there are only 44 cars and bikes to choose from, which feels quite limited compared to other games. The customisation of vehicles is pretty deep though, allowing you to change the hoods, sides, wings, doors and so on, as well as use real world branded parts. Although not as deep as Forza, for example, you can even share and rank other people’s cars online.

Sound wise the game is also respectable. The cars sound grunty enough, and the screams of the people on the sidewalks as you cut corners are hilarious. However, the AI will taunt you during all races, and as you often race the same people and same races, it gets tired real quick. Also being based on the west coast, everyone sounds like a stereotypical gangster. I was really impressed with the music – lots of bass type music like hiphop, breakbeat, and techno, with a bit of heavy rock thrown in as well, but it will tend to repeat itself more frequently than in other games.

Conclusion:
Midnight Club Los Angeles is a decent game in all respects apart from the insane difficulty. The good races are great, and online modes are lots of fun. I realise some people like high difficultly in games, and get a great feeling of achievement when they beat the AI. However, in MCLA the difficulty borders on masochistic, and to me it isn’t very fun when you’re improving your driving, improving you car, to be beaten time and again at the last minute, and playing the same race over and over again.

Pros:
Great looking racing game
Deep customisation of cars
Realistic feeling city of LA

Cons:
Insanely difficult.
Physics and camera effects when racing fast hinder play
Map, whilst clever in design, doesn’t really do a good job
Repetitive and annoying AI taunts during races

75/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Driv3r

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All those involved in game making and playing know that games have bugs in them, with some flaws that are glaringly obvious to anyone, and others that even a top rate Games Tester will miss. Generally these bugs don’t impact on the gameplay too much, usually being minor art flaws and the like and these are acceptable to most game players. Furthermore if there are too many ‘showstopper’ bugs, the developer and publisher always have the option of delaying the release (a regular event in the games industry) or cancelling the project.

So how can a game which has been in development for over 4 years, had millions of dollars spent on it, come out and be so buggy that even in the opening scene the flaws are so glaringly obvious that my techno phobic, game-hating girlfriend can spot them? Because right from the moment I loaded Driv3r and started the main story mode “Undercover”, I was confronted by a jerking cinematic that was so bad I took the disk out and checked for scratches.

Not finding any I started again and got the same “effect”. Now, this is unacceptable in any game really, but when the game boasts of being a cinematic experience, yet they are thusly flawed, it totally breaks any suspension of disbelief that the game is trying to create. This is a real shame because the cinematic feel is such an integral part of this game and this immediately puts you off. In Reflections defence, there can be problems in the manufacturing process with bad media (CDs) and once it’s gone into manufacture there’s not much that can be done.

The sad truth however is that there’s much to get involved in through the cinematic story anyway. It is trite and bland with the voice acting so stiff that you aren’t involved in the story anyway. The whole feel of the game is lifeless. There’s a lack of colour throughout the game and everything seems muted and dull. There’s a real lack of polish and refinement that shows through the bad looking textures to the characters which all look alike with little emotion portrayed in the faces and gestures.

There is simply no ‘life’ portrayed in the game at all. If it’s meant to be a gritty cop action film then you need to care for someone and nothing is developed narratively beyond the minimum needed to set up the next mission. The voice acting is kind of ok, but with such an average story and generic characters anyone could have supplied the voices and the money they have used to secure names such as Mickey Rourke, Michelle Rodriguez, Ving Rhames and Iggy Pop seems wasted.

Furthermore, as soon as the actual game starts for real, you get the sense that something has gone horribly amiss. Tanner, the carry over character, moves like an overweight 50 year old. His jump, performed by the A Button, is a laughable hop of about a foot high, meaning he can’t jump over anything. The aiming is so laborious that if he was in a shoot out with a 3-toed sloth that he’d be dead 3 times over by the time you get to pull the Right Trigger. Pressing the Back button switches you to 1st Person, and it’s a little better, but still awful slow. With something this bad a working auto aim feature would be nice, but I found no difference between “On” and “Off”.

The worst control is getting into and out of the car, performed by the X button. It is so slow that if you are being shot, health will be reduced to quarter from the time you press the button to actually entering or exiting the vehicle. Tanner can swim, but again this is cumbersome, and getting out of the water takes forever, again leaving you open. Seeing that the game is called Driv3r, they could have left this on foot part out, but no, they obviously wanted a ‘GTA Killer’. I think they may have killed it by making it laugh so hard it’s sides split open and its guts gushed onto the pavement.

Luckily the on foot AI is so damn stupid it would have trouble against an anaesthetised 3-toed sloth. This is best described by example. On a boss level, you chase the boss in a boat, and he jumps onto a little shack on the water. Once in the shack I stood back from an open door with two of the boss’ guards on the other side, the boss below me on another level, but I could see his head. I repeatedly shot the top of the boss’ head until he died and mission success. He ducked a couple of times, but then kept standing up into my line of fire. The guards didn’t budge. Didn’t run in the door to shoot me, didn’t move to protect the boss, didn’t even try to fire at me through the wall, which was another “tactic” other enemies tried.

Another time I was on foot, in a windowless building, and a cop car passed by. I must have been within its detection range because it came after me, by directly driving into the wall, until I heard it explode. This is just not acceptable in games anymore, and especially not AAA rated multimillion-dollar productions.

The driving sections are kind of fun. The exaggerated physics of the cars suits the “action film” feel they were attempting, and you get a real sense of speed as you race through the streets of Miami, Nice and Istanbul. There are cars, boats and bikes to ride, and they all handle pretty well, and the use of the standard Xbox driving controls (Right Trigger to Accelerate, Left to break, B to burnout/handbreak) means it’s easy to pick up. The damage models are pretty good too, and crashing into things and shooting up the other cars looks mighty fine. This is a good thing, because you will crash into things… and quite often. And this isn’t because of bad handling, but because there are some things that you can drive through, and some things that you can’t and it’s never clear which is which. In one part of a city you can drive through the fences, and in another you can’t. Not only is there that, but the spawning distance of cars and obstacles is so ridiculously small that things will pop up as you are right on top of them.

Given that the maps are open and huge, every one of the missions is so linear that it seems a total waste. In games like GTA and True Crime the level design is such that you are always encouraged to explore. Not so in Driv3r, which follows one linear mission after another and offers no way to really explore within the main game. There are some missions that require you to reach a destination point without a timer, and you can explore on your way, but immediately after that there are timed or checkpoint missions so if you want to go back to something you saw, you generally can’t. You can cruise around in “Take a Ride” mode, and complete the races in the Driving Games Section, and these are ok (unless you leave your vehicle), but dividing the game into 3 different modes doesn’t give a sense of a cohesive world, unlike the games that Driv3r seems to emulate.

Furthermore, the missions range from ridiculously easy to controller-smashingly hard. I would not have the slightest problem if I wasn’t able to complete the mission because of lack of skill, but the annoying pop ups, bad collision detection and even often the idiocy of the A.I turn most of the missions into exercises of frustration rather than skilful manipulation of human over machine.

The best bit of this game is the music, which is done incredibly well, and puts the score up a few notches. You can have your own soundtrack, but the game soundtrack suits the action, especially the car chases. The loading screen is in the format “Previously in Driver…” much like an action series, and is something done really well. As mentioned before, the voice acting is stiff but still kind of OK, given the generic story and script, and the cars do sound pretty fast. A few extra points come from the ability to record and direct replays, which you can share on Xbox live and a bit of fun can be had watching, and giving feedback to the countless replays already available to watch.

If you were expecting ‘the next big thing’ from Driv3r (which considering the pre-release hype you had every reason to) and you’re a fan of this style of game expecting something new and exciting, you will be extremely disappointed. If you are a long time fan of the Driver series of games there may be something of interest for you here but the bugs and general dullness of the game kills any excitement that you would be looking for.

Conclusion:
The shoddy on foot action and the terrible AI, the bugs, including bad pop up, bad collision detection and glitches in animation both in cut scenes and in game, the terrible mission design and trite story add up to a really average game. If it was a budget priced game made on the cheap it may be acceptable, but this is a AAA title with a massive budget and long development time and it is simply unacceptable. What’s worse is it seems the only thing that was done right was the marketing, as Driv3r has topped the sales charts. This might indicate to game publishers that they can get away with shoddy game making as long as they market it well, and for such a classic game franchise to be handled as poorly as it has here is a real shame. If you’re a Driver fan, give it a rent, if you’re only curious we recommend you give this game a miss.

Pros
+ excellent marketing and production values
+ ‘take a ride’ mode is fun for a while
+ the driving bits are kind of fun, with good vehicle physics
+ making the replays is also fun and you can share them online

Cons
– stiff and awkward on foot action, of which there’s too much
– annoying bugs which should just not be in retail code
– incredibly linear mission design
– terrible pop up for both textures and objects
– dull, lifeless game world.
– some of the worst AI ever encountered in an Xbox game

49/100