OK, I've had time to collect my thoughts a bit and catch up with the workday after being useless at 7am this morning, so here goes in random order:
GAME IS BAD ASSSSSSS ONLINE. I was afraid that it wouldn't be much fun, for some reason. That the sense of speed wouldn't be there. That the super cars would rule the day. After many hours last night sandwiched around the Stanley Cup Finals game, none of that was a concern any longer. I think that they really managed to pull of the handicapping system the way that they hoped...cars with crazy acceleration and speed will get eaten up in the corners, and cars that can take the corners on rails will get gobbled in the straights. I haven't found one 'can do everything' car in any class yet other than the R1's, which only have 2 cars available out of the gates and both are identical other than looks.
If anything, the top speed value is a huge factor this time, which is the case any time you're racing cars. In one particular race Jon had a car that was .5 better top speed than the one I was racing, and he would just yard me every straightaway. But getting it stopped and through a corner was another issue, as I kept closing the gap and pulling up to his bumper every time the road curved. In the end, the top speed won on that particular track, but if we have that same race on another windy track with the same cars I would guarantee the slower, more nimble car would win it. I really do think that you could take a single car and tune it with different gear ratios and settings from track to track and make it a universal ride, but it would take some work. It wouldn't be a "plug and play" dominator like the CRX was last year, for instance.
The Performance Indicator value is superb. If Jon and I raced with equal cars the racing was sublime. If we varied it a bit, you could really tell...a car with 20 points more in the PI would be just a bit stronger on the track than its opponents. Cars that were equal PI, but radically different ratings (such as the top speed vs handling competition earlier) finished about a second apart despite driving so differently. After some tuning, perhaps that slower car could lose some of its nimbleness and pick up some top speed and draw dead even. I think they pulled it off, and made it so no supercar can dominate. It will take more than 1 day, for sure, but early results are positive. It's also changed my stance on "forcing stock upgrades and tuning". Since you have a much better feel on car performance other than the generic "D, C, B, A" ratings, it's almost a necessity to allow upgrades and tuning options to facilitate a wider range of cars instead of the stock arcade rides available.
The online performance is brilliant. You can force any driving assists on or off for the entire field, set up single circuit or series races with a big payoff at the end, adjust the distance and time countdown when the race finishes, and car classes available. I was able to go in and set the vehicles to "No Race Cars", or "Only D", for example, and then further go into the PI index and say
00, so the entire stable of "cream of the crop" D class cars were eliminated. Later on we were self-handicapping ourselves and taking cars in the 330 range and allowing some of the drivers who were struggling to take the field in 399 cars, and that seemed to work out well. The guys who were in the back usually finished in the same spot, but they were able to hang tough longer and really put up a fight, rather than just watching us check out at turn one and never seeing us again. It really served its purpose. The ability to set the starting grid to random, lobby points, reverse true skill ranking, true skill ranking, or any other number of options really lets you start a race in almost any way that you see fit, with slow guys in front, slow guys in back, or anywhere in between.
The only thing I think I'm in direct disagreement with (compared to almost everybody else I heard last night) is the "virtual line" thing that we have enabled. I'm all for ABS...if you want to use it, most cars have it anyway and the braking model is funky. But this virtual line is nothing but a crutch to me, and it takes away the majority of what makes a race car driver good...the ability to memorize a track, hit his marks, and perform. What's worse, if a guy isn't using the braking line or ABS and racing a guy of equal skill who is, it's almost a guarantee that the "memorization" guy will cook it a few times while anybody using the line will drive a track on his first time like a veteran. I've never been a fan of assists, and really plan to elminate that braking line next time unless there's a serious uproar against it. It's just not in the realism area. I can deal with ABS, TCS, and STM a lot easier than I can deal with some magical floating green line on the track essentially serving as an autopilot. Rant off.
At the end of the night, though, I was dreaming of that damned game. I started to really get a feel on the brake and acceleration travel and how far to push the pedals to really keep it at the edge of traction, and some of the battles online were epic. I think once we start building our career stables and tuning them to suit us, we'll see some really varied fields of cars being competitive.
I haven't tried the game with the controller yet, only the wheel. It was natural from the moment I started my first race.
I set the dead zone in the controller options to 1% and saturation to 100%, allowing a full travel in everything...steering, throttle, and brake. It was easy to drive from the moment I fired it up.
The FF is weak...period. Turns and acceleration don't really do much. It's really bizarre, because you can bang off another car and have not much of anything going on, but then you hit a curb and the wheel has a VERY strong jerk in your hands. You can feel when you lose grip over an elevation change, as the wheel goes slack somewhat, but overall I didn't think a lot about the FF, which means it's pretty forgettable to me.
They finally included an interface in a driving game that works with the wheel and it's obvious. Instead of the last Forza where you had to look around with the R stick, with a wheel you HAVE no R stick and you were limited. I found a controller option inside of the options that let me set my look left and right to X and B, look back to Y, and camera to A as well as the paddles for shifting, etc. I don't have a handbrake, but I've never been one to use a handbrake in a game anyway.
After doing that, I had no more blind spots, even in the bumper cam. As soon as the car cleared my "side" cameras when using X/B, it was cleared by me. I tested it a few times (and I apologize to drivers who just saw me weave over like a bat out hell during these tests, since you were unwitting guinea pigs for me to test clearances and whatnot), and never had a "quarterpanel collision" when thinking I cleared somebody. It's also quite nice that it's an instant-snap-view instead of a pan, so you can even use it mid corner to see if somebody's sliding up into you, etc.
The paint shop and most menus now use the LT and RT (pedals on the wheel) to move around in as well, so no more rotating and spinning with R stick and positioning with Left...so you can still actually use the paint shop and whatnot with the wheel.
Overall, the control was tight, the FF served its purpose but was largely ignored, and the interface was streamlined with the wheel in mind. I'm a happy man.
So I've gone a complete 180 degrees...not excited about the game before release to really wondering where I'll get the time to play it as much as I'll want to, and wondering whether it will have legs with the DSP crowd. I really haven't had that kind of fun racing on a console since the initial PGR2 days where everybody was just going apesh*t at the ability to race online lag free. It had that kind of magical 'sweet spot' for me last night, and it got stronger and stronger as the night progressed.
I'm so completely and totally "all in" on this one...
One other thing...anybody complaining about the sense of speed in this game is either driving from the third person view, or in a really slow car. We had some races last night in the R1 cars and I was practically wetting myself at top speed.
