Playtime:
353 minutes
This is one of the least enjoyable games I have ever played, which is extremely sad because I was so hyped for it and I really really wanted to like it. It has so much potential, and it does a number of things well (which I will mention later in the review), but the actual gameplay is just the polar opposite of fun.
Driving on a wheel and pedal setup is very much not a good experience, but I had no interest in driving on a controller so I stuck it out and tried to accommodate the game's extremely limited handling model... only to find the very first real event after the tutorials to be near impossible, due to some very poor choices from the development team.
The game gives you a stock AE86 as your starting car (which is awesome - I have one almost identical in real life, so I was very keen to drive it on the game), but then it promptly puts you on a track that is waaay too fast for a stock AE86 to drift. Big, sweeping corners that are too wide to drift in second gear, yet the car doesn't have enough torque to drift it in third gear either. I cannot imagine a worse matched track to be the starting event with such and underpowered car.
The only way to beat the event is to wiggle the car back and forth along every straight and corner, looking like an absolute fool, not following any kind of ideal drift line or anything. THAT IS NOT DRIFTING!! The game even tells you something about drifting being all about flow and style, yet when it comes down to it, their useless drift meter rewards the most disgusting driving ever, and does not reward good realistic drifting. Nor does it even make good realistic drifting even possible with the starting car.
The second or third event is even more insanely difficult, thanks to the game's mediocre handling model and abysmal scoring system, but after doing the game's one-and-only kind of side-quest a bunch of times I managed to level up and upgrade my car enough to win that drift event.
Then we have the mini-boss, where the game gives you conflicting instructions and expects you to meet both of them. "Get more drift points than your opponent and cross the finish line first," it says. ARE WE DRIFTING OR RACING? BECAUSE DRIFTING IS NOT FAST AND RACING IS BETTER IF YOU DON'T DRIFT. THESE ARE OPPOSITES. NOBODY IN THE WORLD IS INTERESTED IN DRIFT-RACING, IT IS NOT A THING! PICK ONE!
The opponent AI will also straight up kamikaze into you if you are in front of him, which will absolutely send your car flying, but will not negatively affect him at all, thus making this event the least fun thing I could possibly imagine. So, I thought maybe I just need to upgrade my car more. No, sorry, because the game has now taken away the one and only side-quest (sushi delivery) that existed to make money, so now I'm just locked into a point where literally the only thing to do is win this event, but the event is borderline impossible to win.
Sure, MAYBE I could spend a heap more time trying this one race over and over to win, but honestly why the heck would I want to do that? Maybe for the people who like a challenge, I could understand making it this hard, but I don't have the time or patience to put that amount of effort into a 'simcade' game. I play on easy difficultly, because I want a fun, relaxed gaming experience, and yet still the game is so unbalanced that you could have convinced me this was the hardest difficulty setting.
And by the way, I'm not a completely hopeless driver either - I am far from the best, but I can drift fine on Assetto Corsa, a game that is supposed to be actually somewhat realistic and should therefore be harder than a 'simcade' game like this. I'm almost convinced it would be easier to learn to drift IRL than to win this event, and that's the biggest issue with this. Games, on easy mode, should not be so hard that it feels like you would have an easier time learning the skill in real life.
I understand that some people want the challenge, and that's great, but that's what harder difficulty modes are for. Not everyone wants that. Not everyone wants to restart the fourth event in the game countless times just to finally win and make it onto the next event, which is likely to be just as bad, if not worse. That's not fun. Especially when every restart means another nine years of loading time. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN LOADING?! I WAS LITERALLY JUST THERE, AT THE START LINE TEN SECONDS AGO!
The worst part is, I don't think the game is like this intentionally. I doubt they meant to make it impossible even on easy mode. I think they just so thoroughly messed up the balancing of the AI and the scoring system, and the result is the complete ruination of an otherwise promising game.
It also is extremely stuttery at times, which is less than ideal. The gearbox just randomly pops out of gear every so often, presumably due to poor support for sim shifters. It randomly yanks the steering wheel to the side during the loading screens. The force-feedback and wheel behaviour in drifting leaves a lot to be desired. There is no obvious consistency in what objects you can drive through and what objects are rigid immovable objects. I hit a traffic cone once and it stopped my car dead.
The traffic do not make any attempt to avoid hitting you, they are all asleep at the wheel. Night time is way too dark in some areas, even after turning up the brightness well past what the game recommends, and headlights are way too dim (both mine and the oncoming cars'). But all of these lesser criticisms are things I could have overlooked if the actual gameplay and events were enjoyable.
Visually, it looks quite beautiful. The environments are awesome, and the cars look great. I like the idea of this game very much, it seems to be inspired by NFS Underground 2 which I absolutely loved. I even like the idea of doing a manga as a way to save money on things like voice-acting and cut-scenes, since it's a small studio game. That's cool and creative, and evokes a very Initial D feel, which is obviously what they were going for.
Visual customisation is okay, but not amazing. Extremely limited in paint options - I can't even paint my wheels?! Also can't adjust the wheel width or offset, so the AE86 is stuck with the most hideous narrow wheels ever even if you change the style of wheel to something that should otherwise look cool. I guess these things might get fixed/improved in future updates. Performance mods and car tuning are okay, but not great.
Small complaint, but why are we able to adjust the rear camber on the AE86, when those cars are solid rear axle? Also why can I visibly see that it has a different rear suspension setup to the real life version? I know it's a very small issue, but you get better attention to detail out of Assetto Corsa mods that some random dude made for free in his spare time. Still, we've had far worse oversights than that in far bigger games in the past like NFS, so again, this is obviously not a game-breaker.
The only game-breaker is the catastrophic AI opponent difficulty balancing, which really does completely ruin the game. And unfortunately, until that gets fixed, it is basically unplayable. It is impossible to progress any further without devoting a stupid amount of frustrating and unenjoyable time into beating this race... and then the next, and the next.
But frankly, that's not a grind I see any value in pursuing, so I highly doubt I will ever play this game again. Maybe in a year if the devs manage to sort the issues, but until then it's a complete waste of money and storage space.
👍 : 206 |
😃 : 16