After all the talk about being outside the vehicle, we go behind the wheel in our latest ride.
Even with all the talk surrounding the on-foot aspects in the upcoming game, Need for Speed: The Run, it’s refreshing to get behind the wheels of some of the fastest cars in the world and see where the game is heading as we race across the United States.
Of course, we know only bits and pieces behind the game’s expansive story; we are expecting a game that puts players in the role of Jack as he races from San Francisco to New York against other competitors and from the mob. In our latest hands-on time with the game, we had the opportunity to drive a Porsche 911 GT3 in a stretch of desert highway in the game’s Sprint Race mode.
The objective was simple: Complete the stretch of highway as fast as possible and overtake 10 cars to improve our overall in-game ranking. We drove a Porsche, and the stretch of highway offered what you’d expect with past NFS games: plenty of shortcuts, tight turns, and the necessity of avoiding incoming traffic. As far as we’ve been told, all courses in the game are based on actual real-life spots throughout the country, but some slight modifications have been made to incorporate the Frostbite 2 engine and to make it more appealing for racing fans.
A new implantation being introduced in The Run is the rewind feature. Unlike other games where the rewind feature is available to use at anytime, here, it kicks in only in certain situations; specifically, those in which you crash and total your car. Now, rather than having to replay particular races all over again, you are taken back to the last-reached checkpoint and can attempt that particular spot again. The vehicles are put back in their same spots, and now you have the opportunity to fix the mistake that may have caused the first accident to occur.
While racing, we had to use the rewind feature twice, and both times, it was on the same particular stretch of highway. It was kind of nice to be able to try the same spot a couple of times because we got to see what we did wrong the first time. For the second attempt, we went in the complete opposite direction but still managed to destroy our ride.
Although it’s nice that you don’t have to restart a particular race from the beginning, racers are still penalized for using this feature. While the number of rewinds resets after each race, your race timer does not, and this will factor into bragging rights. Also, depending on the game’s difficulty, the number of times you can use this feature is limited. With the one course we raced, it would be highly unlikely that someone would use up all available rewinds, but we expect that later stages and more populated courses, such as city ones, may require numerous attempts.
The popular Autolog feature makes its return in The Run, and your use of rewinds will factor in how much you’ll be able to show off to friends. Because the timer does not reset, if you use the rewind feature, don’t expect to get a really good time. Also, even if you do manage to beat your friend’s time, if you used a rewind, your score is tagged as such, and it won’t hold as much merit.
The racing experience thus far has been what we’ve come to expect from a Need for Speed game, so fans shouldn’t worry too much in that regard. Now, we must wait and see how the game’s Story mode holds out, and hopefully, we’ll hear more on that before the game is released later this year.
The Carmageddon reincarnation has been officially revealed. It’s called Carmageddon: Reincarnation, appropriately enough. (The website appears completely broken at the moment.) And it’s being made by the same team that created the original two games, Stainless Games.
“Carmageddon has returned to its Indie developer roots, and the time is right to bring the game to a new audience.”
Are the words from CEO and co-founder of Stainless, Patrick Buckland. He carries on,
“Originally an ambitious title that tested the hardware limits of its day, we’re excited that the game will finally get the showcase it deserves on today’s platforms.”
Wrecked: Revenge Revisited looks to bring simple controls and frantic action to racing fans later this year.
When it comes to vehicular-combat racers, often the best kinds are those that you can play against your friends in the same room. Wrecked: Revenge Revisited gives you the opportunity to race and battle against your friends in a number of different environments. Instead of this being a standard kart racer where power-ups help you race to victory, you need to use the environment and the various weapon upgrades to take out your opposition and score points.
So instead of requiring you to race as fast as possible, each scenario plays out in “heats.” When you’re playing against another racer, the character who gets eliminated first loses a point, while the survivor earns a point, and the one who reaches the required number of points first wins. As more competitors are involved, the point deductions and rewards will vary. When we played with three racers, the first to go lost a point, while the second didn’t lose any points, and the winner of that particular heat earned the point.
If you’ve recently uninstalled all 16GB of GTA IV then I have some bad news for you. You’re going to want to spend the next 24hrs reinstalling that badboy.
Thanks to the dilligent efforts of some tech savvy GTA fans, the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has been modded and tinkered with until it’s so beautiful it can make a grown man weep. It’s something to do with shaders, aliasing, depth-of-field and other things that sounds great but I don’t fully understand. Thankfully understanding how it works isn’t important. Just watch the video below then wait patiently for it’s release so you can download it and marvel at it’s supernatural splendour!
“Grand Theft Auto IV Looks Amazing Again” was posted by Andrew Tagg on Tue, 06 Jul 2011
Need for Speed The Run gives you a chance to partake in the underground world of illicit, high-stakes racing. This trailer for Need for Speed: The Run showcases the dangers you’ll face when you hit Chicago in the coast-to-coast race.
We take Turn 10′s upcoming racer for a test-drive on the E3 2011 showfloor.
Earlier today, during a visit to Microsoft’s E3 booth, we had an opportunity to play Forza Motorsport 4 for the first time. Turn 10′s upcoming racer is being shown on a number of different setups; there are several where you can just play with a controller, a couple where you can play in a seat with a racing wheel and a Kinect set up for head tracking, one with a force feedback seat set up in front of three large screens, and one where you can control everything in the game with a Kinect. While in line for one of the head-tracking rigs, we got a pretty good look at the full Kinect setup, which was mostly being used to show off how incredibly detailed the car models are this year.
Viewing one of the game’s many Ferraris inside a nondescript garage, the guy using the Kinect was able to reposition the camera simply by moving, almost as if he were walking around the car. Furthermore, using his hand to control a small icon on the screen, he was able to interact with part of the car. Focusing on one of its wheels, he called up an overlay detailing its specifications, for example, and when he moved around to the rear of the car, he popped open the engine cover to look inside. Later, we saw him open the driver’s side door and, by interacting with an icon that appeared onscreen, climb inside. At this point, he was sat in the driving position and interacted with the fantastic-looking interior in much the same way as outside. Putting the key in the ignition lit up all of the dashboard instruments, and when he reached for the steering wheel, he was given the option to participate in a driving challenge, which he accepted. Because we weren’t playing the game ourselves at this point, we can’t comment on how well the Ferrari controlled using the Kinect, but the driver certainly didn’t appear to be having any major problems with it.
What we can comment on is how well Forza Motorsport 4′s head-tracking feature works. After sitting down and getting comfortable with the steering wheel and pedals, we opted to drive a Subaru (one of only three cars featured in the E3 demo) around the spectacular-looking Switzerland track that was shown during the Microsoft press conference earlier this week. The car handling was great, though we’re pretty sure that a good number of the game’s driving assists were turned on by default. The effect of the head tracking was pretty subtle; when we went out of our way to try to look out of a side window, it didn’t respond as much as we had hoped. When we stopped thinking about it and just let it do its thing as we subconsciously leaned into corners a little, though, the effect was really good. It wasn’t so dramatic that it was distracting, but it was definitely noticeable enough to add to our sense of immersion while using the cockpit view.
Forza Motorsport 4 is currently scheduled for release in October.
We take a look at destruction-centric Unbounded, the start of a “new branch” for the Ridge Racer series.
You have to squint to see a Ridge Racer game in Ridge Racer: Unbounded. It looks, in many ways, closer to any number of racing titles built around violent takedowns and environmental destruction. The way producer Joonas Laakso tells it, Unbounded is the product of his racing specialist studio, Bugbear Entertainment, being tasked with bringing its technology to bear on a “new branch” of the Ridge Racer series–that is, racing damage and physics technology grown out of making the demolition-focused FlatOut games. “We are really good at smashing things up,” he says.
Bugbear has matched that destructibility tech with Ridge Racer “intensity”, says Laakso, in the fictional East Coast city of Shatter Bay, where illegal racers (the titular Unbounded) battle to dominate the streets. The city, inspired by New York and Chicago, is designed for “carnage and risk-taking”; built for dynamic, piece-by-piece, physics-based destruction rather than scripted spectacle that is the same each time it’s triggered. (Laakso admires Split/Second but says that unpredictable, procedural destruction gives Unbounded the edge over it.)
The driving experience itself takes drifting and boosting from its Ridge Racer heritage–otherwise, says Laakso, nothing has been brought over wholesale from earlier Ridge Racer games, except for some classic cars. We are shown Crash Race mode, in which you charge up your destruction power with drifting, chasing other drivers, and post-jump airtime (other modes will be more purely about crashing, and others more purely about racing). With this power charged, you’ll see markers thrown up on certain buildings and obstacles, indicating a target in need of your destructive attention. Unbounded, then, has unscripted but not universal destruction–there are certain spots designed specifically for taking dynamic damage.
You can look at the title “MX vs. ATV Alive” and wonder a lot of things. For example: What do MX and ATV have against each other? Are they really fighting or just pretending? Will they ever reconcile? And the list goes on. But the most important question is this: What is the word “Alive” doing in the name?
