Graphics Horse
Member
You expect too much from random racing sim reviews.
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Project Cars 2 Review thread
- Thread starter danowat
- Start date
You expect too much from random racing sim reviews.
That comment alone tells me what kind of gamer they are and to take everything else they say with a grain of salt
I always dislike it when games are criticized (or praised) for sense of speed for nonsensical reasons. Unless a game has its physical scale off or dumps trackside elements super close for viewpoint parallax, you shouldn't be seeing a dramatic difference assuming the underlying track construction is correct (for a sim).
Yes, a dynamic FoV, progressive motion blur effects, vignette, and view-angles/shakey-cam/sound design can be used cleverly, but there are limits, and I seriously doubt those elements have been changed for the worse since PC1.
Yes, a dynamic FoV, progressive motion blur effects, vignette, and view-angles/shakey-cam/sound design can be used cleverly, but there are limits, and I seriously doubt those elements have been changed for the worse since PC1.
I traded in my pCars just last week and all the critical reviews are talking about things that were in the vanilla game already. They didn't fix anything.
Even in the case they were (they are not, but default FOV is smaller, which IMO is a better choice), you can turn all of them off/configure to your liking.
Hyperbolic much?
Sebmugi
Member
Bitch Pudding
Member
Quoted for discussion
Only some tracks have snow?
AI criticisms are a worry, although they are better than the original?
1.5 is the impression I get from a few reviews
Tearing, again.....
I would like to but just watch the gamersyde videos :/ Hope they patch the game soon.
Shadowhaxor
Member
Tearing on PS4 Pro and a few occasional frame drops
I said there was tearing. Glad to see someone else pointed this out.
Yui's Empire
Member
Wow.
soundscream
Member
Wow.
Gamersyde PS4 Pro analysis videos are interesting, tearing is all over the place on some tracks, and nothing on others, also, some views, not others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBsrR4IAPyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCM8v38oK-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU66iRC9UBA
Looking forward to see what DF have to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBsrR4IAPyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCM8v38oK-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU66iRC9UBA
Looking forward to see what DF have to say.
TylerDurden4321
Member
That the loading times are bad seems weird. I remember pCARS1 on XB1 to have pretty standard racer loading times and on PC and my 1Gig SSD, it's the fastest loading racing game from this gen that I have. If you just do practice with no other cars on the tracks it's almost unbelievable how fast pCARS1 tracks load. Why would that be so much worse in pC2 on console? It can't be just the slow hdd and big track file sizes, then Forza 7 load times would be hopeless without an SSD with those 4k textures and big pre-baked lighting data.
Btw. I stand to what I said about Assetto Corsa on console. For me, tearing is something I can live with, framerates under 60 I can live with, but it has to be stable, stuttering from major frame pacing issues gives me headaches and is inexcusable in a racing game.
So... here I wouldn't have a problem on console I guess.
Alan from Team VVV liked pCARS1 a bit too much, so surely he will like this too. Jimmy Broadbent, GamerMuscle are too "is it sim, is it rFactor" and not enough "does it feel good and consistent" (at least if a game calls itself sim). I think I still trust EmptyBox, but he really didn't like pCARS1 after a month or so and made a "not hyped at all" video about pCARS2.
Btw. I stand to what I said about Assetto Corsa on console. For me, tearing is something I can live with, framerates under 60 I can live with, but it has to be stable, stuttering from major frame pacing issues gives me headaches and is inexcusable in a racing game.
So... here I wouldn't have a problem on console I guess.
Look at how they praised the last Forza games in the reviews, then later in the "This Week Inside Sim racing" you hear that they didn't like it all that much. pCARS1 also was praised by ISR but since Darin left they never played it and both of the guys left don't like the handling. I don't trust their game reviews at all. The opinions between the lines outside of the review videos is where the value is.
Alan from Team VVV liked pCARS1 a bit too much, so surely he will like this too. Jimmy Broadbent, GamerMuscle are too "is it sim, is it rFactor" and not enough "does it feel good and consistent" (at least if a game calls itself sim). I think I still trust EmptyBox, but he really didn't like pCARS1 after a month or so and made a "not hyped at all" video about pCARS2.
GenericUser
Member
Inside sim racings verdict will be interesting. I doubt these casual gaming websites are really good at judging a racing sim.
I will speak about the only thing that matter.
Wheel handling.
So, the greatest issue of PCARS1 has been successfully solved - default setups of cars and fefault setups for wheel handling.
I lost majority of my playtime in trying every single car in the roster to get the default feel of handling.
As many recall, despite being Senior Member for PCARS1 and avid contributer, I was totally dissappointed with PCARS1 because the default setups for cars were hot mess and player should have been making separate wheel setups for every car type.
No, that is no more.
Everything works from the box, every car I tried (only few I haven't) have distinctive and convincing feel and it is finally as it should have been from the start. Congrats SMS!
If you ask me to compare the handing with some game, I would compare it to SMS's least known game, that was one of my favorite PS3-era racers, infamous Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends. And that is damn great.
I tried controller, and I can precisely see where the average criticism comes from. It comes from not understanding the P2 physics and inability of casual drivers to understand the way car actually behaves. You need to brake. Like a lot. And you need to brake early. Like very early. Even earlier thatn very early. And that is the problem I presume. I tried just few races on controller and from my perspective, it works pretty nice. But only if you take into account the actual weight of the car, the need to brake early and try to forget everything you know about controller driving from other racing games. And that is not easy.
Major kudos to SMS for fixing the wheel and default setups - that is the single most important detail which makes this game shine.
I was driving the game with Fanatec CSL Elite / ClubSport V3 pedals / Frex Shifter+ combo on PS4Pro. Everything works out of the box, no need to fidle with anything.
Also, another congratulations for leaving enough overhead in the OS to be able to work with all of the steering wheel options in any moment in the game in the options/pause menu.
Great job SMS.
Wheel handling.
So, the greatest issue of PCARS1 has been successfully solved - default setups of cars and fefault setups for wheel handling.
I lost majority of my playtime in trying every single car in the roster to get the default feel of handling.
As many recall, despite being Senior Member for PCARS1 and avid contributer, I was totally dissappointed with PCARS1 because the default setups for cars were hot mess and player should have been making separate wheel setups for every car type.
No, that is no more.
Everything works from the box, every car I tried (only few I haven't) have distinctive and convincing feel and it is finally as it should have been from the start. Congrats SMS!
If you ask me to compare the handing with some game, I would compare it to SMS's least known game, that was one of my favorite PS3-era racers, infamous Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends. And that is damn great.
I tried controller, and I can precisely see where the average criticism comes from. It comes from not understanding the P2 physics and inability of casual drivers to understand the way car actually behaves. You need to brake. Like a lot. And you need to brake early. Like very early. Even earlier thatn very early. And that is the problem I presume. I tried just few races on controller and from my perspective, it works pretty nice. But only if you take into account the actual weight of the car, the need to brake early and try to forget everything you know about controller driving from other racing games. And that is not easy.
Major kudos to SMS for fixing the wheel and default setups - that is the single most important detail which makes this game shine.
I was driving the game with Fanatec CSL Elite / ClubSport V3 pedals / Frex Shifter+ combo on PS4Pro. Everything works out of the box, no need to fidle with anything.
Also, another congratulations for leaving enough overhead in the OS to be able to work with all of the steering wheel options in any moment in the game in the options/pause menu.
Great job SMS.
lem0n
Member
Great to hear. My full Fanatec setup should be arriving this Friday, same day as pCARS2, so I'm quite excited for this weekend!
JackAubrey
Member
I don't think so. Plenty of us drive real cars and play these kinds of games a lot.
When I played that (Nvidia?) demo release on steam out of curiosity, I was surprised that for the PC1, a fully-patched promo version had tracks included with semi-consistent AI pile-ups on normal-seeming corners. Like, the standard AI was unable to finish a race with a group of 16+ cars.
AI isn't simple, by any means, but in terms of game design, I almost can't believe it when a game has problems as fundemental as that.
Holy crap! How is something that frequent and troublesome overlooked.
Lol @ the end of the video. Love tap from another car destroys and launches his tire.
Unknown?
Member
In the defense of snowy tracks. There are many you would never see snow on. It'd be a disconnect to see snow at say Willow Springs.
Christ, I hope rallycross and ice racing haven't created too much of a distraction during development. I think I'd have preferred to have seen a more tightly-focused, highly polished and fully-resolved version of pCARS 1 than a game with new disciplines and loose surfaces, but the same old rough edges. Has the team stretched themselves a little thinly, perhaps? Or does pCARS 2 just need a couple more months of work to iron out the creases?
Snow is in all tracks that would have snow in real life.
Not the same case. PC2 needs polishing in some areas, whereas PC1 was broken on release and never got fixed to a desireable state.
WoolyNinja
Member
I feel like both PCars games have reviewed so randomly its hard to know whats real? With the first game I made the mistake of trusting the people who said the non-wheel controls were fine. They weren't even remotely fine. At the very least I should be able to go straight but that was near impossible, especially with the first car they started me out in (go-karts). I ended up getting a decent wheel which really improved things but it still wasn't perfect.
Now reviews for PCars2 are out and its a similar situation with things like FFB, physics, sound, etc? I don't know what to believe again. How can one person say FFB is improved but still not where it needs to be and another person says its fantastic? Reviews on FFB shouldn't be subjective, there are plenty of racing games to compare it with. Is it better or worst than those?
Now reviews for PCars2 are out and its a similar situation with things like FFB, physics, sound, etc? I don't know what to believe again. How can one person say FFB is improved but still not where it needs to be and another person says its fantastic? Reviews on FFB shouldn't be subjective, there are plenty of racing games to compare it with. Is it better or worst than those?
bryanee
Member
lmao, I didnt expect it to keep happening.
xrnzaaas
Member
The AI was garbage in Monaco (Azure Circuit) in the first game as well. The worst ones were the LMP1 races, because the cars were far too big for the track and you couldn't have one clean race without a huge pile up in Loews or Rascasse.
I can't say about the Formula categories, because I mostly ignored them in pCARS 1, but yeah, this looks awful. The guy restarted multiple times and the game kept messing up.
Yui's Empire
Member
Unrelated, but reminds me of a hilarious glitch in F1 Challenge 99-02 back in the day. If you hit the replay button during the start sequence, when you go back to the race to the red lights, all other drivers start before the lights, while you have to wait to avoid a penalty. Not just that, but they'd go way too fast in turn 1 for some reason, which in Monaco was downright incredible to watch. You'd often see 3-4 cars tops who did not retire right away. I must have spent hours doing that on Monte Carlo alone recording the results from time to time in Fraps.
If Project Cars 2 has this "feature" I am suddenly much more interested in it, lol.
Yeah, I get that, but it would still have been nice to have the option for all tracks, but realism etc (it's still a game though)
I think the take away should be, if you enjoyed PC1, there is a very good chance you'll enjoy PC2 more.
Frostman
Member
This video is ridiculous. Can't believe a problem as consistent as this made it into the final build.
Judging by the consistent complaints of bugs, it's looking like a rough launch. Will pick it up in January.
The 'no snow in Dubai' realism thing was talked about pretty extensively since Seasons was announced. I just wish there was a winter Laguna Seca in there with some lush greenery.
Yeah, I remember the discussions now.
TylerDurden4321
Member
I think, like amar said before, there are many reviewers, who don't get it because they don't have anything real to compare it with. If you have a good wheel, but only use it with Driveclub, DiRT Rally and Gran Turismo, then you wouldn't know about self-aligning torque curves of different tire types, wouldn't know that you need to have a physical model of the suspension geometry. Good FFB calculates the forces that would act on a real steering wheel. The titles above don't even have the underlying data to do that. pCARS1 had it, but the tire model and how forces were compressed (because a T300 is about 5x weaker than what you can feel in a race car) was pretty bad. That you could configure it all to your liking - increase this factor of calculating the wheel forces, but decrease that one etc. - made the issue even worse. A lot of it was the bad tire model though, I don't wanna gloss over that.
draughn101
Member
From the few reviews we have now, it sounds good but buggy. Which I'm ok with. Glad to see it's still getting great reviews with the bugs that we've seen mentioned.
No, same game, different opinions.
Castef
Banned
Journey
Banned
Sounds like he's saying it's still 4K but open framerate with 60fps being the target a la Tomb Raider PS4, but not locked like FM 7. Visuals will still be 4K and high framerate apparently.
KennyLinder
Member
Different standards.
Which racing games would you say have good AI?, FWIW, I'd say that, for most situations, PC1 has some of the best AI I've played, even if it's just as good as PC1, it'll be better than most.
ManUnkindH
Member
It's you and easy allies, don't care about any others.
Certinty
Member
Bad AI? The first game had great AI. I can't believe so many people thought the AI was bad, unlike pretty much every other racing game they were aggressive, far better than being reluctant to overtake at every opportunity.
Standards? As bad as the AI is the game should not land on the shelves next week.