Hello everybody. I've been a fan of Sega Racing games (Daytona USA 1/2, Scud Race, OutRun 1/2, Sega Rally, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Racing, etc.) ever since I first played Daytona USA 2 in the arcade around 2002. I like them and try to promote them as much as I can. Let everyone know about the magic that is Sega Racing Games!!!
So the Sprint Cup has started Preseason at Daytona. They're showing off new 2013 cars like these:
I like race cars, but when they overshine them, it sucks (see Daytona USA 2001). The cars look a bit off to me, like they were designed nice and tight for circuit racing (which is strange since this is NASCAR, not Australian V8 Supercars). But the new 2013 cars are going hella fast at Daytona and everyone seems to like them. Everytime NASCAR changes their car designs, there's a few "boohoo, it sucks" complaints but let's get racing cause I can't wait for NASCAR again, geez.
I thought the 2011 cars looked cool...I just hope the designers aren't trying to turn NASCAR into F-Zero, I'd have nightmares if real-life drivers wore tights and appeared in Nintendo fighting games.
So I was casually watching Speed footage of the "Preseason" and everyone was standing around in the garage. The topic started to sway towards video games. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. (whom I will never have pity on ever again for being an "Enemy of Sega" and beating Danica Patrick in that big Sega race Nov. 2012) was playing Words with Friends on the iPhone (Zynga, GAAAAYYYY). And Juan Pablo Montoya (who had yet to test the 2013's car capabilities versus 2013's jet dryers) was playing CSR Racing on the iPad, a popular drag racing game with a NFS/FnF style. I saw this game before...my dad was playing it and some Trials/Linerider dirtbike game (with engines that sound like BB guns) on his iPhone.
After this clip that I'm sure no one saw, the camera goes over to Bobby Labonte for a brief interview. He's asked "what kind of game would you give for Darrell Waltrip to play?" to which Bobby replies, "A fishing game." And then Darrell Waltrip comes on to say "Shoot, I don't play no video games or fish, what'chu kids talkin bout there with those fancy electronic devices." Then they go on to talk about Kyle Busch's car and the video game discussion is over. In other words, no progress was made between race drivers and race games. Gamers and gearheads still continue to look at the other side's stuff and think "what the f*** is that s*** they're messin with."
Ya know what would be great? If we could get Daytona USA, OutRun, or even freakin Super Sprint in the hands of one of these race car drivers. You'd THINK that race car drivers would appreciate race car video games, don't you? Especially hardcore balls-out racing games that bring the blue skies and that sense of speed RIGHT TO YOU with no firesuit required. Surely a legit race car driver can truly say THAT'S A GODDANG GREAT RACING GAME THERE my programmer friend. I GOTTA GET BALLIN ON THAT NEW SUPER SPRINT GAME. Speaking of race car drivers in games...
DANICA, YEAH IF YOU COULD PLAY SEGA ALL-STARS RACING: TRANSFORMED ON TV,
THAT'D BE GREAT...
But this leads me to my next point and it's a pretty crappy observation I made from a decade of browsing countless Internet chats/forums. I think there's a dichotomy between the two types of racing games--the sims and the Mario Karts. On one hand, you got diehard auto racing fans are only seen playing the sims like iRacing, NASCAR: The Game, and F1 by Codemasters. On the other hand, you got plain old gamers who'll get into Mario Kart, Burnout, Need for Speed but they have no interest in real life racing (the "NASCAR is rednecks turning left for 5 hours" crowd). Almost like the other insults their intelligence. "Arcade racers makes a mockery of the sport," versus "Racing sims are too boring." Take your pick.
Why can't we have both? In Sega Racing Games? I almost think Sega is caught in limbo there. Like Sega takes real life cars & settings and run with it--they embellish real life, look here. Oops, can't have that apparently. You talk about the "Sega Racing Nation" and it's a place run on niche cult classic fuel--like NASCAR fans won't list Daytona USA as being "one of them" while mainstream gamers just can't be arsed into playing something requiring practice & determination like OutRun 2.
It's probably why Danica Patrick's Sega All-Stars Racing campaign bombed--because we have a REAL LIFE DRIVER (appealing to racing sims people) trying to sell an ARCADE RACING GAME (played by gaming nerds who have no idea who Danica is). It's like trying to advertise motorized scooters on Disney Channel. Herp derp, we still love you Danica & Sumo Digital.
Seriously though, if I ever meet a real life race aficionado (someone who sticks a Dale Sr. "3" on their rear windshield or something) who's obsessed with crap like Mario Kart (or better yet, SEGA ALL-STARS RACING), I'll flip my s***. Ok guys, we're all gonna be real life NASCAR/F1/Indy/Rally/Le Mans/V8/Touring as well as arcade racing fans now. Problem solved, goodnite.
And a happy 2013 to you...when everyone else was shooting fireworks, I was shooting a Remington 12 Gauge and an AR-15 (at nobody, don't worry kids). Tell me that those things aren't more impressive (and louder) than sparklers & Roman candles.
When we talk about racing games, I hear this term thrown around a lot--"sense of speed." Well, what exactly is it? "It's the feeling that you're going fast." Well duh, that's what everyone wants. But other than that, people really don't know what it is. They just want something that feels good. Well how do you make that good sense of speed? I'm going to try to define it the best I can.
First of all, notice the term--sense of speed. It's the human body's five senses. It's like trying to explain what and why does certain art is pleasing to look at, why certain food is delicious, why certain scents elicits positive moods. It just "does" somehow. Like try to explain what constitutes "good" art or something. "It's pretty and detailed." Okay, well what's "pretty" or "detailed." Besides, there's abstract art which is neither of these and is hugely popular. You could consult a biologist, anthropologist, or psychiatrist for the answers to these things, but I'm going to explain this sense of speed nonsense as best as I can:
Go back to when you were in a fast vehicle, be it a car, truck, motorcycle, airplane, boat, or roller coaster. You're sitting there then it takes off. You start moving, but you're moving faster than usual. It's "foreign" to you as your body begins to experience weird sensations. G-forces pull you back. Then you start turning as this heavy contraption leans in and out of turns, pulling you along with it. You experience the dopamine rush as your stomach starts to turn and your hair stands on edge. You rest in-between a state of hopelessness to complete control--you can't predict what'll happen next as you attempt to will the car to your bidding. You're doing something super-human--the human body was never meant to go faster than, say, 25 mph. And accompanied with the g-forces are some rumbling as the vehicle trades blows with the road and the engine lets out a hollow roar. Maybe you're in a cool piece of machinery like a Ferrari or an F1 car. Maybe there's some token fast-paced music similar to AC/DC or Metallica. In other words, you're experiencing something out-of-this-world and sense of speed just takes you to that seemingly foreign world.
F1 car of speeds over 200 mph.
Suspension cam of stock car at Daytona.
Mindblowing rally racing!!! So kinetic you can feel it!!! Skip to 1:22.
Go to 2:50, man that's some serious horsepower.
Now...how do you get sense of speed in a video game? Well, I'm sure if you were actually in the cockpit of those cars, yeah, the sense of speed would be really easy to pick up. But you're actually not there (shocker). Looking at racing sims like GT and Forza, they do a good job of transmitting real-life imagery on the screen, but if you're sitting on your couch looking at a regular TV/speaker combo playing a racing game with a regular video game controller, it's not the same thing--you don't feel the same rush as a real life driver. So what do we do? We have to embellish the video game. Obviously, this is one huge advantage that video games have over real life but often, for the sake of "authenticity," racing games (particularly simulations) don't add anything new and thus the games become boring and people lose interest.
"Hello everybody, we're here in the boring world driving a boring car around a boring track at a boring speed using a boring video game controller. You're gonna love this game."
So what should we do to improve the sense of speed? Here, let me throw some suggestions out there, another Top 10 (err, 12) of things:
1. There needs to be some "tactile" feel of the car. The suspension is a great thing since as the car is flung in certain direction, so do you. Sometimes, the car trembles at a high speed, which isn't realistic, but the faster you go, the more you shake, the more you "feel" you're moving. And when the car does some sort of hard cornering, it leans and you can feel yourself being pulled along with it. And not just cornering to the left or right--elevation changes (going up and down hills) is great too since the car is rocking in all directions (track design is crucial). If the car doesn't react to steering, then it might as well be a curling puck on ice--no emotion, no feeling at all.
2. Tire smoke, tire tracks, just other parts of the car that react to physics of the car (car damage, perhaps?). I really cannot think of a good racing game that doesn't have tire smoke/tracks at all--it's mandatory. Exhaust fumes and car damage can be a plus as long as it isn't too distracting for the player. When it comes to Burnout, I'm not "anti-wreck" but I want it to be about fast cars, not smashing them to pieces.
Tire smoke on display as the car's rear bumper starts to kick up from excessive rear-wheel torque.
3. There needs to be a lot of easily-identifiable stuff flying by the car. They give us scale that we've gone from point A to B in X amount of time. Sparse environments with nothing to drive by is boring and doesn't feel like you're really passing anything. The original OutRun does this well--there's tons of crowds, palm trees, dotted lines, overpasses, buildings, signs, even stripes in the road that just whip right past you. Small objects are generally better than large ones since you pass those quicker. Seriously, I talked about this in June 2011, this is a video game not a real life world. We want stuff in our worlds. We want to pass that stuff really quickly.
Colorful, easy to identify objects like clouds, palm trees, traffic, and white lines.
4.Camera angles. There is no such thing as the "best" camera angle, but typically, you want the camera to hover close to the pavement and get a good view of both your car and environment you're passing by. It really helps too if the camera doesn't just stay fixed on the car's rear bumper but rather captures the sides of the car as it is cornering to further emphasize that the car is hauling ass in a certain direction. Ridge Racer violated this rule many years ago and I call it out today.
Should be staring at the driver-side door! Here, I feel like the camera is fixed in place--it's weak.
5. What about the actual speed of the car? There really is no recommended limit but going by what my Sega racers say, a good range would be between 180 to 20 mph (290 to 385 kph). You can get away with going slower or faster if you abide by the rest of the rules...sort of, anyway. F-Zero goes up to 500+ mph but going too fast can get really nauseating. People can only intake so much stimuli before they get profusely ill, even if it's just a projected image and not real life. EDIT: As for going slow (like Mario Kart slow, oooo burn), then you can't have that "sense of speed" if there is no speed in the first place.
Two radically different racing games.
If you DO go outside the speed range, then your game will have to compensate for it. Like F-Zero GX (made by Nagoshi-San, one of the only few people who can actually handle such a beast), has huge environments with wide, gaping turns. On the other hand, you look at something like Club Kart at its low speeds and you have to think "put the camera way close to the ground and make really tight, compact courses." You have to play into the hand of your game's speed range and scale the "size" of the world up/down from there to make sure each is equally difficult yet still playable by the demographic you're aiming at (racing diehards?).
6. 60 Frames Per Second. I don't care what anyone says--60 FPS is better than 30. The best analogy is the log in the fireplace--you're gonna go with the smooth, rounded one or the rough one? The more surface area the log puts on, the faster it will burn (in other words, the smooth log will not burn as quickly). If you're playing a racing game at a lower FPS, then you're not catching as much of the action as you want to--you're only getting, say, 50-60% of what your brain can actually absorb. However, with a 60 fps game (the "rough" log), you get to experience more frames of the action and it just caters to your visual senses better. But if you MUST have 30 FPS or less, then make the frame speed consistent. Inconsistent FPS just f***s your brain all up and isn't fun to play in any genre of action video game.
7. Control response time is paramount. You talk about "fast" games nowadays like Super Mario Bros. or Call of Duty and when you turn, jump, or shoot, you do it INSTANTLY. It makes you feel like you're in charge of your own destiny. When making a racing game, if the car just slowly flops around or you have no real control over where you go, not only will you get pissed off at it, it feels more like the game is trying to usurp control over the car from you. That's why I chew out "slow" games like Need for Speed and (now) Forza because I don't get that feeling like I'm 100% in control of the car if it's so sluggish to do anything. This doesn't mean "make the game piss easy to cater to casuals," but I believe responsive controls are a must.
8. HUD stuff. You don't need to stray away from HUD pieces. As a matter of fact, they can top off the sense of speed. For instance, Daytona USA 2. The "slot machine" position counter, the tach needle which has a motion trail, the track map which rotates to match your car orientation, how everything shakes when you collide with something. It blends in with the rest of the gameplay and at the same time stays out of the way of the action so no complaints.
A decent HUD interface, providing meaningful information and giving a clear shot of the car and what lies ahead.
You don't necessarily need fewer HUD pieces to be "immersive." Split/Second is a great example of this as they chose to include very limited pieces of info in select parts of the screen. Great. But taking away the speedometer (only to replace it with that stupid burnt "border" that blocks parts of the screen) doesn't make the game any faster IMO and can be really annoying for racing "diehards" like me who want simple information like "where am I on the track" and "what's my current lap time?" Is it that hard to ask? Did Split/Second (and Ridge Racer Unbounded as well) need to reinvent what a racing game HUD needs to look like?
Oh Split/Second, how I missed thee...
EDIT: I should mention that I really do love that lap counter. Just the flickering numbers, it's great. Times should be down to the milliseconds (if possible...I know Daytona 1 or Scud Race didn't have three digits).
9.Motion blur is something that isn't necessary bad but I tend to frown upon. THIS IS DEBATABLE but IMO, the more effects you introduce to the game, the worse it gets. Some games feel the need to obfuscate part of the screen when going fast to make it seem "edgy." Yet I don't think that is necessary. Particle effects and whatnot that "prevent" you from absorbing the environment (and possibly cause the game to lag) just piss me off. If you're running at 60 FPS as it is, cruising down the road at 200+ mph, you're going to have a hard enough time trying to understand your environment as it is so motion blur will come automatically. Don't need to force these things on the user.
I searched for "motion blur" and all I got was this scrambled mess. Don't do this.
10. Sound is phenomenally important. After all, visuals are only 1/5th of the human senses so you have to cater to the other ones (hearing is another 1/5th). If you're playing a racing game for about 20 hours and you have to listen to some whiny piece of crap sound effect for that entire 20 hours, it'll suck. Get some deep, hollow engine sounds so you can "feel" the horsepower. Makes it feel like you're situated in a tin can with that loud motor. Get great tire, transmission, suspension, collision, EDIT: and wind sound effects. See NASCAR suspension clip for heavenly "air tunnel audio." You can add "contrast" to pictures to make them more colorful so do the same with sound. Get some stereo speakers to surround you. Easier said than done since not everyone can afford that setup.
11.Now about how you physically feel the game. That's another 1/5th right there. You play a racing game and there needs to be some tactile feedback like a real race car driver would. Here's where Sega's state-of-the-art arcade cabinets come in to play. The force feedback of trying to fight against an aggressive car (much like a cowboy tries to ride a bull) is something you really have to play into. Not as relevant on home consoles (just make the controller shake) but something you can't discount if you're going for 100% perfection.
12. Last but not least--a racing game NEEDS great music. It needs to be exciting and fit the tone of the game. Sega does a great job at creating their own tunes as I've mentioned here. Great lyrics to accompany fast-paced beats. But if you can't create your own music, then use licensed music! Problem is many producers (not just in games but TV & movies too) pick pretty lame "racing" music. Like I think Coldplay is alright but it sure as hell doesn't inspire me to get up and race cars. I can think of 100 better bands--AC/DC, Metallica, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynard, Powerman 5000, freakin Papa Roach (releases an album for racing game tracks), you get the picture. But this is a pretty heavy conversation I will probably discuss in a future post. It'll be great.
TLDR version, here's five bullet points:
1. Work on making the car display "emotion" as it drives. Stoic cars = bad, dynamic cars = good.
2. Use camera angles and track environments to catch as much detail as possible.
3. 60 FPS. Don't get too fancy with the HUD and avoid hindrances to the driving.
4. Go for solid, responsive gameplay that errs on the side of arcade physics.
5. Iterate upon sound & music until it is rich in expression.
That's my list. You think about these things and say...which racing games are fast and which ones are not? Do they follow these rules? Even "bad" racing games (IMO) like Burnout and Need for Speed do some of these things properly but the ultimate ones have to be Sega racers. Now you know about putting better sense of speed in your video games. Click on the games on the right panel bar to look at fast game footage. Now to go to sleep and dream about cars!
This post is WAY overdue. But because I miss NASCAR so much, it has to be done.
Now, it's July 2012 and the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway IS ON. What am I going to do in the meantime? I could go to the race and listen to this (not my video):
Or I could watch it on TV and sit through this commercial 1,000,000 times:
Now that commercial's pretty funny (confession bear time) but NASCAR trumps all. This is my recount of the race (with pics using my new camera).
Like last time, the drive from Orlando to Daytona Beach is one hour. Me and my dad show up a few hours beforehand, looking around town for some place to park. We pay $20 to park in a Denny's parking lot about a mile from the track. Great, but that's the breaks--this standard town is filled to the brim on race day and I sure as hell wasn't going back to that grass field with the bus rides.
A few hours before the race, there's the pre-race show going on next to the track. You can walk around, check out some cars & drivers, the merchandise trucks, the Speed Channel booth, etc. It costs nothing to walk around so it's good to do if you have time to kill. I didn't carry a Sega sign with me this time, thank goodness. But I did wear my Sonic the Hedgehog hat. Rub two brain cells together...Fast Sonic = Sega = Daytona USA.
Got a picture next to Aric Almirola's #43 US Airforce car. Do the math why he's my favorite driver: the "43" blue car with (close to) my first name.
I saw Aric hanging out by the Air Force tent but he ducked away at the last second before I could shake his hand. Aric, I could've made you Super Sega famous (as opposed to Danica who's just overrated) but you missed your chance, man!
Hey it's Juan Pablo. Ask him what it's like to hit a jet dryer. Or race a donkey.
Tire Plinko from the Price is Right.
I should mention a main problem going to Daytona for me was always the weather. In February, the problem was rainy, chilly weather. In July...it is HOT. So by this time of walking around, I had to stop at Denny Hamlin's FedEx tent before I died. Those shirtless rednecks might be on to something...
This truck makes a million dollars. Speaking of Junior...
There's the Hendrick Motorsports tent. And as you may have guessed, a very important person is there. Me just trying to get to shade, go over there as well.
Who's that over there?
Yeah, it's Junior. Answering personal questions like "Who's your best friend off the race track?" I think he said Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin though that was so long ago who cares.
Junior walks off stage, signs three things and runs away. I was just five feet away from him! Yeah he's probably pissed that everyone wants to bug him. I'd be too if I were that famous.
Some more cars & stuff.
It's the new Ford Sprint Cup Car which looks nothing like an Aston Martin, I swear.
Nothin wrong with Ford trucks.
It's Greg Biffle's car SAWED IN HALF.
It's the Speed Center booth. People just waving their hands when the studio isn't even on air yet. But I don't want to be on TV so I just ran away!
Never mind this nonsense, let's go take our seats. It's near the same location I sat before--front row seats just before the entrance to pit lane.
There were a lot of people on the grass. You see, the band Train (the ones responsible for the elevator-tastic Drops of Jupiter) were performing on the in-field as people were walking in. Wait, what's with all these emo alternative bands like Coldplay doing in my NASCAR anyway? Where's the AC/DC, Motley Crue, etc? Whatever, so we're listening to music waiting for the race to begin.
I "watch" Speed Channel (as in leave it on in the background) and the show Hot Rod TV was on. Hey, they are talking about old race cars. This is the Marmon Wasp, the winner of the first ever Indianapolis 500 in 1911.
If it was the number 41 and had a red & blue paint job, I would've pinched myself. Cause one of the most famous race cars in history is almost named after the same insect as the Hornet from Daytona USA. Hornets are a subset of wasps so they're relatively the same. Is that a coincidence or was Nagoshi-San onto something???
About the first Indianapolis 500, it is a funny story... It was basically a soap box derby but more people got hurt. Race cars back then drove an average of 75 mph (120 kph). Bear in mind the race was always 500 miles so it took 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 8 seconds for Ray Harroun, driver of the #32 Marmon Wasp, to finish. The track was laden with white sand to absorb the oil. A car's tire came off. One guy died and six others were injured. There were pace cars, pit stops, and 80,000 fans in attendance so this was a "legit" event.
Nowadays, Indy Motor Speedway can seat 400,000 fans (largest sporting venue in the world) and the 500 is aired on ABC every year as everyone makes a big deal out of it despite the fact no one cares about Indy Car anymore, or something. I care about Indy Car...if only someone on Speed Channel told me when the races come on cause they always happen when I'm NOT watching the TV...
Black & white footage doesn't help me see the sponsors...
What is that, Go Daddy and Red Bull sponsoring cars in 1911??? NOPE!!
Lovin' the shoutout to the "King of Speed" from Daytona...
And if this old timey news footage wasn't hectic enough, guess what--this is 1911 we're talking about. Do you think a bunch of judges could keep track of the positions of 40 cars over that time span? After 10 minutes, everyone lost track of the positions. Then about 200 miles in, a spin out near the judges' stand caused them to flee, throwing any record-keeping out the window. So Ray Harroun "won" because he was such a swell guy who drove a car made in Indianapolis and was good friends with the president of the track. Hey, read this.
I like this picture from Ron Hoskins at Getty Images (from the previous link) cause we love cars and we need more old-school cars in our vidya games. Oh wait...
We already do, thanks Amusement Vision, no thanks to you AM2!!! EDIT: Oh yeah, you can't forget about the 1951 Hudson Hornet, made famous by Doc Hudson from the Cars movie.
Just so you know, Cars is THE BEST PIXAR MOVIE! *readers rage*
I know he's somewhere cruis'n with the girls, he must be. So many Ferraris, even the Flagman gets a ride.
It would be funny though if you raced against 900 other Ferraris and each one of them had the "Rival" arrow over them. BLING-BLING-BLING-look at them points. Hmm, let's make it a Heart Attack challenge--Keep passing cars!! Let's start!! YEEHAA!! All right!!
It also dawned on me--should there be an OutRun 3 some day, there's one more Ferrari they should put in the game:
Oh man, two Yu Suzuki games in one. IMPOSSIBRU!!!!!
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One More Thing You Guys. Anyway, I was just playing Rock Band 3 Pro Keyboards and I was bitching and whining as usual about how there's no good Keyboard charts left and all Harmonix has been releasing is crap background noise charts for songs like Shinedown, Iron Maiden, and Matchbox Twenty. Seriously, you don't buy Iron Maiden to play keyboards. So I stumble upon an old classic: Say Goodbye to Hollywood by Billy Joel. After a few tries I finally gold-starred the thing (only 10th on the leaderboard, I suck) but I noticed something that I NEVER noticed before. Skip to 0:30, 3:12, whenever the chorus is:
Sega bye to Hollywood
Sega bye my baby
Sega bye to Hollywood
Sega bye my bayyyybehhhh
I shat bricks.
We have the next PINGAS on our hands here.
3:24, best SEGA!! scream impression.
BTW, I know this is stupid but if Kotaku can post crap like this 10 times a day then I can post it at least once a day.
Alrighty mates, I'm awfully tired after a days of work (orly? like every single day) so I'm going to talk about Forza 4 a bit more. I know some of you don't like it but it's one of the only non-Sega racers these days I care about. But here are some common sense things I believe Turn10 screwed up on. I'm just mentioning them so that no one game dev makes these same mistakes. This is educational. Here goes:
1. My main problem right now deals with TIME TRIALS. If you have no idea what the hell a time trial is (shame on you), it's when you race the track uninhibited for the sake of getting the fastest lap time possible. I've been doing this in the Rivals mode where you beat other players' times and win the cash (BOOM!!!). Time trial goes on for "infinity"--you can do as many laps as you want. The main problem is that on the first lap, they put your car right before the starting line. As seen here:
Each lap is counted from the moment you cross the finish line. On Laps 2 and thereon you have the advantage of starting at full speed. But on Lap 1, you start from a standstill which basically means your first lap will be 4-8 seconds slower than the other laps you can put up (assuming you drive with equal skill every lap).
So why is this a bad thing??? Because you obviously have to make one full lap before you can actually start putting up the best record times. That first lap is completely meaningless. Unfortunately, many tracks have the misfortune of taking 1 to 3 minutes to get around, sometimes more than that (Fujimi Kaido is 10+ minutes, Good Lord). This wouldn't be a problem if they could A. have a rolling start or B. back the damn car up a half-mile from the finish line so it can get a speedy start on the first lap. Holy cow, did this thought ever cross Turn10's minds???
Something sorely lacking from Forza 4.
Even worse--if you choose to restart during a time trial, guess what--you get put back right in front of the starting line again. Picture that you begin a 3+ minute lap and you screw up 20-30 seconds into it and you don't feel like driving the rest of the lap for nothing so you want to restart from the beginning. CAN'T LET YOU DO THAT, PLAYER!!! Restart and you get put back at the start and waste time getting up to speed for Lap 2. What an DAMN waste of time. It makes time trialing a huge pain in the ass.
"But the game is realistic that way! You can't just 'teleport' back to the beginning like that." Sure, and being able to buy a Ferrari 250 GTO (approx $20 mil in real life, only 39 were made), paint anime chicks on it, smash it to bits and have it fully repaired for fifty bucks sure is realistic too, I get it.
2. Here's another thing pertaining to lap times. There's a universal leaderboard that saves everyone's best times for any track/car class. You can set these lap times during a time trial or during an actual race. However, there are "clean laps" and "dirty laps". A dirty lap occurs whenever you drive completely off-road, bump into a wall, or bump off/draft another car. Car damage is irrelevant as long as you don't violate the previous rules. Dirty laps still go on the leaderboard although clean laps take complete precedence over dirty ones. So if you want to rank high on the leaderboards, you MUST do clean laps.
See those red arrows pointing to that Triangular ! Sign? That means it's a dirty lap.
When time-trialing, the main goal is to run a clean lap. Remember when I said earlier if you screw up and you want to restart? Well if you bump the wall and ruin your clean lap, then that's one time when you would want to restart. But that's not all--when you do something to "dirty" your lap, it lasts for about a 30 second duration. So if you bump the wall/draft/go off-road about 20 seconds before you cross the finish line, then the next lap is automatically dirty even though you did nothing wrong. What the hell??? I can't tell you how many times I started on a dirty lap then proceeded to put up an excellent lap time only for it not to count for this dumb reason.
I understand implementing #1 and #2 for the sake of making the game more "challenging"--that it's easier to safeguard a good lap time because it's more hurdles for challengers to jump through but it still sucks. It's borderline "padding" the gameplay.
2.5. BTW, you ever do a time trial on Catalunya School Circuit or any Top Gear track in reverse? There's a turn right after the finish line. Unless you're driving a really light car with awesome brakes, you MUST slow down before the finish line in order to make that first turn. So if you're going for the fastest time possible, you have to fling the car into the sand/grass/wall and ruin the next lap in order to record that time. Nothing that Turn10 could've done about it but it's still a pain when you think about it.
3. This is stupid but it rears its ugly head on occasion. Ever have your car come to a dead stop aside from the starting line? Like you spin out or suffer a catastrophic wreck? I've had occasions in which I applied the pedal and the car just would not move. And it's not like I'm peeling out--the tires don't spin at ALL. I'm in first gear and the engine is in good condition. Every second, the engine just "jolts" like vrrrmmp.....vrrrmp.....vrrrrmp. Then after 6+ seconds of flooring it, the car just drives off. Makes no sense. It's like Marty McFly trying to start the DeLorean. If this is "realistic" or if there is some way to negate this slow start, it's still pretty dumb there's no obvious way to solve it.
Then again, I have experienced my fair share of public humiliations where even a slow start was not a possiblity.
4. This is something that actually has nothing to do with racing altogether, yay! We're talking about paint jobs. You know how some cars have secondary colors like lines/words (ex. a red Camaro with black stripes, a blue Camaro with white stripes, etc.). Well once you buy that car with the secondary color, you CANNOT change that secondary color EVER. Changing the colors via the "Paint Car" menu won't touch the secondary colors for some reason.
Here's an example: the Bugatti Veyron. If you have a Forza 3 Lvl. 50 save game on your hard drive, Forza 4 will give you a bunch of freebies when you create a new file--the Veyron included. It comes in that typical black/maroon combo. Well, I want to switch the paint job to the white/sky blue combo that we see in the Buy Car screen. But when I go to the paint menu and choose the white/sky blue box, I get this:
It only swaps out the black, not the maroon. Ridiculous. It's possible to go into to the Decal Editor and apply shapes over the secondary colors but it's not the same thing--curvy lines/shapes are hard to cover up. I don't get how Turn10 overlooked something like this. I get scared buying cars with secondary colors now since once you buy it, there's no turning back unless you feel like doubling-down on the same exact car...how lame is that.
5. There's no Ford Torino in the game.
SHUT YER FUGGIN FAYSCH
Ok, don't get me wrong, I still think Forza 4 is a great game but I only bring up these things because I'm a concerned fan who wants to correct a few things. Yeah I sound petty but it's to be riveting/entertaining so deal with it. If I didn't care about the game, I would've never brought up these things. So if you're a racing game developer, avoid these pitfalls at all costs or else you will suffer from the EPIC FAILS.
