About seven years ago, I picked up Bugbear Entertainment's Flatout 2 on a whim after eying it for a few months at my local game store. It promised racing (my favorite!) but also action (not my favorite, particularly in conjunction with racing.) It also featured exactly zero seatbelts and furthermore, promised to deliver a detailed simulation of the kind of high speed driver egress that sometimes happens during a seatbeltless car accident.
Yes, I fell for the gimmick. But it wasn't the gimmick that kept me interested. Not long after booting the game up, I discovered that lo and behold, Flatout 2 wasn't half bad. And in fact, it was good in all the ways I expected it to be bad. It didn't have silly Mario Kart rubber banding. It did have a decent physics model, which simulated weight transfer as well as a loss of grip at either the front or the back of the car. Flatout 2 was something different then, a simulation racer masquerading as an action racer. It was unique, and right up my alley.
Years passed, and I forgot about my little diversion with Flatout 2, the memories painted over with hours and hours of Gran Turismo, Forza and other more serious racing sims. Until I started hearing about a Steam Greenlight title being developed by Bugbear Entertainment called Next Car Game. After researching a bit, I initially dismissed Next Car Game due to its similarities with other soft body physics simulations such as BeamNG, which I concluded "gave better wreck."
But Steam being what it is, Next Car Game went on sale and the temptation was just too much for me.
Within minutes of booting up the game, I was immediately taken back to my memories of Flatout 2. Not only was Next Car Game shaping up well, it was shaping up well in all those wonderful ways that made Flatout 2 good.
Once again there is a shockingly realistic car handling model that underpins everything. While the game's driving physics don't quite match ultra fine level of detail of something like Assetto Corsa, they are much more realistic than something like Grid 2. Put bluntly, Next Car Game is a more realistic driving simulator than about 90 percent of the racing games on the market.
The beauty of Next Car Game (and Flatout 2 by extension) is that they're action racing games where the "action" part of the equation is fulfilled simply by virtue of subject matter. Hyper-realistic simulations are often slammed for being boring. That may be true when it comes to simulating train operation, or farming. It's somewhat less true when the hyper realistic simulation is of 20 rusting beaters fighting across jumps and silly amounts of debris to be the first across a finish line. It's what the game chooses to simulate that makes it a laugh.
Now before everyone runs off and buys Next Car Game, there are some pretty significant issues that need to be addressed, the first of which is that currently, Next Car Game has nothing close to the amount of content that a $30 title deserves. It's also a work in progress, and they're clearly still tweaking things. But if you've long been a fan of racing sims, but wanted something a bit sillier, or you simply like crashing things, I highly suggest supporting Bugbear Entertainment in their bid to make Next Car Game as great as it can be.
2K Drive unexpectedly dropped into the app store this morning at a price of $6.99. I'm always excited when someone has a go at making an at least semi-legitimate racing sim for any platform. While iOS devices suffer from some control issues, I have greatly enjoyed the Real Racing series in the past and I recently got into Colin McRae Rally for a spell. Owing to this, I bit the bullet and paid my seven dollars. So far, I've spent roughly forty minutes with the game, not enough for a full review but certainly enough for first impressions.
I'd previously thought the game was going to be free to play, as every screenshot I'd seen up to its release indicated a two tiered money system. At a price point of seven dollars though, I was hoping they'd scrapped all of that. I personally feel that free to play models tend to break games, giving them wonky progression and generally ruining pacing.
Unfortunately, the two tiered money system is still alive and well in 2K Drive. This goes a long way towards making the game feel like a free to play experience, with pop ups constantly reminding the player that they may purchase "stars" and "coins" for real money. Thankfully it looks like some hasty last minute balancing went on to justify the price point. Coins, the premium currency have so far been handed out with relative frequency. After my forty minutes of play time, I have about fifty coins, while the most expensive cars top out at around eighty coins. Stars on the other hand, seem next to useless. No vehicles or performance modifications can be purchased with stars, and the currency is only good for buying very basic cosmetic mods and repairing cars between races.
But how is the game its self? Well, so far its a bit of a mixed bag. I've already heard people complaining about the controls and indeed, they do take some getting used to. The problem here seems to be that 2K Drive wants badly to model body roll and suspension movement. Unfortunately this adds a bit of a delay to steering reactions. The driver turns the wheel, the car leans, settles and then starts turning. It's far from immediate and when driving from the outside (default) view there's little visual indication that the car is going to turn for the first half a second or so. This leads to more steering lock. As a result, simple lane changes often turn into your car careening into the guard rail on the middle of a straightaway. In car view makes the game more playable, as the player can visually see the steering wheel move, in the drivers hand without the split second delay. It still takes the car a moment to turn, but its far less unsettling.
The physics of the game are interesting. In some ways they remind me of some of the earlier Gran Turismo games, there is a very heavy handed feeling of weight transfer. Slam on the brakes and the tail will lighten up, sometimes alarmingly, with sometimes terminal results. My Datsun 240Z wasn't willing to power oversteer, but i wouldn't be surprised if some very basic drifting were possible in this game with some of the more powerful cars. There is of course a drifting mode, that I have yet to experience, but I suspect the physics are modified in this mode to make drifting easier.
Aesthetically the game is quite nice. It looks slightly more cartoony than real racing 3, but its too close to judge weather one is truly better looking than the other. Sounds are generally alright, but nothing groundbreaking.
It appears as though there are 27 cars in the game, which is quite frankly not as much as I'd like, especially considering two of those cars are the new Dodge Dart in different trims. However contrasting this are a couple of very interesting choices, include the Local Motors Rally Fighter and the Icon FJ45. Curiously the car classes are ranked from a minimum of "I" to a maximum of...."C." Yes, that's right the highest rank is "C." Super extremely weird.
Right now I can't recommend this game to anyone who isn't desperate for a new racing sim on their iOS device. Luckily I was. If you're really into sim style racing games and you're willing to master some prickly controls, have at it. The rest of you guys should wait for the game to be patched for better balancing and a bit of sorting out regarding the controls and camera.
I went hunting for Dragon's Crown a couple of days ago. I had it ordered on Amazon first, but the release date came and went without them having shipped it. So I cancelled my order and ran down to the local Gamestop, only to discover that they were out as well. Undeterred, I signed on to the Playstation Network in hopes of downloading the title. I searched for Dragon's Crown and came up with nothing. I was about to give up my search when I noticed an obscure "Dragon's Crowntheme" being hawked on the PSN store. On a hunch I clicked it. It had a link to where I could finally download the game off of the store. Lord knows why it was so hard to find.
Once I downloaded the relatively small file (less than 2GB) I was off to go quest and relive my childhood of playing the Dungeons and Dragons arcade games and Golden Axe. And relive them I did. Dragon's Crown captures the essence of early beat em ups in a way that hasn't been done among big budget games in a decade. It is a resounding success for anyone who is expecting and wanting a truly old-school-style arcade game with modern depth, loot and character building. The question as to weather or not it's a fun game though, is much more complex.
The most immediately striking thing about Dragon's Crown are the graphics. Put simply, they are stunning. There are no polygons here and everything is hand drawn and two dimensional. Unlike most 2D games these days, there is no low-res retro feel, the designers instead opting for gorgeous high resolution drawings in a vaguely anime style. The game looks and moves stunningly. This is what I imagined video games would look like in the future back when I was eleven.
Unfortunately, stylistically I have some complaints, namely the over-exaggerated breasts and butts of some of the female characters. The game is cartoony, so it doesn't exactly clash with the style, but the game also features relatively normal looking female characters, none of whome look out of place in the least. It's certainly not a deal breaker for me, but I'd like to be able to show this game to my girlfriend without feeling ashamed. I currently can't do that.
The game does its best to inject some variety into the age old hack n slash gameplay. Magic users have magic points which must be periodically charged; meaning that battles are a struggle between casting powerful spells and spending the two to three seconds it takes to recharge. Melee classes all have a variety of movies and can all temporarily lose their weapons. Several melee classes can even block, supplementing a dodge move that is available to all classes.
The right analog stick controls a pointer which can be used to direct an NPC thief that follows the party around. This thief provides access to any locked doors or chests, but will also loot any fallen objects which are left sitting for too long. He is both an integral part of the quest and a constant annoyance, creating an interesting dynamic. The pointer is also used to resurrect allies, find secrets and deprive enemies of their fallen weapons.
As a result, the game is pleasingly complex and players always feel like they have something to do, other than just jam on the square button repeatedly. Bosses are tough and require plenty of well timed dodges in order to exploit their attack patterns.
The game is not without weaknesses, my biggest complaint being the loot system. While nothing is fundamentally wrong with the in-game loot, the whole system feels just a couple of years too old. The menus and inventory management could use streamlining and the game doesn't constantly delight players with new and interesting weapons and armor in the same way as Diablo III or Borderlands II. Magnifying the problem is the need to identify all items, which is expensive enough that players will end up selling most of their loot without even knowing what it is.
Other minor niggles include the game locking its online portion until the players have completed a large portion of the single player quest. The game works great online, but don't expect to play it with friends until both parties have spent several hours with the game on their own. A curious choice for a game that is designed to be played primarily with other people.
The biggest fundamental problem facing Dragon's Crown, is convincing players to spend hours and hours on a genre of game that was originally designed to eat quarters in five minute intervals. The game does a masterful job at jazzing up the genre with a myriad of features, but it also steadfastly refuses to step too far out of the norm for what the genre offers. Being the deepest isometric beat-em-up ever made still doesn't guarantee that the game has enough depth for many modern gamers.
But for anyone who grew up playing and loving Final Fight, The Simpsons or X-Men,Dragon's Crown will likely delight. It pushes its old school inspiration to the technological limit without ever hinting that it's anything other than exactly what it is. It is unapologetic in its retroness while still utilizing modern game making techniques. And for anyone sure about what they're about to get into, it's a once in a decade kind of game.
The BeamNG tech demo was released the other day and I wasted no time in downloading it. I then said "screw it" and just bought the alpha without ever even playing the tech demo. It was a cool $15 towards something I'd love to support. There are apparently four developers, so they can probably use the cash and this is obviously a labor of love. Good on them.
Of course BeamNG is still in its alpha stages so it would be unfair to really call this a review. There is currently no AI, and much like Kerbel Space Program, for now its just a sandbox. It also crashes pretty frequently and it took me roughly a day to figure out how to get my steering wheel to work. Some of the physics are wonky and content is still somewhat sparse.
That said BeamNG is pretty impressive at its core. Obviously the way cars crumple up when they have accidents is the highlight here. Seeing it happen in real time is pretty great. The aftermath of a big wreck looks excellent, with bent body panels and missing pieces. Even more impressive, to me at least is the way cars run with minor damage. Go over a pretty big jump and its possible to bend frames leaving cars juuust a little off. A large part of BeamNG at this point is simply hitting stuff and seeing what can be driven away from.
The rest of the physics simulation is actually a lot better than I'd been led to believe. The cars definitely still need a little work in the handling department, straight line stability in particular needs to be ironed out and cars feel unnecessarily floppy. The mid engined supercar is nearly impossible to drive, due to a total lack of stability. But the actual friction physics are quite good. Weight transfer effects handling in the proper way, and the limits of adhesion are extremely "soft" meaning small angle drifts are attainable and can be controlled with the throttle. This is extremely impressive stuff for a game that is primarily focused of driving offroad.
Leave the roads and things get even more interesting. Again, things need to be ironed out. Brakes are too weak and the trucks generally feature too long of a first gear to do any serious rock crawling. But much like the on road stuff, the potential is clearly there. Tires deform nicely and suspension movement is meticulously detailed. It's not as good as Off Road Drive in this regard, but it has potential to be in the same ball park.
And of course there are mods. One of the joys of PC gaming is installing mods and BeamNG appears to already have a somewhat strong community. Days after its alpha release, I already have a couple of new cars and a new course providing a cherry on top of what has so far been a great experience.
I'd encourage anyone interested in driving games to check out BeamNG. It's showing a ton of potential.
One of steam's biannual, wallet eviscerating sales is going on right now and I'm trying desperately not to get sucked too far in. So far I've only bought Dragon Age Origins and NBA 2K13. I'm only a couple of hours into each game but I'm having a lot of trouble with both of them. It's not trouble related to game design as they're both excellent games, no the trouble i'm having is that I suck at both of them.
I used to have Dragon Age Origins for Xbox 360. Or a roommate did, or I rented it or borrowed it one time. The point is, that I once played about 60 percent of the way through the game before giving up. Funny how much I've obviously forgotten since then.
The first character I created since purchasing the game on Steam was a human noble warrior. I chose this because after staring at the character creation screen for several minutes, I decided that this was the least likely option I would've chosen last time around. Choosing him this time would ensure that my game play experience would be as different as possible.
It took me almost 20 minutes before I realized that the first time I played Dragon Age Origins I had also apparently chosen a human noble warrior. Oops.
I started over again, this time with a Dalish Elf rogue. This time I didn't recognize any of the introduction. I was happy until about an hour in when I started dieing repeatedly. An hour or so later and I'm still dying constantly, though now i'm pretty sure i've hit a wall. I couldn't open a single chest in the entire dungeon due to not having enough lock picking skills and the boss simply shrugs off all of my best efforts to kill him. I can't even get him down to a third life.
I know Dragon Age Origins is a good game, but it sure feels dated. Autosaves are a bit too few and far between, the camera doesn't quite work out the way i'd like it to and gameplay is a strange hybrid of "modern RPG/MMO" style controls and Baldurs Gate style "pause based strategy." None of this is awful or crippling, it just makes me realize how much our expectations have moved on in just a few years. I expected the graphics to be what bothered me most, but instead i'm annoyed at almost everything besides the graphics. Strange.
This brings me to NBA 2K13. I actually own NBA 2K11 and 2K12 as well. I'm a pretty big basketball fan and the NBA 2K games are always really highly rated. There's just one problem i have with them. Despite 40 plus hours of time spent trying to learn them, I am still AWFUL at both games.
I'm not exactly sure what it is, perhaps a lifetime of playing NBA Jam and NBA street as a kid, but I can't for the life of me perform even the most basic of moves in a serious basketball simulation, or any sports simulation for that matter.
The players almost never do what I want, beyond move a particular direction and shoot when I tell them to. In modern basketball games, much more is required if you ever want to make a shot. A big part of the problem is simply remembering the controls. There are a myriad of basketball moves that can all be performed with various button presses. Unfortunately most of the moves are modified by a somewhat imprecise (to my fingers at least) analog stick as well as by actual court position. The chances of me figuring out what to do and then actually remembering how to do it are extremely low. I'm often left wanting my basketball player to do something but not actually remembering how to do it for a few seconds. In a game that's based mostly on timing this is a crippling problem.
I think sports simulations need to take a page from the Gran Turismos and Forzas of the world and figure out some sort of "driver assistance" for people who didn't grow up playing them. Traction control and stability control were implemented into Gran Turismo 3 and Forza came up with the idea of a racing line that reacts to how fast the player is going. These are both incredibly good functions that make hard core simulation games accessible to people who otherwise wouldn't want to play a racing simulation, or perhaps who are just bad at video games.
The best thing about driving assists are that they can be turned on and off independently of AI intelligence. This is crucial as it provides a much better level of customization for players who understand the fundamentals but simply can't make their fingers do the right things.
Hopefully there will be some sort of assist in the future when I inevitably get NBA 2K14, because right now playing basketball games makes me feel like a child trying to learn to ride a bicycle without any training wheels.
A couple of months ago I picked up Kerbel Space Program on Steam. It's part of Steam's early access program, which lets gamers purchase a game still in development to help fund indie studios. In return, these studios give gamers access to the early alpha and beta builds of the game.
I bought Kerbel Space Program after being urged to do so by my friend. He had been playing it obsessively which led me to believe that it was more than just a half broken alpha build of something that didn't work yet. Indeed I was correct, as KSP was already remarkably polished by the time I started playing it a couple of months ago.
Kerbel Space Program pulls of an interesting trick, it reminds me of some of the best physics based games of my childhood, while remaining completely original. In it's current form, KSP is essentially a sandbox, allowing players to design and build multistage rockets which can then be fired towards the moon, or other celestial bodies.
KSP is both accessible and rigorously a simulation. The tone is generally light and cutesy. There are no humans, the player instead taking control of little green men (Kerbels) who wish to fly to the "mun."
The rocket designer takes a cue from Spore's Creature Creator. Pieces are picked out with the mouse and simply dragged into place. Everything is laid out nicely and intuitively and there are lots and lots of pieces available with which to create rockets (and more available with mods.)
Once a rocket is completed, players are invited out to the launch pad to try and send their rocket up into space. This is where the game starts to really bear its simulation teeth. There is an immediate sense of heft and players are given an idea of just how much fuel it takes to escape into orbit. Too heavy a craft will have trouble lifting off without more rockets, but more rockets means more fuel, ballooning weight out to the point where structural integrity begins to become a problem. Players must find the sweet spot between these factors if they want to have any hope of making it into orbit.
Once airborne, players must compete with the atmosphere for a while where winglets and aerodynamic aids are essential. Once in space, the player is invited to open up their map screen where they can zoom in and out and have a better view of the solar system. The map screen is both incredibly helpful and essential to gameplay. It gives players a perfect view of their current trajectory while simultaneously allowing them to control their craft, initiate burns and speed up or slow down time. A smart player can use the map to manipulate orbits and eventually end up where they want to go.
I put twenty plus hours into KSP and never managed to land anything. It was not the main focus of my sandboxing, but I know it is possible to do so, as my friend gloated to me by sending a screenshot over of his landed space craft on Mun. The few times I did try landing reminded me of the old 2D game Lunar Lander of which there have been many variations. Of course the Kerbel version is in 3D and is thus much much more difficult.
As often happens with this game, I was reminded of my childhood glory days while playing KSP. At different times KSP has evoked everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator, to X-Plane, to even the old Glider series. At every turn, I feel like KSP is taking its cues from the classics of the genre.
The fact that I played twenty plus hours of an unfinished game should be indicative of the hard work that went into and continues to go into Kerbel Space Program. The truth is that there's even more to the game that I haven't gone into. There's an entire space plane builder separate from the rockets and orbital navigation is practically its own highly complex but ultimately intuitive mini game. I'm excited for the eventual full release of KSP, but highly encourage anyone who is interested in physics, rocketry or astronomy to pick up the early access version of the game. It's shaping up really nicely.
Bridgy Jones makes a good argument that the iPad is not ruining gaming. While the App Store may be filled to the brim with the worst kind of free to play, pay to win "video games," there is another side to it as well. Innovative, polished, cheap and fun games are released nearly every day to a wider audience than ever before. And while many of them aren't amazingly compelling or life changing, they do represent a great value per dollar argument when it comes to fun.
Bridgy Jones is not the best game on the app store. Far from it. But it represents to me the best thing about the app store. This game is one dollar. Despite it's price, it is polished, well presented, thought provoking and above all fun. In short, it does its job better than it has any right to.
The game its self is pretty simple and honestly, not terribly original. It's a physics based bridge building game where players are tasked with...well building bridges. After designing a bridge or two, players are given control of a train which must then be driven across various bridged chasms. Simple, but effective!
The game is effective for two reasons. The first is that bridge building is and always has been fun to me. The second is that Bridgy Jones is ridiculously well polished. The sound effects, the music, the menus and the graphics are all indicative of a game that should cost far more than one dollar. Everything moves around smoothly, with beams shifting into place with a satisfying pop. Touches like a dotted line circle to show players maximum beam length help make gameplay easier, lessening sources of unintentional frustration.
It's not perfect, a couple of the puzzles required some slightly hokey gaming of the physics in order to complete, but I'm not convinced I couldn't have beaten the level a more natural way.
Bridgy Jones is a solid little title and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in physics puzzlers. Cheap, disposable but not low quality, are attributes I can live with.
Bridgy Jones is $0.99 and can be found here on the App Store.
