Codemasters-what have they lost

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finnracer

finnracer

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TheFinners96
Don't get me wrong codemasters are fantastic, well they used to be. Many of their recent games-dirt1/2, grid, fuel have just been a bit dissapointing especially compared to some of the older toca race driver games and colin mcrae rally1-5. The menus are full of annoying voiceovers and many of the cars-mainly in dirt are just the american rally versions, not the world ones-i.e. subaru impreza. Does anyone else have similar or different thoughts??
 
Yup, I agree, except Dirt 2 is pretty cool IMO although I don't like they force me to drive those Raid cars and buggies. :yuck:
LOL @ FUEL ... don't know what went wrong there...

Especially agree on the menues and voice overs, I have voice disabled, but that doesn't make it less irritating.
Hmm, what else? Oh, yeah they making the new F1 game, too. :dunce:
 
I never own a Code Masters game, I play demo for Dirt1 and 2, Fuel, and Grid.. They look so cool and flashy to me when I hear they are coming out soon, but once I get my hands on them, I am left with huge disappointment.. So yeah they are doing something wrong.
 
yeti
Codemasters are owned by Sega now...

When Sega bought them they made a load of their devs redundant.

C.
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I think it was Codemasters who bought a Sega studio, see http://www.teamteabag.com/2008/04/26/codemasters-buy-sega-racing-studio/

You can't deny how jaw droppingly good Dirt 2's visuals are, and Race Driver 3 was awesome. I loved racing the lawn mowers, but for me their games went downhill after the first Toca and Colin McRae on the Psx.
 
Doh - got that the wrong way round!!!

All I know was that they worked in the same building I worked in - and at one point the had half a floor... then two weeks later - a truck turned up - tookaway loads of their rigs - and then they had an office... then a couple of months later - they were gone!

C.
 
Like i said cmr3 and the original race driver are better than some new release driving games and i actually prefer cmr3 to cmr dirt(1).
 
yeti
Doh - got that the wrong way round!!!

All I know was that they worked in the same building I worked in - and at one point the had half a floor... then two weeks later - a truck turned up - tookaway loads of their rigs - and then they had an office... then a couple of months later - they were gone!

C.
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Where was that? The HQ is in Leamington Spa and that couldn't really be described like that. They employ a good few hundred people, I think they had some other units in the UK.
 
Sureboss
Where was that? The HQ is in Leamington Spa and that couldn't really be described like that. They employ a good few hundred people, I think they had some other units in the UK.
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In Blythe Valley Business park just off the M42 in Solihull. (Near the mahasive tesco)

C.
 
Probably just re-locating it to their Leamington Spa HQ. Had the chance to snoop around there last year, but was working. :(
 
hate to go against the flow here, but i find dirt2 to be great when you are using a wheel. Rally stages are awesome.

I did not like dirt1 and Grid, I think they were made specifically for a controller instead of a wheel.
 
Sureboss
Probably just re-locating it to their Leamington Spa HQ. Had the chance to snoop around there last year, but was working. :(
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There were definitely *some* redundancies... as the guys there mentioned it - don't know how many though... and probably due to the Sega/CM merger.

C.
 
Codemasters has provided some high points and some low points. The Toca series in general met expectations and Toca 3 provided hours and hours of entertainment. The original DIRT was a refreshing concept and the Pikes Peak Hillclimb was worth it's weight in gold. The handling however was a huge dissappointment for me (with the G25). I managed to adapt to it, but it never felt realistic at all. GRID turned out to be a dissappointment (handling physics)but I still got my money's worth out of it.

To me the best thing that can be said about Codemasters is the HUGE improvement that they made to their handling physics in DIRT2. With the G25 I really feel connected to the car and also feel the car's connection to the ground. Last night, I was racing with a friend who was complaining that he didn't like the handling physics because the car was always sliding around like it was on ice. I mentioned that he may simply be "overdriving" the car and that my motto was "Go slow to go fast". He just backed it down a notch and the game came to him immediately and he was delighted with the difference.

One negative aspect to their philosophy (to me anyway) is their desire to be "all things to everybody". Toca was filled with such a variety of vehicles and while I also enjoyed racing the lawntractors, it was mostly as a novelty and not something I was passionate about. I wish they would focus more and limit the types of cars/vehicles in a game.

I have been enjoying DIRT2 immensely and think it's a really great game. However, as others have said, I wish they had focused more on making a Rally game with longer stages, variable weather and daylight variations. I could easily do without many of the vehicle classes they've included.

The best thing Codemasters could do right now would be to provide DL content giving us the Pikes Peak event from DIRT and expand/extend the rally stages. I'd have my wallet out faster than an X-Games Colin McRae :)

Oh yes, one other thing ... Codemasters needs to get their servers squared away. Setting a new World's Record and not having it register on the leaderboards is a major glitch. If they are going to tout the concept of "Compare your times to your friends" on a special section of their web site, the least they can do is allow it to happen from a technical standpoint. 👎
 
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