- 7,189
- Lisboa
- FLAT_TWELVE
Now that I have Enthusia (since last thursday) and have played it for a while, I'd like to share my thoughts on this game.
First, being EPR a PS2 game, it suffers from the fact that its competition (Gran Turismo 4) is the hardest you can get in the console gaming world. Several other racing titles in the last few years have suffered from the comparison with GT3 and, unless they were rally-only titles or for some reason had something that GT3 didn't have - like the "Le Mans" game, with long endurance races, dynamic weather, day/night, etc. - they ended up being trashed or considered "lesser" games.
Will this happen with EPR, now competing with GT4? I don't think so. While GT4 wins clearly in the presentation, graphics, number of cars, tracks, races, championships - and all this gives GT4 the overall victory - EPR still keeps you playing it, even if you already have GT4. Why?
First of all, because of the physics. I'm not sure they're perfect, but you must drive EPR to understand how much GT4 forgives your mistakes. After a few hours of EPR playing you get the impression that GT4 driving experience is a full "driver assisted" one. The best example concerns braking. In GT4 I usually know only two brake pedal positions: up and down (no braking; full braking) while in EPR full braking is something you shouldn't do unless you're (an expert player) in a straight line and even then it's a dangerous thing to do.
Secondly, because you must take an approach to racing in EPR with a completely different attitude. You will suffer heavily if you bump other cars or if you go off track. It seems honest and natural, but even the best GT players wouldn't have their fantastic win/lose ratio and overall scores without some bumps and wall riding here and there.
Thirdly, the AI. It may not be perfect but, from the few races I've made so far, I got surprised how I keep making silly mistakes and all the other cars keep avoiding me. Nothing like the GT AI dummies that put you off track if you are side by side with them and you're in the correct line to approach the next corner.
However, there are a few flaws in the "physics departement": Surprisingly, it is easier to lose control of your car in track than off track. Last night I did one lap in the Nurb with the LMP Nissan and the first time I put two wheels off track at high speed, I thought "ok, I lost it". But it was relatively easy to avoid spinnng and get the car back on track. I'm sure that in GT4 I would have lost the car.
Driving Revolution, the only part of this game that I have been intensively playing, is a lot of fun, and IMO better than the license tests in GT4. It ends up being easier to get an "S" in the DR stages than to get gold in GT's license tests, but the learning curve is much more interesting, considering the far greater complexity of the car's behaviour.
I didn't get very much into racing and I didn't even start "Enthusia Life" (the career mode), because after a few (horrible) attempts with free racing I realized I still had much to learn. Most of all I have to learn the tracks. There's no way you can be competitive in EPR unless you have at least a litle knowledge of the tracks. Apart Tsukuba and Nurb, they're all new to me (to us all) and since you can't go off track or bump cars or walls, racing in EPR can be a very humiliating experience, most of all if you consider yourself a veteran experienced racer, that has already beaten GT3, GT4, and every other racing game you have ever played, be it in the PS2 or in the PC.
One other negative note to EPR concerns the structure of this game: It is very confusing, and I don't have a clear notion about how do you unlock tracks and how do you unlock cars. I guess that the DR mode will allow me to unlock all cars (but I'm not sure if that means that they will be allavailable in FR, TA and EL or in just some of these other modes), but I also know that there are other ways to unlock cars (roulette in EL, all cars behind you in FR). About tracks, I'll have to get into racing to get a definite idea about how to unlock them, both to the TA and FR modes.
Then again, I won't just say that this is a flaw, because it may not be fair to give to EPR a negative note here. The fact is that this is the first EPR, not the 4th. And I guess that when we get to EPR 4 we will all have lots of FAQs available and we'll all already know, even before the game is released, how does it work and how do we progress in order to "beat it" completely.
Concluding, I think EPR is a great game, I hope Konami will invest in future versions of it and I hope that we may have a "war" between them and Polyphony Digital (and, why not, other developpers of racing sims) to provide us players with the best racing games they all can squeeze out of the PS3.
Just because of the graphics, and because I don't like the somewhat confusing game structure I don't rate EPR 5/5, but it sure deserves my 4/5.
So, 👍 👍 👍 👍 to EPR.
First, being EPR a PS2 game, it suffers from the fact that its competition (Gran Turismo 4) is the hardest you can get in the console gaming world. Several other racing titles in the last few years have suffered from the comparison with GT3 and, unless they were rally-only titles or for some reason had something that GT3 didn't have - like the "Le Mans" game, with long endurance races, dynamic weather, day/night, etc. - they ended up being trashed or considered "lesser" games.
Will this happen with EPR, now competing with GT4? I don't think so. While GT4 wins clearly in the presentation, graphics, number of cars, tracks, races, championships - and all this gives GT4 the overall victory - EPR still keeps you playing it, even if you already have GT4. Why?
First of all, because of the physics. I'm not sure they're perfect, but you must drive EPR to understand how much GT4 forgives your mistakes. After a few hours of EPR playing you get the impression that GT4 driving experience is a full "driver assisted" one. The best example concerns braking. In GT4 I usually know only two brake pedal positions: up and down (no braking; full braking) while in EPR full braking is something you shouldn't do unless you're (an expert player) in a straight line and even then it's a dangerous thing to do.
Secondly, because you must take an approach to racing in EPR with a completely different attitude. You will suffer heavily if you bump other cars or if you go off track. It seems honest and natural, but even the best GT players wouldn't have their fantastic win/lose ratio and overall scores without some bumps and wall riding here and there.
Thirdly, the AI. It may not be perfect but, from the few races I've made so far, I got surprised how I keep making silly mistakes and all the other cars keep avoiding me. Nothing like the GT AI dummies that put you off track if you are side by side with them and you're in the correct line to approach the next corner.
However, there are a few flaws in the "physics departement": Surprisingly, it is easier to lose control of your car in track than off track. Last night I did one lap in the Nurb with the LMP Nissan and the first time I put two wheels off track at high speed, I thought "ok, I lost it". But it was relatively easy to avoid spinnng and get the car back on track. I'm sure that in GT4 I would have lost the car.
Driving Revolution, the only part of this game that I have been intensively playing, is a lot of fun, and IMO better than the license tests in GT4. It ends up being easier to get an "S" in the DR stages than to get gold in GT's license tests, but the learning curve is much more interesting, considering the far greater complexity of the car's behaviour.
I didn't get very much into racing and I didn't even start "Enthusia Life" (the career mode), because after a few (horrible) attempts with free racing I realized I still had much to learn. Most of all I have to learn the tracks. There's no way you can be competitive in EPR unless you have at least a litle knowledge of the tracks. Apart Tsukuba and Nurb, they're all new to me (to us all) and since you can't go off track or bump cars or walls, racing in EPR can be a very humiliating experience, most of all if you consider yourself a veteran experienced racer, that has already beaten GT3, GT4, and every other racing game you have ever played, be it in the PS2 or in the PC.
One other negative note to EPR concerns the structure of this game: It is very confusing, and I don't have a clear notion about how do you unlock tracks and how do you unlock cars. I guess that the DR mode will allow me to unlock all cars (but I'm not sure if that means that they will be allavailable in FR, TA and EL or in just some of these other modes), but I also know that there are other ways to unlock cars (roulette in EL, all cars behind you in FR). About tracks, I'll have to get into racing to get a definite idea about how to unlock them, both to the TA and FR modes.
Then again, I won't just say that this is a flaw, because it may not be fair to give to EPR a negative note here. The fact is that this is the first EPR, not the 4th. And I guess that when we get to EPR 4 we will all have lots of FAQs available and we'll all already know, even before the game is released, how does it work and how do we progress in order to "beat it" completely.
Concluding, I think EPR is a great game, I hope Konami will invest in future versions of it and I hope that we may have a "war" between them and Polyphony Digital (and, why not, other developpers of racing sims) to provide us players with the best racing games they all can squeeze out of the PS3.
Just because of the graphics, and because I don't like the somewhat confusing game structure I don't rate EPR 5/5, but it sure deserves my 4/5.
So, 👍 👍 👍 👍 to EPR.
I like to drift in enthusia
