Has Project Cars lived up to the hype?

[doctorrg]

Full price for digital copies. Yuk.

Yuk indeed. I could have gotten the BluRay version for less too. Really only get digital copies so I get it for two consoles at once, and well, it is an awful lot more convenient to not have to fiddle with discs.

 

[mister dog]

I most certainly wasn't looking for something like Horizon, that's for sure, I was looking for something that would give me a great subjective experience of driving. IMO, Project Cars simply doesn't work for me (yet). And yes, that's my very subjective opinion, but my opinion it is.

Xbone version is the one that has the most issues at the moment. Patch that is supposed to fix the controller is due soon (currently tested with MS), so i hope when that is released your driving experience will improve greatly, and you will be able to enjoy it the same as we do.

 

[mr_serious]

I guess that's the drawback of digital copies, no way to get even a portion of my A$99 back, at least not as far as I'm aware. I'll wait a few months and then give it another try when I'm in the right mood, maybe I'll like it then. Not much else I can do at this point.

It felt pretty horrible to me on my first go. Now after spending a little time tweaking the FFB and practising a bit the driving feel has become the best I have ever played.

Whenever I think, I'll just have a quick go on PCARS to see how the [insert car of choice] feels, I end up doing 200 miles in free practice and going to bed at 4am.

When you try it again try this...

1) Select a track you are very familiar with.
2) Select a lower performance car.
3) Read this page about FFB setup - mostly the spindle settings http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?23124-FFB-Tuning-(my-thoughts-)

4) Without changing the settings do 5-10 laps.
5) Now start tweaking the spindle settings. (mostly just the master scale & then next 4 sliders)

6) Enjoy your suddenly transformed driving feel.
7) practice, practice, practice

 

[thestig11]

To be honest i made the move to PS4 after christmas, and i missing GT6, and I had high hopes for PCARS but its not as good as i was expecting. Fair enough the driving itself is good, but i was expecting a better career, where you actually had to work to unlock stuff, a reason for playing the game. Furthermore the tuning options are soon worn out and are a bit limited IMO and also there are no customisation options and from what ive worked out you get a livery from random....

I hope they sort something out or i will be disappointed with my £44's worth of game.

 

[mister dog]

To be honest i made the move to PS4 after christmas, and i missing GT6, and I had high hopes for PCARS but its not as good as i was expecting. Fair enough the driving itself is good, but i was expecting a better career, where you actually had to work to unlock stuff, a reason for playing the game. Furthermore the tuning options are soon worn out and are a bit limited IMO and also there are no customisation options and from what ive worked out you get a livery from random....

I hope they sort something out or i will be disappointed with my £44's worth of game.

It was known from before launch that he 'drive to unlock or earn credits' mode, wasn't the way PCARS would handle it's career mode, and that it wouldn't include customization of cars. Regarding tuning options, i'm guessing you make the same mistake as i did, and you forgot to press the little arrow on the top right side in the tuning menu? (it's easy to overlook).

 

[doctorrg]

3) Read this page about FFB setup - mostly the spindle settings http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/showthread.php?23124-FFB-Tuning-(my-thoughts-)

Will this translate to any console and any wheel?

 

[mr_serious]

Will this translate to any console and any wheel?

yes.

My wheel is a 7 year old Driving Force Pro. It is a single belt drive FFB, really quite a lowly piece of hardware.

After doing some experimenting with the FFB as I described, I really can't believe how much subtle and useful feedback I am getting from it.

 

[doctorrg]

Thanks. When I've got some more time to spare I'll have another look.

 

[Spurgy 777]

@thestig11 To change livery, go to change vehicle, open up your garage (press triangle on PS4), then select the right category and then make of the car you're using, then go down to the car and use the left right arrow buttons to change livery.

Now, as for whether or not this game is overhyped or not, I'd say no, it isn't. Every car I've driven handles pretty realistically, and so far the fastest driving style is the most realistic. The tracks are for the most part very well made, the only one I haven't liked so far is Silverstone. It looks awesome, everything from the lighting at night time, to the weather effects and the car models look great. The AI are raceable, they still need some work as I've found the odd thing they couldn't cope with (chicanes at Oulton and hairpins they run wide and at Silverstone GP at the start of an F1 race they have a massive pile up). And for content I think there's a great variety of tracks and cars, with more stuff on the way.

As for bad things, I'll get the main one out of the way first, the contact physics are horrible, barely touching someone will just make their car go straight on. Luckily the rest are fairly minor, a bug with the wheel calibration messing up every time I join a session, having to make a new lobby every time you want to change the class of car and the very occasional game crash.

Overall I would say the game was very fun, immersive and realistic, hell its not even difficult to find a random online lobby with good clean drivers in it, unlike pretty much every other console racing game (unfortunately there are still some idiots roaming around).

 

[Mike_grpA]

Might be odd, but not very surprising to me.

For two reasons, mainly: One, GT's got a cult following (as does Kazunori, I feel). It's a high profile title and it's a franchise that people have been playing since the early nineties, in some cases. Giving a game a bit of a free pass under those circumstances isn't unheard of. I know plenty of people who're doing the same for their beloved franchises. I've got a friend who's going berserk whenever someone says that Final Fantasy isn't what it used to be, for example

Second, there was NFS: Shift 2 and it was made by SMS. Sure, I do think that it was mostly EA being a ****** publisher that caused that game to be released as a buggy, crippled mess of a game instead of what SMS might have wanted to do with it, but others might not keep that in mind - or care. And they're therefore going to scrutinize PCARS a lot more thoroughly than they'd do otherwise. Can't blame anyone for doing that. Might not be the most fair thing to do, but completely understandable

That said, folks who play on consoles might have a worse experience than I do - and I tend to forget that. My PC version runs fine and I don't care about the career mode... Playing a shoddy console port and going for the most buggy part of the game is bound to give someone a worse impression than the one I got. As I said, I gotta admit that I do tend to forget that

Yeah I understand people have selective memories, but I guess with PD's recent history of alienating their fans, and producing underwhelming games, I thought maybe I wasn't the only one who'd remember the last time I was burned by them lol.

On release you say? I was reading in the GTAcademy Forum that there is a tire grip bug in the GTA events. If you enter the event, then back out and enter again, you get more grip. Okay, stop laughing, I'm being serious Imagine how many of the tens of thousands of entrants are unaware of this bug? Ride height is still backwards after 4.5 years, camber doesn't work properly, aero physics are off etc. GT5 was a mess at release. GT5-6 is the king of bugs. Project Cars may end up in the same boat as it remains to be seen if they can follow through on their promise of long-term support, but as you indicate, let's give them a chance to sort this all out and we'll see where we are in a few months.

Hahaha as I said, some of the bugs were never fixed, and that's sad to hear even new stuff they've added have game breaking bugs. Hardly surprising though, GT6 is basically a beta tester simulator, not a driving simulator lol.

 

[paulpg87]

not at all, just full of bugs, with bad settings. At the moment is not even a 6. i wasted so much money for it... i think i will trade it immediatly for f1.

Moreover the career mode feels so boring and lifeless. totally upset.

 

[GTP_Monkey]

Online is fantastic as are the physics.

career mode is awful to many bugs

 

[Formula1269]

Delete, please.

 

[mister dog]

You are entitled to your opinion, but please stop spreading lies. There are more tracks than in Forza or GT and there is a free car given to everybody every month. Thats fact.

And about GT7 destroying pcars: It will have more cars and better graphics (being a first party, single platform title). For everything else, PD would have to step up their game big time to even be better than pcars, let alone destroying it. I like(d) to drive some cars GT games for leisure since its such a zen like relaxing experience with the swoopy handling and the gentle buzz of the engines, but the game itself was outdated 15 years ago.

Indeed, good chance you'll be chasing rabbits in the clubman cup again with no opposition from the grandma AI, so you could save up credits for the exact same cars you've been saving up for since GT4 already.. They have a new sound engineer though, so there's a good chance they will actually sound like cars now

 

[Luminis]

My guess is that GT7 will have little appeal and that "they" will say the same things about it that they did about the last two Gran Turismo games -- the driving will be soulless, the AI will be lifeless, the physics will not take into account anything related to how rubber responds to heat and wear, the menus will be convoluted and senseless, and the career will be non-compelling. Graphics will be superb though, and I could be completely wrong, hopefully.

As they say, never change a winning team. And going by their sales, I'm pretty sure that PD feels they're winning.

 

[Scaff]

Maybe not as much hype leading up to it, but it surpassed both within its launch window.

Give it a go with specific titles, GT5 eclipses them all for hype, consideration also need to be given for the fact that only one of them is multi-platform, which is going to increase the number of people searching.
https://www.google.co.uk/trends/exp... 5, Gran Turismo 5, Gran Turismo 6&cmpt=q&tz=

Throw in abbreviations (GT5, GT6) and you get even more
https://www.google.co.uk/trends/exp...urismo 5, GT5, Gran turismo 6, GT6&cmpt=q&tz=

Interestingly almost no one seems to search on abbreviations for pCars and few for Forza, yet GT* searches get almost as many hits as Gran Turismo.

Data its fun to play with.

Long story short.

pCars had a good degree of hype at launch, Forza hit peaks of a similar level but had a better hype build, GT5 blows both away in terms of hype, by a huge margin.

 

[OooAhh Cantona]

The game has not met MY hype. Driving physics, tuning and track list are great! But UI and career mode are just a bit disconnected from the player (me). Good game that I'm hoping it will fulfill its potential. Right now, it's like a meth addiction... I keep coming back to it, knowing it can kill me (read: career mode AI ). I want it to be a much more enjoyable addiction.

 

[Stephen220378]

What a ridiculous statement!

Just because something isn't as bad as something else, doesn't make it the slightest bit better. It's just a super cheap excuse, not more.

It's called humour ffs, lighten up and wear a smile

 

[MXH]

I can only speak for myself, but having had my expectations in check this time around, my personal hype for pCARS has been met and to some extent even exceeded. It's a great game but by no means perfect. It's however a refreshing experience that breaks away from the XP, cash and grinding norms of many previous racing games.

As far as physics go, I'm finding it to be realistic/believeable (albeit the counter-steering issue with the DS4 which is supposedly a bug?), the sounds are great and multiplayer can be a fantastic experience with clean drivers. I've genuinely had more fun with pCARS than with every other racer from last generation combined, and I still have yet to start my career mode. The different weather effects along with the Group 5 and Group A cars alone have provided me with some of the best races I've had the pleasure to experience in a long time. Just pure joy.

Overall, a very nice package that I'll be finding myself playing for countless hours.

 

[dr_slump]

It's called humour ffs, lighten up and wear a smile

Bad humour doesn't make me smile, no.

 

[Mike_grpA]

Indeed, good chance you'll be chasing rabbits in the clubman cup again with no opposition from the grandma AI, so you could save up credits for the exact same cars you've been saving up for since GT4 already.. They have a new sound engineer though, so there's a good chance they will actually sound like cars now

Call me glass half empty, but this is exactly what I'm expecting from gt7 lol. I really really really hope we're both proven massively wrong though, because I'd love to fall for Gran Turismo all over again.

I remember how blown away I was when I first played GT1, and then with GT2 the love just grew stronger. Then GT3 came out and I was a little disappointed by the uninspiring car list and the way graphics had taken priority over everything else, and how 300kph felt like I was doing the speed limit (110). Then GT4 came out, and it was love again, and I must've played that for years to experience it all. Then the hype fest for GT5 went on for years, and I was excited to see how my favourite series would evolve. Then when it came out, it felt like GT4 with better graphics, some stupid gimmicks, and stuff taken out. I thought that like with GT3 to GT4, all would be right in the world again with GT6 likely to be an enormous jump up from the disappointment of GT5. Then somehow GT6 was half the game GT5 was, and right there the relationship soured. I longed for the feeling I had when I first played GT1, that returned when I first played GT4. pCARS has given me that feeling of awe, and made me want to save up the $500 it would cost for a T300, just so I can experience everything it has to offer. I really hope GT7 finally evolves from the stale old formula they've used in every game so far. I hope they don't just copy paste everything and add some stupid gimmick like VGT or moon driving and think that'll thrill the fans.

 

[mister dog]

Call me glass half empty, but this is exactly what I'm expecting from gt7 lol. I really really really hope we're both proven massively wrong though, because I'd love to fall for Gran Turismo all over again.

I remember how blown away I was when I first played GT1, and then with GT2 the love just grew stronger. Then GT3 came out and I was a little disappointed by the uninspiring car list and the way graphics had taken priority over everything else, and how 300kph felt like I was doing the speed limit (110). Then GT4 came out, and it was love again, and I must've played that for years to experience it all. Then the hype fest for GT5 went on for years, and I was excited to see how my favourite series would evolve. Then when it came out, it felt like GT4 with better graphics, some stupid gimmicks, and stuff taken out. I thought that like with GT3 to GT4, all would be right in the world again with GT6 likely to be an enormous jump up from the disappointment of GT5. Then somehow GT6 was half the game GT5 was, and right there the relationship soured. I longed for the feeling I had when I first played GT1, that returned when I first played GT4. pCARS has given me that feeling of awe, and made me want to save up the $500 it would cost for a T300, just so I can experience everything it has to offer. I really hope GT7 finally evolves from the stale old formula they've used in every game so far. I hope they don't just copy paste everything and add some stupid gimmick like VGT or moon driving and think that'll thrill the fans.

Meh i was hoping since GT4, and the things i wanted to see improved didn't happen in the last ten years, so i shall not bother anymore. The problem with GT is that it has a huge following and not much true competition, so Kaz and co can do whatever and the cash will flow in regardless, so no need to risk anything by actually changing the formula around, just shelve out something that looks a bit better and the job is done. It's the COD of racing games!

GT6 might have served as a wake up call, but i doubt much will change as the worse sales from that title could be blamed on PS3 being a dying swan at the time.

 

[Mike_grpA]

Yeah, I'll continue to hope, but no more pre-ordering GT for me anymore lol. I'll buy GT7 if it turns out to be what I'm hoping for. If it's just more of the same bollocks, I won't bother. I know quite a few people with the same idea too, so if GT7 does suck, the downward trend of the sales will only get worse.

 

[Bethany Dawn]

While I think Project Cars was over hyped, I do believe it is the best online racing experience to come to consoles.
The single player portion needs a lot of work in my opinion. The ai is a mess, all they do is wreck each other and cut corners, filling the track with litter that isn't removed.

 

[wolf00774]

It's a good game, but I find it comes up quite short in many ways. Little things like drafting and giving too little info about how to adjust things. Digital manual is useless. Career was way over hyped. Some cars feel awesome, but so many just feel really numb and detached from the track. I would have to say this game may have ruined me on pre-ordering or paying full price. Of course, many games have given me a sour taste on that front.

 

[gtracedriver1]

Maybe not as much hype leading up to it, but it surpassed both within its launch window.

This is very misleading as I can tell you since my rank is more than 100,000+ in GTA 2015 round1 and round2 lol. That means at least hundred thousand are still playing and updated the game to 1.18version. So the actual number probably is much bigger. Pcars probably is the go to racing game on PS4. I seriously doubt it has the legs of GT or for that matter Forza. They need to keep updating not necessarily selling DLC to make people coming for more. I am not sure many people buy DLC free update obviously they do lol. So patches, updates is important but they will probaly make Pcars2 in 2yrs time so I am expecting too much support from them or going by their past history

 

[Spooky Wooky]

or moon driving and think that'll thrill the fans.

DO WANT MOON DRIVING!

(If anyone from the Gran Turismo production team is watching, I don't want moon driving)

 

[Spooky Wooky]

Double post, sorry.

 

[FoRiZon]

DO WANT MOON DRIVING!

(If anyone from the Gran Turismo production team is watching, I don't want moon driving)

Buy sure as hell I want to drive a GTR LM on the moon like in the superbowl commercial. Or any supercars for that matter.

What a waste for [that game].

 

[blowfishrulez]

PCars is a very good start of a new racing franchise and has its core values and marquee features straight.

I think GT7 has to stay a GT game, which means it will retain a money system, it will retain the PP system and licenses. It will also be the go to, posh, corporate marketing platform for the big bosses of the automotive industry. What they cannot get away with anymore is: ****** sound, track dependent ToD/Weather and grandma AI.

SMS/PCars right now to me has a fresh, punk like image: a bit nasty, a bit rough, a bit sloppy and always drunk. Yet pretty smart and authentic, crapping on console genre conventions and do what they want. They will establish themselves as the go to Sim for the cool kids, while working on their attire and drinking problem, adopting more cars, reach out and build a bridge to the real world.