The single thing I love most about this game

G

GT1 Esperante

27
The single most important thing about Driveclub that makes it such a fantastic arcade racing game is the way it strays away from the classic racing formula. What I mean is that the game takes the emphasis off of simply finishing first and adds in other aspects of racing that most other games leave to the player, such as a proper racing line and efficiency of speed in and out of corners. And these are things that are necessary for progression in the game.

Part of me wishes that more racing games would do this, but the more sensible part realizes that a real racing sim would never do so.

Who else likes this change of pace for racing games?
 
Yes indeed, I think that's possibly the major thing that has attracted people to the game, or at least kept them playing beyond the usual lures of visuals and sounds etc., the fact that it's different.

It's also the source of perhaps 80% of the hate the game receives, from people wanting yet another clone of every driving game out there...but with better graphics ;)

For me, I don't even see the sim/arcade distinction anymore with DC - like you say, what it lets you do takes the player out of that area.
 
MeanElf
Yes indeed, I think that's possibly the major thing that has attracted people to the game, or at least kept them playing beyond the usual lures of visuals and sounds etc., the fact that it's different.

It's also the source of perhaps 80% of the hate the game receives, from people wanting yet another clone of every driving game out there...but with better graphics ;)

For me, I don't even see the sim/arcade distinction anymore with DC - like you say, what it lets you do takes the player out of that area.
Click to expand...
Amen.
 
It's nice that you don't have to finish 1st in every race, just get it in the top 3 & you're done. I like that you have a lap time target in some races, but the other Face Off's I'm not so keen on though they can be fun for this type of game I guess.

I'm loving the fact that they're all stock road cars, no race cars or tuning, & that you just jump into short races & championships. The replays are also awesome, better than GT imo.


:D
 
For me it's the sense of speed. What I think would increase the sense of speed even more though is if your car could smash into pieces. It would probably make it terrifying to drive at 300 km/h!...:D

I just want the game to reward proper driving more. I had this crash a few weeks ago and continued driving as if nothing had happened:



I think it takes something away from the experience knowing that that whatever you do your car is indestructable. In real racing you can't just keep crashing and keep on going...
 
Last edited:
For me it has to be the graphics/dynamic storms and weather/car interior/Exterior details and years of hard work put in by the artists and designers including the well thought out photomode.

Driving wise I love the quick loading as VBR says you can jump in and have a race set up and all done by the time you get the wheel out and loaded up GT or PCars...and the handling on a controller is just right and weighted enough to control and fair for all with no upgrades or tuning.

Also the ongoing support by Evo has been well done and this game only gets better and better. I know why they are called Evolution now ;)
 
Nice thread.

I'm a big GT fan, but DC takes me into a whole different ride. I love the event's format, even more the DLC ones. It seems way more well arranged than the original tours. You're given some drif events, a bunch of TTs, some races either against drivers with the same car or not, a short championship...

It's a fast in and out to the track, to drive, which is what matters the most. Right?

On the other hand if you're not a completionist and you're not into collecting all stars, the game gives you a decent amount/possible combinations of cars and tracks and weather and time conditions for you to play around. Again, fast in and out. You select the track, get whatever settings you may want, the car and boom! Hit the road Jack.

Also love the sense of speed, the visuals, the fact all cars are stock (pick up a ride and drive. Use your skills, son) and I think the diffcult level is just right for the great majority of players.
 
I do Time Trial. To be fast at DC, in my experience, requires some real learning and technique.. its nothing
like the handbrake crazy Grid 2 or whatever. I could give loads of examples, but its what makes driving DC interesting.

As far as PCars, I returned it to Gamestop until they fix the T500 bug, but from what I drove of it, it is very satisfying
on the dedicated real world circuits using the LM1 (?) type cars. I dont find PCars difficult to handle, so its amusing to
read how people class arcade/sim in such black and white terms. On the invented road circuits and point to point, I think DC is much better than PCars.

Some people just gravitate towards one video game over another I suppose, but
for sure I dont find PCars to be especially hard and 'sim like'. Its just different in its challenge.. and with 37 Force Feedback options in the game menus thats what you would expect. My dream for DC would be to have a better and more articulate sense of FF in the game. I dont mean dozens of FF options in the menus, but just programmed more deep in the FF dept. Other than the weak FF (compared to PCars), DC is just about perfect.

Can you imagine how awesome DC II will be? My T500 never had it so good.
 
Last edited:
I like the visual depth. In other games there's always a compromise. GT always has great car models, but at the expense of horrible looking environments, which makes the cars stand out. Project CARS has slightly worse looking cars than GT, but way better damage modelling, and much nicer environments, so there isn't that massive difference in quality between cars and tracks like in GT, but nothing is ground breaking either. DC has far better car models than GT, but also environments that are equally amazing.

The way the weather works is the best in any game I've played full stop. No other game has anywhere near as good rain effects, and the way the cloud cover comes over, and you get the realistic interaction between cloud layer and the sun, is just mind blowing. The way everything is modelled fully right out to the horizon means you can't see any dodgy flat backgrounds like in every other racing game (GT6 is the worst for this, from the top of mount panorama you can see that everything outside of the track limits is a blurry, flat mess, like a sub par N64 game). Lastly, the textures. I've zoomed into random trackside objects, and things you never even see when driving, and found incredible textures everywhere.

So for me the best thing about DC is the graphics. They aren't just great, they are the new benchmark in racing games, way better than anything else currently out.

I do also like how it plays differently to other arcade racers, and I was pleasantly surprised with the physics, they really aren't that unrealistic. The car's have good weight and the suspension is done well, it just feels like realistic physics toned down to an arcade level. Natural is the word I would use to describe it. Not sim like realistic, but the cars feel natural, unlike other arcade games like nfs or midnight club.

...Sorry about the rant.. Guess there's more than one thing I like about it lol.
 
I want to add a little something.

Any racing game has a general player mentality connected to it based on the games particulars. In our case there are two main titles on PS4 available; DC and PCars. IMO the biggest difference, mentally, is in PCars you can change
the cars settings (FF and the car itself) so dramatically as to create your own version of how it drives. Its nearly an
'open source' approach where you control the important parameters. I know this because some of the default settings were terrible, and I mean really bad, but after doing some researching and borrowing settings from others the game came into its own.. although its quite weird to be able to change how much or how little the curbs are felt, for example, not to mention the dozens of other specific options and relationships.

So thats what makes Driveclub special, and different.

I'm reminded of certain off-shore electric guitars sold mainly in the 1960's, which tried to make an electric guitar more interesting by giving it half a dozen or a dozen buttons and knobs and selector switches. It became something of an arms race, for cheap electric guitars, to out-do the competition in the number of knobs and switches.
Naturally serious players could care less. And so Driveclub is the antidote for that approach that gives a racer more
buttons and switches to play with. Whatever driving characteristics may fall short of realism in a video game, Driveclub makes up for it in the purity of its purpose: you get in the car and you drive it.

The driving characteristics may fall short of ultimate realism in a video game, but in Driveclub, unlike any other racing title, dont expect to find the graphics option to show you the ideal racing line around the track- because you arent going to find one. Thats not what Driveclub is about. In Driveclub you are on your own with the car. And I love that part.
 
Last edited:
Moto54
..in Driveclub...dont expect to find the graphics option to show you the ideal racing line around the track- because you arent going to find one. Thats not what Driveclub is about. In Driveclub you are on your own with the car. And I love that part.
Click to expand...

Except when it randomly is forced on for a Face Off. Wish we could turn them off for tours like we can for single races, would make re-running tours better imo.

Being able to turn the HUD off is even more absorbing. I love dash view in the rain with no HUD, just me & the car!

:)
 
Moto54
...I'm reminded of certain off-shore electric guitars sold mainly in the 1960's, which tried to make an electric guitar more interesting by giving it half a dozen or a dozen buttons and knobs and selector switches. It became something of an arms race, for cheap electric guitars, to out-do the competition in the number of knobs and switches...
Click to expand...
I remember those things :) Let's make the guitar sound like an electric organ kind of idea.
 
VBR
Except when it randomly is forced on for a Face Off. Wish we could turn them off for tours like we can for single races, would make re-running tours better imo.

Being able to turn the HUD off is even more absorbing. I love dash view in the rain with no HUD, just me & the car!

:)
Click to expand...

As you say, turning off the HUD is more absorbing. What I appreciate too is that running TT offline I dont have
to look at those colored flags at the corners, the confetti, or the other eye candy. You know, the lighting is so realistic in DC that to race around the track in its plain form is perfect; I would be put off if they forced those corner
markers to be there at all times.

An idea for future versions:
(because right now you can be in garage and choose day-effects and the camera will move around the car with nothing else on the screen.. like a bitchen screen saver.)

Add the option of 'Car Show' where several cars are positioned together, all at once.
 
Last edited:
The single thing I love most about DC is that one of the locations is my home country of Scotland.

The tracks might be fictional but some of them pass by recognisable Scottish landmarks such as the Skye Bridge and Eilean Donan Castle.

The last time I remembered a racing game that had tracks in Scotland was Toca 2 on PS1 so I'm very glad to see my home country represented once again.
 
honestly to me the most important things that make me come back to DC over and over again are

- no setups (no, seriously, I don't have time anymore to run 10 laps to see if changing the camber by 1% makes a difference, or to go in forums here and there to try and find good setups only to always wonder if other people found better ones)

- very very nice track design, these might be fantasy circuits but man are they well done, super enjoyable to drive
 
One thing that I love and nobody spent a word on is the care put in the various Tour events graphics, and even in the naming. The "Big in Japan" - "Small in Japan" combo? Brilliant. The new "Finding Nismo" race series? Cracked me up. It shows how much Evolution cares about delivering a posh, refined experience, and it's something I really appreciate.

Oh, there's also how the gameplay perfectly blends arcade objectives and progression with credible physics; the immense audio compartment (go on, find me a racing game that sounds this good), the mouth-watering graphics and enormous detail of the car models; a fantastic photomode which gives you plenty of options to make the most out of it (I love how they allow you to take a photo from the replay camera angle!)... The list goes on and on. Hopefully Sony will make good on the promise of turning Driveclub into a service, because the only thing I want is more. More cars, more tracks, more challenges. Bring it on!
 
Last edited:
ClydeYellow
One thing that I love and nobody spent a word on is the care put in the various Tour events graphics, and even in the naming. The "Big in Japan" - "Small in Japan" combo? Brilliant. The new "Finding Nismo" race series? Cracked me up. It shows how much Evolution cares about delivering a posh, refined experience, and it's something I really appreciate.

Oh, there's also how the gameplay perfectly blends arcade objectives and profession with credible physics; the immense audio compartment (go on, find me a racing game that sounds this good), the mouth-watering graphics and enormous detail of the car models; a fantastic photomode which gives you plenty of options to make the most out of it (I love how they allow you to take a photo from the replay camera angle!)... The list goes on and on. Hopefully Sony will make good on the promise of turning Driveclub into a service, because the only thing I want is more. More cars, more tracks, more challenges. Bring it on!
Click to expand...
Big in Japan, what a song, can't beat a bit of Alphaville.
 
AMG 4 LIFE
And flying with the one 1 at Norway island's track Atlantivegen idk the correct name
Click to expand...
Atlanterhavsvegen (Atlanter-havs-vegen) when you look at it broken down it isn't very far off the Dutch words for Atlantic (presumably) harbour road, which should make it easier to remember ;) Great track to be sure. Odd thing is, the place is called Atlanterhavsveien in the real world, so I've no idea what's going on with DC's version of the name.
 
MeanElf
Atlanterhavsvegen (Atlanter-havs-vegen) when you look at it broken down it isn't very far off the Dutch words for Atlantic (presumably) harbour road, which should make it easier to remember ;) Great track to be sure. Odd thing is, the place is called Atlanterhavsveien in the real world, so I've no idea what's going on with DC's version of the name.
Click to expand...

Atlanterhavet means Atlantic Ocean in Norwegian (and Danish). Not 100% sure about the vegen part since I'm Danish (would be vejen in Danish).
 

Latest Posts

Back