Planned release: 22nd September Project Cars 2 or PC2 for short, is an upcoming racing simulator. Trailer from E3 My expectations TLDR: I believe that it will be a good racing game with lots of content but that its going to be a worse simulator compared to its competition. If that matters or not is up to you. Spoiler: My expectations The developter claim that just like the first game set a new standard the second one will push it even further. Their claims for the first game (PC1) was that it was going the be the best looking and most realistic racing simulator out there. While it did deliver the looks it left things to be desired in the realism departement. It was still a very good racing game with many things going for it. This is also what i expect from PC2 with improvements in all areas and so far that looks to be the case. Let's try to put those expectations into words. With the fact that it's going to be avaible on mlutiple platforms and trying to reach a wide audiance. I do expect it to be playable with many types of controllers, be it an xbox controller or a steering wheel. It will also have a large amount of content with all kinds of cars and tracks. Alongside this i hope that they provide a singleplayer career that is just as good as the one from PC1. The AI wont be the best one out there but it will be good enough. The game will definetly look good. Then add in the great weather simulation plus the day - night cycle and you get a very beautiful game. It's going to be a good racing game just lacking abit as a simulator. Ofcourse the game has yet to be released so it's hard to truly tell what will happen. It can fail, be buggy or it might be the best racing game ever.
I generally prefer racers that aren't simulators for the simple fact that if they attempt to simulate real conditions, I can't drive for shit because I apparently rely on a lot of sensory input beyond just those given to me by the windshield and side mirrors. Until they can simulate those additional stimuli I just end up getting really frustrated with how lacking the simulator is. (without forcing me to pay multiple thousands of dollars for the hardware currently required to provide that kind of UI)
I'm curious about what more you want them to simulate and what the latest racing simulator you played was. It's always interesting to see the differences between games.
it's quite simple, without a pod it's very difficult to simulate the -feel- of the road, when you go into a turn at 70 mph you'll know pretty darn quick this was a bad decision if the corners aren't sloped enough to handle it, it's also easier to gauge the break point for drift, and the engine can tell you more about what you should be doing and when, when you can feel the vibrations through your seat. Robbed of that information and driving solely on dials and what I can see, I can't, apparently, drive worth shit XD I have no idea what the latest was, periodically I'll try out an arcade game just to see, but I honestly don't know when the last time I tried one was, or whether that particular game was even new, at the time. The racing games that I find myself enjoying more are those like F-Zero, I've never driven a hovercraft, so the feel is alien enough that I can enjoy it without comparing it to my own experience.
That is definetly sim racing biggest weakness. Most games try to compensate for it with ffb and sound . It takes a little to get used to but works well. I also enjoy arcade racing game. The only thing I don't like is when games try to be something they are not. Like an arcade game acting like it's a simulator. Some things I recently learned but can be very helpful. 1. Set the correct FOV. Probably the most overlooked but most important. Having a correct FOV gives you a much better "sense of speed" which helps with many things. There are formulas on the Internet for it but it basically comes down to your screen size and your distance from the screen. 2. Having a correct force feedback. Many people make the mistake of having their ffb to strong. This makes it hard to feel those small movements. What is the correct setting depends on many things, what wheel you have, how old it is, how much it has been used and so on.
Release is approaching and it have managed keep me interested. There are a couple things specificaly: Very good car and track selection. This is something that's always important and they are definetly delivering on it. Good selection of open wheelers, touring, prototypes, road cars, old and new. My personal favorites are Indycar, GT3 and LMP2. Indycar will have the 2016 car and 3 classic ones from the 1960s. The modern one comes in both a road and oval variant. I'm a bit sceptical about the oval variant as I don't know if they will be able to do oval racing well. The GT3 category is always popular and bring many different cars. LMP2 is just my personal favorite. For tracks, these are definetly the ones im looking forward to the most: Longbeach, Fuji and Daytona. Ofcourse there are alot more interesting tracks with a good variety from Europe, America and Asia. There are even some classic tracks like the old historical Spa-Francorchamp. There are also some new features that I find interesting. One is the inbuilt system for hosting online champioships. It looks solid and seems to have many options for tailoring the experience aswell as allowing for stewards and broadcasters. Another one is that they are adding what they call a competetive racing licence. It is split into 2 parts that are tracked independently. First one is called driver reputation and its about how safe you are. It keeps track of things like how often you crash or have contact with other cars. Second one is driver strenght. It's how good you are as a driver. Finish well and it will increase but do poorly and it will decrease. Server hosts will be able to set a minimum requirement for either one, both or none if they want to. I'm curious in how this will turn out. iRacing have a system like this allready that is good but it also have a community that is quite serious. Project Cars 2 will be alot more open so will be interesting to see what happens. Also looking forward to comparing it with the rating system that is on the way for Raceroom: Racing Experience. The game isn't released yet but i can feel that i will definetly play it. Once i do, i will share both my first impressions and some more once i have gotten more experience with the game.
Project Cars 2 is released Short version: Overall i like the game so far. It lives up to my expactations of it. Not the best game out there but its good. It's sitting in a nice spot between the realistic arcade games and the simulators. It's definetly the game i recommend to any one who wants to gets started with racing games. You can play it with a wheel or with a gamepad. Both works really well. It provides a complete experience with alot of content. Spoiler: First impressions - 5 hours played So i have decided to write to do a first impressions on the game so that everyone here can see what i think about it. Menu The first thing you get greeted by is the main menu. In the first game it was a bit of a mess with them trying to squeeze way to much onto the first page. Here they have a big improvement. I quickly got used to it and learnt where to find everything. Options Follows the way of menus aswell. First game was abit messy and it could be difficult to find what you were looking for. That is much better in this game. They have clear categories making it easy to find what you are looking, everything also comes with a tooltip telling what changes will happen. Graphics Overall it looks great. At times amazing but sometimes bad. It depends alot on weather, track, car, where the sun is and all kinds of things. I have had some issues with shadows and reflections so far but nothing game braking. Sound Engine sounds are ok. There are a couple good ones, most are ok but there are some bad ones aswell. Crashing, tire screeching and gravel sounds bad. Physics Feels good and is definetly better then the first game. Some cars can feel abit floaty but so far that have been it. Force Feedback It's been good with the cars i have testes. Haved tried it much with different setting but i'm sure it will get abit better as i fine tune it. AI Is definetly a mixed bag. It's bad in the start but becomes ok once the cars starts to spread out abit. It occasionally gets good, depends on car and track. It handle some things bettern then others. Content A great selection of cars and tracks. Both modern and classical. Biggest weakspot is the open wheelers as several of them are made up. Some things i found annoying The pit speed is limited to 37mph/60kph, no matther what track or car. Not being able to create a custom championship, There are many good cars and tracks in the game and not being able to choose which to use in a championship is sad. What happend to the ability to create online championships. This was one of their main selling points for a while and now there's not a trace of it. I really hope that it shows up later as it looked like a great tool. Overall i like the game so far. It lives up to my expactations of it. Not the best game out there but its good. It's sitting in a nice spot between the realistic arcade games and the simulators.
If you are interested in playing a racing game i can highly recommend that you pick this up during the summer sale as its 60% off
I recently got some friends started with this game which have resulted in me spending more time with it and i have started to appreciate it more. Since the game was released i have considered it to be the best place to start with racing games. Lots of content, looks good and have all the features you need. Now that i have spent more time with it and especially the multiplayer part i can definetly see potential in this being people's only racing game. When me and my friends play, if everyone is present. There are 4 of us. Which is not a very fun number for racing and even more so if you take our skill difference into account. Something i didn't know about before and came as a happy surpise is that this game is the only modern racing game that allows you to add AI to multiplayer. Which is a great way to increase the amount of cars without having to rely on random players. The big drawback though is that all AI cars are set with the same difficulty. If there is a large skill difference between the players then someone will be either to fast or slow for the AI. However if the difference isnt that big and you manage to hit the right difficulty level you can have it set up so that the fastest guy is fighting in the front for the win while the slower guys are fightning in the middle or the rear. Another thing i have gottten to like is that it's a good game to learn how to create a car setup in as it gives you a lot of information about what your changes will do. It's not really useful for a new player as they should be putting all of their focus on just driving the car but as you get more skilled it could be a useful tool to atleast have some idea about it and what you can do with it. I played around a bit with the ingame screenshot tool and the game does really look good. Spoiler: Screenshots
