I haven't enjoyed the basic gameplay of a driving game since I76,
and not had as much fun since Road Rash on the genesis. I've tried:
MotoRacer provided a brief distraction, CH superbike, some couple
hours of thrills in first person view. NFS:HS some arcade cornering.
Needless to say I'm not a stickler for realism in driving games.
Though I do dislike track based arcade drivers sometimes, what with
steering optimized for high speed cornering, and thus a fleeting
"touchy" sense of control.
Driver OTOH has some realistic handling, before you fire off an
incredulous rebuttal, I mean realistic in a TV/Movie/Starsky & Hutch
sense of the word. The game plays like a good hollywood car chase.
It FEELS right, and the car unlike most every driving game I've
played is totally responsive, sweetly controllable. Too bad the basic
gameplay isn't all there is to the game. You've got your deathwish
"head-on collision" cops, "stop on this pixel" mission goals, precisely
timed missions, console/Lucas Art's style repeat-until-sucessful
mission design, console interface, console save game paradigm, and
of course, the back breaker, exponentially increasing console
difficulty.
Undoubtedly this design choice is common in console games to keep 16
year olds from solving a game in a few hours or days, and taking it
back for a different game. On the PC that doesn't cut it, I don't
play games to be frustrated for hours by artificial restrictions. These
criminals who hire you are undoubtedly the most punctual demanding
crooks ever to walk the face of the earth -- Tenth of a second late?
a couple pixels off the mark? Time to restart. Unlike your teen console
fanatic, I don't have the luxury of having a half day of school and 8
hours of TV viewership as the only demands on my time. Thus the
frustration mounts as superlative gameplay is marred by restarting ad
nauseum, hitting ESC through the lead in, watching a level load meter
(undoubtedly the result of code not optimized to take advantage of the
PC's memory caching and storage), and then hitting ESC again to cut out
the fly by.
Still the game compels, the moments between peeling out of your
parking spot, and your realization that you wont make it to the first
"check point" destination in time, are among the best driving gameplay
moments to be had, since wildly flinging your bike around blind corners
"just missing" opposing traffic, in Road Rash. The manic pace combined
with make-the-vehicle-do-your-bidding controllability is there, the
occasional adrenaline rush -- though dampened by age, and mitigated by
a little jadedness -- is there. The reckless flying through
intersections is there.
Unfortunately so are the console sensibilities.
--
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>...and
>of course, the back breaker, exponentially increasing console
>difficulty.
Hi Simon (funny meeting you here!). Just so you know, in the Driver
"Scripts" directory there's a subdir full of misison files ... they
are text files and can be edited at will. I don't have all the details
for editing, but some are obvious (i.e., changing "cops_on" to
"cops_off"). There's probably more info on this somewhere on the net
if you want it.
Joe McGinn
==========================================
Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network
[link lost in import: /***.com/]
==========================================
[snip entire posting]
I agree wholeheartedly with all your comments, good and bad. Just one
suggestion to make the game more fun and less annoying: try the
driving games instead of the undercover mission. There are no
mandatory cutscenes (I'm getting allergic to the ringing sound of old
touchtone phones already - used to love it...) and no flybys.
Especially the pursuits are great fun.
--
Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.
>I agree wholeheartedly with all your comments, good and bad. Just one
>suggestion to make the game more fun and less annoying: try the
>driving games instead of the undercover mission. There are no
>mandatory cutscenes (I'm getting allergic to the ringing sound of old
>touchtone phones already - used to love it...) and no flybys.
>Especially the pursuits are great fun.
Thanks for the idea, I'll try that.
Joe McGinn
==========================================
Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network
[link lost in import: /***.com/]
==========================================
