that's all there really is to say.
but ppl always want details...

it's nothing like the original. save ur money.



edit: u could stop here, right now, and just rest assured in the above statements, and get on with your life. go play some other, fun game.

but no. you want to press the issue. ;)

OK, a few details, which, had I known, I truly might not have bought this game...

first of all, just to be clear -- I think it was already pretty strongly implied, but -- yeah, I played the original. a lot. it's been over 20 years so maybe my recollection isn't perfect & complete, but I know it basically blew me away, which this game does not. (and btw I have a friend who played the original in my corner, too ;))

(don't get me wrong of course we want to like this game, but ..................)

and btw I'm pretty much gonna try to restrain this commentary to objective technical points, below, and not even comment about art style/quality, etc.


#1 i use kbd+mouse. mouse is, of course, the best way to aim in "shootery" games, and, while I'll be the first to admit kbd isn't the "best" way to drive, it's still more than adequate, so don't even bring that "u gotta use gamepad" mess around here ... besides i bet it does the same exact thing w/ gamepad.

anyway, when you switch weapons, from guns to rocket, for example, the aim crosshair resets to some seemingly random position. so, if you want to wear someone down with guns, then pop off a rocket or 2 to finish them, or vice versa, beware because as soon as u switch weapons u won't be aiming at your target any more! you have to scan the screen to see "wtf did my xhair go?", losing precious time which u simply cannot afford.

After such a ridiculous "glitch" or "example of laziness" or whatever you want to call it, there doesn't even really need to be an "item 2", but ....


#2 this has to be one of the last, if not THE last racing game made without a "proper" modern physics engine. IT. FEELS. LIKE. CRAP. Seriously. It's just like .. "is this car even on wheels? ...cuz it feels more like sledding on sandpaper or something."

Even the bounding boxes feel big and blocky like an oldschool game, and not like the "true" shape of the car or the environment, so u seem to "catch" on things u think u can pass.

#2a and at first I really wasn't going to say anything about the art style, but then I realized, one of my issues with the map I played over and over (paris) was the overall grainy, extremely "busy" and yet relatively monochromatic nature of the graphics makes it harder than it needs to be to see details such as caltrops, distant enemies, the xhair they keep moving around on you (see item 1 above), etc.


#3 the developers idea of how to implement "difficulty" ...

For starters: The AI is pretty challenging to begin with. (It cheats, actually, as another poster pointed out.) Even to win on "easy" you're going to have to race pretty dang good.

But what does "easy" mean, anyway? Well, instead of easy, med, hard actually affecting the skill of the AI, hard means you must finish in 1st place to win (i.e. to proceed!); med means u can finish 1st or 2nd; easy, you can come in as low as 3rd.

Most racing games with a "career" aspect -- where u spend $ to upgrade your car and whatnot -- even if you fail miserably in the first race, they still throw you some token $100 or whatever so you can at least buy some new tires or a fricking nitro boost or whatever to at least help you do a little better next time around.

In this game there is no such "easy" start. You lose? You reset and go again with no compensation. (Pfft I'm surprised they don't try to hit you with repair/ammo costs, too, just to dwindle down your starting $800 or whatever, which btw isn't enough to actually buy anything.) So, if you can't at least come in 3rd place in the very first race, it's "game over" for you, in a literal real-world sense: you will have to stop playing because you can't get past the 1st lvl to unlock any further content! (or, y'know, just keep trying that same race, same weaps, same car, same opponents, over and over until you are too sick of it to play any more.)

Yes, I speak from experience. I pretty much play all games on "hard", so, yeah: not proud of it, but, I have not yet been able to get past the very 1st race of this game. Tried at least 50 times (4 hrs played). Almost won 1 or 2. Came in 3rd once. Came in 7th, 10th, whatever, a couple times, and the rest ..... 30-40 runs ..... were all abortions because the game is "too hard" (shrug) and I had no chance to win + once u realize "i need to hit at least 3rd or this is pointless" u are not going to ♥♥♥♥ around for 4 laps in 6th place if that's how the chips are falling for that particular race. (I mean, yes, of course the AI are going to do all the dicky stuff to you that you would expect in NFS or every other game: ram you at the most inopportune moments, with force of a magnitude that you seem unable to impart against them; drive perfectly most of the time; drill u from behind when you have just respawned and they are coming along at 200 mph, thus turning a 5-10 second respawn into a 30-second "fk it; restart" moment, etc.) Anyway, obviously could have beat it if i persisted but, y'know, better things to do.


#4 and, I was gonna leave it there, but I'm reminded by the mention of nitro-boost about another quirk of this game that is not really a deal killer, but it's just a weird "wtf" kinda thing. The noise made by the nitro boost is super loud and annoying and doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to any kind of engine or boost sound. It sounds like an alarm buzzer or some kind of "high-voltage" sci-fi sound. Super. Loud. And. Annoying. And also constant, because of course you want to use the nitro the whole time so u have a chance of beating the cheater AI. So, you basically will hear only this sound for the entire game, and I am not really exaggerating. The other sounds are there but much quieter when the boost sound is on.


And yes, the more I re-read this, as I'm editing it, the more impossibly ridiculous these issues sound, and I'm almost hoping for someone to come on here and say "no, dummy, you misunderstand how the game works", but I'm pretty sure I was just running a basic set of options/modes/etc. (I mean .. the old game had autoaim .. maybe I am supposed to be using a controller? :P)

Anyway that's it for now. I actually have a more thorough review I'm working on, but I'm trying to be a sport about it, and at least make it to lvl 2 of the game before I release what I really think of this mess. :P

P. S. There was one song on the music I rly liked. There are definitely other positive points that improve on the original (there damn well better be, after 20 yrs.!), but for now I am unable to enjoy those because of all the lame stuff. :/

=------------------------=
2016 edits:

Correction:
I popped in DTR for a few hours recently. At the very least I wanted to hear that song again. ;) Came at it with a little different perspective, having played many and varied games in the meantime. Did better but still could not win. Tried to have a positive attitude about the game and that worked for a while but eventually it wore out. One thing I did discover, though, is that I was incorrect above and you can modify your vehicle from the start. So, I swapped in plasma for mg, and terminators instead of rockets. Both felt crappy/worse and i would stick w/ mg/rockets next time. :P (And are terminators unguided now? Bad, un-fun decision, if so.)

Discoveries:
My (no pun :P) "drive" to play this annoying game has come from wanting to unlock the progression/variety goodness of the weapons of the old game, and see them rendered in 3d, have fun killing w/ them, clear the initial hurdle of difficulty and become the hunter instead of hunted, etc. But now that I learned how to explore the options available in modding the car, it appears you only get 3 overall weapon slots, unlike the old game where you had access to all weapons at once. This is very disappointing. Can you get more slots on a better car? If not, another bad, un-fun, game-ruining decision. Why change stuff like this? Another major detracting point if this is all, in fact, "how it works".

Also newly noticed: the degree of politically incorrect dialogue. This game was definitely made in a different era/culture. So if you're sensitive to that...

Anyway, see u in 2 years! :D