| kowenicki said: so come on then.... some reviews and impressions and scores out of ten. |
I need to play more online and races to comment fully, as I decided to play with the editor first, but so far I'm pretty impressed.
Editor seems really good and breaks down into three elements:
1 - car customization - mainly looks so far as I can tell at this stage
2 - driver customization - just looks
3 - track customization - the big one, and a lot of fun. Seems very well designed to support everything from easy to complex design ambitions
Focusing on the track editor, you can make something that looks good pretty easily (more so that LBP due to some clever stuff plus the obvious focus of racing over LBP more open structure). For example:
1 - edit terrain, make some dips and mountains in approx 5 seconds.
2 - lay a track as though driving, easy and you can lay down a nice track very fast
3 - get the editor to 'auto populate' your track with boosts, add trees, buildings, etc. (this is clever as you jump to a polished looking level without any drawn out effort or time).
4 - have a test drive, have a test, race, etc. without leaving builder
5 - save and publish if you want
Of course, if you want to you can place every tree, warp the angle of the road, etc. and basically take a long time over your track - but I'm impressed you can build something good in a very short time with minimal effort.
As for the racing, seems fun but nothing amazing. Playing AI is okay in a Mario Kart sort of way, with speed boosters, jumps and pickups to attack opponents with but nothing too astounding although fun enough. Playing online seems better, but I've only had a couple of races so far so need more time to really get a feel for it.
There's lots of leader boards for times, races, popular tracks, etc. plus a store in place but currently inactive - hello micro-transactions by the look of it.
Publishing levels is very fast and easy, as is downloading levels, plus other content like other players custom karts and driver designs.
Graphics are clean and look pretty good to me, with a distinctive look in the same manner LBP had (albeit a different one). Even throwing a lot in my track I couldn't seem to cause any major hiccups or slowdown.
Now, so far I only have three gripes, none of which are major:
1 - the load times between major activity feel a little long. Not terrible, but a little longer than I expected. Hopefully they'll continue to optimise this as much as possible
2 - frame rate feels a tad slow overall. Nothing again that leapt out at me but it just felt like it was there. It almost felt subliminal in you get my drift.
3 - if you play with complex cliffs, etc. then mix them with complex roads you can get the occasional gap in the joins. Also there is some pop in of objects depending upon density.
Overall though pretty good and certainly my kids loved it, particularly how easily they could create then race on their own tracks.
Looks like the full game will have a career mode plus splitscreen but this was turned off in Beta.
Also, like I say I haven't played with online enough to comment more there, plus with limited ability to race wtih AI I couldn't really judge the AI's capabilities overall.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
