I’ve been keeping an eye on the game’s updates, and I’m now planning to review it. The game’s randomly lagging for me at times mid-race (I’ll leave a video to show this), so while I figure out the best setup to use for playback, I’ll just leave my current notes here.
I REALLY love the Custom Season mode. The freedom you have with all of the variables you can change is something I’m not used to seeing in racing games. This alone has kept me coming back to the game from time to time, even before the recent update.
Additionally, the Championship mode’s upgrade system is a really cool feature. I love the randomized elements; really adds to the feel of working with what you get. Some ideas for improving it:
- I’m not a fan of there being more races in a season than upgrades, as this locks you in performance-wise during the later races. So if your car’s still underperforming after your upgrades are used up, you’re pretty much helpless.
- The Risky upgrade needs to be tweaked. The 50% chance to get a -2 decrease to performance is a little too steep a penalty; just to offset one decrease can take up to 2 races if you use the guaranteed Safe upgrades, and getting the minimum +3 increase after multiple failed attempts for example isn’t worth the risk. I think a successful Risky upgrade should give a flat +3 boost, while a failure should just do nothing, as not getting an upgrade is already a viable risk.
- At the very least, there should be options for the damage multiplier. Standard damage as it is now essentially makes damage a non-factor in races (and I know this ‘cause I’m currently a below average driver), which additionally makes the perk that reduces damage to your car useless.
- In case you want ideas for more perks, a DRS perk might be interesting to play around with. I had ideas for “being a ghost in your first lap” and “doing extra damage to drivers you hit”, but I imagine those might not mesh too well with the sense of realism your game is going for.
Other issues that I think need addressing are:
- AI still struggles in Brazil, particularly at the bridge, from the looks of things. Also unless there’s a way to make them more aware at the intersections of Arena courses, I think it might be best to scrap the intersections altogether. If the game had multiplayer it would’ve been okay to keep the Arenas as they are, but as a single player game, having those 3 tracks become viable for the AI's sake is more ideal. Especially for the Championship mode, which currently has to omit them.
- AI still struggles with rain forecasts. I’ve got 2 clips for that I’ll show in the video.
- Once you DNF you have to wait for all of the other racers to finish. If that’s a mandatory thing that needs to happen, at the very least I’d like to be able to watch the race from the perspectives of the other drivers.
- Physics are still a little wonky. I got one example recorded, so I’ll add that to the video. I wish I was recording when I randomly flipped in qualifying at... I think it was the Germany track.
Other additional features I’d like to see:
- Ability to enable upgrades in Custom Season
- Ability to race on each track in reverse
- An additional set of rain tires, so you can have different ones for different levels of rain, which would make racing in the rain more dynamic (assuming the AI can handle this, that is)