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I would describe them as not great currently xD
I haven’t played Heat but like you I like the Forza Horizon balance of pretty arcadey feel with some sim elements mixed in without it really going too far to either extreme.
I don’t want to be excessively harsh on a game that is still pretty early in its development so far but also not having played any of the previous entries I dont know exactly what feel they are going for, so maybe this is already pretty close to their goal (which would be a shame I think)
As it is right now though it is very arcade-y feeling and in all honesty the “upgrades” didn’t really make the car feel any different as I spent money on the car, it was consistent throughout. The cars don’t really corner that well, you cant really initiate a drift or have any real control through the corners to that level, you can yank up the handbrake but the car doesnt slide in a nice, predictable manner at all. You can either use it to cut a lot of speed suddenly in a quick jab or hold it and spin out.
So generally you’ll be driving flat out dodging traffic until a corner at which point you’ll slam on the brakes to cut your speed enough to try and get around the corner without riding the walls (the races use a battle system with “health bars” to win or lose and hitting walls depletes your health bar)
As I said in the previous post as well the opponents definitely need balancing as well as you will often need to cheese the harder battles or just hope to god that they crash and you can get far enough ahead to win. A lot of the AI drivers will hook their front onto your rear and plow you into a wall which is extremely frustrating.
The game itself is set in an open world of sorts. So when you leave for the night you choose which highway entrance to enter on and in which direction. You are then free to cruise the highways (you start with a small loop and then a little more opens up as you play, I presume the full game will have a lot more) and challenge any other vehicle you see to battles. You can race all the civilian trucks or cars if you want or you search for other rival gangs. When you beat a certain amount of members from each gang then you unlock the boss of that gang for a boss battle.
Whilst cruising you are stuck going the direction you began with unless you pull into a parking spot. Here you can chat to random people about inane shit or challenge some others that are parked up. Here you can also leave the parking area to go in the opposite direction on the highway. It is realistic but also frustrating sometimes to try and find a parking area if someone you want to battle is on the opposite side, I wanna have some places where I could illegally switch sides really.
If you dont like JDM shit then I would say the appeal would be even narrower for you cause it is focused on those cars. This is what I love so what kept me involved to see it through but the selection of parts and wheels etc is honestly shite (nightrunners blows it out of the water by a long way in this aspect).
TLDR: you probably won’t like it that much based on what you said, even cruising the majority of the available world is really fucking long straights and is pretty boring and you dont even like JDM stuff :)
I don’t cheat as for me that takes away all the satisfaction I get from seeing a game through from beginning to end however as I have gotten older I no longer try and force myself to continue playing games that I am not enjoying. I have enjoyed gaming on the whole a lot more since I started doing this. Sometimes I’ll go back if it is something I really want to like and sometimes that works but I no longer get hung up on quitting a game if it is doing nothing for me.
Having not played any of the previous games I wasn’t sure what to expect going in and I am sort of 50 / 50 on it in general.
It has a good level of polish for something that is at v0.15 or there abouts when I played but there were a lot of negatives for me for example the balancing on the last set of boss “fights” was horrendous but obviously it is early on and hopefully as development moves forward things like that will be addressed.
I hated the upgrade system however which is something I don’t think will change going forward, for example having to “upgrade” your wallet to hold more is stupid. Particularly when you are forced into a couple of boss fights back to back early on. These fights award you with a decent amount of cash upon winning but upon finishing them and returning “home” you are greeted with a screen informing you because those fights went over your wallet capacity that you just lose a couple of mil, which when this happened to me I could have really used for upgrading my car.
Ultimately even though it is less polished I think nightrunners is a far superior game following the same sort of gameplay loop and style of highway racing. It has a more striking aesthetic, the cars look better and have a lot more / better upgrade options, particularly visually. That is made by just one person too, I’m looking forward to its hopeful release later on this year.
Also if you like Japanese cars and modding then check out JDM: Japanese Drift Master due to release at the end of this month, based on the demo version last year this was a lot more fun for me than Tokyo Xtreme.
Once you are around 10 or 15 missions into the game they introduce a mechanic where the alarms are water sensitive and you have to try and build things around the alarms using planks etc to try and stop them from getting wet. Getting them wet causes the alarm to go off.
Up until that point I was really enjoying figuring out a route, preparing and trying to pull off the goals within the time before the police show up etc. After the first “dont let this thing get wet mission” I stopped playing and never picked it up again as I hated the idea. It was a shame.
I do like it with those controller attachments, it does improve it further still be sacrifices a bit of portability in terms of no longer being pocket friendly.
I do agree it can be uncomfortsble after a time but for me that is more after hours opposed to minutes but everyone’s bodies are different and I can see why is may cramp some peoples hands quicker.
I find with the steam deck it is just a bit too large for me, it makes it feel a bit unwieldy and unstable in my hands for some reason. For me I think the sweet spot in terms of comfort would probably be something in the middle.
It probably has a lot to do with the kinds of games I play on it as well though. On the vita I played a lot of jrpgs, it really was a beast for that genre, and with those games it can be a lot more menus with turn based combat etc. That means I’d often play with it flat on my lap and not gripping it like a controller which is definitely a less cramped position.
As a vita lover I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t play the assassins creed game but they had similar stuff in the Uncharted game which ultimately made me quit the game.
I remember having to hold it up to light to reveal something in game and I was playing at night whilst on public transport and no lights around me were emitting enough light to pass this stupid “mini game” -_-
Yeh IMO they are too large. I have a steam deck and I barely ever use it outside the house because it just isnt really that portable in terms of being able to fit it in a bag with all the other stuff you may need when going away, it takes up more than half of my bag space.
So I reverted back to my vita and the experience of actually using it as a portable is miles ahead. Like you say I can slip it in my pocket when transferring between trains or the like and it doesn’t fill half my bag when not in use.
I’m a big guy so dont have the smallest hands either but honestly find the steam deck a bit uncomfortable where as the vita just feels good to me.
The last MMO I properly played was Black Desert Online. It is an absolutely amazing game but with disgusting monetisation. It did however also become a dangerous addiction in my life. It is currently free on steam I believe though!
Since that experience I haven’t really played any MMOs, I tried out Throne and Liberty a few weeks ago and that was the most boring couple of hours of my life this year.
As a huge Guild Wars 1 fan, GW2 was one of the biggest disappointments ever.
I really want to try Unbound, it is the first title that has looked interesting to me in the NFS series for a while it is just a shame that I have to use their launcher, if this wasn’t the case I might actually even be willing to break my rule of not giving EA any money (although I would buy it when it was on deep sale that they have fairly often). Shame.
I have never thought it is worth it, even back when WOW released, the economy was better and I was a teenager with a lot more disposable income I would never pay for a subscription to play a game. It is just a terrible way to run a game and I have always thought that.
I’ve never really understood why people would support that kind of model personally, there has never been a justification in my book.
Back then Guild Wars 1 was and always will be the far superior game when put up against WOW in my personal opinion and once I’d paid for that I could play it every month without further outlay. Shame how they ruined it with GW2 (unpopular opinion I’m sure but I stand by it xD)
I tried it for the first time this year, I put in around 10 hours to try and get into it and honestly I found it pretty dull. I didn’t think the combat felt particularly satisfying and the story as far as I got in it did nothing to interest me or draw me in.
I’m not saying it is a bad game because I certainly dont think that but for me personally just nothing clicked, it felt like a slog just to get through the 10 or so hours I put in and I dont have enough time to force myself to like games any more so I just moved on.
Red Alert 2 was the last good Command and Conquer game in my opinion, I know Generals had a big following but I couldn’t get into anything after RA2.
How did it play on the steam deck? I’ve been playing a bit of Tiberium Sun lately but RA2 will always be my favourite, it could use a bit more balancing in multiplayer though.
Yeh, I was so hyped for that launch but it just isn’t Guild Wars to me. Everyone still talks it up to this day and I have tried so many times to get into it but I’d rather go back and venture into pre-searing again and see my man Rurik.