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Monday 28 January, 2008
GAMELOG ENTRY#2
As I was racing through the game, after crossing few levels, the game started to become complex and demanded more concentration. I was in need of some relaxation, a kind of small break when I discovered this special feature to roam around the city. Yes, this came as a surprise package to me. I could roam in the city and buy upgrades for my car. I could also challenge local racers for a small practice session. This also helped me have social interaction with the bay standers. I realized that there are lots of things to explore in this game other than the race itself.
Game play:
My second session in the game started with selecting a proper customized car for me. I have 3 broad options of cars to choose from; Muscle car (used for more acceleration), Tuned car or exotic cars. I also upgraded my car’s graphics by using various vinyl stickers, enhancing its looks. This is really a cool feature and gives certain level of flexibility to players to put his creative skills to work. There are various types of races involved like drift, mountain drift, drag, circuit, single lap and time limit races.
As I proceeded through the levels, I got lots of upgrades as reward but handling upgrades are the ones which were really powerful. High end suspensions, turbo chargers and nitride boosters are just few to name. Once a player reaches 13th level of the game and compete with the 3rd ranked racer, special cops are incorporated in the game. Player needs to develop very strong controls to escape these cops. I must say there is a great flow of storyline throughout the game webbing one level to the other. The designer has definitely blended a sports game with storyline to create more thrill and adventure into it. The thrill I got to drive those high performance cars with changeable vinyl graphics is unmatched.
The police chase is made very realistic by the use of special sound and light effects. There are several levels of police chase: general police chase, under cover chase, cops with SUVs and even helicopters. The final levels of the game are really tough and sometimes frustrating. At the end there are 60 police cars, 10 SUVs, 2 helicopters and the special cop Alex Cross to chase this one player. Then there are spiked strips on the road to escape from. Since I was using manual control, I felt that I really developed a lot over my control skills and I could now take sharp turns even at a high speed of 40 mph.
Design:
Whenever there is a coalition between 2 cars or the car with the building, the effects are superb. Great use of physics engine I guess. And these coalition or big jumps of the car are shown in slow motion with various camera angles to create a nice special effect. The navigation bar and speedometers are perfectly placed ergonomically to give the player the exact feel of driving an actual racing car. Even for the game I am designing now, I plan to put the scorecard in a similar fashion, so that it is easily visible/accessible without actually distracting the player from the game scene.
One of the faults in design which I would have liked to change in the game is related to the selection of cars. If you select a normal car/tuned car and upgrade it to its best, still it cannot perform as good as even a half upgraded exotic car. So this becomes really frustrating if someone choose a tuned car in the first place.
This high end graphic game requires good graphic card. Radeon cards, nvidia or geforce card are must to see this game run smoothly in its full gloss.
As a summary I can conclude that this is really a fun game and can be compared to test drive 6. It has amazing shadow effect which I admired the most, though I didn’t like the concept for some social issues.
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