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I could never quite put my finger on it though...
I knew that it was something to do with how I found was realistic but pretty boring to play...
It was something to do with the lack of car damage...
It just didn't feel like the exciting sport that it should be...
And I've now realised why.
There's no sense of danger.
You might wonder exactly what I mean by that but bear with me for a minute.
The sport racing is about fast cars, yes?
And what's the thrill in driving a fast car?
It's all down to testosterone and male bravado.
Risking dangerous speeds in order to show off extreme driving skills.
There's a sense of danger knowing that if you mess up in that vehicle, it might well be the last mistake you make.
Naturally the game shouldn't recreate this danger, but it should atleast try and emulate it - otherwise the true emotion of the sport is lost.
How well does it emulate this danger?
Putting it simply, it doesn't.
You hit a wall at break neck speed and bounce harmlessly off it.
The worst punishment you get for crashing?
You lose a bit of speed.
No sense of danger whatsoever!
If they had put realistic car damage in then it would've been a whole different game.
You'd have to be even more careful with your breaks and speed. You could risk going faster but if you're not careful it'll be into the wall and a written off car.
Race lost.
It would make the game far more intense.
You've just bought a lovely new car with a nice painted smooth body.
Will you want to risk ruining it's perfect shape and scratching the paint work?
Or will you give up first place to a more risky driver.
Naturally, the difficulty will have to be tweaked accordingly - can't have computer players doing perfect corners at breakneck speeds while you have to crawl round them - but the games would've been far more exciting.
The way I see it now, they've taken all the excitement out of an exciting sport.
It's the "happy world" of racing where no one gets hurt no matter what speeds they go at and they all race happily together!
Sheesh! That's even an cuter setting than your average Mario game!
I think that a sense of danger brings excitement and challenge to the game.
F-Zero X and Perfect Dark are two of the most intense and challenging games on the N64.
F-Zero X, a racer where you can easily lose a race by falling off or destoying your machine.
You have a choice. Do you go at a safe speed (and lose the race), or do you use your B-Button boost.
Ofcourse, using this boost requires your ships shield energy making you that more vunerable to damage.
What's more, at the increased speed, you're much more likely hit something or go flying off the track.
And although if you "die", you simply restart the race with one of your spare ships, but be warned, you only have so many spare ships.
So when it comes to the MASTER difficulty setting, you have 2 "spare ships", 30 rough opponents (who you'll need to use plenty of "boost" to stand a chance against and they'll be using every dirty tactic they know to write your ship off!), you can understand why there's a real sense of danger as you race across the deadly tracks of the JOKER cup.
It took me a hundred goes to win that cup...
Perfect Dark had a real sense of danger.
On the Perfect Agent setting, a single enemy could reduce your energy to almost nothing with a single round of ammo.
If one bad guy sneaked up on your, it could be the end.
This game was also incredibly intense and horribly difficult to finish (it makes Goldeneye on 00 Agent seem like a piece of cake!).
So many games lack a sense of danger these days.
Remember back with Sonic, Mario and Donkey Kong in their 16bit days?
it was basically a "one hit kills" system with small exceptions.
Sonic for instance survived if he had rings (but lost all rings as a result leaving vunerability), Mario survived if he had the mushroom power up (but lost the power up as a result), and Donkey Kong would run away leaving Diddy Kong on his own.
3D platformers (bar the original Crash) have lost this sense of danger.
Another way many games have lost their sense of danger is through punishment.
Some games let your quicksave (as mentioned by Gronti a while back) so when you die, you return where you left off.
No punishment there.
Others like Mario64 and Conker return you to the beginning of the scenario which is a little punishing, but there seems to be no extra punishment for losing all your lives.
You see the "You lose" sequence and then return back to where you would be had you only lost a life, rather than them all.
I think that devellopers should bring back punishment to games.
Punishment gives a true sense of danger, a sense of danger gives an intense gaming experience, an intense gaming experience leaves a huge sense of achievement when you finish the game.
Ofcourse, Mr "Anti-Fustration" Dringo is sure to disagree...
;-D
> If they had put realistic car damage in then it would've been a whole different game.
You can blame the car manufacturers for that; several of the European manufacturers refuse to allow their cars to be seen to be damaged.
The US and Japanese manufacturers don't care, and the GT team have been trying to persuade them to allow it since the first game was developed.
Hopefully, due to GT3 being such a massive success, this will give Sony/Polyphony more leverage for the next version; but we'll have to wait and see.
The only other option, of course, is not to include cars from those manufacturers who are getting uptight about it - but I feel that would lessen the appeal of the game.
I could never quite put my finger on it though...
I knew that it was something to do with how I found was realistic but pretty boring to play...
It was something to do with the lack of car damage...
It just didn't feel like the exciting sport that it should be...
And I've now realised why.
There's no sense of danger.
You might wonder exactly what I mean by that but bear with me for a minute.
The sport racing is about fast cars, yes?
And what's the thrill in driving a fast car?
It's all down to testosterone and male bravado.
Risking dangerous speeds in order to show off extreme driving skills.
There's a sense of danger knowing that if you mess up in that vehicle, it might well be the last mistake you make.
Naturally the game shouldn't recreate this danger, but it should atleast try and emulate it - otherwise the true emotion of the sport is lost.
How well does it emulate this danger?
Putting it simply, it doesn't.
You hit a wall at break neck speed and bounce harmlessly off it.
The worst punishment you get for crashing?
You lose a bit of speed.
No sense of danger whatsoever!
If they had put realistic car damage in then it would've been a whole different game.
You'd have to be even more careful with your breaks and speed. You could risk going faster but if you're not careful it'll be into the wall and a written off car.
Race lost.
It would make the game far more intense.
You've just bought a lovely new car with a nice painted smooth body.
Will you want to risk ruining it's perfect shape and scratching the paint work?
Or will you give up first place to a more risky driver.
Naturally, the difficulty will have to be tweaked accordingly - can't have computer players doing perfect corners at breakneck speeds while you have to crawl round them - but the games would've been far more exciting.
The way I see it now, they've taken all the excitement out of an exciting sport.
It's the "happy world" of racing where no one gets hurt no matter what speeds they go at and they all race happily together!
Sheesh! That's even an cuter setting than your average Mario game!
I think that a sense of danger brings excitement and challenge to the game.
F-Zero X and Perfect Dark are two of the most intense and challenging games on the N64.
F-Zero X, a racer where you can easily lose a race by falling off or destoying your machine.
You have a choice. Do you go at a safe speed (and lose the race), or do you use your B-Button boost.
Ofcourse, using this boost requires your ships shield energy making you that more vunerable to damage.
What's more, at the increased speed, you're much more likely hit something or go flying off the track.
And although if you "die", you simply restart the race with one of your spare ships, but be warned, you only have so many spare ships.
So when it comes to the MASTER difficulty setting, you have 2 "spare ships", 30 rough opponents (who you'll need to use plenty of "boost" to stand a chance against and they'll be using every dirty tactic they know to write your ship off!), you can understand why there's a real sense of danger as you race across the deadly tracks of the JOKER cup.
It took me a hundred goes to win that cup...
Perfect Dark had a real sense of danger.
On the Perfect Agent setting, a single enemy could reduce your energy to almost nothing with a single round of ammo.
If one bad guy sneaked up on your, it could be the end.
This game was also incredibly intense and horribly difficult to finish (it makes Goldeneye on 00 Agent seem like a piece of cake!).
So many games lack a sense of danger these days.
Remember back with Sonic, Mario and Donkey Kong in their 16bit days?
it was basically a "one hit kills" system with small exceptions.
Sonic for instance survived if he had rings (but lost all rings as a result leaving vunerability), Mario survived if he had the mushroom power up (but lost the power up as a result), and Donkey Kong would run away leaving Diddy Kong on his own.
3D platformers (bar the original Crash) have lost this sense of danger.
Another way many games have lost their sense of danger is through punishment.
Some games let your quicksave (as mentioned by Gronti a while back) so when you die, you return where you left off.
No punishment there.
Others like Mario64 and Conker return you to the beginning of the scenario which is a little punishing, but there seems to be no extra punishment for losing all your lives.
You see the "You lose" sequence and then return back to where you would be had you only lost a life, rather than them all.
I think that devellopers should bring back punishment to games.
Punishment gives a true sense of danger, a sense of danger gives an intense gaming experience, an intense gaming experience leaves a huge sense of achievement when you finish the game.
Ofcourse, Mr "Anti-Fustration" Dringo is sure to disagree...
;-D