PC1 In-depth review from the perspective of a sim racer

Justin

#1 overuser of the :P emoticon
I recently have written a review of this game that is designed for many of us here: people who play a lot of other sim racing games. It is really in-depth compared to most typical reviews, covering multiple sections in great detail. A few of you may not agree on the verdict, but hopefully it informs some sim racers who may still be on the fence about buying this game about just how it compares to other sims out there in multiple areas. :)

http://www.atomicsimracing.net/reviews/project-cars-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

Any feedback would be appreciated, good or bad. :)
 
I'm not hiding from anything. Just stating my opinion. You are free to disagree.



Say what? 15 posts since 2009 and you chose to use one of them right here to quote me? WMD member are you? :whistling:

My interests wax and wane. I've flown the crap out of DCS for last year and my driving bug bit again. pCars is now released so I'm posting on an active forum. Read into what you want.

I did buy a base WMD membership for Beta access, but I also bought early access to AC as well. Bought beta access to DCS if that matters as well.

Sorry I don't jerk the circle in the direction you want me to.
 
Who's this "Nightfire" guy anyway ?
Is he reliable like.... IGN, say ?
Project Cars
IGN rating : 8.9 (GREAT)
IGN Community rating: 8.8 (GREAT)

http://www.ign.com/games/project-cars/pc-119989
Read it and weep ...Nightfire. :rolleyes:

You're talking to him right now. As I said, I'm a nobody in terms of reviewers but this was a review from someone who doesn't write on games for a living or gets stuff published on Metacritic. I'm just a sim racer with a keyboard and long opinion to share to other sim racers. :) I have a generally positive view on the game anyway! It's just that I feel outside of the career and the graphics a lot of what it does is done better in other sims.

I appreciate all the feedback guys. I totally understand some negatives brought up over assumptions: a lot of the review was written in the week leading into the game's release and while I addressed many assumptions made in terms of FFB and Multiplayer in pre-publish editing (of which I was a lot more critical of in the initial drafts), some may have slipped through the cracks. I still stand by the majority of my thoughts though.

Also I knew that WMD line would cause some controversy. But that's me being my cynical self and trusting no one for objective thoughts who have significant financial interest in how the game is received. That doesn't mean I think all WMD members are SMS shills or anything though. I was a WMD member too! But that also means I was privy to certain threads focused on the public perception of the game during development that didn't sit well with me. I won't say anything more than that.
 
Well written review indeed.. but it is VERY CLEARLY written for a specific type of person/personality.

Also, in my opinion, this guy is no more or no less a simracer than for instance yours truly (I've been simracing since original Grand Prix from Microprose, done em all up until this day, except rF2! Heck I've even raced GPL online in the very early days. Put almost 1000$ on iRacing over the years. Bought everything Kunos has ever produced. Bought everything Papyrus ever produced, yes, even Indy 500. I've got all Simbin titles ever created. Have and love Game Stock Car. Have spent way too much on various hardware over the years just to fuel my simracing hobby. Etc).

His opinion is different and that's fine.. but lets not for a second kid ourselves that what he has written is any kind of "truth". It will definitely resonate with a lot of people here and especially the people at Reddit/r/simracing (that place is vile btw!) but it's just that. An opinion piece written by one type of personality as a confirmation bias piece for the "groupies".

These kinds of reviews always pop up with controversial titles. The first review of this kind that I can remember was when SU-27 Flanker was released way back in the days (there was a huge split in the Falcon vs SU-27 community).

It's actually a really interesting human condition. People seek confirmation for their own opinions so these kind of opinion pieces obviously get traction among it's followers. Kind of how all the videos of Emptybox work too. It doesn't mean the content is bad.. it can be well written and even well researched but it's very clear that there is an agenda.

Oh and about the WMD members being "greedy" and purposefully distorting their views for future revenues? Yeah, that bit was a bit over the top and pure BS in my opinion. The fact of the matter is that the majority of funders (in numbers of people) were junior members and team members. They outnumber the other people by a HUGE margin. And most of these don't even seem to realize they are going to get profits from this game.. though the profits may be basically worth about a steak dinner + fancy wine. :)

Anyhow, it's a well written opinion piece and actually works very well as a lens into the mind of a more liberal "hardcore" simracer who has given Project CARS a chance (unlike so many other "hardcore" simracers who outright belittled the project ever since day 1).

That's my take on the review.
 
Also, in my opinion, this guy is no more or no less a simracer than for instance yours truly. His opinion is different and that's fine.. but lets not for a second kid ourselves that what he has written is any kind of "truth".
That's my take on the review.

Of course it's his opinion and he's entitled to it. As are we entitled to agree or disagree. What you and many other investors have said, might say etc can also be construed as "not any kind of truth".

Lets not kid ourselves that because you say it's not true (calling him a liar eh? :rolleyes:) that we have to believe your so called truth.

Any way you are right, it does resonate with a lot of people.

As for giving Pcars a chance, didn't see you on the Racedepartment Pcars server tonight? There were many of us, both liberal and hardcore sim racers enjoying ourselves with a fun race game that to me is not in the same ball park as GSCE or RRE for that matter in my opinion. It still has too many flaws for online play too.
 
My interests wax and wane. I've flown the crap out of DCS for last year and my driving bug bit again. pCars is now released so I'm posting on an active forum. Read into what you want.

I did buy a base WMD membership for Beta access, but I also bought early access to AC as well. Bought beta access to DCS if that matters as well.

Sorry I don't jerk the circle in the direction you want me to.

I didn't ask you to jerk anything.
 
Of course it's his opinion and he's entitled to it. As are we entitled to agree or disagree. What you and many other investors have said, might say etc can also be construed as "not any kind of truth".

Lets not kid ourselves that because you say it's not true (calling him a liar eh? :rolleyes:) that we have to believe your so called truth.

Any way you are right, it does resonate with a lot of people.

As for giving Pcars a chance, didn't see you on the Racedepartment Pcars server tonight? There were many of us, both liberal and hardcore sim racers enjoying ourselves with a fun race game that to me is not in the same ball park as GSCE or RRE for that matter in my opinion. It still has too many flaws for online play too.

Nice of you to twist my words like that. See how I put the word truth in "" to make sure nobody would be foolish enough to mistake me for outing the dude for anything.

But yeah, you go on with your passive aggressive posts over and over. I'll just keep ignoring you for now.

.. as for not being online, I'm working.. constantly, hour after hour.. and sometimes sleep. During my lunch, dinner, night snack and breakfast breaks I read these forums and type these posts. I'd love to play pCars right now.. heck I'd pay almost anything to get some free time but it's not happening. Luckily I've had my 700 hours of pCars (around 400 since it hit steam) so I can wait a bit.
 
Nice of you to twist my words like that. See how I put the word truth in "" to make sure nobody would be foolish enough to mistake me for outing the dude for anything.
Don't start the whining now :rolleyes:. No twisting here. You said this: . "but lets not for a second kid ourselves that what he has written is any kind of "truth".

ps, I don't do passive aggressive or whatever that means. But members like Kyle Pearson and other investors love to be overtly aggressive whenever they feel like it.
 
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@Justin

"There is also an issue with game seemingly stuttering despite showing a constant framerate while using Vsync. I have a feeling this is a frame pacing issue, but I feel this will be fixed quickly after launch if it isn't localised to my PC."

I have found that using adaptive V-sync eliminates the stuttering with my SLI setup, even though it appears that the framerate is still basically locked around 60fps. I have yet to see any tearing from the adaptive V-sync releasing. When using standard V-sync, I do get occasional stutters as you did.
 
You seem to be just a bit schizophrenic about pCars. Maybe the title deserves it? Your conclusion is fairly positive but all the other sections I looked at-- not the complete review, I must admit-- seem to be filled with lots of negative remarks. I may well be off base with this sense ---maybe I didn't read it close enough.

I do agree with the idea that for a dedicated simracer wanting realism in handling feel as the number one virtue.... pCars will likely convert very few from other titles.

But, how many simracers like to jump from title to title for something new and different? Probably quite a few-- maybe more than you think when you consider most owners of racing sims (outside of iRacing) never play multiplayer online-- at all. (My source for that is the developers at Kunos)
 
@Justin

"There is also an issue with game seemingly stuttering despite showing a constant framerate while using Vsync. I have a feeling this is a frame pacing issue, but I feel this will be fixed quickly after launch if it isn't localised to my PC."

I have found that using adaptive V-sync eliminates the stuttering with my SLI setup, even though it appears that the framerate is still basically locked around 60fps. I have yet to see any tearing from the adaptive V-sync releasing. When using standard V-sync, I do get occasional stutters as you did.

I actually found a fix for this quite literally an hour after the review went live. It involves a similar method to what you describe. Turn off in-game vsync and force it on via Nvidia Control Panel. Its funny how stuff like that always happens. :p

@traind Yeah, it can feel that way at some points and is probably the thing I feel the most critical of in the review. However despite focusing on negatives I never outright say the game is terrible at anything that it does but I never quite made that clear at some points.

I personally play it as a bit of fun away from my main sim, which is AC at the moment. So I do understand that we can play supposedly lesser sims from time to time. :)
 
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Well, i can understand the title is not to your liking (and you want everyone to know this) but this argument is so idiotic, that it should be banned. Yes, you read it, idiotic and banned. Cause you know, red bold letters make everyone easy to find their argument, however bad it is. Do you know how many of the WMD members invested huge amounts of money and now hidden from public count Dollars (or Euros) being poured into their wallets? If you think that any (ok, some might have, but majority for sure didn't) of WMD members ever thought about it, man, you can ask yourself a lot of questions about yourself, cause you're saying us what you would do, not what we did. We all wanted this game to succeed cause we need good racing games. One more is always better than only the hard hard hard core simracers alone. And if people enjoy playing it for the fun of it, is that so bad? If rFactor2 is too hardcore and iRacing is too expensive and AC just isn't done yet (but i like it), why we should not have an alternative? If you don't like it, move to the next one or explain what's wrong with it. Just repeating the mantra bad, bad, bad, awful, ...... helps whom? I like it and i'm proud to say that, even if you think that i don't understand anything about the physics or racing or ..... But i understand what fun is and that's what matters. It's not even a week since pCars came out and there's more written about it than it was about any other racing game so far. Who knows, maybe you guys are also WMD members that count on the saying that even the worst advertisement makes people interested in the subject of the argument. And you're counting money on your bank account grow by every word you write. What a cunning plan, Baldrick would add.

To be honest, in races against the AI you can see some names in the list that are from the big investors. And in different communities you can read how the guys with these names defend the game. So at some point you start to think that they do this because of their big investment.

But to be honest again, if I would have invested big into it, I don´t know how I would act. Maybe I would do the same, I don´t know. At least I´m defending Bitcoin :D
 
Personally, when I invested in pCARS back at the start, AC was not even a distant spec. Neither was RaceRoom. I was just desperate for a new PC race sim which wasn't called rFactor. The fun of seeing daily builds and watching the progress of the game was worth the team member investment alone, and I am pretty happy with the sim I've got out of the process as well.

Personally I will back pCARS 2 just as quickly as 1... And we all know pCARS 2 won't have any profit sharing. That is not remotely a consideration for me (or for probably 95% of the WMD members).
 

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