M
Mikkow
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Mikkow
Got it today on DVD, installed online steam version (how exciting!). Have a G25, 24" iiyama 16:10 monitor and decently deep knowledge of motorsports/racing etc.
I have limited knowledge of the STCC series, despite being a Swede, and I'm moderately interested (So far, WTCC and WRC/F1 interested me a bit more until very recently due to this expansion). I don't know how the tracks are really like though I heard they are smaller and crazier than the FIA famous ones. I played some WTCC in race 07 before and I liked it a lot.
Here are some initial impressions after about 1½ hours of playing around:
- The AI seems more confrontational and aggressive. In the original, they were perfect gentlemen, always giving room, to a fault (almost impossible to be overtaken by the AI unless going off). I had some serious bumping on the Knutstorp track in a test race, which felt very new to the sim.
- The force feedback model is overhauled. I'm noticing less extreme 'tugging' when cornering on and beyond the limit when in open wheelers for example. The 'weave a bit' effect when driving straight is much more random and not just a smooth wavy motion to the left and right. It's much more to my liking.
- The sound effects, though not including engines, have been overhauled. The bottoming out sound, the crash sound, tire squeel etc is all new as far as I can tell, and it sounds a whole lot better (I remember these sounds from TV sometimes). They are much more meaty and sound like 'serious business', tire squeel excluded. The crash sound is incredibly loud and long and took me off guard - "HOLY ****!". All in all, seems like a serious improvement over Race 07.
- Grip seriously seems a little bit different. When going slower especially, I get the sensation that the cars have a little wee bit more mechanical grip. As a result, it feels a little bit harder to drive (more responsiveness = more twitchyness). Who knows how much is placebo effect or actual difference.
Leaning towards the latter.
- There are bugs. When doing championship with 23 cars (btw, I think you can now have up to 31 AI cars instead of 24 from race 07), even though there's enough drivers in the STCC to fill up the field, there's 5 duplicate drivers. Freaky! Also, alt-tabbing out of the game means I'll never get back in. It will crash on me, and this bothers me the most as I often have to alt-tab.
- Everything new in english. But in the pit stops and while racing on swedish tracks, there's new announcer sounds (just a sampled loop), in Swedish, which sound very realistic, and you can make out the words. Nice atmosphere there.
- The Camaro Cup car is a BEAST. Feels incredibly unresponsive, meaty and powerful compared to the touring cars. I'm sure this one will be quite popular online. I quite like it. Hard to drive though due to the immense torque and power.
- Only tried one Swedish track so far - Knutstorp. Didn't think much of it until I now finally know how it's like. It's a kind of mickey mouse (shorter, more turns and elevation changes) track, but it's amazingly fun for the cars which aren't on the higher end of the HP spectrum (touring cars, radicals, FBMW, and ohmygod Caterhams!). It's already a new favourite of mine. I always liked these type of tracks before, so no surprise. I hope the other tracks can compare to it.
- UI changes. The cars are now shown as a 3d preview you can move around with the mouse when you are selecting drivers/cars. Some other stuff, not important.
- New music seems nice. Though I often replace sim music with Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge music and so forth.
- A "Pit Menu". Along with the 'options' 'car setup' 'drive' 'timings' etc - called Pit Stop Menu or something like that. You can set up exactly what you want them to do for a pitstop, then save each plan individually (and name them), much like a car setup. Pretty neat.
It appears clear they haven't quite finished and polished it yet. But I'm sure that'll all be dealt with in shortly arriving patches. I'm glad to have it, and I'm blown away by how fun it is (I had no idea the STCC format was so much more suitable for touring cars (and many others)).
I'm sure non-swedes will highly appreciate this iteration of Race 07 and have tons of fun racing the new tracks and classes (which are not very suitable for FIA GT cars - horray for diversity in tracks and cars).
EDIT: An update on the STCC bugs section: The Alt-Tab crash & inability to return to the game after an alt-tab was fixed by going into the steam program, and then: View > Settings > In-game > then disabling "Enable Steam-community in-game".
Presumably the offline installation of STCC doesn't suffer from the problem as a result.
EDIT 2: Update on the E90 BMW transmissions/cars: They did in fact include the sequential BMW's! I just realized the west coast racing had 6 gears, and I was driving it in manual H-shifter mode thinking it was the 5 speed H-pattern.
The conclusion is thus that the info-text for the BMW's are wrong - it doesn't state the transmission type correctly for some of them. Yay!
I have limited knowledge of the STCC series, despite being a Swede, and I'm moderately interested (So far, WTCC and WRC/F1 interested me a bit more until very recently due to this expansion). I don't know how the tracks are really like though I heard they are smaller and crazier than the FIA famous ones. I played some WTCC in race 07 before and I liked it a lot.
Here are some initial impressions after about 1½ hours of playing around:
- The AI seems more confrontational and aggressive. In the original, they were perfect gentlemen, always giving room, to a fault (almost impossible to be overtaken by the AI unless going off). I had some serious bumping on the Knutstorp track in a test race, which felt very new to the sim.
- The force feedback model is overhauled. I'm noticing less extreme 'tugging' when cornering on and beyond the limit when in open wheelers for example. The 'weave a bit' effect when driving straight is much more random and not just a smooth wavy motion to the left and right. It's much more to my liking.
- The sound effects, though not including engines, have been overhauled. The bottoming out sound, the crash sound, tire squeel etc is all new as far as I can tell, and it sounds a whole lot better (I remember these sounds from TV sometimes). They are much more meaty and sound like 'serious business', tire squeel excluded. The crash sound is incredibly loud and long and took me off guard - "HOLY ****!". All in all, seems like a serious improvement over Race 07.
- Grip seriously seems a little bit different. When going slower especially, I get the sensation that the cars have a little wee bit more mechanical grip. As a result, it feels a little bit harder to drive (more responsiveness = more twitchyness). Who knows how much is placebo effect or actual difference.
Leaning towards the latter.- There are bugs. When doing championship with 23 cars (btw, I think you can now have up to 31 AI cars instead of 24 from race 07), even though there's enough drivers in the STCC to fill up the field, there's 5 duplicate drivers. Freaky! Also, alt-tabbing out of the game means I'll never get back in. It will crash on me, and this bothers me the most as I often have to alt-tab.
- Everything new in english. But in the pit stops and while racing on swedish tracks, there's new announcer sounds (just a sampled loop), in Swedish, which sound very realistic, and you can make out the words. Nice atmosphere there.
- The Camaro Cup car is a BEAST. Feels incredibly unresponsive, meaty and powerful compared to the touring cars. I'm sure this one will be quite popular online. I quite like it. Hard to drive though due to the immense torque and power.
- Only tried one Swedish track so far - Knutstorp. Didn't think much of it until I now finally know how it's like. It's a kind of mickey mouse (shorter, more turns and elevation changes) track, but it's amazingly fun for the cars which aren't on the higher end of the HP spectrum (touring cars, radicals, FBMW, and ohmygod Caterhams!). It's already a new favourite of mine. I always liked these type of tracks before, so no surprise. I hope the other tracks can compare to it.
- UI changes. The cars are now shown as a 3d preview you can move around with the mouse when you are selecting drivers/cars. Some other stuff, not important.
- New music seems nice. Though I often replace sim music with Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge music and so forth.
- A "Pit Menu". Along with the 'options' 'car setup' 'drive' 'timings' etc - called Pit Stop Menu or something like that. You can set up exactly what you want them to do for a pitstop, then save each plan individually (and name them), much like a car setup. Pretty neat.
It appears clear they haven't quite finished and polished it yet. But I'm sure that'll all be dealt with in shortly arriving patches. I'm glad to have it, and I'm blown away by how fun it is (I had no idea the STCC format was so much more suitable for touring cars (and many others)).
I'm sure non-swedes will highly appreciate this iteration of Race 07 and have tons of fun racing the new tracks and classes (which are not very suitable for FIA GT cars - horray for diversity in tracks and cars).
EDIT: An update on the STCC bugs section: The Alt-Tab crash & inability to return to the game after an alt-tab was fixed by going into the steam program, and then: View > Settings > In-game > then disabling "Enable Steam-community in-game".
Presumably the offline installation of STCC doesn't suffer from the problem as a result.
EDIT 2: Update on the E90 BMW transmissions/cars: They did in fact include the sequential BMW's! I just realized the west coast racing had 6 gears, and I was driving it in manual H-shifter mode thinking it was the 5 speed H-pattern.
The conclusion is thus that the info-text for the BMW's are wrong - it doesn't state the transmission type correctly for some of them. Yay!
