the biggest problem with codemasters racers is they just can’t help themselves and put in loads of unskippable bullshit: cutscenes, animations, voiceovers, blah blah blah. the “attitude” and presentation of these games is just so aggressively obnoxious. it puts me off the games, despite me adoring their threading the needle of simmy/arcadey very well. it’s truly infuriating. i think dirt rally keeps it more in check? but still not perfect. i just want unfussy racing, i don’t want to hear a “immersion-building” voiceover about picking my sponsor or whatever
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Yeah I got confused by the most assisting setting because I got even slower using it. I didn’t realize it was already braking for me lol
But yeah, that’s a little too much help.
My problem is steering not braking. After a while I figured out that the game wants you to make more sweeping motions instead of small adjustments. That helped. Also setting the inside deadzone to something high like 60. I’m still playing around with that though. The linearity should do something too but I’m not sure what. I feel like I want to play this with the dpad, it’s weird. Handles so differently from other racers. It’s probably simmier than what I normally play
I’m curious to try manual transmission, yeah
I like the manual because it feels like hitting a good combo in a fighter. Hit throttle or brake, hit LB/L1 for the clutch, then hit X/Square or B/Circle.
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the most important setting is the steering setting imo, since it changes from FM7 like sim steering to arcade steering.
change that to normal before changing anything else…
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Found a video of those racing game tribute missions in Forza Horizon 4 :
(the background music is mostly edited in by the video maker sadly though they seem to at least try to pick somewhat appropriate tracks from their own soundtrack for the real thing)
Spoilers?
#10. Outrun
#9. Smuggler’s Run
#8. Test Drive (1987)
#7. Project Gotham Racing
#6. Daytona
#5. Crazy Taxi
#4. SEGA Rally
#3. Super Off-road
#2. Ridge Racer
#1. The Porsche 911 Turbo (all of them?)
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Admittedly yeah, they do lay it on thick in a lot of cases, but in retrospect GRID is one of the more tasteful and thoughtful ones. Playing the PC version right now and load times are never more than 5 seconds, and the race start animations are all skippable, though some you may need to watch once. Results screens can drag on a bit, but I find I usually need a breather after a good race anyway. DiRT 2 is quite similar, and I personally rate them as my top racing games of last gen.
Now, you wanna talk bad Codies UX? DiRT 3. Now that is a slow and obnoxious game. I can’t bring myself to replay it even though I love the Gymkhana.
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I really loved Smuggler’s Run, or especially the sequel about gunrunning in Cold War Afghanistan and Cambodia, though they were unwilling to created enough hard blocking terrain to make most situations not resolve the same. GTA without buildings needs a little more, but back then fast dune biggies over the miracle of open 3D worlds was like a dream of flying.
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I’ve told this story a million times, but for the longest time the only non-Nancy Drew video game my mom would touch was Smugglers Run and I still don’t know what it was about that game.
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Other than owning every game in the 40 game Nancy Drew adventure game series, my Mom’s video game experience is Pac-Man -> Sonic 2 & Knuckles (because she found it easier than the base game) -> Mario 64 -> Smugglers Run: Warzone -> Pac-Man CE and I don’t think she’s touched anything since that came out.
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pretty good list for the Mom Classic Mini
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I think we went for a while w/o mentioning how good this game looks, so…
did i mention before how good this game can look?
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… and it also can do this
… which happens rarely, i.e you absolutely need to be creative how you can achieve that. In my case, i wanted to know whether i can drive a GT40 between the wheeltracks of the Unimog:
You can! Kinda. Well, the Unimog has to drive over you, basically… technically though, it worked! 
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It looks good and it runs better than Horizon 3! On my PC at least. It loads faster and I can use higher graphics settings.
How did driving work out for you, managed to get the hang of it?
I’m actually pretty sure I had controller latency problems yesterday! I removed a Dualshock 4 program I had just installed to get NFS to work (didn’t work anyway) and did a reboot today and it’s like night and day
I’m having a lot of fun now!
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My Mom Classic Mini is:
- Every Civ game up through 5
- Master of Magic
- Plants vs. Zombies
- Free Cell
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That’s cool! She doesn’t like 6 or never got around to playing it?
Her PC can’t run it, and she still enjoys the heck out of 5, so no reason to upgrade right now. Being on SSI disability also limits her funding for that.
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Yeah it’s really demanding for not much of a graphical upgrade
I think it is time now to talk about a few of the core gameplay mechanics (pun initially unintentional) of Horizon4, that seem to make the sensation of playing this game so good, especially for people who seem to never have touched a horizon title for years/before.
first up - honking:
this game isn't just honking great, it got some great honking mechanics. ..... sorry..... just couldn't keep this one for myself any longer, and i would do it again.
Seriously though, this game offers some kind of superfluous-looking customization here that has been in the series before, and my guess is that most people pretty much don’t care about it or even realize why it is even there, but in fact, it is one of the better means for online players to communicate after the “fxxxing milkshake”-peak of unsolicited gaming chat that, tbh, was one of the more unnerving aspects about horizon3. Loud breathing, catching glimpses of discussions you didn’t want to be part of, people being annoying just for the sake of it - you could do away with it if you muted voice chat in the game settings, but i am not sure how many players figured this out, or cared to do so.
Now, it seems like voice chat is missing entirely from the game (correct me if i am wrong!), and it seems to have been replaced officially(?) by the quickchat function that is mapped to the d-pad.
The second, more interesting - imho - means of communication is the car horn. If you spend some time online, you quickly realize that there is much more honking going on in transition than (quick) chatting, most probably due to the input required - honking is a click of the thumb stick, chatting needs two presses, plus you have to take your hands of the wheel/left stick - so it’s easier to just honk.
People seem to give you a greeting honk on the Autobahn when passing by, when you meet them around town or the festival, and very often you get a honk in return if you honk first. Double or triple honks are used to convey more elaborate information, e.g. people honk to communicate about spatial geometry, i.e. locations of things that they perceive others not to be aware about, and i found myself thinking about how i can communicate that you need somewhere around 195 - 200 kph when driving over a ramp to crash into a sign placed on top of a trailer.*
It is, in short, an interesting tool to command attention, greet, communicate, underline, react, and to diversify yourself among your peers. Some (i. e. this writer) use it to signalize success when doing a tricky jump or count down the last 10 or five seconds before a forzathon live starts.
It’s the gist of role-playing in a game like FH4, and it is used by a lot of people before they switch to the quick chat function that probably(?) should have been the primary medium for communication.
* i tried to be a location marker for the other car, and moved my car further away from the ramp after seeing where the other player landed. However, before we could close in on a range where he/she should be able to do it, he/she left and went off doing what cars in horizon do.
next time:
why the forzathon is a clever way of bonding, and why cumulative stacking of odds may be a good idea for more in depth inspection.
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