siefbeef
NFS Hot Pursuit is a great nifty arcade racer with alot of little nusances that weigh it down a lot.
First for the positives:
+ The game has a great sense of speed and acceleration, which makes racing down the highway at 400 kph actually really thrilling and adrenaline pumping.
+ The car selection is great with many of the most iconic vehicles of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
+The AI is actually pretty decent and poses an actual challenge, if you are not perfectly driving.
For the negatives:
- The handling of the cars feels a bit imprecise, which is especially highlighted when you are trying to get through a road block which has a small opening, that is almost impossible to navigate through, due to the floaty handling.
- The progression in this game is quite strange for me, as you are constantly unlocking new vehicles but alot of the time these are just duplicates as many of the cars have a normal and a convertable version. Also after completing every event in the game the final unlock, the Gumpert Apollo, (which I really looked forward to) was still miles away from actually being unlocked, therefore I never got to drive it outside of the preview events.
- The general feel of the menus and UI is horribly sluggish. On top of that you have long loading times (even with a PCIe 4 SSD) and unskippable cutscenes for every race (you can tell the game to skip the cutscene but most of the time it will play most of the cutscene anyway). All of that feels like it wastes your time not doing what you actually want, which is racing.
- This last point may seem like a small issue but it is really not and is probably alone respobsible for why I give this a 3,5 instead of a higher rating: The Crash Cam. If you haven't played the game, let me explain what the crash cam is: It is a slow motion camera that takes away controls from you racing to look at an opponent "wreck" after every succesful action. And if I say every succesful action I literally mean EVERY single one. You hit someone with an EMP, you hit someone with a spike strip, you hit someone heavily with your car, you wreck somebody. You might think that is a rare or special occurence but in the end this will happen to you about 15 times in a 5 minute race. I get what they were going for, I know the crash cam from Burnout, they want you to enjoy the carnage that you caused when you sent an opponent into the wall and gaze upon its bend metal wreckage. BUT this does not work at all in the context of this video game, as first of all, all of these cars are licensed, which means they are not allowed to have any sort of damage model at all except for scratches and bumpers hanging off and second of all, they even use this when you use your EMP, where all that is happening is, that the opponent is lightly swaying to the side, which is like the least interesting slow motion "crash" footage I have ever seen. And you know what is the best thing about all of this, if the constant interruption of your driving with boring slow mo footage wasn't enough? Half of the time you will immediatly crash into either a wall or a traffic car afterwards, killing all of your momentum, which actually makes it a better strategy to not use your power ups in a race. And all of this could have been circumvented when they made this Remaster, where they could have just acknowledged that it was a shitty feature in the original and could have made it at least optional.
The last part developed into kind of a little rant into this little part of this game but it made me so frustrated and dampened my experience with the game heavily which is otherwise a fun arcade racer.
Who would I recommend this to? If you are looking for an old school arcade race in the style, that they are not making anymore, this is still a solid pick.
First for the positives:
+ The game has a great sense of speed and acceleration, which makes racing down the highway at 400 kph actually really thrilling and adrenaline pumping.
+ The car selection is great with many of the most iconic vehicles of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
+The AI is actually pretty decent and poses an actual challenge, if you are not perfectly driving.
For the negatives:
- The handling of the cars feels a bit imprecise, which is especially highlighted when you are trying to get through a road block which has a small opening, that is almost impossible to navigate through, due to the floaty handling.
- The progression in this game is quite strange for me, as you are constantly unlocking new vehicles but alot of the time these are just duplicates as many of the cars have a normal and a convertable version. Also after completing every event in the game the final unlock, the Gumpert Apollo, (which I really looked forward to) was still miles away from actually being unlocked, therefore I never got to drive it outside of the preview events.
- The general feel of the menus and UI is horribly sluggish. On top of that you have long loading times (even with a PCIe 4 SSD) and unskippable cutscenes for every race (you can tell the game to skip the cutscene but most of the time it will play most of the cutscene anyway). All of that feels like it wastes your time not doing what you actually want, which is racing.
- This last point may seem like a small issue but it is really not and is probably alone respobsible for why I give this a 3,5 instead of a higher rating: The Crash Cam. If you haven't played the game, let me explain what the crash cam is: It is a slow motion camera that takes away controls from you racing to look at an opponent "wreck" after every succesful action. And if I say every succesful action I literally mean EVERY single one. You hit someone with an EMP, you hit someone with a spike strip, you hit someone heavily with your car, you wreck somebody. You might think that is a rare or special occurence but in the end this will happen to you about 15 times in a 5 minute race. I get what they were going for, I know the crash cam from Burnout, they want you to enjoy the carnage that you caused when you sent an opponent into the wall and gaze upon its bend metal wreckage. BUT this does not work at all in the context of this video game, as first of all, all of these cars are licensed, which means they are not allowed to have any sort of damage model at all except for scratches and bumpers hanging off and second of all, they even use this when you use your EMP, where all that is happening is, that the opponent is lightly swaying to the side, which is like the least interesting slow motion "crash" footage I have ever seen. And you know what is the best thing about all of this, if the constant interruption of your driving with boring slow mo footage wasn't enough? Half of the time you will immediatly crash into either a wall or a traffic car afterwards, killing all of your momentum, which actually makes it a better strategy to not use your power ups in a race. And all of this could have been circumvented when they made this Remaster, where they could have just acknowledged that it was a shitty feature in the original and could have made it at least optional.
The last part developed into kind of a little rant into this little part of this game but it made me so frustrated and dampened my experience with the game heavily which is otherwise a fun arcade racer.
Who would I recommend this to? If you are looking for an old school arcade race in the style, that they are not making anymore, this is still a solid pick.
2022
Citizen Sleeper is a story driven ressource management game. I know this sounds like someting that should not be really work and watching gameplay of it also doesn't really look compelling.
But this game achieves such a feat in telling a deep story with plenty of fleshed out characters, world buildung, choices that matter and time pressure that is supported by a great visual art style and soundtrack, that at the end of the game you will feel like you have become part of this whole ecosystem.
People that simply want action and gameplay might be dissapointed. For everyone else, even if you are usually not a fan of clicking through menus but you are someone who wants a game with a great narrative, then I would absolutely suggest this game to you.
But this game achieves such a feat in telling a deep story with plenty of fleshed out characters, world buildung, choices that matter and time pressure that is supported by a great visual art style and soundtrack, that at the end of the game you will feel like you have become part of this whole ecosystem.
People that simply want action and gameplay might be dissapointed. For everyone else, even if you are usually not a fan of clicking through menus but you are someone who wants a game with a great narrative, then I would absolutely suggest this game to you.
2020
I have to preface this by saying that I only started playing this game after the 2.0 Update, so I cannot judge the game for its state before that. I have seen videos of old gameplay and I'm really glad that I did wait for the game to be fixed.
I'm gonna split this up into two parts: The Meh and The Good. You might ask why I don't write the bad and the good? Because I don't really have anything really negative to say about this game.
The Meh:
- Gigs
- Pedestrians
- Police
The Good:
+ Vehicles
+ Storytelling
+ Graphics and Performance
+ Gameplay
+ Game World
+ Characters
- Gigs:
I think the biggest gripe that I have with this game are the gigs, which are not to be confused with sidequests. They give you essentially mini missions, which oftentimes can be solved by just simply shooting your way through them. They often lacked any sort of depth, both in their story telling and their mechanics. But I have to admit that they at least tried to give every single one of them a bit of a backstory and there were actually a few that I quite enjoyed. Ultimately they are pretty meh but completely optional.
- Pedestrians:
Okay, this will sound strange for why this is a single point of criticism but pederstrians will for some reason always try to jump infront of your car while trying to dodge it. I know it is not a big deal and I'm just mentioning it because it was the only form of frustration I ever encountered in this game, so don't take it too seriously. But the consequence of this is that I had to deal with police more often than I wanted to, which brings me directly to my next point.
- Police:
For me personally the police never really posed a threat and was more of a nuisance rather than a fun game mechanic to engage with. But it is pretty easy to evade the police on lower heat levels, which makes this fine with me, as I didn't have to actively engage with them most of the time.
+ Vehicles:
There is a wide range of vehicles to choose from and I actually think all of them handle uniquely and have their own characteristics, which makes them feel noticably different from one another. For the purpose it serves in an Open World RPG, driving actually feels pretty good, apart from motorcycles, which I personally didn't like. But personally, I am glad that CDPR actually put the effort into the vehicles and the driving rather than making cars soley as a means of transportation. It made me (together with the game world) travel from A to B seemlessly by car, rather than constantly using the quick travel option. I finished this game without ever really using quick travel, which helped greatly in the immersion into this game world.
+ Storytelling:
Speaking of immersion, I liked that we see this whole game and its story play out in the first person view rather than in cutscenes. I know this is not a groundbreaking concept but it made the player really feel like being the main character 'V'. At points I just felt like, that the ratio of gameplay to talking might have been too much on the talking side. But at least the dialogue options were pretty fleshed out, which I know do not change anything in terms of the outcome of most conversations but it felt nice to always be able to say what was on your mind.
+ Graphics and Performance:
There is no way around it but to call Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely stunning... if you can afford it. It is a very demanding game if you want to enjoy it in all of its glory but with a decent setup and DLSS I actually got it to ruin pretty smoothly outside of very busy areas. But I want to acknowledge that consoles and mid to low performence PCs might struggle. Graphicswise I want to especially highlight the work of lighting in this game. Every scene in this game feels perfectly lit and cinematic, which I am completely amazed by. It feels like every light in this game has been placed with a purpose.
+ Gameplay:
I have to say, that I am amazed how well thought out this game is in terms of its shooter gameplay and its variety in how to engage in combat. You can either be a netrunner, who hacks everything and everyone they see or a stealthy ninja moving quickly through the shadows, taking out enemies with a precise throwing knife to the head or a heavy with machine and shotguns on your hip dealing out heaps of damage. All of these gameplay styles (and more) are supported by a wide range of skills that are available after every level up. Furthermore bodily modifications, with their added passive effects and sometimes special abilities, help you to tune your combat style even more. I personally loved a stealthy + reflex approach, where I was crouch sprinting with throwing knives until I got detected. After that I started using double jumps and speed to close the gap with a shotgun to then make a mess out of the nearest enemies. Guns feel actually powerful in this game and seem to have a real impact on the enemies that you are shooting. Shotguns or heavy machine guns, for example, just tear chunks out of people. I'm not someone who has the opinion that shooters have to be necesserily graphic or overly violent but I think it fits perfectly into the world this game is set in.
+ Game World:
Cyberpunk 2077's approach to the game world lies completely opposite of something like Starfield or many other open worlds nowadays, where the decree is: "Bigger is Better", where there are vast and seemingly infinite areas to explore but all of these areas hold just the bare minimum of content to justify their existence. Night City isn't huge but every single corner seems so detailed and hand made, with a wide variety of landscapes, like the megastructures (which are essentially towns in and of themselves) slums, suburbs, corporate monoliths, red light districts and many more. Even without an objective in mind it is sometimes nice to just stroll through the streets and explore every nook and cranny while clever NPCs exchange random but seemingly genuine conversations. The city seems like it still exists even after you turn off your PC and feels almost like a character in and off itself.
+ Characters:
This is the point, where I think the game shines the most. All of the characters in this game feel like real people. All of them have their own motivations, mannerisms and views on life. Jackie, Misty, Vik, Panam, Judy and of course Johnny Silverhand, to name a few, come to life through amazing writing and phenomenol voice acting. All of them receive their own time to develope themselves from mere colleagues/contractors/associates to genuine friends through a string of side missions. The side missions are small amazing self contained stories, where, for example, at the end of their arc I even had sympathies towards a vending machine and a self driving taxi. I genuinely formed connections to some of those characters and deeply cared about their success in life and was grateful for their support in difficult situations. At the end of the day they will remain in the back of my head whenever I will think of this game.
All in all, I deeply enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk 2077, with its amazing gunplay, immersive world and authentic characters and would recommend this game to anyone who is willing to put the time into it.
I'm gonna split this up into two parts: The Meh and The Good. You might ask why I don't write the bad and the good? Because I don't really have anything really negative to say about this game.
The Meh:
- Gigs
- Pedestrians
- Police
The Good:
+ Vehicles
+ Storytelling
+ Graphics and Performance
+ Gameplay
+ Game World
+ Characters
- Gigs:
I think the biggest gripe that I have with this game are the gigs, which are not to be confused with sidequests. They give you essentially mini missions, which oftentimes can be solved by just simply shooting your way through them. They often lacked any sort of depth, both in their story telling and their mechanics. But I have to admit that they at least tried to give every single one of them a bit of a backstory and there were actually a few that I quite enjoyed. Ultimately they are pretty meh but completely optional.
- Pedestrians:
Okay, this will sound strange for why this is a single point of criticism but pederstrians will for some reason always try to jump infront of your car while trying to dodge it. I know it is not a big deal and I'm just mentioning it because it was the only form of frustration I ever encountered in this game, so don't take it too seriously. But the consequence of this is that I had to deal with police more often than I wanted to, which brings me directly to my next point.
- Police:
For me personally the police never really posed a threat and was more of a nuisance rather than a fun game mechanic to engage with. But it is pretty easy to evade the police on lower heat levels, which makes this fine with me, as I didn't have to actively engage with them most of the time.
+ Vehicles:
There is a wide range of vehicles to choose from and I actually think all of them handle uniquely and have their own characteristics, which makes them feel noticably different from one another. For the purpose it serves in an Open World RPG, driving actually feels pretty good, apart from motorcycles, which I personally didn't like. But personally, I am glad that CDPR actually put the effort into the vehicles and the driving rather than making cars soley as a means of transportation. It made me (together with the game world) travel from A to B seemlessly by car, rather than constantly using the quick travel option. I finished this game without ever really using quick travel, which helped greatly in the immersion into this game world.
+ Storytelling:
Speaking of immersion, I liked that we see this whole game and its story play out in the first person view rather than in cutscenes. I know this is not a groundbreaking concept but it made the player really feel like being the main character 'V'. At points I just felt like, that the ratio of gameplay to talking might have been too much on the talking side. But at least the dialogue options were pretty fleshed out, which I know do not change anything in terms of the outcome of most conversations but it felt nice to always be able to say what was on your mind.
+ Graphics and Performance:
There is no way around it but to call Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely stunning... if you can afford it. It is a very demanding game if you want to enjoy it in all of its glory but with a decent setup and DLSS I actually got it to ruin pretty smoothly outside of very busy areas. But I want to acknowledge that consoles and mid to low performence PCs might struggle. Graphicswise I want to especially highlight the work of lighting in this game. Every scene in this game feels perfectly lit and cinematic, which I am completely amazed by. It feels like every light in this game has been placed with a purpose.
+ Gameplay:
I have to say, that I am amazed how well thought out this game is in terms of its shooter gameplay and its variety in how to engage in combat. You can either be a netrunner, who hacks everything and everyone they see or a stealthy ninja moving quickly through the shadows, taking out enemies with a precise throwing knife to the head or a heavy with machine and shotguns on your hip dealing out heaps of damage. All of these gameplay styles (and more) are supported by a wide range of skills that are available after every level up. Furthermore bodily modifications, with their added passive effects and sometimes special abilities, help you to tune your combat style even more. I personally loved a stealthy + reflex approach, where I was crouch sprinting with throwing knives until I got detected. After that I started using double jumps and speed to close the gap with a shotgun to then make a mess out of the nearest enemies. Guns feel actually powerful in this game and seem to have a real impact on the enemies that you are shooting. Shotguns or heavy machine guns, for example, just tear chunks out of people. I'm not someone who has the opinion that shooters have to be necesserily graphic or overly violent but I think it fits perfectly into the world this game is set in.
+ Game World:
Cyberpunk 2077's approach to the game world lies completely opposite of something like Starfield or many other open worlds nowadays, where the decree is: "Bigger is Better", where there are vast and seemingly infinite areas to explore but all of these areas hold just the bare minimum of content to justify their existence. Night City isn't huge but every single corner seems so detailed and hand made, with a wide variety of landscapes, like the megastructures (which are essentially towns in and of themselves) slums, suburbs, corporate monoliths, red light districts and many more. Even without an objective in mind it is sometimes nice to just stroll through the streets and explore every nook and cranny while clever NPCs exchange random but seemingly genuine conversations. The city seems like it still exists even after you turn off your PC and feels almost like a character in and off itself.
+ Characters:
This is the point, where I think the game shines the most. All of the characters in this game feel like real people. All of them have their own motivations, mannerisms and views on life. Jackie, Misty, Vik, Panam, Judy and of course Johnny Silverhand, to name a few, come to life through amazing writing and phenomenol voice acting. All of them receive their own time to develope themselves from mere colleagues/contractors/associates to genuine friends through a string of side missions. The side missions are small amazing self contained stories, where, for example, at the end of their arc I even had sympathies towards a vending machine and a self driving taxi. I genuinely formed connections to some of those characters and deeply cared about their success in life and was grateful for their support in difficult situations. At the end of the day they will remain in the back of my head whenever I will think of this game.
All in all, I deeply enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk 2077, with its amazing gunplay, immersive world and authentic characters and would recommend this game to anyone who is willing to put the time into it.
2014
I am a fan of the Trial series but this one is just the worst one of the series so far (haven't replayed Trials Rising, yet).
To get the only good thing out of the way, the gameplay is still great and feels crisp and responsive as ever and that is what I really like but the game is riddled with so many issues around its core gameplay.
For me the atmoshpere of the previous games was just better with its janky charme and every level having its own little theme. Here everything is just too clean and too similar and bland with its futuristic setting.
The UI is just absolutely horrible everything is so cluttered and takes ages to load, even with a PCIe SSD.
Playing offline is also a huge annoyance, when my Ubisoft Connect actually wouldn't... connect, the game would remind me EVERY single race that I was not connected to the internet and that my time would not be uploaded.
The addition of the FMX mechanic also completely fell flat for me as the controls are just super imprecise and half of the time you will not achieve the trick that you wanted to. For me this also distracts from the main aspect of the game, which is the time trials.
But the most egregious problem I have with this game is its content. If you own the base game, you will only own half of the actual game! And I'm not being hyperbolic here, the base game only provides you with half of the available championships. Everything else is DLC and can be bought afterwards for 30€ or in other words 150% of the cost of the base game. (Alternatively you can buy the 40€ version).
All in all Trials Fusion still has the responsive and crisp gameplay as its predecessors but everything around it just got worse. If I had to recommend a game, please just buy Trials Evolution - Gold Edition where you will get 2 games for the same price instead of half of a game here.
To get the only good thing out of the way, the gameplay is still great and feels crisp and responsive as ever and that is what I really like but the game is riddled with so many issues around its core gameplay.
For me the atmoshpere of the previous games was just better with its janky charme and every level having its own little theme. Here everything is just too clean and too similar and bland with its futuristic setting.
The UI is just absolutely horrible everything is so cluttered and takes ages to load, even with a PCIe SSD.
Playing offline is also a huge annoyance, when my Ubisoft Connect actually wouldn't... connect, the game would remind me EVERY single race that I was not connected to the internet and that my time would not be uploaded.
The addition of the FMX mechanic also completely fell flat for me as the controls are just super imprecise and half of the time you will not achieve the trick that you wanted to. For me this also distracts from the main aspect of the game, which is the time trials.
But the most egregious problem I have with this game is its content. If you own the base game, you will only own half of the actual game! And I'm not being hyperbolic here, the base game only provides you with half of the available championships. Everything else is DLC and can be bought afterwards for 30€ or in other words 150% of the cost of the base game. (Alternatively you can buy the 40€ version).
All in all Trials Fusion still has the responsive and crisp gameplay as its predecessors but everything around it just got worse. If I had to recommend a game, please just buy Trials Evolution - Gold Edition where you will get 2 games for the same price instead of half of a game here.
I really like Metro 2033 but this game never quite came close to it.
One of the problems for me is how often the game makes Artyom go outside, in the prequel the outside was something fearful and dangerous and mysterious, here you are just walking through it like no man's business.
I also did not get invested in the story at all.
Bossfights are often times confusing and it is very unclear what you are actually supposed to do, in a later boss fight I got the boss glitched twice which ended in a soft lock and with the same boss I ran out of ammo because it was unclear to me, what to do exactly.
Speaking of performance, the game often times just refused to start for me, which was quite annoying.
The atmosphere is great, the gunplay is alright but all in all this game just didn't live up to Metro 2033 and I had to take a break before actually finishing it, due to the game being too long in my opinion.
One of the problems for me is how often the game makes Artyom go outside, in the prequel the outside was something fearful and dangerous and mysterious, here you are just walking through it like no man's business.
I also did not get invested in the story at all.
Bossfights are often times confusing and it is very unclear what you are actually supposed to do, in a later boss fight I got the boss glitched twice which ended in a soft lock and with the same boss I ran out of ammo because it was unclear to me, what to do exactly.
Speaking of performance, the game often times just refused to start for me, which was quite annoying.
The atmosphere is great, the gunplay is alright but all in all this game just didn't live up to Metro 2033 and I had to take a break before actually finishing it, due to the game being too long in my opinion.
2003
This game was one of my most favourite when I was a kid, playing it then on the XBOX, I was never able to finish it, as in the end the difficult ramps up drastically. So I wanted to finally beat this game around 15 years later. I installed it on my PC and I must say, for a game that is now 20 years old, it actually still holds up nicely with 4k resolution support and super quick frame rates. I sadly ran into crashes constantly, oftentimes the game would crash around 5 minutes after boot, perfect timing to be close to winning a race... Sometimes it would run hours without crashing once. So I have to say that this game unfortunately runs pretty inconsistent on modern machines.
But to the game itself:
People always seem to compare this to NFS but I personally think it is actually more like if Trackmania was a street racer, if that makes any kind of sense. Especially in the endgame it is mostly about finding the quickest routes through the checkpoints, memorizing landmarks, mastering difficult sections, like jumps, that have to be lined up perfectly, or else you will find your car in the river Seine, optimizing pathways and then executing them in the most efficient way possible, all of that while dodging heavy traffic at 300 kph (that actually feel like 300 kph). Essentially you will want to speedrun these races, which makes every single race feel like you actually achieved something, when you finally get to beat them. But at some point the speeds you are racing at get so obscene that traffic cannot always be dodged and it can seem that it has a bit of a random variable to it, if you will crash into the next wave of oncoming cars or not. And I understand that this is not everyone's cup of tea, if you are searching for a street racing game, where you are casually racing other drives to then upgrade and customize your car, this is the complete wrong game for you.
I also want to especially mention the game worlds that these open world races take place in. I personally like the approach to the open world concept this game takes, instead of one big map, this game divides itself into three smaller open world maps: Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo. I like this approach more as when you have a single big map it can often feel like you are constantly seeing the same thing and it becomes a bit monotonous after a while. These maps all have a different vibe to them and even more important play differently from eachother. Paris for example features alot of small alleys and tight corners and also uses alot of verticallity whereas Los Angeles for example feels alot more open and lets you flow a bit more. It makes this open world racing design way less repetitive.
I also want to mention the story or more precisely the characters (as there is no real story) that you race against. Many will probably say that they are super cheesy and look hideous in this weird artstyle and I would agree! I love it for exactly that reason! I'm glad that we always know who we are racing against, sometimes it is an internationally wanted criminal who is trying to keep a low profile, so he races you through the catacombs of Paris, or someone that is part of the yakuza and you are trying to win the car of your friend back. I know in the grand scheme of things this does not greatly matter but it gives Midnight Club 2 something that I think alot of racing games actually miss and that is a sense of identity and charme. I prefer this cheesieness 100% over racing against faceless racer #95.
I quickly also want to mention, a few points why this game does not deserve a 5 star rating for me: As already mentioned, technically this game is not working reliably on modern machines but I don't want to hold this too much against it as it was literally not designed for it. And while I think the game world is great to race in, it does not provide much more than that. In freeplay there is nothing to do, except for searching for your next opponent.
I could go on and on about this game but I want to try to keep this review somewhat short. I hope you got a glimpse into, why I think this game is one of the best arcade racers of all time. Its challenges, tight controls, creative game world and charme make me love this game. If you are searching for challenging racing done well and nothing else, I would highly recommend this game to you.
But to the game itself:
People always seem to compare this to NFS but I personally think it is actually more like if Trackmania was a street racer, if that makes any kind of sense. Especially in the endgame it is mostly about finding the quickest routes through the checkpoints, memorizing landmarks, mastering difficult sections, like jumps, that have to be lined up perfectly, or else you will find your car in the river Seine, optimizing pathways and then executing them in the most efficient way possible, all of that while dodging heavy traffic at 300 kph (that actually feel like 300 kph). Essentially you will want to speedrun these races, which makes every single race feel like you actually achieved something, when you finally get to beat them. But at some point the speeds you are racing at get so obscene that traffic cannot always be dodged and it can seem that it has a bit of a random variable to it, if you will crash into the next wave of oncoming cars or not. And I understand that this is not everyone's cup of tea, if you are searching for a street racing game, where you are casually racing other drives to then upgrade and customize your car, this is the complete wrong game for you.
I also want to especially mention the game worlds that these open world races take place in. I personally like the approach to the open world concept this game takes, instead of one big map, this game divides itself into three smaller open world maps: Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo. I like this approach more as when you have a single big map it can often feel like you are constantly seeing the same thing and it becomes a bit monotonous after a while. These maps all have a different vibe to them and even more important play differently from eachother. Paris for example features alot of small alleys and tight corners and also uses alot of verticallity whereas Los Angeles for example feels alot more open and lets you flow a bit more. It makes this open world racing design way less repetitive.
I also want to mention the story or more precisely the characters (as there is no real story) that you race against. Many will probably say that they are super cheesy and look hideous in this weird artstyle and I would agree! I love it for exactly that reason! I'm glad that we always know who we are racing against, sometimes it is an internationally wanted criminal who is trying to keep a low profile, so he races you through the catacombs of Paris, or someone that is part of the yakuza and you are trying to win the car of your friend back. I know in the grand scheme of things this does not greatly matter but it gives Midnight Club 2 something that I think alot of racing games actually miss and that is a sense of identity and charme. I prefer this cheesieness 100% over racing against faceless racer #95.
I quickly also want to mention, a few points why this game does not deserve a 5 star rating for me: As already mentioned, technically this game is not working reliably on modern machines but I don't want to hold this too much against it as it was literally not designed for it. And while I think the game world is great to race in, it does not provide much more than that. In freeplay there is nothing to do, except for searching for your next opponent.
I could go on and on about this game but I want to try to keep this review somewhat short. I hope you got a glimpse into, why I think this game is one of the best arcade racers of all time. Its challenges, tight controls, creative game world and charme make me love this game. If you are searching for challenging racing done well and nothing else, I would highly recommend this game to you.
1999
In short this game has its moments and to this day can still hold a creepy atmosphere but the clunkiness and general very slow pace of progression make it, for me personally, a bit tedious to play.
The Good:
+ Graphics
+ Sound design
+ Game world
+ Puzzles
The Alright:
~ Story
The Bad:
- Progression
- Pacing
- Boss Fights
- Controls
First of all I have to preface this with, that I am not a retrogamer and did not grow up in the PS1 era but rather with the PS2/Original XBOX. So I'm looking at this as someone that is used to more modern gaming and does not have any nostalgic feeling towards this game.
The Good
Graphics: Despite or even because of its "retro" graphics this game presents a great creepy atmosphere, where, because of the lack of polygons, alot of the horrors are still left for your imagination. Also the use of the fog and the darkness, where only a small part of your nearest surroundings are shown at any given time, give a great sense of being lost, isolated and vulnerable. In contrast to most modern day horror titles this is also the main source of the tension and creepiness instead of playing a loud noise to make you jump scare every other minute. I prefer this form of horror by a mile.
Sound design: Already speaking of sounds, the sound design in this game is amazing. The radio starting to crackle when enemies are nearby makes you cautious and filling you with dread even before you can spot them, making every move even more tention filled to spot where the enemies actually are. Generally the sounds of the monsters and surroundings are great. The music also does a good job at raising tension and even stress sometimes.
Game World: There is a great variety of well designed and detailed locations, that all have a unique feel to them: Different parts of Silent Hill, a hospital, a school, etc. They really inspire you to explore these places for every nook and cranny.
Puzzles: I personally liked the Puzzles as they provided a nice challenge while also maintaining a wide variety, so to not make it stale over time.
The Alright:
Story: Actually before starting this game I knew nothing about the story and was hoping for an intricate mystery around Silent Hill. What I got was mostly "Where is my daughter?" and towards the ending some occult stuff, which was fine but not as much as I expected. The dialogue and the voice acting between the characters are also not that great. All in all, it was alright.
The Bad:
Progression: Generally the game does not do a good job at communicating what your current objective actually is. I found myself oftentimes in a state of confusion, what I'm supposed to be doing next. I actually had to look at a walkthrough a few times because I simply got stuck and became frustrated. An example for this is, when you are supposed to notice a small hole in the ground, where a key is hidden. I spent a good 20 minutes being stuck at that point before I just asked the internet for advice. Also in the end I feel like the character becomes a bit too powerful, so standard enemies just become cannon fodder, which takes away from the general horror at that point.
Pacing: I think the game is just too long and does not have a great progression story wise. In the first half it is, as already mentioned, basically just a guy asking "Where is my daughter?" over and over again while in the end it kinda devolves into a key collecting simulator, which at some point feels drawn out and you just want to finally come to an end.
Boss Fights: The controls are just way to clunky to engage in any interesting boss fights. It often boils down to just tanking hits with first aid kits, while trying to deal as much damage in the mean time. There is absolutely no sense in developing tactics to deal with bosses.
Controls: The general feel of the game is just super clunky and takes away alot of the fun for me. Especially the walking with only a d-pad available just feels very imprecise and annoying. Taking into consideration that alot of this game is actually nothing but walking, this can become pretty tedious after a while. Also a big negative for me is the camera. Why is the camera always pointed at you, when you enter a room, instead of showing the room ahead, where most of the time enemies spawn? I know that alot of this comes from the technical limitation of the PS1 controller only having a d-pad but in the end it still got noticebly in the way of my enjoyment for this game, so I still wanted to mention it.
Conclusion:
All in all, who would I recommend this to? If you are interested in the Silent Hill series as a whole I think this is still worthy of playing, as long as you are aware of the jankiness of this game. Else I can only really recommend it to retrogamers that love this kind of style and this era of gaming.
The Good:
+ Graphics
+ Sound design
+ Game world
+ Puzzles
The Alright:
~ Story
The Bad:
- Progression
- Pacing
- Boss Fights
- Controls
First of all I have to preface this with, that I am not a retrogamer and did not grow up in the PS1 era but rather with the PS2/Original XBOX. So I'm looking at this as someone that is used to more modern gaming and does not have any nostalgic feeling towards this game.
The Good
Graphics: Despite or even because of its "retro" graphics this game presents a great creepy atmosphere, where, because of the lack of polygons, alot of the horrors are still left for your imagination. Also the use of the fog and the darkness, where only a small part of your nearest surroundings are shown at any given time, give a great sense of being lost, isolated and vulnerable. In contrast to most modern day horror titles this is also the main source of the tension and creepiness instead of playing a loud noise to make you jump scare every other minute. I prefer this form of horror by a mile.
Sound design: Already speaking of sounds, the sound design in this game is amazing. The radio starting to crackle when enemies are nearby makes you cautious and filling you with dread even before you can spot them, making every move even more tention filled to spot where the enemies actually are. Generally the sounds of the monsters and surroundings are great. The music also does a good job at raising tension and even stress sometimes.
Game World: There is a great variety of well designed and detailed locations, that all have a unique feel to them: Different parts of Silent Hill, a hospital, a school, etc. They really inspire you to explore these places for every nook and cranny.
Puzzles: I personally liked the Puzzles as they provided a nice challenge while also maintaining a wide variety, so to not make it stale over time.
The Alright:
Story: Actually before starting this game I knew nothing about the story and was hoping for an intricate mystery around Silent Hill. What I got was mostly "Where is my daughter?" and towards the ending some occult stuff, which was fine but not as much as I expected. The dialogue and the voice acting between the characters are also not that great. All in all, it was alright.
The Bad:
Progression: Generally the game does not do a good job at communicating what your current objective actually is. I found myself oftentimes in a state of confusion, what I'm supposed to be doing next. I actually had to look at a walkthrough a few times because I simply got stuck and became frustrated. An example for this is, when you are supposed to notice a small hole in the ground, where a key is hidden. I spent a good 20 minutes being stuck at that point before I just asked the internet for advice. Also in the end I feel like the character becomes a bit too powerful, so standard enemies just become cannon fodder, which takes away from the general horror at that point.
Pacing: I think the game is just too long and does not have a great progression story wise. In the first half it is, as already mentioned, basically just a guy asking "Where is my daughter?" over and over again while in the end it kinda devolves into a key collecting simulator, which at some point feels drawn out and you just want to finally come to an end.
Boss Fights: The controls are just way to clunky to engage in any interesting boss fights. It often boils down to just tanking hits with first aid kits, while trying to deal as much damage in the mean time. There is absolutely no sense in developing tactics to deal with bosses.
Controls: The general feel of the game is just super clunky and takes away alot of the fun for me. Especially the walking with only a d-pad available just feels very imprecise and annoying. Taking into consideration that alot of this game is actually nothing but walking, this can become pretty tedious after a while. Also a big negative for me is the camera. Why is the camera always pointed at you, when you enter a room, instead of showing the room ahead, where most of the time enemies spawn? I know that alot of this comes from the technical limitation of the PS1 controller only having a d-pad but in the end it still got noticebly in the way of my enjoyment for this game, so I still wanted to mention it.
Conclusion:
All in all, who would I recommend this to? If you are interested in the Silent Hill series as a whole I think this is still worthy of playing, as long as you are aware of the jankiness of this game. Else I can only really recommend it to retrogamers that love this kind of style and this era of gaming.
2019
This game is pretty good with a couple of flaws.
I will make a quick overview with details to every single point below:
The Flaws:
- Soundtrack
- Drifting
- Difficulty
- Progression
The Alright:
~ Story
~ Police
~ Offroad Racing
The Good:
+ Handling
+ Sense of Speed
+ Street Racing
+ Reward Mechanics at Night
+ Costumization
+ Monetization
First the flaws:
The Soundtrack: For me the soundtrack doesn't work at all. I get that they want to make it fit the setting of Florida, with some latino songs but, I feel like these songs would fit better in a club rather than in a racing game. In a racing game I want something that is pushing me, makes me want to step on the gas pedal, take corners more aggressively and produce more adrenaline and not something I would hear on the radio.
The Drifting: I cannot stand the drifting in this game. It has a very "digital" feel to it. Either you are in "drift mode" or you are in normal steering mode. I personally would have liked something that was a bit more "analog", something where you can feel the car slowly starting to slip and you try to hold it at the maximum. The drift events were also not really fun for me as there is not really a way to throw the car around, sliding from one side to another to get a nice flow going, drifting from one corner to another. Instead you go from "drift mode left" to normal steering to "drift mode right", which, as mentioned, feels very digital and clunky.
The Difficulty: For me personally the difficulty is pretty inconsistent. First I started playing the game on normal and was beating races way too easily, so I set up the difficulty to hard and to be honest I still think it is a bit too easy. If you are racing races that match your tier ranking, I feel like the AI is not good enough to really challenge you but if you start a race in an undertiered car you will have no chances with keeping up on the straights, as then their overpowered machines will just drive away. So I was often in the situation, where I was either bored because I was leading by a kilometer or had unbeatable opponents.
The Progression: This for me is the worst point of this game. The progression in this game is just kind of weird for me. When I beat the mainstory, I was level 35 out of 50 and my car was Tier 350 out of 400. I feel like the point of a main story should be that at the final you should need one of the best cars to beat it and not just a kind of a good car. Afterwards there is actually nothing really that you can do. You can grind the same events over and over again that give you enough money to buy a new car but my question is: What for? Just for me to grind for the next car, so that I can then grind for the next car again? Also I found that there is a weird gap between Tier 350 and 400 where there are actually no events at 370 or 380, meaning, that if you have a car at Tier 370 you are way too fast for 350 or 340 events but also a bit too slow for 400 events, making the problem of difficulty even more pronounced. Also after unlocking Level 50 the night races become kind of pointless as the Rep that you received for these races (which would go into leveling up) are now pointless. I guess the high heat races are meant as some form of end game content of the night races, where you have to grind races to get the best performence upgrades. The catch to this is, that this is determined by a randomized system, so that you can't choose which part you would like to receive but instead have to hope to receive the part that you liked. If you didn't, you would have to go through the process all over again. And that is where I ended my playthrough as the grind just became too much and there is no real motivation to go any further after you have your dream car. It was kind of a luke warm ending.
The alright stuff:
The Story: For me the story is serviceable. It was enough to make me want to play through the game and give it some structure. The characters are a bit hit or miss but all in all I think for what it is, a fun little arcade racer, it was enough.
The Police: In the early stages it can become impossible to escape the police at a certain point as there are no safe spaces or pursuit brakers anywhere. This can make the early stages actually a bit fun as you are trying to go a bit stealthy when you are in free roam. But it can also be pretty frustrating as in some races you can't really avoid the police and after the race ends the pursuit continues. In the midgame I think there is a nice balance, where low heat feels easy and high heat feels difficult. In the endgame your car is usually fast enough to simply outrun the cops pretty quickly, so that high heat pursuits are not even a real challenge anymore. The cops generally are a good way to introduce high stakes, as you will lose all your progress of the night, when you get busted. But generally I would not consider police chases very fun. I never engaged in police chases on purposes, like I did in NFS MW 05. In general I always tried to flee as fast as possible.
Offroad Racing: In general these feel alright but they miss the high speed feel of street races. I feel like if these were not in the game, nobody would have missed them.
You might think at this point, that doesn't sound that good, why did you give it 4 stars?
The good:
The Handling: As long as you build your cars towards grip and street handling (which I always did) the cars feel amazing to drive. They are very responsive, while still feeling like the cars have a weight to them. Also different cars actually feel different to drive.
The Sense of Speed: This is actually a very important point for me, especially in arcade racer. Every time you approach 280 kph you actually feel how you gradually start losing confidence and that it takes you every piece of concentration to not crash into the next traffic car and every kph you go above takes courage. I love that.
The Street Racing: This is the bread and butter of this game and what got me hooked. When the afformentioned AI difficulty actually works the right way, it leads to some really exciting head to head racing, where most tracks actually have a nice layout. Especially the night races are what I had the most fun with as on top of the head to head racing, you have to avoid the traffic at the same time, giving you that adrenaline push, that I seek in arcade racers. This also somewhat mitigates the difficulty problems, as you still have to drive very cleanly while maintaining a high amount of speed, as crashes will cost you lots of time.
The Heat Mechanics of the Night: I think this is a great addition to this game. The principle is: You get essentially XP points for races finished in the night, after that you have the choice of driving home and receiving the XP or you stay out and continue to the next races to get a multiplier on your XP but in return the police becomes more aggressive and better equipped. This is a great risk/reward mechanic. It actually gives the police a purpose instead of being a nuisance. Every time you get busted it is a frustrating experience but it is an even greater reward when you finally flee the police and get to the safe house with a huge amount of XP. I really like this feature.
The Costumization: Visually tuning a huge list of dream cars is great in this game. I probably spent a few hours alone costumizing cars until they exactly looked like I wanted them. Bumpers, lights, spoilers, fenders, muffler, rims, underglow, community made liveries, even the sound of the exhaust can be costumized. A nice little touch is that before buying you actually get an indication how costumizable the car you want to buy actually is. I loved this part of the game.
Monetization: I wanna quickly mention this because I feel like, if the monetization of a game is pretty bad it will get immediatly pointed out but if it is good nobody mentions it. There are no Microtransactions in this game, atypical for EA actually. You don't have to buy customizations with real money, there is no season pass, no performance upgrades for cash. The only thing I found was one reasonably priced DLC.
Conclusion:
As I have mentioned this game has its flaws mainly, in my eyes, the progression, but the main part of what I seek in an arcade racer, with its general great feel of driving (apart from drifting), its amazing customization options and just adrenaline filled street racing, this game nails on the head. Probably one of the best modern arcade racers. I would definitely recommend.
I will make a quick overview with details to every single point below:
The Flaws:
- Soundtrack
- Drifting
- Difficulty
- Progression
The Alright:
~ Story
~ Police
~ Offroad Racing
The Good:
+ Handling
+ Sense of Speed
+ Street Racing
+ Reward Mechanics at Night
+ Costumization
+ Monetization
First the flaws:
The Soundtrack: For me the soundtrack doesn't work at all. I get that they want to make it fit the setting of Florida, with some latino songs but, I feel like these songs would fit better in a club rather than in a racing game. In a racing game I want something that is pushing me, makes me want to step on the gas pedal, take corners more aggressively and produce more adrenaline and not something I would hear on the radio.
The Drifting: I cannot stand the drifting in this game. It has a very "digital" feel to it. Either you are in "drift mode" or you are in normal steering mode. I personally would have liked something that was a bit more "analog", something where you can feel the car slowly starting to slip and you try to hold it at the maximum. The drift events were also not really fun for me as there is not really a way to throw the car around, sliding from one side to another to get a nice flow going, drifting from one corner to another. Instead you go from "drift mode left" to normal steering to "drift mode right", which, as mentioned, feels very digital and clunky.
The Difficulty: For me personally the difficulty is pretty inconsistent. First I started playing the game on normal and was beating races way too easily, so I set up the difficulty to hard and to be honest I still think it is a bit too easy. If you are racing races that match your tier ranking, I feel like the AI is not good enough to really challenge you but if you start a race in an undertiered car you will have no chances with keeping up on the straights, as then their overpowered machines will just drive away. So I was often in the situation, where I was either bored because I was leading by a kilometer or had unbeatable opponents.
The Progression: This for me is the worst point of this game. The progression in this game is just kind of weird for me. When I beat the mainstory, I was level 35 out of 50 and my car was Tier 350 out of 400. I feel like the point of a main story should be that at the final you should need one of the best cars to beat it and not just a kind of a good car. Afterwards there is actually nothing really that you can do. You can grind the same events over and over again that give you enough money to buy a new car but my question is: What for? Just for me to grind for the next car, so that I can then grind for the next car again? Also I found that there is a weird gap between Tier 350 and 400 where there are actually no events at 370 or 380, meaning, that if you have a car at Tier 370 you are way too fast for 350 or 340 events but also a bit too slow for 400 events, making the problem of difficulty even more pronounced. Also after unlocking Level 50 the night races become kind of pointless as the Rep that you received for these races (which would go into leveling up) are now pointless. I guess the high heat races are meant as some form of end game content of the night races, where you have to grind races to get the best performence upgrades. The catch to this is, that this is determined by a randomized system, so that you can't choose which part you would like to receive but instead have to hope to receive the part that you liked. If you didn't, you would have to go through the process all over again. And that is where I ended my playthrough as the grind just became too much and there is no real motivation to go any further after you have your dream car. It was kind of a luke warm ending.
The alright stuff:
The Story: For me the story is serviceable. It was enough to make me want to play through the game and give it some structure. The characters are a bit hit or miss but all in all I think for what it is, a fun little arcade racer, it was enough.
The Police: In the early stages it can become impossible to escape the police at a certain point as there are no safe spaces or pursuit brakers anywhere. This can make the early stages actually a bit fun as you are trying to go a bit stealthy when you are in free roam. But it can also be pretty frustrating as in some races you can't really avoid the police and after the race ends the pursuit continues. In the midgame I think there is a nice balance, where low heat feels easy and high heat feels difficult. In the endgame your car is usually fast enough to simply outrun the cops pretty quickly, so that high heat pursuits are not even a real challenge anymore. The cops generally are a good way to introduce high stakes, as you will lose all your progress of the night, when you get busted. But generally I would not consider police chases very fun. I never engaged in police chases on purposes, like I did in NFS MW 05. In general I always tried to flee as fast as possible.
Offroad Racing: In general these feel alright but they miss the high speed feel of street races. I feel like if these were not in the game, nobody would have missed them.
You might think at this point, that doesn't sound that good, why did you give it 4 stars?
The good:
The Handling: As long as you build your cars towards grip and street handling (which I always did) the cars feel amazing to drive. They are very responsive, while still feeling like the cars have a weight to them. Also different cars actually feel different to drive.
The Sense of Speed: This is actually a very important point for me, especially in arcade racer. Every time you approach 280 kph you actually feel how you gradually start losing confidence and that it takes you every piece of concentration to not crash into the next traffic car and every kph you go above takes courage. I love that.
The Street Racing: This is the bread and butter of this game and what got me hooked. When the afformentioned AI difficulty actually works the right way, it leads to some really exciting head to head racing, where most tracks actually have a nice layout. Especially the night races are what I had the most fun with as on top of the head to head racing, you have to avoid the traffic at the same time, giving you that adrenaline push, that I seek in arcade racers. This also somewhat mitigates the difficulty problems, as you still have to drive very cleanly while maintaining a high amount of speed, as crashes will cost you lots of time.
The Heat Mechanics of the Night: I think this is a great addition to this game. The principle is: You get essentially XP points for races finished in the night, after that you have the choice of driving home and receiving the XP or you stay out and continue to the next races to get a multiplier on your XP but in return the police becomes more aggressive and better equipped. This is a great risk/reward mechanic. It actually gives the police a purpose instead of being a nuisance. Every time you get busted it is a frustrating experience but it is an even greater reward when you finally flee the police and get to the safe house with a huge amount of XP. I really like this feature.
The Costumization: Visually tuning a huge list of dream cars is great in this game. I probably spent a few hours alone costumizing cars until they exactly looked like I wanted them. Bumpers, lights, spoilers, fenders, muffler, rims, underglow, community made liveries, even the sound of the exhaust can be costumized. A nice little touch is that before buying you actually get an indication how costumizable the car you want to buy actually is. I loved this part of the game.
Monetization: I wanna quickly mention this because I feel like, if the monetization of a game is pretty bad it will get immediatly pointed out but if it is good nobody mentions it. There are no Microtransactions in this game, atypical for EA actually. You don't have to buy customizations with real money, there is no season pass, no performance upgrades for cash. The only thing I found was one reasonably priced DLC.
Conclusion:
As I have mentioned this game has its flaws mainly, in my eyes, the progression, but the main part of what I seek in an arcade racer, with its general great feel of driving (apart from drifting), its amazing customization options and just adrenaline filled street racing, this game nails on the head. Probably one of the best modern arcade racers. I would definitely recommend.
2021
This game is great in killing time, in my opinion, a bit too good at it. I don't have much time in my life, so I had to stop myself from playing, once I realized the time I was starting to sink into it.
If you have some time to waste at an airport or university or wherever, or you like this kind of addictive gameplay loop then I would definitely recommend this.
Something I want to mention here (because it is sadly not the norm anymore) is the monetization: The base game only costs 4,99€ and does not have any ingame skins or boosters or battle passes or any other form of "micro" transactions. I think this is one of the most fairly monetized and priced games in the last few years.
If you have some time to waste at an airport or university or wherever, or you like this kind of addictive gameplay loop then I would definitely recommend this.
Something I want to mention here (because it is sadly not the norm anymore) is the monetization: The base game only costs 4,99€ and does not have any ingame skins or boosters or battle passes or any other form of "micro" transactions. I think this is one of the most fairly monetized and priced games in the last few years.