Post by Jägerbomber on Nov 18, 2015 13:06:23 GMT
Been playing Wild Run for a while. Uplay kicked me off (first time). Though I did have to grab the Wild Run CD key from Steam and give it to Uplay because it didn't do it automatically... But at least it launched (unlike the beta).
It looks better, though... what actually looks eye pleasing varies. Wet roads stay wet for a very long time. A lot of the time, you hadn't even seen it rain. But, from what I've seen so far... it looks like the side paved roads with no lines don't get visibly wet? But that might be what I remember seeing so far. The transition from wet to dry road seems to happen directly at intersections/changing road type. Ok, I mean, I guess how the wet road lights up is realistic-ish, but you notice that the wet only reaches out to generally just short of your sight distance, about the distance that cars do, which hasn't seemed to have been improved. But my point was that it's not like the wet road is visibly pleasing to look at. It can also seem kind of distracting perhaps. But the other thing is, that wet roads (no rain or light rain) seem to have no effect on handling at all... even though it tells you that it does. At least windshield wipers activate now, not that it's nearly as visually great as Driveclub.
I also noticed some strange (I'd hope not unintentional) design choices for the roads in snowy areas. Paved roads in snowy areas are still slick, but maybe slightly less slick. It's actually fun now to drive a Perf spec car on the roads in the snowy roads because you're easily drifting without then quickly spinning out. This change is, I'd say, unrealistic, but here's the stranger part. The slick roads in the snowy areas... no longer have snow on them. So now, you just know that the road is going to be slick because it is in the snow-covered area (and not on a highway or in a city... which never had snow on the roads). That's a strange decision, gameplay-wise... Shouldn't a slick road actually have some snow on it? (And don't go explaining it with black ice...). Anyways, pre-update I never actually figured out for sure if roads in cities in snowy areas were actually slick. If there was, it was very slight. Interestingly, even though the slickness of the slick roads was toned down, I've noticed a bit more tire squealing in snowy cities. But this is really only an issue if you need to turn while you're hitting the gas all the way, mostly from a stop. Straight is fine, I'd just assume slightly slower than in a warmer place.
Now, I'm not sure I've been in a really heavy rain storm yet, other than in the initial drifting challenge. I'm not sure what the drift car was using for tires compared to my performance car, but that drift challenge was in a heavy thunderstorm and drift spec emphasizes torque with not so much grip as a performance car. And it was sliiiiiick. Like even much more so than pre-update snowy roads. And it is difficult... But I'm not afraid to admit that I (would) suck at real drifting with a wheel and pedals. I definitely need practice at it. But I was definitely surprised at how extremely slick it was.
Oh, and why are there no ice lakes that I know about?... I just tested a river in the snowy mountains, but it's no different than anywhere else...
I've done a lot of driving around in my new Dodge Challenger monster truck. (Again, the Ford Shelby gets left out.... with no spec for it. ) Oh, and I noticed that, even for Perf cars, there seems to be a new bounciness to the suspension, that I guess is kinda nice. Generally just visible most of the time, but I'm sure it has a bit of an effect on getting airborn (generally unintentionally). I've noticed it also seem to cause some rolling when crashing into a low object with a Perf car. But... you can get rolling all over the place with the Monster truck. If you're up climbing the mountains and you don't notice your tire is against a tree when trying to get unwedged, you can hit the gas and suddenly be vertical and rolling backwards.
Most disappointing thing about the Monster Truck? You can't go rolling over civilian cars easily... and metal and wooden guard rails are no more breakable than they were before. Strangely, a tiny civilian car can take you out and crash-repawn you extremely easily... while you can last quite a while tumbling down a huge rocky cliff on your roof... A busy road makes traffic much more of a menace than it was before. Being in the city during the game's rush hours is a nightmare. Easily the worst spot for the monster truck. I had a car wedged under my front axle... and had to back up and go around.... And damn those guard rails on the s-curves... and anywhere really.
However, driving a monster truck in an easy location is so peaceful... (well... depending on what music is playing.) Cruising along the roads across the salt flat or winding around the easy dirt roads of the hills north of it is so therapeutic.
But barreling down a snowy mountain in a monster truck is expectantly crazy... Not that it's that much crazier than it was before, you're in a vehicle with much bigger tires and suspension. The GPS still doesn't give a crap about rock cliffs or guard rails or trees though... However, I'm not sure if it does this for Raid cars, but I had a while where the GPS had me take the railroad track for quite a while and it was a nice ride. And I even came up behind the train... which I didn't think would happen because I've never found it while driving on the tracks before. Only crossing roads through cities. Oh and monster trucks have a large amount of grip on dirt roads. Don't be afraid to hold the gas on sharpening turns. But it doesn't have infinite grip and its turning speed or actually its turning beyond the wheel spring (depending on what you have it set to) is very wide. So you'll probably have to slow a lot for really sharper turns. It can also climb pretty much any non-rocky slope you can find at the top of a mountain.
Ok, back to visuals and other stuff. Like I said, what is actually visually pleasing is a mixed back. The look of the wet roads might not be the greatest addition. World texture work simply isn't a huge difference, mostly because this is a driving game. You also don't notice it quite reaching the levels of that trailer above... because of course. (Even though it says in engine). I haven't actually taken a close look standing still at the ground in the salt flats... but it's a driving game. I think civilian people might have gotten a large upgrade, but of course you aren't seeing them up close unless on purpose. However, civilian vehicles seemed to have gotten a fairly large upgrade. One some occasions they can still look like ass though. But significantly better than they were before. And... I haven't noticed that damn civilian Dodge Challenger with the rear lights that didn't load in until it was two feet in front of you in the middle of the night...
Night lighting is one of its new strong(er) points. Highway night lighting looks kind of pleasant and coming headlights do a good job of showing you the distance and position of coming cars, when there's no street lights. (Of course they weren't made realistically blinding either. ) Now, I don't quite remember how much bloom there was coming out of tunnels before, but in the right lighting conditions, sometimes you can get a major bloom effect when exiting a tunnel... and it actually looks kind of cool. Plus it even has a whoosh sound now when exiting which adds to it. Also, longer tunnels brighten at the ends and get darker in the middle. Not... quite realistically so, but it's there. And I had one tunnel that got very dark... And it seems to me like even some of the lit tunnels get a little darker than they should maybe. Also, I haven't checked specifically, but its strange that I don't think there's any high-beams option... You've pretty much only got low beams (as far as I know) and the darkness is even more apparent now, even outdoors. Not that you're going to hit anything that wasn't lit, but still...
The new world lighting is also good to the snow. Especially shaded is just very pleasant to look at. Not that it looks "extremely" nice. It's just really pleasant to calmly drive through in the right spots. Or actually drift through as well... not that the roads actually have snow on them anymore. /derp
Morning/evening sun seems to be a bit less orange than it used to be. Makes sunrise/sunset hours less in-your-face apparent, but it's personal opinion I guess. Sometimes you can catch the shadows of things cranking along, much faster than real life of course.
Bright midday lighting is, unsurprisingly, the least pleasing. But it's about realistic...ish. A bit too bright while sitting in a car and everythings a bit too bright white to not squint at or to care about looking at. Though it might be just a tad too bright still... and this is coming from someone with their display brightness down quite low. I wouldn't want to see someone playing with high brightness during the day. They'd be pretty blind perhaps. idk. It about appropriately blasts out the specific details of a snowy scene as well.
And that's about all I can think of at the moment. Other than I'm wondering where the damage meter disappeared to. I don't think it was easily visible before (or I'm an idiot and still don't know what it is on the hud), but it seems to have disappeared from the phone menus as well, though I don't remember for sure where it was before. Also, the HUD speedometer is blue now... the same color of the nitro meter going in the opposite direction. Not a good choice. Oh, but they did finally straighten out the minimap rather than having it slightly tilted, thank you...
It's good to be playing The Crew again. And it was pretty active last night... at least in the mountains. But I haven't actually gotten my own versions of the other new specs yet. Just the monster truck so far. Only got to use them in the initial challenge. Except for bikes. Drag races have a slight bit of additional challenge to them. First you have to burn out your tires as close to the marker point on the meter as you can (it's tiny, but you have to be close, not inside it), then next hit the gas on go and shift quickly three times at the marked points. Annoyingly (I think), the meter for the first one doesn't appear with enough time to react... and then the other ones come really quickly after it. But I need more time with it.
Gonna keep playin'.
Oh yeah... The default map has been stripped down to the bare basics. And you can't customize the default map icons. Everything else is still stuck in their own categories. Kind of annoying if you want to mix it up with various destinations nearby... instead of sticking to one category. Oh and I finally tried hitting out of bounds when I was along the northern border. It teleported me back and Zoey said "What? The entire United States not big enough for you?" Lets see.... Its not the entire United States, And let's have FUEL answer that question for you...
It looks better, though... what actually looks eye pleasing varies. Wet roads stay wet for a very long time. A lot of the time, you hadn't even seen it rain. But, from what I've seen so far... it looks like the side paved roads with no lines don't get visibly wet? But that might be what I remember seeing so far. The transition from wet to dry road seems to happen directly at intersections/changing road type. Ok, I mean, I guess how the wet road lights up is realistic-ish, but you notice that the wet only reaches out to generally just short of your sight distance, about the distance that cars do, which hasn't seemed to have been improved. But my point was that it's not like the wet road is visibly pleasing to look at. It can also seem kind of distracting perhaps. But the other thing is, that wet roads (no rain or light rain) seem to have no effect on handling at all... even though it tells you that it does. At least windshield wipers activate now, not that it's nearly as visually great as Driveclub.
I also noticed some strange (I'd hope not unintentional) design choices for the roads in snowy areas. Paved roads in snowy areas are still slick, but maybe slightly less slick. It's actually fun now to drive a Perf spec car on the roads in the snowy roads because you're easily drifting without then quickly spinning out. This change is, I'd say, unrealistic, but here's the stranger part. The slick roads in the snowy areas... no longer have snow on them. So now, you just know that the road is going to be slick because it is in the snow-covered area (and not on a highway or in a city... which never had snow on the roads). That's a strange decision, gameplay-wise... Shouldn't a slick road actually have some snow on it? (And don't go explaining it with black ice...). Anyways, pre-update I never actually figured out for sure if roads in cities in snowy areas were actually slick. If there was, it was very slight. Interestingly, even though the slickness of the slick roads was toned down, I've noticed a bit more tire squealing in snowy cities. But this is really only an issue if you need to turn while you're hitting the gas all the way, mostly from a stop. Straight is fine, I'd just assume slightly slower than in a warmer place.
Now, I'm not sure I've been in a really heavy rain storm yet, other than in the initial drifting challenge. I'm not sure what the drift car was using for tires compared to my performance car, but that drift challenge was in a heavy thunderstorm and drift spec emphasizes torque with not so much grip as a performance car. And it was sliiiiiick. Like even much more so than pre-update snowy roads. And it is difficult... But I'm not afraid to admit that I (would) suck at real drifting with a wheel and pedals. I definitely need practice at it. But I was definitely surprised at how extremely slick it was.
Oh, and why are there no ice lakes that I know about?... I just tested a river in the snowy mountains, but it's no different than anywhere else...
I've done a lot of driving around in my new Dodge Challenger monster truck. (Again, the Ford Shelby gets left out.... with no spec for it. ) Oh, and I noticed that, even for Perf cars, there seems to be a new bounciness to the suspension, that I guess is kinda nice. Generally just visible most of the time, but I'm sure it has a bit of an effect on getting airborn (generally unintentionally). I've noticed it also seem to cause some rolling when crashing into a low object with a Perf car. But... you can get rolling all over the place with the Monster truck. If you're up climbing the mountains and you don't notice your tire is against a tree when trying to get unwedged, you can hit the gas and suddenly be vertical and rolling backwards.
Most disappointing thing about the Monster Truck? You can't go rolling over civilian cars easily... and metal and wooden guard rails are no more breakable than they were before. Strangely, a tiny civilian car can take you out and crash-repawn you extremely easily... while you can last quite a while tumbling down a huge rocky cliff on your roof... A busy road makes traffic much more of a menace than it was before. Being in the city during the game's rush hours is a nightmare. Easily the worst spot for the monster truck. I had a car wedged under my front axle... and had to back up and go around.... And damn those guard rails on the s-curves... and anywhere really.
However, driving a monster truck in an easy location is so peaceful... (well... depending on what music is playing.) Cruising along the roads across the salt flat or winding around the easy dirt roads of the hills north of it is so therapeutic.
But barreling down a snowy mountain in a monster truck is expectantly crazy... Not that it's that much crazier than it was before, you're in a vehicle with much bigger tires and suspension. The GPS still doesn't give a crap about rock cliffs or guard rails or trees though... However, I'm not sure if it does this for Raid cars, but I had a while where the GPS had me take the railroad track for quite a while and it was a nice ride. And I even came up behind the train... which I didn't think would happen because I've never found it while driving on the tracks before. Only crossing roads through cities. Oh and monster trucks have a large amount of grip on dirt roads. Don't be afraid to hold the gas on sharpening turns. But it doesn't have infinite grip and its turning speed or actually its turning beyond the wheel spring (depending on what you have it set to) is very wide. So you'll probably have to slow a lot for really sharper turns. It can also climb pretty much any non-rocky slope you can find at the top of a mountain.
Ok, back to visuals and other stuff. Like I said, what is actually visually pleasing is a mixed back. The look of the wet roads might not be the greatest addition. World texture work simply isn't a huge difference, mostly because this is a driving game. You also don't notice it quite reaching the levels of that trailer above... because of course. (Even though it says in engine). I haven't actually taken a close look standing still at the ground in the salt flats... but it's a driving game. I think civilian people might have gotten a large upgrade, but of course you aren't seeing them up close unless on purpose. However, civilian vehicles seemed to have gotten a fairly large upgrade. One some occasions they can still look like ass though. But significantly better than they were before. And... I haven't noticed that damn civilian Dodge Challenger with the rear lights that didn't load in until it was two feet in front of you in the middle of the night...
Night lighting is one of its new strong(er) points. Highway night lighting looks kind of pleasant and coming headlights do a good job of showing you the distance and position of coming cars, when there's no street lights. (Of course they weren't made realistically blinding either. ) Now, I don't quite remember how much bloom there was coming out of tunnels before, but in the right lighting conditions, sometimes you can get a major bloom effect when exiting a tunnel... and it actually looks kind of cool. Plus it even has a whoosh sound now when exiting which adds to it. Also, longer tunnels brighten at the ends and get darker in the middle. Not... quite realistically so, but it's there. And I had one tunnel that got very dark... And it seems to me like even some of the lit tunnels get a little darker than they should maybe. Also, I haven't checked specifically, but its strange that I don't think there's any high-beams option... You've pretty much only got low beams (as far as I know) and the darkness is even more apparent now, even outdoors. Not that you're going to hit anything that wasn't lit, but still...
The new world lighting is also good to the snow. Especially shaded is just very pleasant to look at. Not that it looks "extremely" nice. It's just really pleasant to calmly drive through in the right spots. Or actually drift through as well... not that the roads actually have snow on them anymore. /derp
Morning/evening sun seems to be a bit less orange than it used to be. Makes sunrise/sunset hours less in-your-face apparent, but it's personal opinion I guess. Sometimes you can catch the shadows of things cranking along, much faster than real life of course.
Bright midday lighting is, unsurprisingly, the least pleasing. But it's about realistic...ish. A bit too bright while sitting in a car and everythings a bit too bright white to not squint at or to care about looking at. Though it might be just a tad too bright still... and this is coming from someone with their display brightness down quite low. I wouldn't want to see someone playing with high brightness during the day. They'd be pretty blind perhaps. idk. It about appropriately blasts out the specific details of a snowy scene as well.
And that's about all I can think of at the moment. Other than I'm wondering where the damage meter disappeared to. I don't think it was easily visible before (or I'm an idiot and still don't know what it is on the hud), but it seems to have disappeared from the phone menus as well, though I don't remember for sure where it was before. Also, the HUD speedometer is blue now... the same color of the nitro meter going in the opposite direction. Not a good choice. Oh, but they did finally straighten out the minimap rather than having it slightly tilted, thank you...
It's good to be playing The Crew again. And it was pretty active last night... at least in the mountains. But I haven't actually gotten my own versions of the other new specs yet. Just the monster truck so far. Only got to use them in the initial challenge. Except for bikes. Drag races have a slight bit of additional challenge to them. First you have to burn out your tires as close to the marker point on the meter as you can (it's tiny, but you have to be close, not inside it), then next hit the gas on go and shift quickly three times at the marked points. Annoyingly (I think), the meter for the first one doesn't appear with enough time to react... and then the other ones come really quickly after it. But I need more time with it.
Gonna keep playin'.
Oh yeah... The default map has been stripped down to the bare basics. And you can't customize the default map icons. Everything else is still stuck in their own categories. Kind of annoying if you want to mix it up with various destinations nearby... instead of sticking to one category. Oh and I finally tried hitting out of bounds when I was along the northern border. It teleported me back and Zoey said "What? The entire United States not big enough for you?" Lets see.... Its not the entire United States, And let's have FUEL answer that question for you...