USA NFS-Shift guineau pigs required

Ok, time for my first impressions. I could have posted them yesterday, but I didn't
realise it had landed in my letterbox a day early.

If I had to sum up my initial experiences so far in one sentence it would be...
believe everything you've read, both good and bad. There are console and design
decisions which will make you want to eat your shirt in frustration. For example
during your first race (part of the setting up process) you cannot quit. At all.
Ever.

I hadn't turned on my wheel so after a little messing about with the keyboard I
parked and tried to escape. Couldn't. Waited for the race to end. It didn't. Went
off for a shower, came back... and the race was still waiting for me to do my laps.

Had to CTRL-ALT-DEL that session. Not a good start!

Blah, blah, blah... movie bollox again, game bollox again, yes, come on, get on
with it... yes, there we are. Menu screens, set up the G25 as posted on one of the
forums, buy a Toyota Corolla with my tiny pool of money I earned coming last in the
first race (some things never change), then head for a quick time trial at The
Ring.

And...

Mmm... first impression is that the steering is just wrong. Something's definitely
not right. Maybe the hands on the virtual wheel lag the actual car input. If I
ignore them and look ahead totally, I feel less disorientated. I have yet to work
out what the issue is here. It's not diabolical, but there is something not quite
right about it.

Visually, it's not as initially impressive as I'd hoped, but the more you drive the
more immersed you get. I even found the blurring *far* less of a problem than I'd
expected. Heck, I may even like it... a little. :-) It only affects you at high
speeds and then you really are mainly staring wildly out of the windscreen, not
checking your instruments. So as an immersive technique it seems to work better
than expected.

I've now had three laps of The Ring. Second lap was in a BMW something-or-other,
and the third was with about 80k's worth of add-ons, which made the car handle much
more like a sim vehicle. Less sudden sideways action, more correctability. But
still that sense that there's something not quite right with the steering. I
obviously need to take the recommended settings and do some experimenting.

Not now though, I have a chilli to make and some washing-up to do. Extra hot
jalapenos anyone?

Andrew McP

PS Overall verdict so far: I don't regret buying it. There is a very good simulated
racing experience buried in here trying to get out. If we can peel away the movies
and annoying game elements, and solve control niggles, I think we may find there's
more here than meets the eye.

On the other hand, it took me far less time in the WRS demo to find a big grin on
my face. But then it doesn't have the best rendition of The Ring so far brought to
the PC, or anyone to race against... which reminds me, I find the Shift AI pretty
impressive so far. So far they make human-style mistakes.

PPS Load times aren't as bad as reported by many IMO.

> Mmm... first impression is that the steering is just wrong.

The in car steering wheel doesn't seem to follow your steering inputs.
I'm not sure if there's a delay, but it's just off. Doesn't seem to
affect the cars though.

The cars have a large number of physics paramters, so much so that each
car in NFS Shift is like a different game. You'll run into this once you
start running the different cars. Some of the cars can be upgraded to
factory "works" level (removes the nitrous), and my guess is more attention
was made to those cars to make them more realistic.

After upgrades, some of the cars end up traction limited, tires will spin
in gears 1 through 4, so you end up running a taller gear or turning on
traction control.

Another issue is that some cars, like the Camaro SS bumped up to works level,
are bouncy. Setting the fast rebound rates to max stiff cured most of this.
I now set all the cars that way.

Yet another issue is that some cars get into an oscillation mode that is
like a speed wobble. Easing off the throttle and not moving the steering
wheel seems to help, but mostly you have to avoid it.

> blur ... It only affects you at high speeds

It's just annoying to me, I'm not looking there anyway, so why bother?
I turned motion blur off, but it still happens.

> something not quite right with the steering.

Each car is different. As mentioned above, each car is like a different
game. Some seem to be flawed.

> PPS Load times aren't as bad as reported by many IMO.

Seems like a long time to me. It's over 30 seconds for a race to load
up on my system. I remove my headphones so I don't have to hear that
same loading background music. It really slows things down, and the
career mode is very time consuming if you plan to get every "star".
I just completed tier 2 and the invitational events, and the stats
show 90 wins and 410 stars.

Where the load up time is really annoying is when you try to adjust
a setup. You're waiting almost a minute for each change, not including
driving time.

(jeffareid) wrote:

> The in car steering wheel doesn't seem to follow your
> steering inputs.

I'm sure you're right. The mismatch between what you see and what happens may be
the problem.

> The cars have a large number of physics paramters, so much so that
> each car in NFS Shift is like a different game.

Yes. Hopefully someone will draw up a short list of vehicles & upgrades to avoid
soon to save time and effort. :-)

> Seems like a long time to me.

I'm sure there are some issues with load times which a patch will be able to tweak
(along with the reported ATI issues). But I'm used to flight sims like LOMAC, where
you could go away and make a cup of tea, walk the dog, meet someone you liked, get
married, have three children, and still have time to read War & Peace before you
were flying. So I'm not too bothered by the delays at this stage.

Andrew McP

(Andrew MacPherson) wrote:

> Mmm... first impression is that the steering is just wrong.

http://www.needforspeed.com/web/nfs-...blogs/116565?a
uthorId=13007

The offending setting turns out to be 'Wheel lock' which was at 100%, but should be
at 50% for wheels. This makes a lot of difference to the feel.

I'm not going to claim it turns it into a perfect sim, but it does remove one of
the obstacles to enjoyment.

I am, however, getting tired of the little cut scenes before each race. In other
sims you can hit a key and skip them, but not here. And while I'm still trying to
work out which L lens the grid photographer is using, I'd prefer it if he and the
grid babes were an optional extra.

I also think the AI are learning to drive just as badly as me. I swear they started
off driving pretty sensibly, but now they've turned into monsters. It reminds me of
many of the Rookie Legends races I've had! :-)

Andrew McP

Andrew MacPherson wrote:
> (Andrew MacPherson) wrote:
>
>> Mmm... first impression is that the steering is just wrong.
>
> http://www.needforspeed.com/web/nfs-...blogs/116565?a
> uthorId=13007
>
> The offending setting turns out to be 'Wheel lock' which was at 100%, but should be
> at 50% for wheels. This makes a lot of difference to the feel.
>
> I'm not going to claim it turns it into a perfect sim, but it does remove one of
> the obstacles to enjoyment.
>
> I am, however, getting tired of the little cut scenes before each race. In other
> sims you can hit a key and skip them, but not here. And while I'm still trying to

That's the reason I deinstalled the demo. I setup my wheel, entered the race and
realized that I forgot to setup the steering (!). So I just wanted to fix that and
had to watch a frikkin commercial I couldn't skip. That really didn't work in the
way they thought... No sale, buttheads!

And hearing about those stupid forced cut scenes in the final game, that decision is
reinforced, regardless of the rest of the "game".... arcade game, that is!

l8er
ronny