My final thoughts, or review of the game. Very long.
The graphics are all I could have hoped for. They're somewhat inconsistent, one moment the game looks grand the next it looks average, but it never really looks bad.
Driving physics can be good, but unfortunately the handling of some cars is very difficult. Those cars can still be driven quickly, but it takes much more effort then a better handling car. The differences in the handling of the cars is really about how much oversteer each has and when the car exhibits oversteer. Some will oversteer in corner entry, others mid corner, others on exit.
Some like the Ariel Atom will oversteer the whole way. But then there are the 'good' handling cars that are neutral in the way they handle, cars like the Ferrari 458 and BMW M5 feature only slight levels of oversteer making them very easy to drive fast.
Also the balance in the car classes is not very good. There is hot hatch, sports, performance, super, and hyper car classes. Yet in each class there is a car or two that outshines the others. People are catching onto this quickly so in more and more online races everyone is picking the same car. For example the GT Spano is in the Super car class, yet it is several seconds faster then the Ferrari 458 which is also in the Super car class.
The tracks were just another area of Driveclub that frustrated me. Most of the funnest tracks, that make you feel like your actually going somewhere, are unfortunately all point to point. And they're rather short point to point courses too, most only take 3 or less minutes to finish.
The problem with this is whenever you feel like just driving around and logging laps trying to enjoy the car, graphics, sound etc, you end up having to restart every 3 minutes. Why couldnt these point to point courses get converted into a traditional layout so we could log as many laps in a row as we wanted without interruption? For years I had the fantasy of just cruising around a fun arcade track like the Outback in NFS II with modern graphics, but that dream will have to wait.
Theres the disturbing lack of true 'easy' or 'hard' courses. All the tracks are medium-medium/hard in difficulty. Even the easiest courses in the game will keep on your toes, and will punish slight errors in racing line or throttle by sending you into the guardrail hard. Theres devishly placed bumps, curbs, drops and more placed at almost every track trying to get you to fly off course. I dont mind such things, but when theres no easy track to take a breather on, it can get tiresome.
Which brings me to my next point, the disturbing lack of freedom in the game, enforced by super strict invisible walls lining every course. Is it really so wrong to let us hit that rock or tree sitting there 1 yard from the side of the road? You know watching my car slide off the embankment could be pretty cool. Maybe I just want to drive around there between those trees? But anytime you think of anything fun Driveclub is there like some strict Librarian swatting your hand with a ruler telling you that you cant do these fun things.
This is never more evident then with the ridiculous off track timer. The game already has narrow courses with invisible walls everywhere, but to make it worse if you drive onto the grass a timer instantly appears attempting to reset you back onto the course. Are you serious....
Driveclub is a 'corridor' racer, and it didnt have to be. If it moved the dang barriers back off the track 10 or so yards the game would have been much better for it. All the awful online driving of people just running through corners full throttle with little consequence would change in a hurry maybe the 2nd time they ended up at the bottom of a 100 foot chasm thanks to no invisible walls keeping them on the track.
Need for Speed II (PS1) realized you had to give some freedom...that game could be narrow at times, but it also featured at times lots of runoff room, and even some open areas that you could explore, not all of them shortcuts.
Theres been lots of talk about the penalties and AI, but outside of the rubberbanding I like the AI. They're aggressive, smart, they make mistakes. I feel the gripe about the whole penalty system is overblown. So what if I lose 200 fame points when an AI driver rams me? The later levels in the game require hundreds of thousands of points to level up, 200 points doesnt matter. The penalty system can be improved yes, but is no that big of a deal to me.
Online barely works. The game loses connection with the servers randomly. 1/20 online races I try to join actually work. And when you do race its Motorstorm all over again. Bullies in huge Bentleys will toss your Lotus across the track like it wasnt even there. Some of the carnage is so outrageous it resembles a destruction derby more then a race. But it wouldnt be happening if they didnt have invisible barriers to keep them on the course. Theres nothing more frustrating then taking a corner properly while the guy ahead of you just wall surfs it without braking and you only close in on him by 1 car length. And then in the next turn your given a 4 second penalty for cutting the course by 5 feet. But of course the wall surfer never gets a penalty.
There are a few good races to be found online. But the experience will always mostly bad until they patch in private rooms.
10 or so days after launch and Im pretty much bored with the game. Private online lobbies, photomode, and a working online mode could help fix that alot. But the single player 'tour' was so very average. It amounts to nothing more then a few 2-3 lap races, 1 lap time trials and drift trials. Yawn. How about something fun like a 10 lap day into night endurance race? They have those types of events online but not offline? The offline events are so incredibly lackluster. Ive had zero interest in doing any of them twice.
If theres one thing Driveclub is sorely missing its fun. Its got the adrenaline factor in the form of a great sense of speed and challenging fast tracks, but the game is hell bent on preventing you from having any real sort of zany fun other arcade racers like modern NFS or Burnout have. The gameplay desperately needed a 'xfactor'. The clubs and all the mini challenges like speed and driving line face offs arent it. Something like civilian AI traffic, pink slip racing, etc etc.
At the moment Driveclub just exists in the realm of thorough mediocrity. Delayed 1 year, but still feels like a launch title complete with missing features to be patched in at a later date. Those features will make the game better, but its hard to reason why a 12 month long delay couldnt make basics like a photomode or private lobbies ready at launch. How did so many features not make the game on release?
Its unforunate because at the moment Driveclub is a terribly dry game with not alot to do. At least with photomode and private lobbies we could be planning events and having photomode competitions. I guess that will have to wait until a further time. With Project CARS being delayed Im glad I'll get the chance to test out the new features, which hopefully will arrive soon.
