Better late than never, but I finally got to try out Driveclub. Actually I bought the game + Season Pass in December, but GT Sport took too much of my time
Inevitably with the lack of content GTS does gets stale, and I can only run Blue Moon Oval so many times grinding for the 20mil twins
Earlier this week I decided to fire up DC, and just immerse myself completely in it. I already completed the DC Tour, got up to level 30 and unlocked all cars up to that level. Here are my humble thoughts (wall of text incoming).
The gameplay is the best part about DC. It harks back to the good old arcade racers of the past. Easy to learn, but difficult to master. I'm not into the whole faceoff challenge and club side of things, but they are very easily ignorable. Otherwise it's just you, amazing supercars and the road. Plus a monsoon or blizzard thrown your way
I think it's a love letter and tribute to classics like Outrun and PS1 era NFS - where you drive cars you can only dream of in exotic locales around the world. I love my sims, but damn I do miss that feeling of freedom and awe as a kid 👍
Driving physics is very intuitive and surprisingly deep. I mean obviously you're not required to be as precise with throttle and braking as a sim, but knowing proper technique, using racing lines and slow in fast out does wonders to shaving lap times. The infamous Venom Hotlap took me an hour to gold (even hit the replay recording limit)
Far trickier than any license test in recent GT games. And DC has attained status as the only racing game where trail braking DOES make you faster
Having said that, if you're not attacking the leaderboards, you can just drive it easy and have fun. I think the best class is either Performance or Sports. Hot Hatches understeer too much (for an arcade game), and the Supers and Hypers are simply too ADHD if you're not in full attack mood
There are vices however. Braking is far too effective in most cars except Hypers (should be the other way round). Also it is impossible to avoid contact while racing in close quarters due to how loose the handling is. I understand why sim racers might be put off by this, but that's just how the game is designed unfortunately.
I tried playing the early races with a pad and while it's good, I feel there's a bit of input lag in the steering. Using a wheel eliminates this. It's very rare for an arcade game to play well with a wheel, but DC is one of the few that does. FFB is too light though, even after setting everything to 100%. I suspect the game just doesn't model self aligning torque like sims does. If this is on PC I would just add damping effects to my wheel, but no such thing on consoles. Road vibration however is very good - much more detail than Gran Turismo's dull track surfaces even. Rotation wise I stuck with 720 degrees for the most part of career, but for the Venom hotlap I turned it down to 660 degrees which allowed me to take those hairpins with less turning. I've stuck with it since. Tried going lower but that makes the wheel oversensitive and you just scrub off too much speed. Also experimented with Wheel Assist - it does make the driving a but more stable and safer, but in high speed corners it limits your steering angle too much and you lose so much speed. Better without it (except for below).
Drift physics is where this game lets me down. Thankfully it's not such a big part of career mode. The game is just not sure whether it's trying to be arcade or sim. You do need to balance steering and throttle so you don't spin out, but sometimes I can feel countersteering assist so I'm never really sure what to do mid drift. One of my friends suggested Hardcore mode - it brings the drifting closer to sim side but having to exit all the way to main menu and options to change it is a pain. My solution is to turn on Wheel Assist and just throw caution to the wind really. Go in at high speed, e brake, straighten the wheel and mash the gas and hope the auto countersteer pulls you out the corner facing forwards
Works well enough. It's an arcade game so I'm not going to overthink things.
AT vs MT is another tricky choice. I've stuck with AT for most of career, but MT for Venom lap so I can upshift early and avoid wheelspin. I think MT is marginally quicker, but only if you've got your lines and everything else right. I decided to stick with AT for now, just to keep things simple. I like that the game also allows you to override AT and row your own gears. The downshifts on the FXXK is heaven
I love how they went in detail with implementing KERS + DRS in cars that have it. I've only tried it on the P1 GTR so far, but I like that it's a subtle gain in performance instead of a warp drive NOS button, just like IRL.
Anyway, enough with technical talk. The car list is simply amazing. I love that they have mainstream supercars and also a few quirky ones (I bet there's a few that even Forza/GT doesn't have). Must have cost them a fortune to license them all. Graphics wise I think the car models are on par with GT, but somehow in race they look a bit meh. Maybe it's the 30 FPS, or Polyphony are just wizards with lighting. Rain effects and lightning strikes are awesome. Sounds are a bit of mixed bag. Engine note is bang on but volume leaves a lot to be desired. Interior sounds are very muffled. I know there's an option to use external sounds in cockpit, but with some supercars I find it too quiet. Hypers are totally insane and fitting though (driving the Veneno is a mindblowing aural experience).
The track locations are gorgeous and reminds me a lot of older racing games and old Top Gear road trips. I absolutely love the point to point tracks, and despite the numbers I haven't gotten bored of them yet. The weather/time of day variation definitely helps too. The circuit tracks I could do without. Mostly they are pretty bland compared to sprint tracks and IMO doesn't suit the spirit of DC. I like sections of sprint tracks that are made into a circuit, but not dedicated racing circuits. You got to really learn the nuances of the surface of each track. In the faster cars, if you hit a bump wrong it's bye bye grip... One thing I don't like is shortcut detection. I find the implementation a bit inconsistent - some chicanes you can cut, and some you have to stick to the road strictly. IMO, in an arcade game just forget about penalties. If you don't want players cutting put an immobile barrier in place.
What else? Soundtrack and presentation. Menus are easy to use, if not a bit unimaginative. Not as elegant as PD's menus but they get the job done. The best part is the Tour event posters. I bet they don't take that much time to do, but it just adds up to the whole carnival experience. I love the animation of getting into your car - I wish they added an ignition sequence and sound as well. The only thing I don't like is the colour choice menu - for the factory colours I would've liked the names shown (Gran Turismo OCD, I know), also it was a bit confusing at first what all the Special and Custom colours are - I just discovered last night that you can edit them! Getting that flip and chrome paint is gonna take ages though. Soundtrack is awesome. I loved DC's OST so much I actually got it way back at release in 2014
So it's not really a surprise but still pretty epic to hear it in game. When you have a dedicated soundtrack it just fits the whole atmosphere of the game, unlike licensed thrash in modern NFS.
Club events and challenges I think I will skip. I joined a friend's club who kindly already has all the club cars unlocked, and that's about it. I also find it kinda annoying that you can't join more than one club. Limit it to 5 maybe, but only one? If you're not admin there's really no point in unlocking all the club badges and liveries because you can't use them anyways! Looking at the top clubs it's crazy how much XP they have
Nerds
Going forward, I've still got the rest of the Season Pass events to go through (it's insane how much there is to do). Also the Bikes expansion pack. I'm not a bike racer so I find the handling really hard (having to commit your line at entry with no room for further adjustments is an alien concept). But it's something new, and out of respect to Evolution I will press on 👍 Of course there's also trophies, photo mode and multiplayer (not sure if many people still play). I think I'm in for the long haul
Well done to Evolution for bringing Driveclub
Shame we probably won't see a second game (not keen on Onrush - looks too much like a Motorstorm clone), but probably it's best to leave the legacy untouched, seeing how many racing franchises have steadily declined over the years. No such worry with Driveclub.
I would be more enamored with the game if it had more 20th-century vehicles. If it had a car roster more like a PGR game it could have been something pretty special.
decides on a moniker like that
