- 8,426
- Rockay City
Need for speed gets "serious".....confirmed!
- Thread starter Hereward
- 2,170 comments
- 169,923 views
Tetradic
Premium
- 151
- NYC
- Tetradic
I managed to spend 3 hours with NFS:S last night, bridging my way into Tier 3 events. I have to say my first impressions of the game are only getting better. Some thoughts;
- There was alot of talk about how tail happy the cars are, which is basically true...but... I realized last night that it's less the cars themselves of only the physics but it's the way braking works/feels in NFS:S. If you are coming from Prologue, which I assume most of us are, the brake feel is so different it's hard to compare. GT has always been a bit of a brake mashing game, to unrealistic degrees. If you put the brake pedal to the floor at 250kph while turning in in real life (generally) bad things happen. That has never been the case in GT, you could always get away with alot no matter how you adjusted the brakes. Prologue introduced the ability to turn off the ABS which made braking more realistic (for racing and non-abs cars) but few ever raced without it, in fact I noticed alot of the top online racers using alot of ABS for hotlapping, which gave a huge safety zone for less than perfect braking technique (which I realized I had very poor braking technique). NFS:S, by default has very sensitive brakes and if you are running in pro mode with all aids off (including ABS) and you stomp the brakes like you can in Prologue/GT then your back will replace your front (as it should). One needs to relearn to brake in NFS:S and much of the real world driving instruction you would get for race driving applies in NFS:S. You need to develop some feel for the pedal not to send the backend of the car into a slide. I found myself barely pressing the brake more than 5-10% in last night (90% less than I did with any GT game) which resulted in alot of early braking but I calmed the backend down quite a bit. Then I started looking at some of the tuning screens and brake upgrades. Adjusting the brake balance really makes a huge difference. I miss the ability to adjust it in-game like in prologue but it really does the job setting the car up for each track. More so than it ever did in GT.
- Speaking of tuning. I absolutely love the ability to have a ballpark setting menu and a advanced menu. That is something I always wanted in the GT series. Often I don't want to adjust everything just to balance the car. Having the ability to ballpark the car for a given circuit (say balance the car for understeer as opposed to oversteer without having to adjust toe/camber/ride height/springs/ballast all together) is great. Again, it ballparks it but is useful. To eek out every inch of performance from the car you'll still need to really tune it but for general racing in career mode ballparking is "good enough"
- Another little thing I noticed last night is the curbs. In Prologue/GT you could, errr, "aggressively" (beyond realism) use them (along with the grass in most cases, not blatant cheating, well within OLR rules, two wheels still firmly on the track, but far from real). Not the case in NFS:S. Try using the curbing on the Nordschlife the way you would (could) in GT4 or Prolouge. You'll spin. Same for many other tracks. The curbing really unsettles the car, as do bumps and crests.
- One big fault I have with NFS:S so far, though am finding I can live with it is the deadzone in the steering with the force feedback. NO matter how I adjusted the steering controls last night I still had a deadzone from 11:30-12:30 on the wheel (I'm using a DFGT, but have read the same for G25 and DFP) which makes straights vague at best. I hope someone finds a setting to fix this or EA issues a updated eventually addressing the FF. Oddly reducing the FF to 8 seemed to make it better on some cars, especially Tier 3 cars or MR cars.
- The lighting in the game is rather beautiful. The way the sun gets in your eyes at time and how it produces glare on the windshield which clouds your view at times, like it would in real life. Subtle details are wonderful. The Nordschlife becomes a beautiful thing at "dawn".
The more time I spend with this game the more I enjoy it. It takes some adjustment from GT but so far it's been well worth it. I feel like I'm picking up some good habits and improving my driving in NFS:S, fixing things that have always plagued me in the GT series (like high speed braking). I hope the new skills will transition back to GT5.
GT5 is going to have to up the bar, which I have no doubt it will, not just with big features but little ones like the above.
- There was alot of talk about how tail happy the cars are, which is basically true...but... I realized last night that it's less the cars themselves of only the physics but it's the way braking works/feels in NFS:S. If you are coming from Prologue, which I assume most of us are, the brake feel is so different it's hard to compare. GT has always been a bit of a brake mashing game, to unrealistic degrees. If you put the brake pedal to the floor at 250kph while turning in in real life (generally) bad things happen. That has never been the case in GT, you could always get away with alot no matter how you adjusted the brakes. Prologue introduced the ability to turn off the ABS which made braking more realistic (for racing and non-abs cars) but few ever raced without it, in fact I noticed alot of the top online racers using alot of ABS for hotlapping, which gave a huge safety zone for less than perfect braking technique (which I realized I had very poor braking technique). NFS:S, by default has very sensitive brakes and if you are running in pro mode with all aids off (including ABS) and you stomp the brakes like you can in Prologue/GT then your back will replace your front (as it should). One needs to relearn to brake in NFS:S and much of the real world driving instruction you would get for race driving applies in NFS:S. You need to develop some feel for the pedal not to send the backend of the car into a slide. I found myself barely pressing the brake more than 5-10% in last night (90% less than I did with any GT game) which resulted in alot of early braking but I calmed the backend down quite a bit. Then I started looking at some of the tuning screens and brake upgrades. Adjusting the brake balance really makes a huge difference. I miss the ability to adjust it in-game like in prologue but it really does the job setting the car up for each track. More so than it ever did in GT.
- Speaking of tuning. I absolutely love the ability to have a ballpark setting menu and a advanced menu. That is something I always wanted in the GT series. Often I don't want to adjust everything just to balance the car. Having the ability to ballpark the car for a given circuit (say balance the car for understeer as opposed to oversteer without having to adjust toe/camber/ride height/springs/ballast all together) is great. Again, it ballparks it but is useful. To eek out every inch of performance from the car you'll still need to really tune it but for general racing in career mode ballparking is "good enough"
- Another little thing I noticed last night is the curbs. In Prologue/GT you could, errr, "aggressively" (beyond realism) use them (along with the grass in most cases, not blatant cheating, well within OLR rules, two wheels still firmly on the track, but far from real). Not the case in NFS:S. Try using the curbing on the Nordschlife the way you would (could) in GT4 or Prolouge. You'll spin. Same for many other tracks. The curbing really unsettles the car, as do bumps and crests.
- One big fault I have with NFS:S so far, though am finding I can live with it is the deadzone in the steering with the force feedback. NO matter how I adjusted the steering controls last night I still had a deadzone from 11:30-12:30 on the wheel (I'm using a DFGT, but have read the same for G25 and DFP) which makes straights vague at best. I hope someone finds a setting to fix this or EA issues a updated eventually addressing the FF. Oddly reducing the FF to 8 seemed to make it better on some cars, especially Tier 3 cars or MR cars.
- The lighting in the game is rather beautiful. The way the sun gets in your eyes at time and how it produces glare on the windshield which clouds your view at times, like it would in real life. Subtle details are wonderful. The Nordschlife becomes a beautiful thing at "dawn".
The more time I spend with this game the more I enjoy it. It takes some adjustment from GT but so far it's been well worth it. I feel like I'm picking up some good habits and improving my driving in NFS:S, fixing things that have always plagued me in the GT series (like high speed braking). I hope the new skills will transition back to GT5.
GT5 is going to have to up the bar, which I have no doubt it will, not just with big features but little ones like the above.
Last edited:
Just found this over at the NFS blog, explains the control settings in a bit more detail.
http://needforspeed.com/web/nfs-na/blogs/need-for-speed-news/-/nfsblogs/116565
http://needforspeed.com/web/nfs-na/blogs/need-for-speed-news/-/nfsblogs/116565
- 6,059
- Simcoeace
People coming from GT5P might feel that the physics in SHIFT are somehow "arcadey", just because they are different from GT5Ps (just like they did with FC), but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that SHIFT is at least as much of a sim as GT5P (once you get beyond the arcade veneer). It models weight transfer & instability under braking (plus brake locking) MUCH more than GT5P (as Tetradic described in his post). I got tired of pointing this out in the FC vs. GT5P thread - but the ease of braking in GT5P was a big failing IMO. However the feel of the physics & FFB in SHIFT is also quite different from FC & SCC in feel. The closest parallel I can find in console racing is PS2's Enthusia, but obviously with far superior graphics, AI & just about everything else.
I like the cockpit view (& I'm fine with the blurring etc.) - your field of vision is situated further from the windshield than in Prologue.
Sounds are pretty nice.
Graphics (at least on the PS3) are nice but definitely not as good as some of the videos we've been seeing.
The Precision/Aggression thing is kind of ridiculous. What it amounts to, is you get points when you drive well, PLUS points when you drive badly - which makes the whole thing pointLESS!
All-in-all I think this game is exactly what I had been hoping for & I look forward to some good online races with GTPers at the RING!
I like the cockpit view (& I'm fine with the blurring etc.) - your field of vision is situated further from the windshield than in Prologue.
Sounds are pretty nice.
Graphics (at least on the PS3) are nice but definitely not as good as some of the videos we've been seeing.
The Precision/Aggression thing is kind of ridiculous. What it amounts to, is you get points when you drive well, PLUS points when you drive badly - which makes the whole thing pointLESS!
All-in-all I think this game is exactly what I had been hoping for & I look forward to some good online races with GTPers at the RING!
- 1,411
- Shaggy_Alonso
C'mon Biggles. Please tell me you'll be buying SuperCar Challenge? My own personal gremlins about it have now vanished, and I believe you'll love it too 👍
- 1,963
- Hereward
- Herewward
Hope we can get a dedicated section for NFSS want to see a paint shop section and tuning section for this game, plus a tournament and time trial sections as well as general chat. Looks to be quite a few GTPers with/getting the game now and from accounts of the lucky few (most of the non UK guys LOL) this game looks to be one that a good comunity can grow around.
- 5,954
- 020 A'dam
- Blitz187
- Are u serious?
Have you tried turning down the amount of rotation? I had it on 900 first but have turned it down a lot along with setting steering lock in the tuning menu on 58 or something and the dead zone has decreased to minimum now on my DFP... also when I got to stage III parts the deadzone seemed to get less as well..
- 47
The Precision/Aggression thing is kind of ridiculous. What it amounts to, is you get points when you drive well, PLUS points when you drive badly - which makes the whole thing pointLESS!
I find the precision/aggression system to be genius for exactly that reason. It's points either way, so people who are naturally aggressive aren't trying to find ways around the system as such.
But the results of having a metric to judge whether people are crashers or not online is huge. How well it has been implemented will remain to be seen, but it could potentially extend the playlife of online a lot for some people who don't have to contend with people of the opposite playstyle.
- 8,642
- London
- GTP_Stotty
3 hours in and hmmmm... `not quite sure yet. Overall, I'm enjoying NFS:S, it is good fun, but there are some reservations...
Playing on pro, with all assists off (except ABS), AI on hard. Currently at level 9 (of 50).
Strengths
The graphics are good enough, but not GT5P good. The sound is excellent. The tracks are really good... maybe not as precisely modelled as GT5P, but even the non-real tracks are really nicely put together.
Weaknesses
One big one - steering. The steering just isn't precise enough. There is a deadzone no matter how much you adjust the various settings. It doesn't make the game unplayable, but it does limit your ability to place the car precisely. In addition, there's an overall feeling of vagueness around the major controls that makes the whole experience less impressive than GT even when everything's at 100% sensitivity.
Other than the steering, the physics model is broadly ok. It's arcadey, but still enjoyable. Feels to me like a game that won't have a huge amount of life in the way that the GT series does... likely it will keep me amused for a month or 2, but not exclusively - I'll still be sticking GT5P in the PS3 to run WRS events.
The game is also quite easy... even on the highest AI difficulty, with an unmodified car, races are quite easy to win.
Haven't tried tuning or modding my car (currently a BMW 135i) seriously yet.
The rewards system is a bit silly... you get rewarded for pretty much anything.
Will update further with more wheel time.
Playing on pro, with all assists off (except ABS), AI on hard. Currently at level 9 (of 50).
Strengths
The graphics are good enough, but not GT5P good. The sound is excellent. The tracks are really good... maybe not as precisely modelled as GT5P, but even the non-real tracks are really nicely put together.
Weaknesses
One big one - steering. The steering just isn't precise enough. There is a deadzone no matter how much you adjust the various settings. It doesn't make the game unplayable, but it does limit your ability to place the car precisely. In addition, there's an overall feeling of vagueness around the major controls that makes the whole experience less impressive than GT even when everything's at 100% sensitivity.
Other than the steering, the physics model is broadly ok. It's arcadey, but still enjoyable. Feels to me like a game that won't have a huge amount of life in the way that the GT series does... likely it will keep me amused for a month or 2, but not exclusively - I'll still be sticking GT5P in the PS3 to run WRS events.
The game is also quite easy... even on the highest AI difficulty, with an unmodified car, races are quite easy to win.
Haven't tried tuning or modding my car (currently a BMW 135i) seriously yet.
The rewards system is a bit silly... you get rewarded for pretty much anything.
Will update further with more wheel time.
Tetradic
Premium
- 151
- NYC
- Tetradic
You can tune the handling of individual cars to cover the spotty system level force feedback model...but the problem with the force feedback still remains.
I noticed that tire pressure adjustments made a difference with wheel feel, as did tire widths.
Still the problem is in the game's force feedback model.
Tetradic
Premium
- 151
- NYC
- Tetradic
I play with FFB on 8, steering lock at default, deadzone at 0 and I find it hardly an issue. It's not quite as disturbing as in SCC. Of course, they still need to fix it.As well as the other issues....
In my earlier post I mentioned I played with the steering settings...what I meant was I started with the steering settings you posted yesterday and worked form there. I agree with you, setting the FF to 8 seems to be the best system level solution. 7 is to low and 9 is worst than 10 oddly. Very random but good catch there...
Christian_C
Premium
- 1,499
- Stoke, UK
- GTP_Christian_C
We are getting graphics as good as the videos on the xbox, It seems that most multi-platform games seem to look worse on ps3 as on the back on the xbox case it says 1080p whereas as far as I know the ps3 version only runs at 720p.
- 98
For some reason there are no engine/car noises in quick race – career the sounds work fine. I've adjusted the settings and still, no luck.
Anyone have the same issue or know a fix?
Anyone have the same issue or know a fix?
I had that issue in quick race drift. On first run no engine sound, on second run engine sounds were on.
- 98
wow, the game just crashed at the end of a race
Eric.
Premium
- 8,515
- GTP_Eric
- Ebiggs
OK... need some clarifications:
1) There's no chance at all to configure button controls?
2) I've understand that you can turn off HUD. Will turn off all those crappy badges, point bars on top, etc. (in sum... all those arcadish nonsense), from popping off while driving?
3) Are the races ridiculous short as in GT5(max. 5 laps), or are there more endurance races?
4)Is there a championship mode (like for example creating a GT championship that covers a series of tracks in a point system)?
5) Oversteering - last comments on that have "scared" me and can be a turn off on buying this: Are all cars really oversteering or not?
6) Complete damage mode - does it affect car handking or is just rubbish?
7) Speed blurring can be set off (as someone said earlier it could at least on PC version)?
Thanks in advance
1. True
2. True (though you need that info for some things)
3. Mostly short, though they are difficult enough that its probably for the better
4. Series races, yes.
5. Umm, not sure what you mean. Every car is capable of oversteer...yes. FWD will under braking with a bad setup (I had high rear tire pressure), AWD doesn't really do it without flicking it.
6. Pretty useless - seems to be 99% visual damage
7. Not on console.
- 271
- Stratosphere03
Can anybody suggest me a good Tier 2 car for the Tier 2 events? I tried the Camaro, and I couldn't keep that thing on the road. Then I tried the Elise which handled 10x better, but wasn't fast enough to keep up. I'm thinking of trying either the WRX or the Skyline GT-R
Eric.
Premium
- 8,515
- GTP_Eric
- Ebiggs
Just give the Elise some power mods. My Tier 2 car is a fully modified 370Z right now (everything but the Works package - $250,000!!!). Its pretty damn fast, but hard to keep on the road with that much speed. Tire upgrades are a godsend.
I've driven the STI in a Car Battle event and it wasn't too bad. Fairly high level of understeer, though you might be able to tune that out. Cayman handles pretty good too, and the BMW M Coupe is nice.
- 305
- United States
- maroonz28
- Coming Soon.....
+1 for the STI
It handles pretty good, has great acceleration, and It will last you for a good while once you get the works upgrade. The only downside is that it lacks top-end speed so use it on tracks without long straights like Road America or the Ring. I can still be competitive with mine in the 14.00 category online.
- 2,980
- The Ramapo Mountains
- jjaisli
Hmmm. I'm going to have to contact Amazon. There was a big note that you got a free car if you pre-ordered but there was nothing in the package or box. Good luck getting an answer though.
To answer my own question, and for the benefit of anybody else who may have pre-ordered this game from Amazon.com, I received an email response from them today and they claim codes will be sent out via email within 10 days. So they're coming.
- 271
- Stratosphere03
- 475
I have noticed faster more powerful cars have slightly less dead zone and much better FFB also. Let's hope this is something SMS can patch in the future...
This set is giving me good rotation and feel of a road car bit not much to get rid of the dead zone.
720 degrees rotation
steering d-zone: 0%
accel/brake d-zone: 2% for both
steering sens. : 50%
acell/brake sens. : 50% and 45% respectively
speed sens. steering: 0%
turning steering lock set to the middle marker (28-32) more or less
- 2,716
- Québec
- GTP_WorstDriver
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