‘Project CARS’ is Namco’s answer to DriveClub
Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Format: PC, Playstation 4, Wii U and Xbox One
Release Date: Nov, 2014 (TBC on Wii U)
When Sony announced DriveClub for the PS4, there was a great deal of excitement over the size of the game. A lot of people were enthused by the way maps within the game were built to scale, which meant you could have a race that lasted 3 hours, if you chose to. There was also a lot of focus on community, meaning that players could connect instantaneously and create their own races, whenever and wherever they chose.
This all sounds very impressive, but no matter how dedicated a racing game is to delivering such a revolutionary experience, you will never make everyone happy. Aside from gamers who simply aren’t into racing games, those who are tend to be split into two groups:
There are those who like realistic racing simulators, where the cars handle almost exactly as you’d expect them to in real life.
And there are those who just want to play for fun, with explosive jumps and high speeds of up to 300 m/ph.
You can’t really appeal to both, and even if you do find a perfect middle-ground, extremists will still bemoan the game for one thing or the other.
Project CARS might just be the title to change all that.
When Namco announced that Project CARS would boast “total realism”, it was visually apparent that some of the press in the room were already switching off. The speed junkies could barely hide their grimaces as they thought to themselves “How am I going to make this sound exciting?”
Almost immediately, as if to answer this question, they then turned around to say “Of course, we realise this isn’t exciting to everybody.” A few sets of ears pricked up at this.
“Project CARS will allow you to alter the settings in-game, to let you play how you want to play.”
If what Namco says is true, we essentially have a game that panders to all demographics, one that can be equal parts realistic and bombastic, a driving game for everyone.
There is a definite drive to get this message across in the trailer, which asks whether you want to come out on top or become a well-disciplined master of the race-track. It sounds as if they are one and the same, but the trailer stresses that there is definitely more than one way to get to the finish line.
The differences in play-styles is clear to see in the wide array of cars on display. There are your typical BMWs speeding across dirt tracks, but you also have Formula 1 cars on asphalt courses.
At one point, there is even something resembling Go-Karts on a simple loop, so there is something there for even the Mario Kart fanatics!
Just imagine the DLC: Kratos vs. Master Chief in a Go-Kart race to the death!
A racing game like this could genuinely change the way we approach video-games as a medium.
What if we were to implement the same adjustable rules into other genres? To shooters perhaps? Switch from realism shooters, where one bullet can kill you, to old-school shoot-em-ups, where you can point rocket launchers downwards to give you an extra high jump.
Giving this sort of control to the players could potentially mean an end to bad games as we know them (or at least cut them back considerably).
We were eager to hear more about this, but Namco didn’t go into details regarding how these play-styles could be adjusted. While they were happy that this feature was present in the game, what they were clearly most proud of was how well the game mimicked real life.
“[Our buzzword] for this game,” they were eager to stress, “is ‘Realism'”.
And regardless of whether you are interested in racing sims or not, it is all too easy to be impressed by how realistic this game looks. The visuals, as you might expect, border on the pornographic. Sleek racing machines drive flawlessly into a golden sunset, reflections bouncing off the rear bumpers. As a yellow hot rod takes a sharp corner at speed, the trailer slows down to a crawl so that we can drink in the technical marvel before us.
We were then excited even further when told that the game would support Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus, placing you directly in the drivers’ seat for added realism.
When we saw Forza 5 at the Xbox One launch, we shrugged and admitted that, yeah, I guess that’s next-gen.
With Project Cars, you look at it, pick your jaw back up off the ground and yell “NOW, THAT’S NEXT GEN!” (or at least write it down in capital letters, because yelling would have been inappropriate)
We were given the opportunity to play a prototype of the game in a private room, and we discovered that Namco were not kidding when they said they were pushing realism. Not adept at even the most crowd-friendly racing games, we soon found ourselves doing unintentional donuts on a patch of grass, while falling quickly into last place.
“The environment is represented realistically as well,” a Namco representative said over our shoulder, as we drove into a bollard. “If it rains, puddles will build up, which affect the way your car handles when driving over them.”
It was a shame it wasn’t raining in this particular demo, as it would have been a nice way to explain how bad we were.
Set for a release in November, it’s difficult to believe the demo we played was actually just a prototype. As mentioned, it looked phenomenal, with the cars getting slowly beaten up the longer we played. And in terms of realism, it certainly handled the way we expected, with someone gently telling us that we shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car.
It was only when we accidentally started driving into traffic that we discovered the physics may be a little off, as we flipped several meters into the sky and then defied gravity for a few seconds by landing vertically on an invisible wall.
Let’s hope this is a feature they keep in the more outrageous gameplay options!
Project CARS is set for release in November, 2014
Check out the trailer below
