Ridge Racer Unbounded - 1.5Gb. FO3 - 10+Gb??

[Nobodo]

...and I don't think it means RRU is less than 20% of the game FO3 is.

[ElfShotTheFood]

10 GB of that space is probably uncompressed blades of grass.

Seriously though, FO3 has more environments, which means more art assets. RRU seems to take place mostly in the same environments, so they wouldn't have to create as many art assets.

Team6 also probably didn't compress as much data as Bugbear did, since there was no console release for FO 3.

[Haggis&Tatties]

Lets not beat about the bush here....Bugbear are simply a more experienced developer with the hystory of producing a great franchise and great games.

Team6 are a shovelware company making cheap games with a 10 year old game engine and tools, who were unfortunatly hired by a publisher who was also way out of their league when it came to quaility instead of quantinty.

So its not surprise a game that looks and plays 100% better than F3 comes in at almost 1/10th of its size......quality and experience(Bugbear) over quantity and stagnation(Team6).

[Daniel199516]

Wow, that's really not much space, that's a nice achievement of bugbear..
I haven't bought the game yet, but I heard anyone here saying something about a demo, is there gonna be a demo for RRU? (it isn't on steam)

And I think ElfShotTheFood is right, compressing and more environments.. Too bad they didn't make some field maps like the Flatout 2 ones (but yeah.. it's named Ridge Racer now)

Edit: Oh and btw, is it a game you can just call Flatout 3? So that I can play it and just forget its a RR game like I did with flatout 3?

[Sonicdawn]

Originally Posted by Daniel199516

Edit: Oh and btw, is it a game you can just call Flatout 3? So that I can play it and just forget its a RR game like I did with flatout 3?

u mad? sorry didn't quite catch that one. What are you saying?

[Behnam]

Originally Posted by Daniel199516

Wow, that's really not much space, that's a nice achievement of bugbear..
I haven't bought the game yet, but I heard anyone here saying something about a demo, is there gonna be a demo for RRU? (it isn't on steam)

And I think ElfShotTheFood is right, compressing and more environments.. Too bad they didn't make some field maps like the Flatout 2 ones (but yeah.. it's named Ridge Racer now)

Edit: Oh and btw, is it a game you can just call Flatout 3? So that I can play it and just forget its a RR game like I did with flatout 3?

Bugbear confirmed on their facebook page that the demo is comming soon... But no dates yet...

[Daniel199516]

I meant, can you see this game as the sequel to Flatout 2? Is it like that game?
Because in that case I could pick it up and play it as a flatout game, never had anything with the ridge racer serie..

and flatout 3 I played not thinking it was a flatout game, because it wasn't like flatout 2, that part probably confused you in my other post

at above, nice, than I will wait for that to try it myself

[Kwakkieftd]

ontopic

The work of a competent developer, better use of textures / compression etc...
It's all in a city environment so with just clever use of texturing they can put so much more game in less space, just look what can be done with one texture http://www.udk.com/showcase-amazing-one-texture

and it's all in the quality of the engine they use. I guess the crappy 10 year old engine of Team6 just isn't capable of handling some kind of compression.
If you also look at the system req's it looks like the Team6 engine needs all resources available to make the game run decent.
Processor: Intel® Quadcore
Memory: 4 GB
Video: Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 / AMD Radeon HD 6970
how may games you know of have these outrageous req's

But ok, i just saw they support the Razer Hydra who cares maybe that's the difference....

[Sonicdawn]

Originally Posted by Daniel199516

I meant, can you see this game as the sequel to Flatout 2? Is it like that game?
Because in that case I could pick it up and play it as a flatout game, never had anything with the ridge racer serie..

and flatout 3 I played not thinking it was a flatout game, because it wasn't like flatout 2, that part probably confused you in my other post

at above, nice, than I will wait for that to try it myself

ah ok I gotcha, I might wait for the demo myself because I am pretty low on cash right now, but I will probably buy it, the response seems to be positive on metacritic for the xbox version at least. So I would imagine the PC version is even better because of the graphics bottleneck of the xbox.

[KazzyMac]

Originally Posted by Sonicdawn

ah ok I gotcha, I might wait for the demo myself because I am pretty low on cash right now, but I will probably buy it, the response seems to be positive on metacritic for the xbox version at least. So I would imagine the PC version is even better because of the graphics bottleneck of the xbox.

I've got both xbox and PC version; not booted the PC version up yet as it requires booting into Windows for that, but the graphics on xbox are perfectly fine. The only issue could be a lack of antialiasing and the issue that the xbox uses 480p upscaling for 720p/1080p resolution (in other words, special effects like blur, dust etc are rendered in 480p and look obviously blocky) but apart from that it's a very shiny eye-candy racer, and I haven't yet come across any FPS drops even online.

[Purple44]

Originally Posted by Daniel199516

I meant, can you see this game as the sequel to Flatout 2? Is it like that game?
Because in that case I could pick it up and play it as a flatout game, never had anything with the ridge racer serie..

and flatout 3 I played not thinking it was a flatout game, because it wasn't like flatout 2, that part probably confused you in my other post

at above, nice, than I will wait for that to try it myself

RRU is more like Burnout\ Split Second, than a Flatout game. And RRU looking like a console port.

Here Ram8113 impression of RRU:

My impressions of Ridge Racer: Unbounded so far.

Originally Posted by Ram8113

All right, everybody here knows FO3 is an absolute abomination of a Flatout game. Heck, isn't even a good arcade racing game. After watching previews of RR:UB it was quickly made clear that this game was the next best thing for us FO fans. So here is my mini review after having beaten half the game and played a bit of multiplayer.

(For the record, this is my first ever Ridge Racer game. Also worthy of note: I consider FO:UC to be the best racing game ever made)
-------------------------------------------
GRAPHICS

As a FO game:

Everything you'd expect from Bugbear. Simply put the game is beautiful and the FPS stays silky smooth even on my mid range PC. I'd say I have the game running on max settings but... there really are almost no graphical settings in this game. The ONLY things you can adjust are screen resolution and texture filtering. Bottom line: The cars look like FO cars, the game is pretty, and there is lots going on with the physics.

9/10

As a racing game in general:

The graphics are pretty run of the mill. They're certainly not the best out there but they do the job. The steady frame rate is more than I can say for Blur, recent NFS games, or F1. The lack of graphical options is a major minus.

8.5/10
-------------------------------------------
CARS AND CAR PHYSICS

As a FO game:

These cars handle almost nothing like FO cars. They are light weight, floaty, and VERY fragile. There isn't the slightest feeling of realism. They are also substantially faster.

Also, car collisions have next to no effect. You can't spin people out, roll them over or anything like that. You can blow them up but only with lucky seemingly random hits or with easy to get nitro which instant kills anybody.

6.5/10

As a racing game in general:

Typical arcade fare. Not challenging to drive. It's easy to pull off huge drifts and blaze around corners as well as catch huge air. It does have it's issues though. The handling can be a bit inconsistent at times. Perfect drifts will suddenly go awry for apparently no reason and with absolutely no warning. This isn't common but it's not rare either. Overall, handling is very average for an arcade racer.

Also, the cars in each class feel almost exactly the same.

7.5/10
-------------------------------------------
TRACK DESIGN AND VARIETY

As a FO game:

Well, if you're looking for Flatout 4 (or whatever # we'd be on if this was the next FO) style tracks this is the absolute wrong game. It's worth pointing out again that I've only played half the districts at this point. But every district has felt exactly... the same... as the last. Also, shortcuts aren't nearly as fun, creative, or dangerous. Or even effective for that matter.

All tracks seem to be on flat, open city roads. Next to no choke points, few hair pins, and almost no sense of danger when approaching a tight turn at high speeds.

The tracks do have lots of physics objects on them but not only does it feel like fewer than FO:UC but the physics objects do NOTHING to the game play except fly around and look cool when hit. Not a single physics object that I've hit has slowed me down or altered my course.

4/10

As a racing game in general:

This games tracks feel like your standard NFS fair: One giant, pretty city. You've got your skyscrapers, your slums, your construction sites, your sports stadiums, ect. Nothing new. Nothing original.

7/10
-------------------------------------------
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

As a FO game:

These guys don't act like FO drivers at all. They don't have there own driving personalities and avatars (like Jack Benton, Sally Taylor, ect). They also don't really interact with each other very much on the track. They do go for hits (mostly when using nitro) but the lack of collision physics makes it so that more often than not, nothing happens. I have yet to see a three or more car pile up which were practically common in the FO series.

Also, the rubberband AI is pretty darn bad. I know FO had rubberband AI but it actually served to make the game more fun and keep the collisions coming. The AI in this is very cheap. If your racing perfect and crash, you lose 5 or 6 spots because they were all right behind you the entire time. Good luck catching up though because they don't slow down that much at all.

The lack of driver personality is the biggest killer here though. I loved hating Jack Benton and avoiding Frank Malcov at all costs (knowing he'd just crash).

3/10

As a racing game in general:

Again, standard fair. Rubber band AI is meant to keep the races close and exciting but more often than not just makes things frustrating.

6.5/10
-------------------------------------------
MULTIPLAYER

I've only played a few multiplayer matches but haven't had any issues. So far the lobbies are pretty much empty. No lag to report though, at least yet.

The biggest issue is only being able to race 8 people online whereas you can race 12 offline.

8/10
-------------------------------------------
GAME MODES

As a FO game:

One BIG issue: No stunts. Another issue: No destruction derby. But you can race other cars!!

1/10

As a racing game in general:

You get more here than most arcade racing games. You've got your standard race. Then you've got frag events, drift events, and the track editor.

9/10
-------------------------------------------
SOUND

As a FO game:

Again, nothing like past FO's. The decent music from FO 2 and UC is replaced with generic techno and the cars are completely lacking any form of punch. Collisions sound average at best and crashing into stuff just doesn't sound as good as FO:UC.

7/10

As a racing game:

Sounds just like every other arcade racer out there. Thank GOD there's no announcer.

7.5/10
-------------------------------------------
MAP EDITOR

Well, I totally would have LOVED to review this seeing as to how it's a MAJOR reason I bought the game... but it won't launch for me!! Every time I try it crashes. Clearly though, it works for others because I've played some (pretty bad) online custom tracks. So for the sake of this review I'll just pretend it wasn't even included in the game.
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
FINAL VERDICT

As a FO game:

As much as I wanted this to be a Flatout game, it just isn't and it clearly was never meant to be. There are no stunts, drivers don't go flying out of there windows, and the crashing and destruction is toned down BIG TIME. If this were FO 4 I'd be pretty darn disappointed.

6/10

As a racing game in general:

This is a fairly cool and fun arcade racer despite many shortcomings. The destruction is fun even if it has no real effect on the races. The driving does it's job and generally the action stays fun. The rubber band AI can be brutal but most races you'll win on the first try. I'm not in the least bit disappointed I bought this game.

8/10

[KazzyMac]

Hm..

"You can't spin people out"

I've spun the AI out before. Actually, I've done it several times. It's usually a case of pot-luck and requires a good shove on the quarterpanel. I've had some tool successfully ruin an online game by spinning me out into a wall, as well. :P

I'm not arguing with the review, though. On the basis of judging it as a FO game it's very accurate ... but I've come to terms with understanding that this game is best judged as NOT being a FO game. :]

[Haggis&Tatties]

Purple44 is just on a mission to complain about this games minor issues across the board, but as i have already said, no amount of spin on this games few issues, which can be fixed with patches, and the game is only a day after release......will they ever be able to spin up to the level of complete incompetence and bad management that was shown in the whole Flatout 3 fiasco.

[Purple44]

Originally Posted by Haggis&Tatties

Purple44 is just on a mission to complain about this games minor issues across the board, but as i have already said, no amount of spin on this games few issues, which can be fixed with patches, and the game is only a day after release......will they ever be able to spin up to the level of complete incompetence and bad management that was shown in the whole Flatout 3 fiasco.

If Flatout 3 had never been release, I still would post that RRU looking like a console port and that unacceptable for a PC racing game. RRU label to end up dead online in about 2 months, just like Blur ( which was Flatout 3 for me ). I had high hopes for Blur and 20 player chaos racing online.

20 player hosts, dead in 2 months. I spent an hour waiting to start a 20 player host and 3 times got to 3 players, but never got to 4 players so I could start the race. Blur should of let 20 player host start with 2 players, would had more players join in later.

Console ports to the PC is just bad news and ends badly!!

[Sonicdawn]

Originally Posted by Haggis&Tatties

Purple44 is just on a mission to complain about this games minor issues across the board, but as i have already said, no amount of spin on this games few issues, which can be fixed with patches, and the game is only a day after release......will they ever be able to spin up to the level of complete incompetence and bad management that was shown in the whole Flatout 3 fiasco.

True, he really wants the game to fail and be bad, the question is why? I mean, it's not like it's gonna make the fiasco of FO3 look any better.