NFSU & U2

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

I haven't downloaded the demo on either one of these, but was wondering if
these two games are more like arcade-style racers like Hot Pursuit 2 or are
they sims like Porsche Unleashed and High Stakes?
Thanks,
SC Tom

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

Gee, I'm sorry I asked such a tough question. I'll try an easier one next
time.
SC Tom

"SC Tom" <SC@Tom.com> wrote in message
news:10pmd5cmv3hotc4@corp.supernews.com...
>I haven't downloaded the demo on either one of these, but was wondering if
>these two games are more like arcade-style racers like Hot Pursuit 2 or are
>they sims like Porsche Unleashed and High Stakes?
> Thanks,
> SC Tom
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

> I haven't downloaded the demo on either one of these, but was wondering if these two games are more like arcade-style racers like
> Hot Pursuit 2 or are they sims like Porsche Unleashed and High Stakes?

The cars of NFSU and NFSU2 behave similar to the cars in NFS Porsche Unleashed.

The tracks of NFSU are very short. Longest track barely takes over a
minute per lap, there are two at 50 seconds, and the rest in the low 40's.
At two of the tracks of NFSU, Olympic and Stadium, you never brake, never
shift gears, just steer and bounce off walls with the throttle floored,
always in 5th gear. You get the longest track with the demo, Market Street,
which at least has 3 braking points (but still a bounce off the fence
in the garden section), and some shifting (3rd gear to 5th gear).

NFSU2 has longer tracks, added race tracks call Underground Racing League,
but the race tracks are made up of common components. It won't take long
to memorize the race tracks. There are a lot of circuit tracks though,
with a good variation in length.

High Stakes a sim? I've spent more time with High Stakes than any of the other
NFS series games, was online for 2 years, but I would never consider it a sim.
The grip physics are strange, cornering grip is better than forward grip,
(why the wiggle launch is faster), and you can use both at the same time,
for example, approaching the 90 degree bend on the Hometown track at top
speed, and barely needing 1 second to slow down and take that turn.

Grand Prix Legends, Nascar Racing season 2003, F1 Challenge 99-02, GTR (have
to order this from Germany) are what I would consider to be sims. Live for
speed is a sim still in development, cars are unstable with the current
model but this is to be fixed in the next version of LFS.

Hot Pursuit 2 is just weird, with the bizarre handling of the cars in the game.
It's like they took the cars from NFS PU and added 500 lb bumpers so the
cars could be driven with game pads. I use joystick for steering, and have
to pulse it like a game pad to steer the cars in HP2 for fast lap times.

HP2 and U1 were the low points of the NFS series. What's the point of having
nice looking cars if you don't have replays to look at them? I use bumper
view, so I never get to see the cars. In HP2, you go through a long
career mode to unlock nicer looking and faster cars that you can't race online.

If you want to see what these games look like, I've made a lot of videos
from various racing games. Go here:

http://jeffareid.net

and click on the racing game video link.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

I guess the most important question I have is, is the steering like HP2,
like using a game pad, or is it incremental (for lack of a better word) like
PU? I had HP2 and couldn't stand it using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. I felt
like I should break out my old Gravis game pad. At least with High Stakes,
PU, and the other earlier games, when you moved the joystick to the left a
little, the car steered to the left a little, not full left.
Thanks for your replies.
SC Tom

 

[Vellu]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

SC Tom kirjoitti:
> Gee, I'm sorry I asked such a tough question. I'll try an easier one next
> time.
> SC Tom
>
> "SC Tom" <SC@Tom.com> wrote in message
> news:10pmd5cmv3hotc4@corp.supernews.com...
>
>>I haven't downloaded the demo on either one of these, but was wondering if
>>these two games are more like arcade-style racers like Hot Pursuit 2 or are
>>they sims like Porsche Unleashed and High Stakes?
>> Thanks,
>> SC Tom
>>

Driving is arcade (no damage), but visual and performance tuning could
be considered simulation (fairly realistic). Especially the dyno bit in
NFSU2.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

> I guess the most important question I have is, is the steering like HP2, like using a game pad, or is it incremental (for lack of
> a better word) like PU? I had HP2 and couldn't stand it using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. I felt like I should break out my old
> Gravis game pad. At least with High Stakes, PU, and the other earlier games, when you moved the joystick to the left a little, the
> car steered to the left a little, not full left.

U1 and U2 steer normally. HP2 is the only NFS game where it was better to
pulse the steering on some corners. Rather that trying to remember which
ones, you could just pulse steer on all of them. Just a quick twist of
the wheel and back to center would cause the HP2 cars to start rotating,
as if they had all their weight in the bumpers. I use twin joysticks,
left for thottle / brake, right for steer, so it wasn't quite as annoying
as it would be with a wheel.

Although you can get good lap times in NFS High Stakes with normal steering,
the best lap times are/were made using game pads with instant steering.
When steering is done with pulses of the wheel instantly pegged to one
side or the other, the High Stakes cars lose less speed when turning,
and the higher speed results in better lap times, about a second or so.
The fastest non-game pad player is Larynx, who uses a stick to steer
and pedals. He wiggles the stick a lot to get some of the game pad
advantage, and the pedals allow partial braking which helps control
the cars better as usually the wheel is pegged, the throttle is floored,
and you control speed with some taps on the brake for most of the
corners in High Stakes.

NFS Porsche Unleashed had it's quirks as well. It turns out that front
downforce doesn't do anything but add drag, slowing a car down. Rear
downforce doesn't improve grip at all, but it does keep the car from
going as high on jumps or rises. Setting top gear extrememly tall
reduces aerodynamic drag, allowing for higher speeds, but this is
only legal on the race cars in the game. Setting the rear tire pressure
lower than the fronts, like 40 rear, 45 front, allows the cars
to have lift throttle oversteer, resulting in more consistent and
better times.

As posted before, my biggest beef with U1 is the shortness of the
tracks, and so little driver input required on the tracks. A lot
of the time is spent with the throttle floored, the car in just
one gear, and bouncing off walls as needed. Not all of the tracks
are like this, but Olympic, the worst offender, was the most
popular online track when I was online. The points system for
online play only awarded points for wins, and running 10 lap
races increased the points you could win while the max points
you could lose maxed out at 3 laps. The result was almost all
10 lap races at the host's favorite track. This got pretty
boring. Average "lifespan" of a NFSU online player was maybe
6 months. I visit U1 online every now and then and it's gone
through 3 "generations" of players. The original players from
the demo days are long gone.

U2's online play is too restrictive. You can only race players
from your country, and you can't see what's going on except
by changing your "filter". There's also just one huge
lobby, instead of rooms like U1, or pits like PU and HS.
Virtually no chance that you'll see any racer for a second
time in quite a while. I got online with the demo a few
times when it first came out. Virtually no one had taken
the time to learn the track, so wins were easy. However
it was like playing offline with AI cars. You never
chatted, and once a race was done, you never saw that
group of racers again. I quickly lost interest in online play,
but the offline play has been fun.

For me, there are too many good games out now to spend the
the time to get good enough to be competitive for online
play, so I mostly enjoy the offline play. According to
marketing data, only a small percentage of racing game
players go online anyway.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.need-for-speed (More info?)

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the answers.
I think I'll skip Underground and see if I can catch Underground 2 sometime
after the holidays.
Thanks again
SC Tom

"Jeff Reid" <jeffareid@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:W1zvd.32600$ve.13343@fed1read06...
>> I guess the most important question I have is, is the steering like HP2,
>> like using a game pad, or is it incremental (for lack of a better word)
>> like PU? I had HP2 and couldn't stand it using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro.
>> I felt like I should break out my old Gravis game pad. At least with High
>> Stakes, PU, and the other earlier games, when you moved the joystick to
>> the left a little, the car steered to the left a little, not full left.
>
> U1 and U2 steer normally. HP2 is the only NFS game where it was better to
> pulse the steering on some corners. Rather that trying to remember which
> ones, you could just pulse steer on all of them. Just a quick twist of
> the wheel and back to center would cause the HP2 cars to start rotating,
> as if they had all their weight in the bumpers. I use twin joysticks,
> left for thottle / brake, right for steer, so it wasn't quite as annoying
> as it would be with a wheel.
>
> Although you can get good lap times in NFS High Stakes with normal
> steering,
> the best lap times are/were made using game pads with instant steering.
> When steering is done with pulses of the wheel instantly pegged to one
> side or the other, the High Stakes cars lose less speed when turning,
> and the higher speed results in better lap times, about a second or so.
> The fastest non-game pad player is Larynx, who uses a stick to steer
> and pedals. He wiggles the stick a lot to get some of the game pad
> advantage, and the pedals allow partial braking which helps control
> the cars better as usually the wheel is pegged, the throttle is floored,
> and you control speed with some taps on the brake for most of the
> corners in High Stakes.
>
> NFS Porsche Unleashed had it's quirks as well. It turns out that front
> downforce doesn't do anything but add drag, slowing a car down. Rear
> downforce doesn't improve grip at all, but it does keep the car from
> going as high on jumps or rises. Setting top gear extrememly tall
> reduces aerodynamic drag, allowing for higher speeds, but this is
> only legal on the race cars in the game. Setting the rear tire pressure
> lower than the fronts, like 40 rear, 45 front, allows the cars
> to have lift throttle oversteer, resulting in more consistent and
> better times.
>
> As posted before, my biggest beef with U1 is the shortness of the
> tracks, and so little driver input required on the tracks. A lot
> of the time is spent with the throttle floored, the car in just
> one gear, and bouncing off walls as needed. Not all of the tracks
> are like this, but Olympic, the worst offender, was the most
> popular online track when I was online. The points system for
> online play only awarded points for wins, and running 10 lap
> races increased the points you could win while the max points
> you could lose maxed out at 3 laps. The result was almost all
> 10 lap races at the host's favorite track. This got pretty
> boring. Average "lifespan" of a NFSU online player was maybe
> 6 months. I visit U1 online every now and then and it's gone
> through 3 "generations" of players. The original players from
> the demo days are long gone.
>
> U2's online play is too restrictive. You can only race players
> from your country, and you can't see what's going on except
> by changing your "filter". There's also just one huge
> lobby, instead of rooms like U1, or pits like PU and HS.
> Virtually no chance that you'll see any racer for a second
> time in quite a while. I got online with the demo a few
> times when it first came out. Virtually no one had taken
> the time to learn the track, so wins were easy. However
> it was like playing offline with AI cars. You never
> chatted, and once a race was done, you never saw that
> group of racers again. I quickly lost interest in online play,
> but the offline play has been fun.
>
> For me, there are too many good games out now to spend the
> the time to get good enough to be competitive for online
> play, so I mostly enjoy the offline play. According to
> marketing data, only a small percentage of racing game
> players go online anyway.
>
>
>
>
>