race-driving engineer? are there degrees for that?

[Lance]

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subtitle: A Prose Ode to the School of F355, or A Sort of Game Review

xEik's achievement of becoming an IT engineer must have inspired me or something because last night i achieved something that i thought might take just as long as a degree; i won a race in F355 Challenge! okay, it was in novice class, but still..... i thought it was going to take about 4 years of constant intense diligent effort to take a first. this game is thAt hard. but somehow i zipped through past the former first-place driver while he was occupied trying to pass one of the slow guys on lap 13. former number two slipped by him, too, and i had to hold off both of them while they tried to eat my back bumper for the next seven laps. but i prevailed. yes! it felt like i had won a real race. it was that intense and took so much effort to beat those guys. the AI in the game is incredible, seemingly intelligent, agressive, persistent.

hmm.... i suppose that in order to earn the degree, i must win on all the other tracks and do it in the higher skill level. doggone it!
but that's OK; now i know it's possible for me to beat the opponents.

to jump away from the parallel/metaphor, i know some of you have already played this game, but those of you who haven't, and who are also truly hardcore racers, you owe it to yourself to have this experience. F355 is the closest thing to real racing that i've experienced in a videogame. in a small way for a short time, i've driven a real car this way [ a long time ago, on out-of-the-way real streets outside a city which shall not be named], and though the car wasn't as fast as a Ferrari 355, it produced the same feeling this game does. this is what real racing feels like.

it isn't the Future; it isn't Anti-Grav; but it's pretty damn great.
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[Lance]

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btw, if you know any other games that are as hardcore and satisfying as F355 Challenge, please let me know about them. go ahead and list them right in this topic, and tell everybody what makes them great
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[Roger]

It really seems I've gotta keep my eyes open for F355!

Anyway, today I bought F1 World Grand Prix for Dreamcast. I've only had a few races of it this far. I don't know about satisfacion, but there is frustration a plenty! :x

[jmoid]

Maybe I shOUld get a dreamcast, they are pretty cheap these days after all...

[Lance]

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Jamie, a Dreamcast might be the best gaming value available. however, even though i don't want to discourage people from getting one, i have to tell you that F355 Challenge has been ported to the PS2. i get the impression, possibly mistaken on my part, from reviews i've seen, that the graphics are a bit jaggy compared to those of the DC. bUt, there are two additional features on the port, an additional mode [which to me seems to add nothing to the game that isn't present in the standard mode], and the ability to save a partially completed Gran Prix series. on the original Dreamcast version, a partially completed series can't be saved, but must be completed in one go. this would require great skill and determination, but that is probably what Yu Suzuki wanted! if you already have a PS2, that still might be the way to go, although it's true that both the game and the DC are readily and cheaply available. don't forget that my stated opinions may be influenced by the fact that the Dreamcast is my favourite console.

Roger, that's one of the games i've heard of and want to check out. i don't know anyone who's played it. would you give us a description of how it plays, the good and the bad as you see it
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[jmoid]

Thanks Lance - much appreciated. I believe according to what I've read about the capabilities of both machines PS2 graphics compared to DC are usually a little more jaggy.

[Roger]

OK, here's my take on F1 World Grand Prix. These are my experiences from two evenings of gameplay. I will no doubt have to reassess the game later on...

I bought the game with the suspicion that I wouldn't like it all that much. Sure enough, I find the realism of the game a bit offputting. I'm not really into the tactics of car racing: careful driving, advancing one position after another, being careful not to crash into the other cars, staying on the track etc. For the same reasons my copy of Gran Turismo is collecting dust on the shelf, while I frequently enjoy a round of Ridge Racer type IV or Colin McRae.

For now, I'm mostly sticking with the "time attack" mode. I may grow to like the racing, once I master the controls (and learn self control...).

Graphically, the game is beautiful, a real treat for the eye. Sometimes, however, the polygon count exceeds the Dreamcast's capabilities and the frame rate drops. That is a minor glitch, though. (It doesn't bother me, anyway!). The music is best muted, so that you can enjooy the "wasp like" high pitched engine sounds. Lovely! There's also a commentator who drops witty remarks ("try not to hit the other cars" :wink: )

All in all, I think the game is best enjoyed by hardcore racing fans. Casual drivers look elsewhere. Lance: judging from your description, this game is only a tenth as frustrating as F355. Get it!
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Edit: screenshots are available at Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/dreamcast/driving/f1worldgrandprix/screenindex.html)

[infoxicated]

Thanks Lance - much appreciated. I believe according to what I've read about the capabilities of both machines PS2 graphics compared to DC are usually a little more jaggy.
Always the sign of a rushed port - see Virtual Tennis 2 and many other Sega games for that. The Dreamcast hardware has hardware anti-aliasing, the PS2 does it with software, so if you see a jaggy edged Sega game it's a sign of a piss poor port. You can expect exceptionally long loading times, menus that flicker like a strobe light during a power surge and glaring signs of a rush job all round.

Sega is in it for the money after all - the quicker they can port it, box it up and get it on shelves the better for them. A bit of a shame for a brand which once represented quality :(

[Lance]

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Roger, if it's only one tenth as frustrating as F355, i'm not sure it's hard enough!
but you're probably exaggerating how easy it is. ;)
what you're describing sounds fairly hardcore, and that's what i'm looking for. some racing games are too easy. for example, yesterday i played Flag to Flag and took first place in almost every race in the championship on 'medium' difficulty mode, ending up the season with more than 300 points while the nearest AI opponent had only a bit over a hundred. there is something wrong with that. especially since i hadn't even driven on most of the 19 courses before and went directly to qualifying, which you can't bypass, and only practiced on two of the courses. this would be ridiculous even if i were one of the top videogame talents, which i am not.

i love Ridge Racer 4. actually, i sometimes get frustrated playing it when using a 'drift' car [the ones that are really fun] on the next to last race of the championship. on higher difficulty, which is provided by racing for Racing Team Solvalou [level 3] or DRT [level 4], i have a hard time getting cleanly through the last corner of the race. you lose if you don't, as the AI always makes certain that the best of your competitors is right there at the end. whether you are a little ahead or a little behind, you can still win as long as you make no mistake whatsoever in that last curve of the ''Heaven and Hell'' course. i haven't been able to take the entire long corner at full throttle, so when i reach the exit, i have to let off the throttle for an instant, which in a 'drift' car results in immediate slide of the rear tires to the outside of the corner just as i need to turn back in the other direction as the road suddenly goes left toward the finish line. any error will put you into a wall on the left or on the right, and your opponent will dash right through to victory. oh, yeah, the heart gets pumping on RR4. maybe i'm weird, but it somehow manages to produce a higher level of excitement than most racing games, including what would seem to be more sophisticated and realistic ones. odd.

Rob, i am hoping that as SEGA designs new games that were never on their own platform, they will produce the quality they used to do when they had their own. [i could wish that they would make their own machine, and design exclusively for it, but that isn't the way it is.] maybe when they're out of debt, huh?

speaking of quality, SEGA and NAMCO have probably produced more of my favourites than any other creator/distributors, largely through doing a more complete job than most companies. they have tended to pay attention to every last detail, and to put more details into a game than others. there is a conceptual depth to their games that is lacking in most.

damn, i got on a verbal ramble again, didn't i? possibly pent up because i turned the computer off yesterday afternoon because of approaching lightning and hadn't turned it back on till just a bit ago. [there were over 18,000 lightning strikes in central Florida yesterday before 10 PM, at which point the storms came around agAiN.
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