Alright. Had the game very early on today but didn't play thanks to life and Shadow of Mordor being hard to put down however, once I did, I spent 3 - 4 hours on the game and so far, I am really enjoying it. This is also coming from a guy who doesn't play alot of racing games and when I do, It's burnout/arcade racers mostly. First of all, the game looks STUNNING with no pop-ups in sight as well as being a very smooth and consistent 30fps. Moving on, the game is split up into 3 categories. Tour, Single Event and Multiplayer.
World Tour
Here is the campaign of the game where you get to choose and unlock events that are based on races, time trials, drifts and cup. The stars represent the challenges of that specific level that you could achieve for more points so you could level up, unlock cars, paint jobs and unlock more events in the tour. What I love most about it is that prior to the specific things you have to do, the game throws out random records from the leaderboards to achieve during the race for a specific short of time lets say for example, as you are about to hit a turn you go through a challenge pop up and it tells you to beat the other guys score in how long you could drift so, expect anything and not just drifts.
This actually kept me engaged and on my toes because even when I was in 1st place, I wasn't just scratching my balls but was on point and trying to beat records WHILE I was in first place which felt great. This system is also available in everything you do weather Tour, Single Event and I am guessing MP but I am not sure as I was unable to enter. Basically whatever you are doing in the game is pushing you further onto leveling up and progressing. You could also create your own challenges so that you could challenge other players as well as friends.
There are 51 events(levels) and they are a mix of races, drifts, time trials and cup matches.
Single Event
Here is where you are able to create and choose to your liking the type of match, location, car, whatever and play the way you want. There are 5 locations in the game. Canada, Chile, India, Norway, Scotland. Each location has 11 tracks so that's 55 levels and I think what they made great is the customization to the level itself you can set up things like time of day, weather, time lapse, crowd size, face-offs(on/off), opponent difficulty, number of opponents.etc
Multiplayer
I couldn't enter the MP for some reason but hopefully next time when I play, I'll try so I could write more about it. Couldn't even delve into the club specefications as I am still not into a club, you could browse for clubs as well for people who want to join in a club but since we are on gaf then everybody is in dat GAF CLUB. I tried out the paint job customization but I feel that it's better in the Forza games from what I have seen of videos just for comparison. I love how when you leave the controller for abit, the camera goes into this AD type of movement where it will show off your car from various angles, inside and out. You could also choose the time of day so I am guessing the screenshot thread will be a sight to behold. Didn't see a rewind or replay option but from what I am reading it's coming in later right? However, I did get into a real time day and night cycle where the race started at sun set and by the end of it the sun was no where to be seen. Didn't get to try out any snow or rain however, I will have to go to single event and try to customize there to see how everything looks like. In the options there is a setting for random so I am guessing weather is randomized as well as day and night cycle.
I'm usually a guy that plays arcade racers the most and I felt Driveclub strikes a good balance between simulation and arcade-y. It's kind of hard to explain since I don't play racing game that much but it just feels GREAT to play. I am sure if you guys played with the difficulty, you could probably push it towards being much more of a simulation type game rather than arcade-y or in between. So far, I am having great fun with it, I can't wait for GAF club and also playing with you guys. I am open for any question of the game you guys have or if you want me to take screenshots of specific things. It's kind of hard to find faults with the game because I feel it sets out what it wants to do and I guess people who play alot of racing games can judge better then I ever will. I will leave you all now with the pics dump of my 3 - 4 hour play session. I also tried putting my special edition code but it gave me an error that it's invalid, my guess is that it will work when the game releases.
NOTE: IT LOOKS BETTER IN MOTION. Enjoy!
The first few pics I took off screen because I was excited to try the game out and I didn't think right lol.
