We get back into the mud for a look at a very near-final version of Codemasters’ upcoming off-road racer.
Dirt 3 wastes no time in making the point that rallying is back. While it was present in Dirt 2, the extreme sports aesthetic and overall feel made it seem slightly out of place–but in Dirt 3, point-to-point races in classic rally cars are front and center.
The first thing you notice when starting the game is that the paddock and RV from the previous game are gone, along with all the product placement and extreme sports lifestyle gubbins. Your pre-race car selection is now set up as a team selection but can be done on an ad hoc basis, with the vehicles determined by your reputation rather than by your ability to afford them.
Once you’ve picked your team and car, you find yourself in the “service area” near the start of the race, where you can tweak individual car settings, as well as the difficulty level of your opponents, the number of available flashbacks, and the driving assists.
To begin with, you’re presented with two classic rally stages in Finland, which do a good job of setting the scene for the game. Despite the trimming of the fat that got between you and races in Dirt 2, it will feel instantly familiar for fans of the series. The two stages you hit first are challenging but not punishing: relatively open bends and small jumps that help to ease you into the driver’s seat.
The choices of a Peugeot 207 and Abarth Grande Punto are hardly the most thrilling, but they’re good little rally cars that are fun to throw around the track.
Driver: San Francisco will let you change lanes…and change identities. Get the details in our hands-on report.
Drawing inspiration from such classics as Bullit and The French Connection, as well as more contemporary titles, such as the Bourne series, Driver: San Francisco is aiming to instill some of Hollywood’s hard-nosed cop bravado into its action racing formula. Recently, we got the chance to go behind the wheel of this latest entry in the Driver series alongside series creator Martin Edmondson of developer Ubisoft Reflections.
While previous entries in this series have dabbled in the realm of third-person combat, our demo of Driver: San Francisco forwent such extraneous features and focused on making the driving as fun and wild as possible.
Our session with Driver San Francisco picked up with the continuing story of the series–months after the events that took place in the awkwardly titled DRIV3R. The series’ protagonist, on-again, off-again police officer Tanner, had finally succeeded in putting the villain Jericho behind bars. Jericho’s sentencing was close at hand, but as we soon discovered, not everything would go according to plan.
In brief, Jericho hatched a daring scheme involving an acid tablet, a rocket launcher, and a local news helicopter to make his escape, but not before forcing Tanner into a deadly automotive wreck. After regaining consciousness, Tanner discovered that this event had yielded unexpected results: he could now leave his body and posses other drivers on the San Francisco streets.
With the press of a button we could depart our mortal shell and take flight above the city. From here we could glide around using the two analog sticks (our demonstration was on an Xbox 360) and possess the driver of any vehicle we wanted. In the beginning we were limited to a very intimate view of the city.
However, as our powers developed, we were eventually able to pull the camera back to reveal the entire city and instantly jump anywhere we wanted. As Edmondson noted, including the ability to quickly hop from one side of this massive city to the next in mere moments has been no small technical feat.
To pull this off, the team at Ubisoft Reflections has forgone the use of any middleware in favor of building all its own tech from the ground up–and keeping it running at a smooth 60 frames per second no less.
We take Lightning McQueen for a spin around the tracks in Disney Interactive’s game based on Pixar’s animated film of the same name.
As far as film-to-video game adaptations go, those based on Pixar’s animated works are on the more easily digestible end of the scale. With Pixar’s Cars 2 set for release later this year, Disney Interactive has knocked up a colourful arcade driving game based on the film, for ages 5 and up. We recently had the chance to sit down with a small demo of a very early build of the game.
At this stage, all the cutscenes we saw were still in the early stages of development (read: slow-moving drawings). but even though this is not what the final game will look like, it added a light and cartoony feel to the whole demo. Little is known about the story so far, but it looks like it will closely follow that of the film.
Because the main campaign is still being worked on, we were shown a few training missions from the start of the game, which are designed to get you acquainted with the different aspects of gameplay and the racing tracks in the game.
There’s an underlying spy theme running through the whole game, and so our first training mission took place in spy school. After picking from a variety of characters (Lightning McQueen, Finn, Sarge, Mater, and so on), we were shown a basic training mission that involves learning the controls of the game–steering, doing jumps and tricks, drifting, boosting, and so on.
Completing the missions well earns you points, which fill up an experience meter that can be used to unlock new missions and car skins. The best part about this bit was hearing actor Michael Caine’s voice giving curt, beautifully sarcastic instructions.
EA’s car-mayhem franchise said to be “action arcade style” set in fictitious Crash City.
Early last week, the Australian Classification Board offered up tantalizing information that EA would soon be returning with a new, multiplatform installment in its vehicular carnage-heavy Burnout franchise. The listing was light on information, unfortunately, and it was not clear if Criterion Games would be returning to the franchise that it created, or what direction this new game would take.
While many of those questions remain, at least a few may have been answered, again courtesy of Australia’s game-rating board. Joystiq reports that it has received a summary of the game’s rating information that was submitted by EA to the ACB.
According to that breakdown, Burnout Crash will be “an action arcade style game set in the fictional world of Crash City. The aim of the game is to cause as much damage as possible to traffic and buildings by crashing a car into them.”
Given that description, Burnout Crash sounds as if it will be a return to the menu-driven challenges of 2004′s Burnout 3 and 2005′s Burnout Revenge. Prior to moving on to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Criterion shifted to a more dynamic, open-world format for 2008′s highly regarded Burnout Paradise.
EA had not responded to a request for comment on the Australian rating summary as of press time.
Codemasters’ sequel hitting the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC this fall; UK release set for September 23; 3DS and NGP versions announced, not dated.
Just last week, Codemasters’ racing game F1 2010 took home the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ top award for a sports game, beating out juggernauts FIFA 11 and Gran Turismo 5. Now, the developer–on the heels of the strong debut of the original–has announced and dated the next game in the series.
F1 2011 will arrive in North America for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on September 20. In the UK, the game will ship on September 23.
Additionally, Codemasters sent word that versions of the game for Nintendo’s 3DS and Sony’s Next Generation Portable (NGP) are in development and will sport features unique to the systems.
Like its predecessor, F1 2011 will include every circuit, team, and driver from the forthcoming 2011 FIA Formula One Championship, including Sebastian Vettel, current World Champion.
Additionally, F1 2011 will premiere the 2011 Formula One Grand Prix of India, raced at Delhi’s Jaypee International Race Circuit, as well as the German track Nurburgring.
