What are you playing?

[Kugelfisch]

It always looked like incompetently thrown together Unity trash to me. Sounds like I was right.

[Gendo's Ocular Dickhole]

So it's just the Bioshlock Vita-chamber all over again.

...which is just System Shock's restoration bay all over again.

[rabidtictac]

Didn't System Shock's restoration bay cost some kind of currency? Not that it still isn't a shit concept.

[Gendo's Ocular Dickhole]

Didn't System Shock's restoration bay cost some kind of currency?

The second game did. First game required turning off the cyborg convertor via flipping a switch.

[Kugelfisch]

I'm fairly sure SS2 had limited enemy respawns or at least wandering enemies.

[rabidtictac]

It does.

I'm still on an arcade racing kick. Shame this subgenre died so fucking hard. Everything is sim racing now. F-Zero will never come back.

Horizon Chase Turbo.

SpoilerShow

I've put in more time with it and now I kinda think it's shit. The AI is really bad. Of course, you expect rubberbanding in every racing game. But this is some pretty serious stuff, here. You can see them slowing down when you're behind and blasting past as soon as you start passing them. You pretty much can't stay in front of the #2 car if the game has decided it's going to pass you.

There is no physics engine. The problem with this is the game uses a very binary system for collisions. If you hit an enemy car from the back, it gains speed while you lose speed. If you hit from the side, you lose speed but it doesn't. If it hits you from the back, then you gain speed (but might crash into an object because of losing control.)

All of these are pretty obnoxious. There are 20(!) racers on every track. These aren't like the obstacle racers in Outrun or Super Hang-On. These are persistent. The tracks are fairly narrow, about 2-3 lanes wide. The start of every race is a MASSIVE clusterfuck and game of bumper cars. Sometimes there are just no places for your vehicle to fit, because of all the enemy car asses clogging up every available lane. You can't go offroad because it slows you down and there are obstacles there. You can't hit enemies to move them out of the way because hitting them makes them go faster and you slow down, exacerbating the bumper car situation. The ONLY way to get past these guys is to race super clean.

But the AI also knows this, and they use psychic powers to detect when you're behind them. Horizon Chase Turbo doesn't have any kind of rear-view mirror. At least, not that I could find. So logically, players shouldn't be able to know where I am when I'm behind them, let alone what angle I'm going to use to pass. But the AI always does. Whenever you're behind an AI car, it will slide to block you, no matter where you are on the track. Again, you can find yourself in unwinnable situations, boxed in by a couple of these assholes who magically always know where you are. Combine with stage obstacles and there's just nowhere to go at times.

All of these issues could be mitigated in various ways. If the game had a real physics engine, you could check aggressive AI drivers out of your way with smart positioning and counter-aggression. But aggression just isn't possible in Horizon Chase Turbo. There's no rear-view mirror and getting rear ended is the ONLY beneficial form of car-on-car contact. If the rubber banding and psychic AI were toned down, then maybe the bumper car mafia wouldn't be as obnoxious. If there were half as many racers (10 would be more than enough imo,) the crowds would be much less dense, alleviating all frustrations. Go play Outrun and I guarantee you that you will never encounter 20 cars on the same fucking screen.

The game also uses an unlockable upgrade system which seems totally meaningless. The AI will rubberband to your speed, whether high or low, so I didn't notice any benefit from choosing faster cars. There's an obnoxious-as-fuck "fuel" system that requires you pick up fuel powerups on the stage to keep racing. The main problem with this is sometimes there aren't any fuel powerups in the stage except in ONE location. And these aren't massive zones like in F-Zero, that you can easily slide into. They're little gem powerup drops in specific lanes, which can/will often be blocked by car asses. There's also another separate gem collecting system, like picking up coins in Mario. It's fucking stupid. The coins don't have any effect on the race, but help with your ability to rank highly and unlock shit. Getting all coins on a level requires you to take certain lanes when driving the races. Again, you're just being forced to run these courses on the exact routes the devs want you to, rather than freely driving as you like.

The parts of the game I've played have been fairly easy so far, contrary to what you might think by my complaining. It's not so much that the game is impossibly difficult as the design elements make it obnoxious and not fun.

[rabidtictac]

You can see an example of the AI being an annoying bitch here. You pretty much always have to feint like the guy in the video did in order to pass, otherwise they 100% of the time block you.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

An entire event has been cancelled from the baka gaijin edition of Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage for promoting native racist stereotypes or some shit.


Apparently Princess Mononoke is a hate crime now. Must be the face paint.

[Kugelfisch]

I found bad AI to be the biggest problem of most of those little arcade racers.

Although GRID Autosport possibly has the most annoying AI.
If you enter a cup for a small team that only requires you to get an overall finish in fifth or so place, the AI has ultra rubber banding.
If you fine-tune your setup perfectly and know the track, you'll likely get a qualifying time a cool two seconds or more faster than anyone.

However, if you lose pole position at any point, which you likely will because the strongest AI is just plain faster all of the sudden and will stick to your rear bumper, you won't ever get it back.
You can drive perfectly, suddenly the fucker will have no issue at all making 5 second faster laps than even your qualifying time. It's absurd. You're plain not supposed to win with the smaller team.

If you sign with the "best" team next time around, nobody comes close to driving that artificially well. Not even your team mate.
Getting an underdog first place means getting pole in qualifying and aggressively blocking from the very beginning. They will otherwise drive world record times no problem.

[rabidtictac]

I found bad AI to be the biggest problem of most of those little arcade racers.

See, I agree with that. Which is why I really like the more Outrun/Super Hang-On style of arcade driving game. The AI could be the most shitty in the world, but it wouldn't matter for those games. Because you don't have to beat the AI opponents or even deal with them at all. You just have to get around them and beat the checkpoints. That said, the AI in both original titles is still way less annoying than in Horizon Rush Turbo. I watched some dude play Road Rash II and you don't instantly slow down or crash the second you scrape an opponent car there either.