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Racing Games Too Fast, Furious For U.S.?
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad just posted an interesting article called 2 Fast 2 Furious For The U.S., discussing the Japanese releases of Gran Turismo Concept and World Rally Championship 2 Extreme for PS2. It's pretty interesting, since these are two games that haven't been scheduled for a U.S. release yet, despite having solid predecessors." Seems like we'll never see GT Concept in the States, despite a European release (wonder why?), and if WRC 2 Extreme can make it through the surfeit of rally titles currently clogging U.S. bargain bins, it should be a worthy buy.
Licensing issues are most likely why these games will never see the light of day here.
This may be a ficticious memory or a past rumor, correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember the original Japanese Gran Turismo having a ton of cars (Ferrari) that were not in the US version due to similar licensing issues.
In the 'tire wear' races (non endurance), I shoot for tires that I can run in though at least 5 laps. In the 5 lap races, that saves a pit. In the 10 lap races, it means I can push harder at the end when the rest of the field is risking things.
My main car I drive is a RUF CRT tweaked from here to kingdom-come. The goal in a 5 lap race is to be *just* in the red with your tires when you finish, with the wear evenly distributed. Which tires you use depends on your style, the drive train you're using, your breaking system and the weight of your car. Generally, in my CRT, I use medium or mediu-soft up frontand Medium-slick or medium in back. Basicly, one step softer up front.
My advice is to buy Medium tires first, take a few practice laps and see how they work, then go up or down as needed.
If your tire wear is good and you're behind because you can't take the turns like you would ideally... don't worry. Chances are that AI car's gonna pit. Not always, but usually.
The rate of decay you describe sounds like Super-Soft. I can usually get a lap in without them being red. Usually. More than one lap is iffy. In anycase, Super-Soft is WAY out, I can't make them last. Only good for showing off in those little 2-lap races, or getting better times in the 1000 yard.
Plain and simple: Under real racing conditions, if you're driving by feel, you're going to crash. Feel does play into it (an F1 driver recently said the two most important instruments were his eyes and his ass), but probably 99% of your most important input is visual cues. Hitting turns correctly requires a lot of setup which has to be done quite a long time before you get anywhere close to the turn itself.
Based on his subsequent explanation, much of what the F1 driver had in mind was using feel to monitor the car's "health," which is mostly ignored in current video game racing titles (other than vague performance degradation from accident damage in certain games).
I can see how you'd feel that way from regular street driving, but regular street driving isn't what the games are trying to simulate...
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The article merely eludes to the fact that there are multiple GT Concepts for PS2 around the world. The article talks about GTC 2002 Tokyo/Geneva, but there have been previous incarnations of GTC Tokyo 2001 and GTC Tokyo-Seoul 2002. Tokyo-Seoul was just Tokyo 01 with 6 Korean cars to help Korean PS2 sales.
I picked my copy up for $35 in Korea and I had to mod my PS2 just to play it. As a GT3 fanatic the game can be finished in a day or two, but its absolutelly worth it if you lust after the GTR35 Concept, RX8, 350z . If you get only one GTConcept you should ignore the other games and go for the article's 02 Geneva/Tokyo (VW12, Cien, ect). The dualnode is ridiculouslly fun btw.
just my 2 cents