I have been lying to you all. I have said several times on here that I don't know sports, don't like sports, don't care about sports. This is a lie, there is one sport that I am die hard for.
NHRA Drag Racing.
11,000 Horse power monsters going from 0 to 330+ MPH in under 4 seconds. These fucking things are awesome to watch. When everything goes right the speed is insane.
When everything goes wrong.....
There are several divisions of Drag Racing, from Top Fuel, to Funny Cars and ever modified street cars.
So when I heard that after like 12 years they were making a new NHRA Drag Racing game I was excited. Especially when I heard it would have a career mode that would cross over all the divisions of competition. Meaning you would start in 10 second street cars, and move up to the 4 second 330mph fire breathing machines. Which is exactly what I wanted out of a game like this.
Technically that's what i got but....
Ok so here's the thing, you look at those races and might think, "How exciting can a 4 second run in a straight line be?" And that is why a game like this would need to factor in all the little things that make these cars work. There is a lot of factors to consider. The temperature of the track, the air, the grip of the tires, the amount of power you can apply in any given pass on the track. Too much power and the tires will smoke causing the engine to over-rev and explode. So what a good driver will do is let off the throttle, then get back on it, and try to get the tires to lock onto the track. Usually the reason why this doesn't work is if the other car launched down the track correctly there is no way you'd catch them. So most of the time if the car doesn't lock it immediately, then the driver wont bother.
Sometimes both cars smoke the tires and you get this
The point is there is a lot of dynamics that a developer who knows the sport can really put into the game. From crew that are better at putting the engine together, to judging the weather, and so on. Even then there are a lot of things that can go wrong, and the game should factor this in.
But nope.
NHRA Speed for All has less gameplay than a mobile game. You just keep your car maintained, which is literally just a generic "Fix" button on a small handful of parts, and you win. The game offers no challenge, all you have to do is squeeze the throttle at the right time and you win. You do a burnout at the begining of the race which is designed to heat up the tires, the game doesn't give you a choice to do this or not, you HAVE to do a burnout every race. Then you back up back into starting position, you then put the car into first gear and inch your way onto the starting line. The game doesn't let you fuck this up, you can floor it and disqualify yourself, or back up off the track, nothing. You are 100% on rails. So you go when the light goes green and you win, because there is no balance you will absolutely beat everyone no matter what.
Then you have to let out a parachute to slow down. Typically if a 300mph car doesn't have a parachute bad shit happens.
But if you don't hold the break and dont use a parachute the game will stop the car for you.
Then you have the announcer who says generic shit, if you can even hear him over how incredibly loud and unbalanced the car audio is. You driver has stats that don't matter, your crew is irrelevant, nothing fucking matters, the same AI opponents will be at the top of the ranking every race so there is no tension in the competition, the money you get is fucking random, where winning a race will net you $10k in profit, or sometimes winning will cost you $4000, who the fuck knows it's random. Also when the game says you lost money, somehow your total will still go up for no reason.
It's like they didn't bother to do anything but surface level research on what NHRA drag racing is. It's a terrible game, with mobile game levels of gameplay at best. Fucking dogshit.
NHRA Drag Racing.
11,000 Horse power monsters going from 0 to 330+ MPH in under 4 seconds. These fucking things are awesome to watch. When everything goes right the speed is insane.
When everything goes wrong.....
There are several divisions of Drag Racing, from Top Fuel, to Funny Cars and ever modified street cars.
So when I heard that after like 12 years they were making a new NHRA Drag Racing game I was excited. Especially when I heard it would have a career mode that would cross over all the divisions of competition. Meaning you would start in 10 second street cars, and move up to the 4 second 330mph fire breathing machines. Which is exactly what I wanted out of a game like this.
Technically that's what i got but....
Ok so here's the thing, you look at those races and might think, "How exciting can a 4 second run in a straight line be?" And that is why a game like this would need to factor in all the little things that make these cars work. There is a lot of factors to consider. The temperature of the track, the air, the grip of the tires, the amount of power you can apply in any given pass on the track. Too much power and the tires will smoke causing the engine to over-rev and explode. So what a good driver will do is let off the throttle, then get back on it, and try to get the tires to lock onto the track. Usually the reason why this doesn't work is if the other car launched down the track correctly there is no way you'd catch them. So most of the time if the car doesn't lock it immediately, then the driver wont bother.
Sometimes both cars smoke the tires and you get this
The point is there is a lot of dynamics that a developer who knows the sport can really put into the game. From crew that are better at putting the engine together, to judging the weather, and so on. Even then there are a lot of things that can go wrong, and the game should factor this in.
But nope.
NHRA Speed for All has less gameplay than a mobile game. You just keep your car maintained, which is literally just a generic "Fix" button on a small handful of parts, and you win. The game offers no challenge, all you have to do is squeeze the throttle at the right time and you win. You do a burnout at the begining of the race which is designed to heat up the tires, the game doesn't give you a choice to do this or not, you HAVE to do a burnout every race. Then you back up back into starting position, you then put the car into first gear and inch your way onto the starting line. The game doesn't let you fuck this up, you can floor it and disqualify yourself, or back up off the track, nothing. You are 100% on rails. So you go when the light goes green and you win, because there is no balance you will absolutely beat everyone no matter what.
Then you have to let out a parachute to slow down. Typically if a 300mph car doesn't have a parachute bad shit happens.
But if you don't hold the break and dont use a parachute the game will stop the car for you.
Then you have the announcer who says generic shit, if you can even hear him over how incredibly loud and unbalanced the car audio is. You driver has stats that don't matter, your crew is irrelevant, nothing fucking matters, the same AI opponents will be at the top of the ranking every race so there is no tension in the competition, the money you get is fucking random, where winning a race will net you $10k in profit, or sometimes winning will cost you $4000, who the fuck knows it's random. Also when the game says you lost money, somehow your total will still go up for no reason.
It's like they didn't bother to do anything but surface level research on what NHRA drag racing is. It's a terrible game, with mobile game levels of gameplay at best. Fucking dogshit.
