Project Cars as a series was kickstarted by Codemasters games in a promise to deliver to fans a real racing Simulator. Racing Sims are not like what you might think, they aren't your Need for Speeds, or your Gran Turismo's, or even your Forza's. While GT and Forza are "realistic" racing games, they are far from Sims. You see real racing Sims involve much more detail and thought from car enthusiasts to play correctly. A racing sim player must know how the differences in tire pressures will change traction on the course in different weather, they must know how to fine tune their transmission's aspect ratio to get the most out of the car.....basically you need to know car's and the sport of racing inside and out.
Racing sims also have a strict set of rules, bump into your opponent trying to pass? Well that's a penalty sir. Slightly go off road taking a turn too shallow or too wide? That's a penalty fucko. Try to take a turn too fast? Well you just crashed and now your car doesn't work dipshit, you think you can side swipe a wall and just keep racing dummy?
No real racing sims are few and far between and there was a real void in the market when Project Cars was first put up on offer. For the most part Project Cars was decently received, but the sim players complained that there were too many arcade elements. So Codemasters went back and made Project Cars 2 which addressed some issues that the sim community had, and created new ones.
So now they've released Project Cars 3 and said "fuck it" to the racing sim genre entirely and made a.....well basically they made a Forza game. Project Cars 3 is a somewhat realistic racing game featuring all the things you've seen in Forza and Granturismo games before. Real life cars, tracks, and emphasis on not driving like a Burnout game. Pretty simple concept, and fairly decently executed.
The biggest problem is.....well Project Cars 3 isn't even very good at being a Forza game either.
Striped away of the sim elements you can still modify your cars in an arcadey way, upgrading parts to improve performance, yada yada yada. The upgrade system on your car works, it's generic and boring and doesn't feel like it makes a difference one way or the other, but it works. There are even menu options where you can still modify gear differentials and tire pressures and whatnot, but they aren't emphasized nor do they feel nessecary. I took the same set up for my cars into every course, rain or shine, and never felt like I needed to fuck with any of that shit. While I could have handled a given course better if I bothered to tweak things, but I won every race anyway so why bother?
Then we get to the gameplay part of the racing game and that's where Project Cars 3 shows it's biggest failures. Number one on this list is the AI is a bunch of cheating cocksuckers. Even on the lowest difficulty the AI doesn't obey the rules of the game. I've watched AI opponents slingshot perfectly around curves far faster than possible in much better handling cars. A Honda Hatchback cannot take a 180 degree turn at 70 MPH, it simply cannot, but the AI in this game does that. Additionally in a game about realistic (HAHA) racing, where you are supposed to drive clean, the AI deliberately will try to ram you off the road. Are you trying to pass them on the outside of a curve, the AI will break their own driving lines to side swipe you just to fuck you up. That's it that's the only goal. Making your only choice to ram your way to 1st place and then stay there the entire race or risk just getting smashed around like a bumper car. The AI is fucking broken and doesn't fit the game at all.
Next we have the objectives. You see every race in the game has 3 optional objectives, on top of winning the race (though sometimes the option objective IS to win so.....shrug), while most of these objectives are fine and consist of things like "Cleanly pass 5 opponents in 60 seconds" or "beat a lap time of X". There are some objectives that flat out do not work, or are simply impossible to do in the car the game expects you to do them in. "Draft an opponent for 5 seconds and then cleanly overtake" Is one that cannot be done, because there is no indication of when you've drafted enough the game doesn't tell you when you are drafting so you just have to guess and hope it counts. Then there is another one that I found that required me to beat a lap of 1 minute 15 seconds in a shitty E-class car (bottom tier) and that's impossible. The bonus objective expects you to be able to beat the lap in under 1:05, and that's even worst. No amount of tuning or upgrading to the very very edge of E-class will make a car handle the course in question a that time.
So the objectives are broken, fuck it. The AI is broken, but it's not too difficult to overcome and ignore, however this means you are basically not racing other cars and the game becomes "driving around a course for a while".
Codemasters said "Fuck it make it a realistic arcade game instead of a sim because we can't figure out how to get the sim part right." But then they went and fucked up the arcade part of the racing game. And I don't understand because they made Grid and Grid 2 both of which were good. So it's almost like they didn't even try here and I just don't get why.
Racing sims also have a strict set of rules, bump into your opponent trying to pass? Well that's a penalty sir. Slightly go off road taking a turn too shallow or too wide? That's a penalty fucko. Try to take a turn too fast? Well you just crashed and now your car doesn't work dipshit, you think you can side swipe a wall and just keep racing dummy?
No real racing sims are few and far between and there was a real void in the market when Project Cars was first put up on offer. For the most part Project Cars was decently received, but the sim players complained that there were too many arcade elements. So Codemasters went back and made Project Cars 2 which addressed some issues that the sim community had, and created new ones.
So now they've released Project Cars 3 and said "fuck it" to the racing sim genre entirely and made a.....well basically they made a Forza game. Project Cars 3 is a somewhat realistic racing game featuring all the things you've seen in Forza and Granturismo games before. Real life cars, tracks, and emphasis on not driving like a Burnout game. Pretty simple concept, and fairly decently executed.
The biggest problem is.....well Project Cars 3 isn't even very good at being a Forza game either.
Striped away of the sim elements you can still modify your cars in an arcadey way, upgrading parts to improve performance, yada yada yada. The upgrade system on your car works, it's generic and boring and doesn't feel like it makes a difference one way or the other, but it works. There are even menu options where you can still modify gear differentials and tire pressures and whatnot, but they aren't emphasized nor do they feel nessecary. I took the same set up for my cars into every course, rain or shine, and never felt like I needed to fuck with any of that shit. While I could have handled a given course better if I bothered to tweak things, but I won every race anyway so why bother?
Then we get to the gameplay part of the racing game and that's where Project Cars 3 shows it's biggest failures. Number one on this list is the AI is a bunch of cheating cocksuckers. Even on the lowest difficulty the AI doesn't obey the rules of the game. I've watched AI opponents slingshot perfectly around curves far faster than possible in much better handling cars. A Honda Hatchback cannot take a 180 degree turn at 70 MPH, it simply cannot, but the AI in this game does that. Additionally in a game about realistic (HAHA) racing, where you are supposed to drive clean, the AI deliberately will try to ram you off the road. Are you trying to pass them on the outside of a curve, the AI will break their own driving lines to side swipe you just to fuck you up. That's it that's the only goal. Making your only choice to ram your way to 1st place and then stay there the entire race or risk just getting smashed around like a bumper car. The AI is fucking broken and doesn't fit the game at all.
Next we have the objectives. You see every race in the game has 3 optional objectives, on top of winning the race (though sometimes the option objective IS to win so.....shrug), while most of these objectives are fine and consist of things like "Cleanly pass 5 opponents in 60 seconds" or "beat a lap time of X". There are some objectives that flat out do not work, or are simply impossible to do in the car the game expects you to do them in. "Draft an opponent for 5 seconds and then cleanly overtake" Is one that cannot be done, because there is no indication of when you've drafted enough the game doesn't tell you when you are drafting so you just have to guess and hope it counts. Then there is another one that I found that required me to beat a lap of 1 minute 15 seconds in a shitty E-class car (bottom tier) and that's impossible. The bonus objective expects you to be able to beat the lap in under 1:05, and that's even worst. No amount of tuning or upgrading to the very very edge of E-class will make a car handle the course in question a that time.
So the objectives are broken, fuck it. The AI is broken, but it's not too difficult to overcome and ignore, however this means you are basically not racing other cars and the game becomes "driving around a course for a while".
Codemasters said "Fuck it make it a realistic arcade game instead of a sim because we can't figure out how to get the sim part right." But then they went and fucked up the arcade part of the racing game. And I don't understand because they made Grid and Grid 2 both of which were good. So it's almost like they didn't even try here and I just don't get why.
