But I take it all back. What happened? I went to the 'HCC dagen' this
weekend (the biggest computer event in the Netherlands) and there I saw RC
2000... Very cheap... I couldn't resist. I bought it. On the way home I
cursed my stupidity. What did I do? Why did I do it? Ah well, it was
cheap...
Came home, did the medium install (350 Mb) on my humble Celeron 266 (O.C. to
333) with a Helios Voodoo 2 card and started the game. Wow... Those graphics
are indeed drop dead gorgeous! I ran the game in 800x600 and it ran fine
(could be smoother, but it certainly wasn't choppy)! More important: to my
surprise (and relieve) the control HAS changed. Last week I played the
second demo once more. After two minutes I deleted it from my HD (again). I
found it uncontrollable. But this game will stay on my computer. You have to
get used to it (well, EVERY game has a different feel to it), but you can
actually drive these cars! And I'm still using the default settings for
sensitivity and so on! I'm still having some difficulties with my approach
to S-turns, but it's really A LOT better. Better? It's totally different.
After a short while you know how to get the car around tricky corners. And
just like in CMR you can fly off the road down a steep hill (I always liked
that: speeding around a corner with that deep steep mountainside below you).
The sense of speed is great. Going down those roads at full speeds scares
the hell out of me. It's almost going too fast: just like in those in-car TV
shots (which always make me think: how can anybody do that?!?)! Luckily the
cars have excellent brakes ;-) Of course the game has it flaws, but it's
definitely much, much, much better than any of the previous versions. So I
aplogize to Magnetic Fields for judging their game before I ever played it.
Although they are to blame for that themselves because the released two
crappy demos... I wouldn't do that again, if I was them.
So all those game magazines were right after all...
Jeroen