I though about that and think it should hopefully bring a good discussion..
As we all know, most of us in r.a.s. research absolute reality over arcade
features. That's what we want, and we push racing simulation companies such
as Papyrus to focus more on this aspect. Each title out is more and more
realistic. The road is still long from the ultimate reality, but such titles
like GPL really make a big step into that.
Normal gamers have a different mentality of what's a good racing game. The
more "arcadish" the better somehow. The more it is different from the
reality the better. They wan't to "evade" from the real-life. And I
understand their needs.
The more advanced the *** industry goes and racing simulations
complexity, the more deep the trench between the 2 worlds appear. If we go
back in the old times, the normal gamers had as fun as us with such titles
like Indy 500, Gp2 and even StuntsCar (remember how fun we had with it for
those who remember ?). I think that *** reviewers and the general public
should understand that those worlds are different, that they have their
needs and they have their different markets. They understand this a little
more in air sims. Game reviewers don't mix up arcade flight sims with
realistic combat simulators.
Some people like me can cross the 2 borders. I can say that TOCA is fun, and
even NFS3 somehow. It's fun, but not as hard-core simulators. And I also
probably know that the opposite exists, people who are casual racers, but
really think GPL is great (I have no problem with that).
If we take example of the Avault.com review, we can easily see that the
reviewer is a normal gamer that want's a more arcadish aspect to his racing
games. No problem with that. The playstation has plenty of them, and the PC
has tons of hits that are arcade racing games. But the problem is that he
want GPL to be arcade, which is different as I told. You can't force GPL to
become arcadish, and at the same point you can't force Screamers2 to become
a hard-core racing simulator.
SInce he's a reviewer, his point-of-view is reached to tons of people around
the world. There's maybe a hard-core racing simulator out in Australia who
read this and said "Oh geeze, he's a hard-core simracer and didn't like it.
Well I won't buy it". That's not good for neither side (arcade or
realistic). There's also probably an arcade racer who told "Yeah well this
ain't really my world". And it's ok with that. But he's misleading 1 out of
2 people.
Maybe in the future, *** websites and magazine will start to understand
the differences between arcade and hard-core simmers, that they have
different needs and are distinct markets. I hopefully think that with the
realistic game engine that Papyrus has brought to us with GPL, and soon to
be ported into all the upcoming titles, that it will be apparent of them
there's a difference.
Avault.com probably hasn't realized that already. Shame to them.
- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard> Good race at the Brickyard!
- Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
- Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
- Sponsored by http://www.awpss.com/
- "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."--
