Recent reviews by ๖ۣۜДlbeят Mшцgдъї

Just some rambling, not a real review!
I feel like a hypocrite giving it a thumb down and still play it a decent amount.

But every time i play i get frustrated by something, especially late game, when you finally have money to build anything you want, the simulation starts to mess with you. Random crashes doesn't help either, it can happen anywhere from 10minutes in to hours in.

And after playing the first game again, it really feels like a downgrade in some areas.
The traffic is ruthless in the first game but at least the bots don't cross 6 lanes at 90° to the road. They don't need to make a 10-point turn to switch lanes.
Then the small things, like in the first game when firefighters come to put out a fire, you see firefighters run from the truck with hoses that spray water on the building and not just park beside the building.

Of course there are good things compared to the first game, the road creation tool is vastly improved.
I like how you can upgrade certain buildings, it makes them cheaper in their base form and you can then upgrade them as your city grows.

Still the best.

It's just getting better.

nah man, these prices

build a conveyor belt the length of many football fields

It's decent

Best mud and water physics ever.

Just get it.

I wish i could give out stars out of 5 or 10, or even a "neutral" instead of just thumb up or thumb down.

I bought the game when it was still in alpha and since then the game has come a long way. With fine tuning the car physics and adding new content and features along the way. Other then the important physics related improvements, the switch to fmod the and implementing of yebis2 post-processing engine was very nice. The attention to details in the cars is amazing, is it because Kunos is Italian?, the first time i drove the Lotus 49 and seeing the drive shafts spinning and following the suspension was cool. And of course the use of laser scanned content help the detail and quality.

It's very nice to see a game come out in this day and age where games otherwise are heavily locked and DLC dependent to have such a big and talented modding community. In the beginning there were many rFactor converted tracks and cars but over time there were just more and more original content created for AC or the conversion were being worked on the AC standards. Sure there is a DLC for AC and there will be another one shortly, but with the first one containing a laser scanned nordshelife, i think it's worth every €.

The game works really well with a steering wheel or even a controller, i use a Dualshock 3 when I don't play with a wheel. I would not recommend using the keyboard for this kind of game, it just doesn't work.

My absolutely biggest problem with the game is setting things up, whether it be my inputs methods, racing offline or online. There just isn't enough options for me to be happy. For instance, input menu, i have 15 options that i can bind keys or buttons to. In GTR2 which are a 9 year old game, there are almost 70 of them. It feels like AC is a port from a console game where you can change almost nothing. Many buttons are even hard coded into the game or you have to find the right hex number for that key and insert it in the right CFG file which is a joke.

The good:

• High quality content, most is laser scanned so it's accurate
  
• In my opinion really nice physics, it feels "right" if that makes sense
  
• The looks, this is highly personal and in a simulator it shouldn't matter to much, but AC looks very good
  
• Modding, a game, especially a simulator often dies quickly without modding, and judging by the quality and quantity of mods available AC will have a long life

The not so good:

• Multiplayer, i still think AC lacks in multiplayer, more options when setting up server would be nice
  
• Server browser, too few options when filtering servers
  
• Few setup options available in the game when doing offline racing compared to other games
  
• Hardcoded keyboard binds/few keybinding options
  
• No weather (i.e rain) other then changing the sky and fog
  
• No day-night time cycle

TL;DR: The driving feels really nice and the graphics looks amazing and even more so with some tweaking to the "post-processing effects". But there isn't much more than that, it's kinda "meh" and sometimes after I've been driving other simulators this really do feel like "Hotlap simulator 2015".

If you like me are out to find a true successor to the likes of GTR2 or rFactor, this is partially it, the driving feels nice, the modding community is there, but other then that it falls short.

Don't get me wrong, i don't hate AC, i love just going around the nordschleife tourist online and doing laps offline, but as a whole package, it just isn't cutting it for me.

just no

♥♥♥♥ you rockstar, learn how to treat your playerbase, removal of money, banning and killing mods is not how it's done. ♥♥♥♥ you.

Don't buy, biggest grindfest there is and a shark card that costs 75€ cant even cover the cost of a yacht.

Old review:

Almost exactly 1 week since the game released and i have now clocked 100 hours in the game, so here's my impressions so far. And i have exclusively played online, gonna wait with the story.

So Grand Theft Loadi.... Auto Online.

+Heists
When i read there were gonna be 5 heists, 4 of winch require the full 4 player line-up i was worried you would play them once and that's it, never gonna do them again. But i have played all of them twice and i can see myself play them even more trying to get all the challenges. And the job R* made on the heists are superb, good design, good voice acting from the characters that do talk.

+Leveling
On my 100hours in online i reached rank 50 and i didn't play jobs or heists all the time, many hours spent just exploring, so you can reach 50 a lot faster if you want. And i think that's a reasonable leveling pace, not to quick so that you unlock everything instantly and not to slow so you lose interest.

+Jobs
There are a lot of different job types as it's called, game mode in GTA IV. Race, capture, deathmatch and so on. On very neat feature is "On Call", you cue up and joins a lobby but you're not transfered into the job until the host starts. So no waiting in the lobby. The jobs them self is fun and big plus, but is haunted by the next thing, the loading times.

+Daily objectives
Feels like im playing WoW. The game features 3 daily objectives which will give you cash and RP (XP). Completing them a week in a row will grant you even more cash and RP and a month in a row even more. This is a nice thing to do as they often are fairly easy, like participate in a race. This could also act as a way to get players to log on daily and then think "might as well play some more".

-Loading times
The loading times in this game are insane, it takes so long to switch from a job back to freemode or the other way around. Also the startup time can be pretty brutal, longest this far is 4minutes, but that could have been the servers being slow. But overall loading times are long, so don't be in a hurry.

(-)Glitches
Now this will probably differ from person to person so this is just from my experience. There are some glitches that are more game breaking then other. One of them being when you die during a heist or setup to a heist. All you see is a image your character, but you can still see the HUD such as the mini map. This is avoided by someone else in your heist crew committing suicide. Not all get this glitch, only me and 2 other friends get it, but 5 other friend don't get it.

(-)Performance
Again, this may very and it could be my computer, but i would expect higher performance from my rig. It's most notable when leaving the city to drive out to the desert, the FPS drop to 40-60fps and it feels like I'm on a PS3 or X360.

The online is a solid 9/10, high replay value on the heists and hopefully some more will come later on. Glitches, some small and some bigger is what takes of the last point.