Wreckfest xbox one8/18/2023 ![]() Giving the setups menu a first-grade reading level isn’t going to keep vocal fans happy. (I rely on them for my setups, after all!) They’re the ones who give the most feedback when developers are taking the community’s temperature for what they need and expect in the next iteration. To be fair to 704Games, Codemasters and other motorsports developers, there is a alrge body of core, simulation racing fans who already know what this stuff does. The 2014 NASCAR champ was gracious throughout, telling me that in all cases I needed to loosen the ride because the video game car was generally too tight to keep Harvick’s six-year-old from plowing into the wall. Instead I buttonholed Harvick for what I needed to be doing to my tire pressure. And as my review pointed out, they completely changed the tuning model this year, so anything from NASCAR Heat 3 on back is likely to damage your car, or at least severely wear it out, more than it is to help.Įarlier this year, I was on a call with Kevin Harvick (whose car is in that image above), ostensibly to talk about being on the cover of NASCAR Heat 4. Polygon screenshot/Monster Games/704GamesĬould any person go into this menu, make a change and know what they were getting out of it? There is a broader set of tuning changes users can make, on a scale of looser to tighter, but for really optimizing a car’s performance, you’re going to be googling and then going to a YouTube video to find the numbers you need. ![]() It still gives absolutely no help whatsoever. Here’s NASCAR Heat 4, a game I just reviewed and really enjoy. (Real Sport 101 has great general purpose setup recommendations the forums are tailored more to constructors and driving controller.) As such, I just go to places like Real Sport 101 or F1 Car Setup and take their advice. Even with courses where adding wing (Monaco, Singapore) or taking it off (Monza, Baku) should be painfully obvious decisions, the setups menu uses no concrete examples to help me understand. Take the suspension tab there’s no suggestion that you’ll need a softer suspension on tracks where you’ll be taking a lot of kerbs on your racing line. How does Wreckfest’s setup assistance compare? Here are the menus for Codemasters’ F1 2019, a game where I have about 150 hours of track time.Įven though Codemasters gives explanations of what the adjustments do, there’s not even any generic advice on where (or what types of courses) these adjustments will be useful. On tarmac, I took a Killer Bee (the smallest and most vulnerable ride) and won my first Figure-8 race with it. The only one that doesn’t, really, is the brake balance, although it still gives me a solid indication of what will happen if I push it to one direction or the other, which I can then apply to my understanding of a course where I expect a lot of grip or a lot of drift.Īll that, combined with the adjustments to the suspension, gearing and differential, allowed me to out-corner the field at the Boulder Bank Circuit (fictitious) within its super-deadly first loop-back and blow away second place by 10 seconds over the next three laps. Bugbear Entertainment is actually telling me what to do with these settings relative to the course conditions I’m going to face. ![]() Yeah, it’s just four categories covering the four most relevant areas of car performance, on a scale of 1 to 5. ![]() From the concrete guidance it gives, I have high confidence that I have adjusted the car for the conditions I’m about to face, without taking a practice lap or trying to convince myself the front end is “looser” or “tighter” than it should be, which is always difficult in a video game where the vehicle’s momentum is barely perceptible. And on a course, be it dirt, tarmac or a combination, players will reasonably expect to tune their setups, even if they are going to trash the hell out of their suspension in the first two laps.įor that, Wreckfest gives me the most simple, understandable and effective setup menu I’ve used this year - and I race a lot of motorsports games. Wreckfest offers a standard demo derby involving a field of beaters out on some dirt patch, but the better action is in one of the game’s banger races or figure-8 eliminators. Wreckfest is a demolition derby simulator, but give Bugbear Entertainment all credit in the world, they gave it a credible handling engine to match the spectacular (and I truly mean that word) collisions that light up every race. It’s in the stinking setups menu, of all things. A wreck-elation, if you will, about a critical layer of motorsports gaming that remains technical and opaque to a non-car guy with soft hands and clean fingernails, such as myself. ![]() Wreckfest, which launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at the end of August, is more than a slap-upside-the-head, how-the-hell-did-I-miss-this? great time for me. ![]()
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