2K drive Opponaut first impressions

"feather-throttle-not-hair" (feather-throttle-not-hair) 09/05/2013 at 14:39 • Filed to: None

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2K Drive unexpectedly dropped into the app store this morning at a price of $6.99. I'm always excited when someone has a go at making an at least semi-legitimate racing sim for any platform. While iOS devices suffer from some control issues, I have greatly enjoyed the Real Racing series in the past and I recently got into Colin McRae Rally for a spell. Owing to this, I bit the bullet and paid my seven dollars. So far, I've spent roughly forty minutes with the game, not enough for a full review but certainly enough for first impressions.

I'd previously thought the game was going to be free to play, as every screenshot I'd seen up to its release, indicated a two tiered money system. At a price point of seven dollars though, I was hoping they'd scrapped all of that. I personally feel that free to play models tend to break games, giving them wonky progression and generally ruining pacing.

Unfortunately, the two tiered money system is still alive and well in 2K Drive. This goes a long way towards making the game feel like a free to play experience, with pop ups constantly reminding the player that they may purchase "stars" and "coins" for real money. Thankfully it looks like some hasty last minute balancing went on to justify the price point. Coins, the premium currency have so far been handed out with relative frequency. After my forty minutes of play time, I have about fifty coins, while the most expensive cars top out at around eighty coins. Stars on the other hand, seem next to useless. No vehicles or performance modifications can be purchased with stars, and the currency is only good for buying very basic cosmetic mods and repairing cars between races.

But how is the game its self? Well, so far its a bit of a mixed bag. I've already heard people complaining about the controls and indeed, they do take some getting used to. The problem here seems to be that 2K Drive wants badly to model body roll and suspension movement. Unfortunately this adds a bit of a delay to steering reactions. The driver turns the wheel, the car leans, settles and then starts turning. It's far from immediate and when driving from the outside (default) view there's little visual indication that the car is going to turn for the first half a second or so. This leads to more steering lock. As a result, simple lane changes often turn into your car careening into the guard rail on the middle of a straightaway. In car view makes the game more playable, as the player can visually see the steering wheel move, in the drivers hand without the split second delay. It still takes the car a moment to turn, but its far less unsettling.

The physics of the game are interesting. In some ways they remind me of some of the earlier Gran Turismo games, there is a very heavy handed feeling of weight transfer. Slam on the brakes and the tail will lighten up, sometimes alarmingly, with sometimes terminal results. My Datsun 240Z wasn't willing to power oversteer, but i wouldn't be surprised if some very basic drifting were possible in this game with some of the more powerful cars. There is of course a drifting mode, that I have yet to experience, but I suspect the physics are modified in this mode to make drifting easier.

Aesthetically the game is quite nice. It looks slightly more cartoony than real racing 3, but its too close to judge weather one is truly better looking than the other. Sounds are generally alright, but nothing groundbreaking.

It appears as though there are 27 cars in the game, which is quite frankly not as much as I'd like, especially considering two of those cars are the new Dodge Dart in different trims. However contrasting this are a couple of very interesting choices, including the Local Motors Rally Fighter and the Icon FJ45. Curiously the car classes are ranked from a minimum of "I" to a maximum of...."C." Yes, that's right the highest rank is "C." Super extremely weird.

Right now I can't recommend this game to anyone who isn't desperate for a new racing sim on their iOS device. Luckily I was. If you're really into sim style racing games and you're willing to master some prickly controls, have at it. The rest of you guys should wait for the game to be patched for better balancing and a bit of sorting out regarding the controls and camera.

Hit me up in the comments if you guys have any questions and I'll answer them as best I can.

Casper > feather-throttle-not-hair 09/05/2013 at 14:46

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Meh, iOS makes this worthless, but the fact it has a Z and you used it in the main pic earns you +7 of my worthless cool points. They are literally of no value, but now you have some.

feather-throttle-not-hair > Casper 09/05/2013 at 14:52

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Fuck yeah!

Side note: I believe that there will be actual game controller support when the next version of iOS comes out this fall. Games like this will be much much more playable with even a basic gamepad.

Casper > feather-throttle-not-hair 09/05/2013 at 14:53

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Yeah, touch screens are pretty useless for these kinds of games. I have seen them selling game pad type holders for phones for a while now, so it would make sense that they would bring them to tablets.

feather-throttle-not-hair > Casper 09/05/2013 at 14:59

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Yeah, the problem with game pads and iOS devices right now is that there's no standardization. That is to say that gamepads tend to only work for the game they're designed to work for. There's no universal support. That should be changing soon thank god.

Ive actually had quite a bit of success just biting the bullet and using tilt to steer methods. It can work surprisingly well in some situations. With Real Racing 3, big banked ovals were a joy with tilt steering, far better than with a traditionally controller. Unfortunately any sort of oppositelock is next to impossible and tilt steering makes the games weird to look at, since the screen is canted sideways. Then of course theres the problem with holding your ipad for more than about 5 minutes, which gets uncomfortable.

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > feather-throttle-not-hair 09/05/2013 at 15:08

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any android plans for this?

feather-throttle-not-hair > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs 09/05/2013 at 17:41

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I believe it will be coming out on Android later. But a port is planned.

Biostar01 > feather-throttle-not-hair 11/10/2013 at 22:12

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ohh... I want it.

But I don't want to pay $7 for a frikkin iOS app. So no.

Biostar01 > feather-throttle-not-hair 11/10/2013 at 22:15

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The shadowing and position of this picture makes me think of... well...

bad rendering and a plain image placed on top of another one with some sort of weird 3d system trying to make it work.

I don't know how it'll look when you go forward.

feather-throttle-not-hair > Biostar01 11/11/2013 at 00:28

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At this point i'm kind of waiting to see if apple releases a game controller before I play any more racing games. I'm pretty sick of touch controls.