DriveClub PlayStation 4 PS4

DriveClub has undoubtedly been the biggest disappointment of the year. While you could make a case for the likes of Watch Dogs and Destiny failing to deliver on their pre-release hype, at least both titles launched in a playable state – the latter succeeding despite the entire gaming industry expecting Bungie’s online focus to bite it in the bum. The same hasn’t been true of Evolution Studios’ next-gen debut, which is still busted a month removed from its initial release.

We should stress here that the supposedly social racer is a fantastic game: its handling model and overall presentation is best of class, while we reckon that some of its point-to-point events are a real work of art – especially when the title’s vaunted day-to-night cycle and dynamic lighting combine to make you feel like you’re on the road trip of your life. The problem is that, core fundamentals like single player aside, all of its ambitious online features still refuse to work.

While multiplayer is playable, it's still prone to frequent errors

We don’t want to rag on the Runcorn-based developer too hard here, because working in an online arena ourselves, we can certainly appreciate how difficult it is to launch a network-based game. However, this hasn’t exactly been a soft seller, with the title occupying a spot near to the top of most European sales lists for several weeks now – an observation that suggests that there are thousands of people out there with a barely functioning game.

Having shelved the title for a few weeks in order to focus on other products, we decided to boot up the release earlier today to see just how bad the situation is. The racer’s titular Clubs appear to have been fixed, so that’s definitely progress: you can view your team members, collect experience points for your crew, and unlock new vehicles, which is good news. However, leaderboards are inconsistent, so it’s hard to see your team’s standing in relation to the rest of the world.

Face-offs do work, but with wonky data

To be fair to the game, single player events do now display the position of your friends – after a prolonged period of loading – so we’re assuming that it’s logging local scores as well, even if we couldn’t find ourselves on many of the scoreboards that we observed. Face-offs, which are dynamic challenges that appear as you race, are similarly half-baked, displaying with regularity now – but setting you impossible targets that wouldn’t seem out of place in a WipEout game.

While we’re informed that multiplayer does work sometimes, we couldn’t get it to load after multiple attempts today. Having tried it in the past, we like the setup here – which sees you boot an event browser and register for the one that you want to participate in – but it’s all a bit pointless when, a month after launch, you’re still regularly get greeted by a ‘Try again later’ error message. Again, we know that the developer’s working hard, but that’s just not good enough anymore.

Sometimes leaderboards function, and sometimes they don't

Challenges, the final piece of the puzzle – which we assume work similarly to those in Autolog – have been disabled since release, so we still haven’t been able to try them out. According to other writers that we’ve spoken to, these worked prior to the title’s launch, but have remained a greyed out area on our game’s home screen ever since day one. We feel sorry for those aiming to get the title’s Platinum Trophy, as this can’t be obtained until the function is switched back on.

And it’s all such a shame, because we want to be excited for this game. Earlier this week, it was rumoured that Japan would be added as a location in the near future, which really raised this author’s enthusiasm – until he was reminded that the title doesn’t actually work. With weather and a much needed photo mode also supposedly on the horizon, hype should still be sky high for this exclusive. Instead, it’s dissipating swiftly, like the smoke from a burnt out sports car.

DriveClub PS Plus Edition PS4 PlayStation

Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has said that the developer’s committed to fixing the game, even though it practically needs a re-launch to recover from the dire position that it currently occupies. Even the PlayStation Plus Edition, which could get people back on board, has been put on hiatus until the package’s problems are solved – as has, we assume, the DLC roadmap that the developer meticulously outlined prior to launch.

With no further updates on Facebook, and the Twitter account on lockdown, the future’s looking particularly bleak for this first-party racer. We still hope that the British developer can get the game back in the race, but at this point, we worry that the damage has already been done. In a tame year for next-gen exclusive games, this is one write-off that Sony could have done without. Unfortunately for early adopters, though, DriveClub is still a bit of a disaster one month on.

How’s your relationship with DriveClub faring? Are you still playing the game? Did you avoid picking it up due to the server issues? Did it never interest you in the first place? Crash your car in the comments section below.

Is DriveClub the worst launch of the year? (77 votes)

  1. Yes, the server issues are inexcusable at this point71%
  2. Hmm, I’m not really sure10%
  3. No, the game has its issues but it is still pretty good18%

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