Topic: Project Cars, my Alpha Impressions

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Introduction
Project Cars is an upcoming racing game for PS4, Xbox One, supposedly Wii U and PC. I am big racing game fan, love Gran Turismo and played everything from the arcadey ones like Blur, most Need of Speed games, The Burnouts, Race 07, GTR 1, GTR 2, Forza, etc... By far I think that Gran Turismo 6 nails the handling of the cars most perfectly but I'm an "early accessee" to Project Cars and following the Alpha for 2 years now. We get provided with the latest build of the game on a weekly basis. After seeing the screenshots of the PS4 version on Pushsquare's frontpage I thought I'll get the latest build and give it another try. Some people have misconceptions about the game, the wrong expectations and even some of those were contacting me asking specific stuff about the game.

I wrote this sum up to help you people get a clearer picture of what to expect and whats happening in the Alpha. It's all personal impressions of course, Im no professional gaming journalist of any sort, just a gamer with a passion for racing games. What follows is a compilation of my experiences with the game (in ALPHA status, or even before that) to hopefully spark some interest for this awesome game and clarify any misconceptions one might have! For my "tests" I used my mid-range PC, everything set to medium, my G27 racing wheel and set the simulation setting to FULL SIM (all need for speedy-speed effects, blurs and unrealistic eyecandy, driving aids, abs, etc... all turned off) to get the purest feel for the physics engine.

Graphics
Being pretty taxing on my PC hardware I guess everyone that looks at the above screenshot or the screenshots that were posted of the PS4 version can easily see that this game is going to be stellar graphical wise. I love my Gran Turismo but the folks at Polyphony need to step up their game for GT7, not only in the graphics department. The game, when fully turned on every effect and eye-candy (which is supposedly the way the PS4 version will look) runs at a silkysmooth 60 fps at 1080p, you have reflections, realistic lighting, smoke, dirt, grass effects, you name it, they have it. It's stunning. The sense of speed is amazing. I did a few laps on Brands Hatch Indy Circuit, on GT6 first, then on Project Cars, both times driving an SLS AMG GT3. What shall I say? Where GT6 looks and feels "spot on" and "technically perfect" (at least to me) Project Cars goes a step further. Running down into turn one after a full lap on Brands Hatch with over 200 kph is downright frightening. Realisticly frightening. Adding to this is the fact, that your car can literally obliterate itself if you crash. Whereas in GT6 its just a "thud" and rearranging yourself onto the track. But here. Scary. The suspension is bumpy and shake and you feel the forces your virtual driver is exposed to. It's visceral.

Sound
Oh the sound. The sound is stunning. I love my Caterhams and they sound fantastic, as does any other car I've driven. The turbo whistle of the old Lotus formula car (ridiculously fast) is just as stunning as the mighty fat grunts on downshifts (complete with exhaust-flames) in the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3. Everything else is as you might expect, the rumbling when you run over the curbs, the growling audience (on tracks that are finished that far yet), the screeching of tires and the clanging of metal flying everywhere after a big crash! There's really nothing anyone could ever complain about in sound regards. I truly love Gran Turismo but if you drive one and the same car in GT6 and then in Project Cars. Well... let's just say...*mindblown* - They nailed it so nicely, you have your racing-transmission whine on lift-off-throttle, your supercharger whines, big fat bubbling of big displacement engines and the high pitched screeched of formula cars or prototypes. Lovely. And oh, the Radicals. The SR8 Radical... in chase-came it sounds like a Stuka attacking! Absolutely brilliant.

Artificial Intelligence
It needs work. Lots. The good thing is that it doesn't feel like they're all driving on a given path and just reacting ocassionally on the player, it feels like they're really driving, exactly same as you. Unfortunately they produce some wild oopsies as of now, they look stunning (ever wonder what happens if 10 open wheeled cars go into turn 1 and there is only room for 2? Yep, exactly that. Cars launching into the air, debris flying everywhere) and are entertaining and add a welcome realism to the racing experience but right now happened to frequently and even randomly. Nothing, though, beats chasing a pack of cars down Panorama Mountain with them swerving right and left, fighting the g-forces and you just barely make it through and see nasty pileup in your rear-mirror as you race down the straight at 250+ kph. Stunning. It feels really human, just ... dumb humans. I hope this will improve until launch (and I think November 2014 is VERY optimistic, more on that later).

Content & Features
Many people do not know about the large scale of this project. Most importantly, it's supposed to have a huge career mode, where you start from 0, then go Karting and all the way up in the leagues you're interested in. Open wheel cars, touring cars, nascar, etc... at one point, they even talked about Rallying. So far there is not much content of this in the game. The tracks are many. A good mix of fantasy-tracks and real-life classics. Stuff like Hockenheim for example or Silverstone also come in their classic (usually faster, more dangerous) layouts. The cars are a nice selection across the board but at the moment I feel like they just need more. It's good though to have a good roster of BMW, Mercedes for example and also prototypes and purpose built racecars. The game is featuring the Ariel Atoms, the BAC mono and old formula classics too. They're a real treat to drive.

What they're doing further is implementing a full day/night cycle (and the ability to change everything you want, like how fast time progresses, when a race starts, etc.. ) - this is even functional on most tracks already. Also they have a dynamic weather system. Everything from fog to heavy rain and thunderstorm (in combination with time progression) makes for awesome races and all the settings can be changed for your custom races however you see fit. And here it becomes really interesting. For people who have enough of half assed approaches to the genre, here is what the "racers" gets excited:

True pit stops, multi race formats, warmup, qualifying, real flag rules and penalties, mechanical failures, the ability to create your own championships *40* cars on tracks, on certain tracks even more. This ladies and gentleman is real racing. And if you're more into arcade racing, please take my advice and try to make the jump to full sim. It's so satisfying, especially if you have 1 or 2 friends to improve your skills with. Work on your ideal line and just become faster, race eachother and learn from eachother. Just my 2 cents. You're missing out bigtime if you're always going the safe route with driving assists and arcadey handling. This game allows for every approach though, more on that a bit later...

As of now much of the content is still heavily under works, and I personally don't see them making it until november, but I might be wrong. The sheer amount of settings, options, gameplay mechanics and room for custoization, livery sharing, club management, team management, etc... is sheer stunning. I just hope they get it all done in time.

Handling & Physics
I've been playing this game for almost 2 years now in various stages of development, and at first, the handling was... well sub par at best. But after they released the last build, things have changed considerably. Fear not, as you can tinker your experience to your liking, play it (there are presets for this) like you would play need for speed or blur, or play it hardcore, sim to the max and everything in between. It's set up in about 15 seconds and there is nothing to be afraid of. Except. Speed.

As I mentioned before, the racing itself is visceral, fast, brutal, realistic. It's crazy going into a hairpin corner in a car that's just sitting inches above ground, and you really feel the excitement, it's just great! The car control and handling is dependent on the stage of development the car is in I have found out. Cars that are longer in the game already, handle better, have a more finished physics setup it seems. With no assists and just pure SIM turned on, played on my G27 I have to say... it's different to GT6, which gives you slightly more "info" from the force feedback, it's a bit more "rough" - but in a way I'd imagine how it feels to race such cars. You can feel the edge of "loss of control" approaching and act accordingly. Whereas in older builds it was just "SNAP - grip gone" it's way more progressive now. The suspension of each and every car is modelled to accuracy and performs as you would expect in real life, you can go into a long sweeper and feel your car sink into its suspension and use the simulated weight transfer to get the right angle and throttle to make that perfect exit. Running over different surfaces gives you lots of info through your force feedback and very often you can "ride the edge" nicely. If it's better physics than in Gran Turismo? I'm not sure, it's different. More frightening in its whole experience I'd say. But by NO MEANS this is shift or another need for speed title (on FULL SIM setting that is) and gives racing enthusiasts LOTS to be happy about. As this is only getting better until release, I actually put my fear they would screw up the handling to rest. I've got no idea though, how it will play with a controller, for those of you that don't have a wheel (but you shouldn't probably be playing on FULL SIM with a controller anyways, ...).

Also fuel consumption, different tire compounds, tire wear, slipstream and air resistance is ALL realistically modeled into the game. Kudos! You even have a full telemetry set to use to analyze your performance, you have temperature for your brake-discs (and therefore brake-fading) your tires warm up inner, middle and outer area of the compound and start to balloon a bit as they grow hotter and the air in them expands. You have full control over how you want to fine tune your car, you can change every parameter in the suspension setup you could in real life, also you can pre-save certain setups for certain tracks and even do the same with pit strategies. Just save how they should treat your car when pitting and then select from your presets on the fly in the heat of a race. I've never ever seen this many, accessible options in any racing game to date.

Damage Model
Way and beyond above Gran Turismo (not hard to do) but not as much as in games like Burnout for example. Although, this is a tough comparison, because Project Cars clearly is about racing and less about destroying your ride. Nasty crashes, mechanical failures and just all hell breaking lose IS an integral part of racing though, so they do it just fine. Youll have cracked windscreens, wipers, mirrors and panels flying around and yes you can even break your axle, have your wheels wobble or rip out a door, it's all in there. Drive over some debris, you might puncture your tire. Slide sideways into a sand-pit, prepare to get some air and get rid of all your bodyparts, panels and the stuff that's not superglued to your car, just like in real life. You can repair your car in the pits, change tires, fuel up, just like you would expect a real racing game to do it. As long as the AI is still a bit "stupid" and "on the rough side" damaging your car, or generally damaged cars is something occuring too often, hopefully this will be fixed until release.

Accessibility
Again, you can play it like a Need for Speed game, or even Blur, its just a setting you have to activate and you're good to go. The more you go onto the SIM-side though (there are like 5 presets and you can change aspects of it individually too) the more this becomes a racer's dream. In career mode (in custom modes everything is customizable anyways) you will even have a warmup and a qualifying before races the more you put the slider to the SIM side, if you put it to the arcade side the handling is more forgiving, races are shorter and graphical effects further enhancing the sense of speed (like blur effects, etc...) are activated. It's a neat system making this the racing game for everyone. Wether you want to learn to improve your simracing or just enjoy your already high standard and expectations of a racing game or just want some fast paced fun, this game should be for you really. They're aiming to make it really for everyone, not kill you and overwhelm you with a million options, but if you WANT them, you can have them (and its awesome).

Verdict
I want to say again, that I am in no way connected to slightly mad studios and that I'm not advertising this game on their behalf or anything. I'm just reporting my honest thoughts about this game. That said I think it has huge potential, does many many things way better than it's competitors and all the other racing games fighting for the same cake this year will have a tough time. This game clearly (obviously) needs lots of work though. Of the maybe 40 tracks in the game, there is only a handful already finished and the cars, around 50 are a nice selection of real big names in racing but still, it's too little for my taste. The number of cars in GT6 (though mostly clones and unnecessary dead weight) are obviously not needed, but for a proper racing game and also to have enough diversion in racing events, they need more cars. Simple as that. Also I've heard they're getting the V8 Supercars of australia into the game, which for me personally, is GREAT news as I love them. Best racing series ever. Anyways, after seeing the progress of 2 years of their work I can only say that they obviously LOVE racing, they are true racing fans and don't judge them by SHIFT, everything that made the shift series suck, was on EA's behalf, that's why Slightly Mad Studios finally got independent by crowd-funding their game (that funding, which I am part of). This game truly deserves your attention, I fear though, that they might not be able to launch in November this year with all the content planned and I hope they don't release an unfinished game, disappoint expectations of people and drive away customers that way, because this game truly has the potential to become the "one go to racer" of this generation. The handling is a bit different than in GT6, still under heavy development though (never forget that) but to me, it seems "realistic" and just after maybe 5 laps of adjusting the the car's handling I was able to put in competitive times already. Speaking of which, Gran Turismo, which unfortunately seems to be stalled on their promised DLC content (silence) for me is still the benchmark when it comes to car control and handling. But this is going to be a real competitor, maybe even a game changer. Let's just see what Polyphony cooks up next (in supposedly half a decade, haha).

Thank for reading this, I hope it was informative for you,
if you have further questions, just let me know!