Is this like Trackmania?

I have received my copy from Rich. (Thank you.) I have to drive home today, but I will get some multiplayer going tonight, and get some impressions up ASAP.

^^ I know how you guys feel, I make games at DigiPen right now, its easy to get passionate about your project, and impossible to correctly feel criticism.

OK after spending some quality time with this title here is what I thought:

This isn't necessarily a BAD game, but it is unforgivably and gruelingly hard. The graphics look pretty nice for a Wii Ware game, and the music reminds me of 16-bit racing music so that was pretty fun. The controls are pretty loose (I played with the nun chuck) but not too bad, I've seen worse.

The difficulty is hair pulling out and controlling throwingly hard. Fall off a track while in first place? Now you're in last and you won't see another car again, unless you play flawlessly or are being lapped. Some of the tracks seems to be made to just piss you off. For example, in the second race in Championship mode, there is a long straight track and then a ramp. You would assume you should boost and have a big crazy jump! Well, if you do that you'll notice immediately afterwards the track turns and you'll fly off the course and the race is basically over for you. The only way I was able to avoid flying off the track sometimes is to release the accelerator and hit the brakes at every turn. This too can be frustrating because my brain often misfires and since brake and turbo are both on trigger buttons I'll boost instead of braking and fly into regions far far off track. This may be a special problem that only occurs with me though.

Also why are there so many loading screens? There are more than in some CD based Wii games! Sometimes I feel like it's loading the next loading screen. The menus also could use a little touching up, they aren't very appealing to the eyes.

In a nutshell, this is an OK game, but it's not the best. If you like a challenging racing game, it probably doesn't get much harder than this, and for only 8$ it's not a crime.

Alright my turn now.

I've had a few hours with it, played some multilayer and gotten used to the tracks and steering. I've played with the steering modes for a bit and decided I liked medium sensitivity with the sideways Wii Remote.

Pros:

• The menus are real nice, polished and make sense.
• Track scenery is also pretty darn nice. Overall, the assets are pretty respectable for a WiiWare game.
• Track designs are awesome in the later tracks. I think the game suffers not showing off some of its cooler tracks earlier.
• This game looks like, and steers like, an RC game, and I can't remember one of those since the n64 days.
• The boost animation is good.

Cons:

• That darned fall of the track, go to dead last thing.
• Inconsistent braking.
• I'm not really doing to many stunts.

How I would fix this game fast,
1. Fix the fall of the track difficulty.
2. Put a ton more AI cars in the race, if it doesn't kill the performance, try 20+ AIs. The most fun part of the game is getting up to first place, not staying in it, not starting a million miles back and catching up, but working from the middle up.

Now with the inconsistent braking, it seems like sometimes I slide for ever when I'm braking. Then other times I come to an extreme stop very very fast. Especially when coming off of jumps, the car can stop practically instantly. Then if I am coming up to a corner, it'll take forever to brake enough to get around that corner. Maybe if braking were just consistent I'd be happy.

A weird performance problem I have, its like the game "lags" like I'm playing online at random times. Its like, all the sudden the game will sort of slow down for a sec, then pic up, but it doesn't feel like my FPS is dropping, I'm not sure what is going on with this. Does anyone else have this issue? I play my Wii a lot and notice no other problems.

I personally feel that the game is not great, but not terrible. I do have fun with it, and I thank Rich again for the free copy. If a couple of things could just be fixed, I'd give this game a 7+. For now though, I'm feeling a 5. 800 points, is really not a bad price though.

I'd like to hear some more feedback on my thoughts from Rich regarding that performance thing.

O.K. here we go…..

I got the game and have played it by myself and with my boy.
At first I could not keep car on the tracks and that became very frustrating. After a short while and realizing it works best for me with the nunchuk connected I finally got the hang of the controls and then was able to race.

Things I Like…

Graphics are very good for a wiiware game.
Music simple, but has a catch tune that I keep playing in my head.
Fun Challenging Tracks….I have been having fun seeing what track I get next and to watch out for holes that I could drop through,or where to much air time causes you to miss your turn.
That there is some locked content that you have to unlock (example: New cars)

Things that could have been better….
It would be nice if when I went off the track that I would not have to start back from the beginning of a check point. But I do realize that that adds to the strategy of the game when playing in multi player mode.
The controls where a little hard to get use to (It is nice that you can adjust some of the settings).
The graphics where great but the road almost seemed to be to detailed to where it was almost distracting at first but then I got use to it.

As far as for the long loading time...the very first time I went to play it it did take a long time to load..but since then it seems to load fine.

Overall I have been enjoying playing this game with my son.

Thanks for the feedback guys - definately seems like we made it too punishing to make you go back to the checkpoint. Its one of theose cases where here we can easily win each race without thinking about it; as we are very used to the tracks now. And yep - pressing the Minus Button really helps this to reduce any delay if you go off the track (or are about to)
I actually made the decision to revert to checkpoint - it used to restart you where you fell off. Doh!

Roads - we used pretty high res textures all round, but I should have added a couple of texture variations in there. Next race game we do I'll make sure we put a ton of variation in the road texturing.

Load times - this I think is down to the resolution of the textures - we went right up to the limit with the texture memory so there is a lot of data loading in.

ALSO - we are looking into the possibility of doing a patch. I don't know if this can be done on WiiWare; but if it can - and based on what I've read here - we could improve the restart back at last checkpoint difficulty issue.

I'll check this out for you now.

Let me know if I need to describe the issue more, it took several minutes of playing before I became aware of the behavior. It may not even be a performance issue, it almost feels like dt is being calculated incorrectly sometimes in physics or something.

BTW, WiiWare games have been patched in the past.

Rich, patches may be possible in that you may be able to update your game. Definitely run it by Nintendo.

Increasing the longevity of your games by putting in fake lag ... nice

Seriously though. Hope you can address these problems as WiiWare needs some seriously good racing games. The only one we've got so far is Driift Mania (which is excellent, by the way)

Heracles Chariot Racing and HV Hot Rod Show aren't to be overlooked either.

Maybe add Wifi?

Well....
There is a bug. Occassionally the physics refresh rate and the display go out of sync; this makes it appear to lag at times.

Its easy to fix - although I have no idea how it slipped through with neither NOA lotcheck or our testers spotting it. It doesn't happen on the PAL version; which is most likely why it got overlooked.

Regarding a patch - Nintendo don't allow software to be patched Using the instant restart Minus button does compensate though.

Okay I'm gonna try the minus button thing, and bam! points for me for guessing that physics refresh rate thing.

They should let you do it, it was their dumb testing department that didn't find what I'm talking about >.> Hell they patched Excite Bike.

Unfortunately N have slightly different rules for themselves.

Can't you just send a "so called" update to Nintendo but it's really a patch?Man I wanted a free copy!

Hi Rich,
I posted a pretty long feedback on your game in the WiiWare entry/review for it.
NVM, I'll just re-post it here, since this is where everyone is doing it.

I'll start with the good things that I personally liked, then I'll lay on the not so good things, or things I think you should improve on.

GOOD THINGS
Multiple/Changing POV/Camera Angles
Different "Times of Day", helps mix up the courses, though it should randomly change for the courses too. Adds replayability and uniqueness.
The "Length" of the tracks is fine (Some are semi-short) but because you have 6 tracks per cup, it's fine.
The amount of tracks is really good.
The amount of cars/racers could be higher, but it's still a good variety.
The graphics are average if not slightly higher than most wiiware games that are similar.
Unlockables. Including them increases replayability and creates goals to work towards.

NOT SO GOOD
Frame Rate Drops Frequently (Biggest Complaint) Racing games should not have lag.
No Guard Rails/Boundries, or at least have them on some tracks.
The Recovery Time from going of the track is fine/fast, but it probably shouldn't put you back a ways from the point you fell off.
Some times it's fine, but a few cases it put me really far away.
With a name like "Stunt Cars" their really are little to no stunts.
Does getting "Air Time/Drift Time" do anything?
There's only like 1 song I think that plays during all the races. It would have been nice to have more variety.

EXTRA THINGS NOT THAT IMPORTANT
Maybe add a speedometer of some sort?
You can collide with enemies/damage yourself, but does it do anything? Like slow down, loss of stats?
There should be some type of "Negative" effect when restarting races, or you could just keep doing it.
Car physics seem a little dummed down, could have nicer flashier? slides, jumps, boosts.
Braking seems very abrupt and no real friction/sliding.
Why "4" Laps? Is it a happy medium between 3 and 5 laps that other racing games use.
Better/More varied screen shots of each track would be nice, instead of the 4-5 shots used over and over again.
Maybe add in a variety or "Terrain/Turf" to run over, each with variable frictions/feel (Ex: grass, dirt, mud, ice, oil slicks?, water/puddles)
I saw some people were complaining over the long load times, but they are fine.

OVER ALL SCORE (Letter Grade)

Grade not precise, but somewhere around that which is given.
Graphics: B
Music/Sounds: D
Gameplay: C+
Lasting Appeal: B-
Originality: D+
Accessability/Learning Curve: B
Multi-Player: Didn't get a chance to play.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I thought the game was decent, but not above other racing games that are already on WiiWare. I liked some things, but the frame rate issue is perhaps my biggest peeve. In a racing game that is supposed to be fast reflexes and arcade like, skipping/studdering frame rates are a big no no.
I hope this really long post helps you and your team to making more and better games in the future.

Maybe you could take our tips and add them to Stunt Cars 2.

Wii Wheel controls??

Ya it has them. but they are too difficult. I don't recommend them.