What do you think of the preview..?

[mcm2boys]

In case you didn't catch it the first time. Any thoughts..?

[JamieT]

Its kind of what I expected to be honest...  Can't say that's a good thing though... *sigh*... Atleast we still have Reflex - which (hopefully) is only going to get better and better.

[mcm2boys]

I don't seem to have the same eye for detail as some of you guys, but to me it doesn't look too different to Reflex. The rear wheel seemed to break lose a couple of times which looks like something new to me and the sideways landings i think should have ended in a crash. But otherwise the terrain detail looks better than Reflex on this track, more like Alive tracks and the whole arena environment looked great. Oh and they also added the cameras that someone was asking for..

I would like to see the CGI colors dialed down a little to give a more real world look with less saturation but that might just be my eyes. Otherwise for $15 - $20 with 17 new tracks i think it's a bargain, that's $1 a track and some of you guys know what goes in to making a track, so i figure that's pretty good entertainment value in anyones money.

But you can only see so much in a preview, there's no idea how reliable the multiplayer will be, or how severe the online collision will be and watching someone else ride gives me no sense of how the bike will handle in my hands.. So we will just have to wait and see..

Plus if they haven't changed the file formats too much from Reflex/Alive then we can quickly have the custom tracks that we have for those titles in this title pretty soon..

I think it's a hell of a lot of game for the money, still the gold standard in MX games. 

[DirtTwister]

It looks to me like an improved Alive.  One thing I didn't like about SX in Alive was that after a lap the bales were everywhere.  It seems like that wasn't happening and when a bale did get moved out on the track and got hit it moved out of the way.  Everything that Ken George was talking about are things I like.  I want the game to be more forgiving of bumping and banging while racing and emphasis on tracks that reward finding the rhythm to go fast.

The host was talking about stuff that I don't find important.  He likes to crash and sounded like he wanted a Road Rash kind of MX game.   I just hate that stuff.

[JamieT]

Having watched the video some more, there are some positives I'm taking away from it.  Like you said Laurie, the rear wheel breaking traction is a nice new touch, and as I understand from talking to YellowS2K, who's played the game himself, and watching his video, some things with the physics are still being tweaked.  His video > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek2J8OyptRs

What I didn't like was how the preload was giving a huge upward lift at relatively low speeds.  It just looked disproportionate to the rider and the track.  Also Reinhard did a horrible job playing the game,  I just had my head in my hands at some points.  So it was kind of hard to gauge what the gameplay will be like.

I expected oversized tracks, and a more arcadey-unleashed-untamed style of gameplay, but seeing it in the flesh really made it all hit home.  Like Bruce said, the talk of launching the rider in rag doll mode, and goofy road rash or other types of game modes really makes me fearful of the direction they're going to take this franchise.

I had some nitpicks with the tracks, such as the shapes of the berms.  The looked very steep in the middle of the turn, and it seemed like the fast line was to just rail the base of the incline.  Doesn't seem like you'll able to shoot up the inside, pivot and accelerate out, but maybe that was just Reinhard's riding.  Also there was a jump which looked like it was suposed to be your standard 70ft triple jump, and the shape of it (from the side profile) just looked completely wrong in my eyes.  This is something I work hard on with my tracks, to ensure that the obstacles look like they do in real life, so that was a little disapointing to see.

I supose we won't really know for sure until we actually play the game ourselves.  It's hard to find positives at this point in time, when all I'm thinking about is the negatives.  I know that the feeling of the gameplay in Reflex on the stock tracks isn't what I prefer, and having track editor so that I can do it my own way makes a huge difference to how I preceive the game.  Hopefully the same will happen here.

The direction I'd personally like them to take, is to go towards a more authentic look.  Tracks which look like they'd fit in a real life situation.  Also a physics model which also looks more simulation,  but it still has to be fun, and some what easy to play.  (Easier siad than done, I know).  For example in car racing games, Codemasters seem to be able to present the look of real life racing, whilst giving players the ability to just pick up and play the game, without a huge learning curve.

I'm kind of coming to terms now with the idea that MVA will never be what I hope for, but it doesn't make it any less heartbreaking.  They have all this tech that they've developed, built by guys who love the sport, yet it's being put towards a game that seems to be targetted more towards the moderator in that interview, rather than like-minded people to that of the development team...

Like I say, we still have Reflex, that still has a lot of room to grow in terms of custom tracks, so if all that continues, I'll be a very happy bunny.  It seems that only the community can create a game that the community wants to play.

[mcm2boys]

YellowS2K seems to give it 2 thumbs up. I can see you're edging into the MvA Sim camp there JamieT, which is fine but i think we'll have to shake hands and agree to disagree on this one. First of all the total gaming market is huge, but only a subset (and i would say a very small subset) of that will be hardcore MX fans who want a simulation, so you can see why they are aiming for the much larger target audience. I'm not sure where all this expectation for a simulation based game came from because MvA never has been that and the devs never said that it would be.

Don't get me wrong I don't mind the game becoming more 'real' so long as the racing still provides that edge of control, close racing that you get now with Reflex. It's interesting to me that many of those who think that this game doesn't look real enough then turn to Reflex as a better alternative, which to me seems even less real bnased on the criteria they seem to be using to determine real. I would still like to see the graphics move to a more photo real finish, in my view the only thing MXGP got right. I have watched a fair bit of E3 and to me that makes MvA look just a little dated.

The design decisions are bound to be compromises because there are so many opposing forces in the development process, but when considering the quality of the game it's easy to get bogged down thinking about a few details that seem personally important but miss the bigger picture because they already nailed that. I think overall this will be another great title in the series and for me looks bound to bring many, many hours of pleasure.

I know you're a very talented track creator, but from a riders poinmt of view isn't it more important that the jump is shaped to match the way the bike rides over it, especially if they are focusing on rhythm racing again, than making the jumps look like the real thing? I guess for me that highlights my whole problem with an uncompromising push for a simulator, making it look and ride like the real world doesn't necessarily make for a good game, in fact that might well be why no publisher has yet put out a true real world simulator. I see no reason why you can't push it that way but it has to stay fun and exciting to race - and I think MvA has both of those in spades.


As for the moderator he was a bit of a dick in my view, the game clearly has Supercross in the title and he asks what other types of environments will we see in the game? His comments about crowbars and road rash probably have more to do with him being more of a zombie basher than a racer and as far as I can see definitely have nothing to do with the direction the game is taking. He also made it very hard for Ken to hit any of the points he wanted to make in the interview with constant interuptions and badly thought out questions. Unfortunately he was just the wrong interviewer for this game.

I think in hindsight it might have been wise for them to have a game play 'script' where they do stuff on the screen that highlights the key points Ken wanted hit in his script and maybe prep the host on what to ask before the interview to grease the wheels a little. Hopefully that's a lessons learned exercise from this experience.

[JamieT]

If I were designing the game, the shapes of the jumps is what I'd actually start with, and then tailor the physics around them to make it a fun experience.  It seems like they perhaps go back and forth tweaking each end until it feels right.  I just think doing that causes the track designs to deviate from what they truely are in real life.  It's one of the main things I have issues with in these MVA games.

I've studied track designs for the AMA Supercross track for many years now, and every week the same obstacles get recycled and reconfigured, with usually one unique feature each week that hasn't been seen before.  Essentially there's a set standard that Dirt Wurx stick to each week and has remained unchanged for many years.  For some, that can seem cookie cutter and no fun for a video-game, but the fact is, that's how it's done in real life, and also what some people want to see in a game. 

For me, playing mx games is almost a like role-playing experience.  I want to feel like I'm my favourite rider, acting out the same things I see them do in real life.  It's where I get the majority of my enjoyment comes from.  When I see things that are done to provide better gameplay, but deviate from real life, I have to take a leap of imagination that's sometimes too far, and causes a break in that role playing experience.  It's fun to get crazy at times and do something ridiculous, push the broundries of what could be possible in the real world, but that's not something I want to experience constantly.

I don't necessarily agree though that I'm in a minority there.  FIFA, NFL, Formula 1, NBA etc. are all big popular sports titles which replicate the look of the real world.  That's essentially what I'd like to see.  Not so much the official licensing, more the look of the environment, and the way the player can react to that enviroment.  MX Simulator would be great game for me if they just found a way to translate what I do with my thumbs to what happens on screen a little better.

Yeah the old generation of games is looking very dated now after seeing the near-photorealistic graphics of this current-gen.  Graphics is something which is quite important for people to help aid that role playing immersive experience in games, and level design is something I feel is just as important for me.

Yeah I agree, the interview didn't go so well at all... Maybe Ken felt he had to humor him when he mentioned Road Rash. 

Maybe I'm overreacting, but certain parts of the gameplay in the video didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.  Ahh well... we can't all have everything we want - that's what modding is for ey?

[mcm2boys]

Sounds like you'd design the game from a track creators standpoint..   

For me, playing mx games is almost a like role-playing experience.

I thnk this does put you in a minority in this game, though less so maybe 6 months to  year after it's release. You have to agree this has never been sold as a sim and Ken has never said that SX would be a sim. I also think that the other titles that you mentioned have all made compromises to real world simulation, somewhere along the line, because at the end of the day the game experience is totally different to the real experience for many different reasons and the game has to compensate for that in different ways. ..and it will always be like that until we plug the controllers into a socket in the back of our necks to provide real motion feedback...

For me there isn't much you could sensibly do with MX sim to make it a decent game and to me it serves as a warning to those that want to push MvA too much down the simulation path. It has an enthusiastic niche following but wouldn't keep Nordic or Big Bang Entertainment in business for very long and more importantly for a lot of people it simply isn't any fun to play.

I'm not trying to convince you to think any differntly but i have heard a lot from the MvA sim lobby and want to try to balance out the commentary with something of what i believe the silent majority are thinking. At the end of the day we can all probably see what it will be and i for one think they have done the best job of walking that playable versus reality tightrope of any of the MX game developers by a big margin. All this discussion of reality has taken away from the bigger picture that this still looks to be an excellent title - though maybe i will reserve final judgement until i see the multiplayer and how it handles in my own hands. 

[al167]

im very impressed and looking forward to it!!, the preload is excessive and the bike seems to just not crash at all, but I believe a better rider will make the world of difference. im hoping that it has higher difficulty settings like "suicide" or "all time" to make the bike crash more easily and it would be awesome to have an option to turn off preload and have preload off, expert settings only online races.

I actually like the idea of realtime rag doll crashes.  and the bail/eject idea just adds some fun IMO(you can bail in real life). it will be eye candy to watch a rider body fold in half on top of a triple landing!!

the tracks look really fun and not too overscaled.

cant wait actually!!

and cant wait for DE to support it too

[135Lance]

I think the game will be a lot of fun, I'm pretty excited for it. Well, I get excited for any motocross game really.  I pretty much expected the game to look this way since it was done is such a short time. Ken said they began coding in December 2013 and started making tracks January. So for less then a year of development I think it looks great. I believe (Hoping) that all the new game ideas that "WE" the fans mentioned on their forums they put into the next title.  Not sure if any of you guys play MXGP, but maybe in the next title they could do something like that. Where you can choose "Realistic"  for the more experienced players. Would be cool to have an arcade or sim play option. The newest video is way better then the E3 video http://youtu.be/bvjMMbF1iMM The person playing is a lot better in this video.

[RKipker]

Its kind of what I expected to be honest...  Can't say that's a good thing though... *sigh*... Atleast we still have Reflex - which (hopefully) is only going to get better and better.

Ahhhgh, someone who agrees with me... !  Disappointing its taken  year for them to basically develop this.