As I hurtle along the twisting, bumpy roads of Norway, the thunderous roar of the Hennessey Venom GT’s V8 and its high pitched turbocharger whining in my ears, I look up. I should be looking at the road, constantly adjusting to the snaking trail of tarmac that weaves its way down the side of this mountain, but instead I’m distracted by the sun peeking out from behind the landscape, illuminating the scenery in a way I’d not quite seen yet. It’s yet another fleeting moment of utter beauty.
If there’s one thing that has consistently attracted people’s attention over the course of its protracted development, it’s the visual fidelity, and come the final game, Driveclub’s graphics are just as awe inspiring as they promised to be. Each of the five locations – Canada, Chile, India, Norway and Scotland – is stunningly created and minutely detailed. From the general topography of the mountains and hills, right down to recreating the actual plant life that you’d see on a trip to these countries. Flags blow in the wind, flocks of birds burst out from trees, confetti gently floats down to the ground and balloons are let loose into the sky.
It also cannot be stated enough just how big an impact the lighting and cloud systems have on the game’s overall look. There’s the show stopping day-night cycle that will blind you should you be racing towards the sun and realistically colour the clouds overhead but there’s also the quite understated manner in which the clouds cover and shift as you drive, allowing for the sun to appear and let you bask in its light through a break in the clouds.
Then there are the cars, a fairly small selection of 55, which range from Hot Hatches through Sports, Performance, Super and Hyper cars. It means that there’s everything from the humble Golf GTI to the quite ludicrously powerful Gumpert Apollo Enraged or McLaren P1, replete with its DRS and KERS systems.
Each car has naturally been lavished with the care and attention that makes them look as accurate and true to life as can be, but they also sound incredible. In my experience, Driveclub sets a new bar for the recreation of a car’s sound, with the kind of rattling that sits underneath the sound of the Hennessey Venom GT helping it to sound unique from fellow hypercars like the Pagani Huayra.
There’s a good reason why the soundtrack is turned off by default during races, to bring the fantastic audio work to the fore. I took a lot of joy in switching between camera positions when I first unlocked and drove a new car, to hear the sound change and, in particular, switch to the in car view to check out the excellent car interiors and hear the engine from a completely different perspective than externally.
Driveclub PS+ Edition
- Featuring a subset of content, the PS+ edition will give people a way to get in and try the game. Featuring tracks and events from India, as well as 10 cars (5 unlockable individually and 5 via clubs) you won’t see the whole Tour, but will still be able to take part in online races and receive and send challenges to your friends. If you’re on the fence, this is worth a look.
Though unlocking cars is simply based upon your Fame level, or that of your club for one car in each class, many will start playing and earning these with the single player Tour. Each event, whether a race, time trial or drift, has a trio of objectives to complete in order to earn the three stars and unlock further events. Some races are paired up, while each class of vehicle has a final event comprised of three races in total.
The AI drivers often aren’t going to challenge you that much during the Tour, especially not in the early races, let alone once you can pick a faster car in a given class and set off into the distance. However, they are more than happy to swap paint with you, hold the racing line and, when turned up to Legend difficulty and with the faster cars in their hands, can be very difficult to catch.
However, the AI is part of the reason why I found it rather easy to clear all of the objectives on the Tour. The AI can be bullied out of the way in races, while time trials and drifts primarily need a bit of practice to beat. It could certainly have had a larger difficulty curve over a greater number of events but it helps to give you a nice introduction to each location, the types of gameplay and, most importantly, lets you unlock a large number of the game’s cars quite quickly.
The Tour really just a stepping stone to the challenges system which is the bedrock to the game’s potential longevity. Any race, time trial or drift that you take part in can be shared as a challenge, regardless of where it comes from, and you then set how long it lasts for and to whom you wish to send it. What really gets the challenge’s leaderboard ticking over is being able to send it to recommended players and clubs, who can then share it further if they try it and like it.
There’s the potential for this to become overwhelming, should you receive too many challenges too quickly, but going up against a tough record would see me repeat a time trial for tens of minutes, trying to get as close to the time as possible. My only wishes are that I could take the customisation of my challenge even further. I want to be able to pick the exact Face Offs that feature, choose whether it’s my own score that features in them, set if it’s a time, time and race position together or score to beat and more, but the options aren’t currently there. It’s something that Evolution should look to expand upon in the future.
Having said that, its simplicity makes it a very slick system and one that’s ably assisted by the simple and effective menu system. You can quickly keep track of the challenges you’re taking part in, see what your friends have achieved recently and get to whatever you need in just a few button presses. On top of that, loading into an event can take as little as 8 seconds for a time trial and around 18 seconds for a full race, with event restarts practically instant, enabling that impulsive “just one more go” style of play that has caught me on a number of occasions.
Starting out with Hot Hatches, the handling model makes it really easy to throw your car into corners, brake late and knock into your opponents, but as you get to Performance cars and beyond, it really comes to life. Now you really have to start thinking about braking points and if you hammer the throttle too hard out of a slow corner, the car’s rear end will step out on you faster than an unfaithful spouse. There’s a terrific sense of speed too, which can be quite terrifying when you have hypercars topping out down tight bumpy roads. It straddles the divide between arcade-like accessibility and feeling realistic quite expertly, with tight and responsive controls.
You’ll need every ounce of control to make it through some of the devilish track designs, too. Each of the five countries has five tracks with variations coming in the form of reversed version of the two road circuits and the two point to point tracks, with three differing layouts of proper race circuits making for a total of eleven to choose from. While the race circuits are fun to drive and have good layouts, it’s the road circuits and point to point tracks which provide by far the greatest and most exhilarating driving challenge, with greater undulations and variation in surface.
As you drive, you earn Fame points for all manner of things. The most obvious are the randomly assigned Face Offs, which give you a racing line, average speed or drift score to try and beat from another opponent. They’re fun little mini-games that go hand in hand with the points you get from drafting an opponent to drifting and keeping clean sectors. That last one’s a bit tricky though, especially at high speed, and going with all four wheels off the road, hitting barriers and other vehicles will all knock points off your Fame haul for that race. Helping you out on the road is a quite ingenious set of flags at most corners.
These do a few things, in lieu of resorting to letting you race with a racing line marked on the ground. They work alongside the minimap to tell you where an upcoming corner is, but their regular spacing also gives you a rather clear set of visual markers to pick your braking point. Most ingeniously, they’re also colour coordinated like a traffic light to give you an indication of how tight and difficult a corner is.
Waiting for the rain
- Even with the 11 month delay, Driveclub is waiting for features after launch. The two of note will be the addition of weather effects, namely rain and snow, as well as a photo mode. These and other tweaks and changes to the game will come alongside several months worth of DLC, both paid and free, which will add cars, tracks, liveries and more Tour events.
Really heavy collisions and corner cutting will result in a more stringent penalty that restricts your acceleration for a varying length of time, while straying off track for more than three seconds will see you reset – not that there’s ever much leeway at the edge of the track. By and large the game sticks to a slap on the wrist instead, with taking a few points away and only superficial visual damage to your car. Of course, that won’t stop racers when you head to competitive online and the dozen or so races that I’ve tried have often featured idiots who felt the need to try and push you into walls. Considering that these are often very tight and twisty tracks without much room for overtaking, this could potentially be infuriating when racing against people you don’t know and can’t talk to jovially in a party chat.
Much like the challenges, the competitive multiplayer races leave me wanting more control and customisation. You pick from a grid of upcoming events, registering your interest and drawing any players in your online session in alongside you – thankfully, anyone can race, as loaner cars are made available if you don’t have something elligible unlocked – and these races can be anything from single make races to team-based races where your cumulative score comes into play or even endurance races that last 10 laps and see you race from dawn till dusk or dusk till dawn. There’s potential for expansion in the future though, and I want private lobbies, cat & mouse team games, synchronous time trial-like races against other players’ ghosts and more.
The titular clubs, meanwhile, are an interesting idea, but one that’s been difficult to really grasp prior to launch. They’re a simple way of pooling together your efforts under a single banner, to unlock the five cars that are exclusive to the clubs. They also let you work together in club challenges and towards shared statistics and goals. However, with the 6 player limit, you’ll want your club to be full of active players in order to chip in.
What’s Good:
- It’s all so damned pretty.
- The cars all look and sound incredible.
- Tight and responsive handling that makes everything a joy to drive.
- Slick dynamic menu system and very short loading times.
- The challenges system is intuitive, simple and potentially quite addictive.
What’s Bad:
- Not being able to create truly custom challenges and multiplayer races.
- The Tour could be longer and feature more challenging events.
- Your enjoyment online depends heavily on the driving of other racers.
- Weather and photo mode aren’t there on day one.
As you finish the Tour and start to take on more and more challenges, Driveclub starts to show its true colours. It may be difficult for some to adapt to in an age where racers sprawl across open worlds featuring hundreds of cars and tons of tracks, but this is a game with a very singular focus. The overarching goals soon start to peel away, and you’re left with the purity of competing against the times and records of friends and rivals, the stunning scenery and the joy of driving cars absolutely on the limit.
bunimomike
Lovely review, fella. They’ve been transparent about adding the weather features… is it in the next few weeks?
One of the most important bits, to me, is that I might give this a go. Keep in mind I play zero racing games and fell out of love with the genre years ago. The fact that Driveclub has me even remotely interested is testament to the type of game they’ve built. Good on them. :-)
Tony Cawley
Good review mate thanks for that. I’m a little on the fence with this, it sounds like you have to dedicate a large portion of gaming time to it in order to get the most out of it. With destiny still lingering I don’t need 2 games battling for my attention.
CallofDylan
I don’t want a game that only has cars Microsoft didn’t want. I can’t believe how evil Microsoft are buying rights to so many cars. They better not do this with the next call of duty
Tony Cawley
Is this a joke?
bunimomike
Sorry if I’m being a pleb but this has nothing to do with it, does it? Surely the likes of Gran Turismo has licensed hundreds of different vehicles which, I assume, DriveClub could have done too. Are you saying Microsoft has paid for exclusive use of certain makes of vehicles that there’s simply nothing left for Gran Turismo, DriveClub, etc.?
Tony Cawley
He’s wrong. Microsoft do not own exclusive rights to any cars at all.
tonyyeb
As far as I know the only exclusive deals are EA with Porsche? Anyone else for certain?
stonyk
Do you have a source for your information?
Forrest_01
Yeah, I’m with this guy – I don’t want anyone buying up the rights to all the cars in Call of Duty either. ;)
Amphlett
I’m against you here. I would love someone to buy up all the rights to cars in Call Of Duty. The handling of most of the cars is dreadful so the sooner they do away with the cars from the franchise the better… erm, atcually, errr, they don’t have cars in there… do they?
double-o-dave
Err… Ok. Are you gonna share those mushrooms?
The Silv3r Fox
LOL!
xIONx
I hope Microsoft do buy all the rights to cheesy, Western military focused, invisible-walled corridor shooters.
wonkey-willy
Nice review. .
Not a big fan of racing games myself so I will stick to the plus version. Last racing games I enjoyed were the burnout games,
Anyone know what time the store updates?
yarg2k7
inconsiderately about the time i’m picking the kids up from school so its about 3ish give or take a few minutes usually
Amphlett
My son comes home on the bus so I’m sorted”
JustTaylorNow
And this is why car games suck. The only car game worthy is burnout paradise
Tony Cawley
What’s why car games suck? What even is a car game?
ron_mcphatty
Hah :)
Starman
At last a decent racing game #4theplayers.
Ok I’m being picky but does anyone else think some screens look like they could be from Ridge Racer 6, whilst others look amazing? I think its the lighting.
DirtyHabit
‘races that I’ve tried have often featured idiots’ This is whats been putting me off since day one. Looking forward to trying out the PS+ version tho.
MrYd
But that’s the fun of driving games! I’m that idiot, usually.
If you don’t want your car all smashed up, drive faster. Or slower. Either one will keep you away from my kind offers to remodel the sides of your car for free.
DirtyHabit
‘Rubbings racing’ As they say in all good car films featuring Tom Cruises’ teeth. But people parking on, or driving the wrong way round the track, that gets my goat.
Say for example, crew vs crew racing where one team delegates a ‘hitman’ who’s job it is to take out the other team for that race. Leaving the rest of the team to run away with the win.
Amphlett
@DirtyHabit – A hitman for a club is an excellent idea. I’ll take that one, thank you.
DirtyHabit
Dammit!
(unless I’m on you team) ;-)
CarBoyCam
Unfortunately, you can be the fastest guy on the track, but when people don’t brake and deliberately try and hit you, you can’t avoid it.
Hopefully penalty systems etc can prevent people going online with the sole purpose of trolling or wrecking.
Telling people to drive slower or faster to avoid it is a little unfair.
TSBonyman
Great review.
My only small issue might be the corner-cutting penalties – Why make a walled-in circuit but leave corners open for cutting – and then penalise people for doing so? No biggie though and i can’t wait to start playing it.
MrYd
Maybe there’s something there you shouldn’t be driving over? Some nice flowers? Buried pirate treasure? Spectators?
And if there isn’t, just pretend there is. End result is the same.
double-o-dave
Kittens.
DirtyHabit
Ponies?
TSBonyman
Possibly i might usually have a tendency to throw the car around the track in racing games.. :)
MrYd
Grrrr. Now I can’t stop thinking about kittens. Little cute ones. And ponies. Who are also cute.
And pony-kittens. Which are cute, but kind of wrong in a crimes-against-nature way.
Amphlett
Jammie dodgers? Don’t touch my dodgers!
TSBonyman
Well, erm.. let’s imagine the pony-kittens have taken an invisibility potion and are lurking nefariously on all the corners of the tracks – i think you would agree with me in that case that something would need to be done and thus encouragement instead of penalties could be offered for any culling of the abominations by cutting corners and mowing them down.
;)
MrYd
Noooooooo!
You can’t run over cute little invisible pony-kittens. They can’t help being an abomination. It’s not their fault. That’s obviously down to whichever mad scientist spent years sending ponies and cats out for nice romantic meals in the hope that eventually a pony-kitten would be born.
So leave the poor little invisible cute things alone. Find the mad scientist instead and run him down. Or get him to invent laser-squirrels. I’d quite like to see laser-squirrels.
DirtyHabit
Structurally, it sounds like Destiny on wheels.
xIONx
#Drivetiny
DirtyHabit
Badum tssh!
The Silv3r Fox
Really informative review – thank you. Got to say that across a number of sites the reviews are above average only. It’s going to end up as a 7/10 on Metacritic I reckon, which for me is a little disappointing.