o_O

I am completely sold on this, and also expect complete disaster.

Ryo inclusion might just be pure genius (including some of his work placements)!

That's it I'm in. What platform are people going to get this on?

Ryo's drift angle is immense on the bike! Let's hope that AM2 are consulting on this one and we see a port to the arcade (that is so the wrong way around).

Oh noes, it isn't terrible, except the framerate. Based on the demo.

I mean, its almost so unterrible that I might pick it up!

Really? I thought the demo was a bit grim.

The demo doesn't explain drift turbo or what the tricks get you (speed boost on landing?), and it isn't obvious you can alter the difficulty, which is a bit odd.

Its a pretty dull mix of Sonic Riders and Mario Kart isn't it? I'm not sure that it brings anything new at all, just nicking bits from either game. Considering that Sonic Riders was probably ditched in favour of this, I preferred the drifting, turbo and jumping in that game.

I don't remember Ryo smiling much or pulling wheelies in Shenmue, must have missed that bit.

It is quite bland.

The drift button idea is quite nice and the track design, on the demo, is such that you get good reason to try it out and experiment, a simple version of the Mario Kart drift.

It suffers a bit from game engine tech demo syndrome. But you'd expect that with something made in the UK.

It also suffers from Mario Kart power up syndrome, I've only managed to come 7th, after being first on the last lap.

But I couldn't help but smile when I was caught in a Samba.

I couldn't tell you if it was remotely balanced, but its not the total disaster I was expecting.

You'd imagine the Wii version might mitigate any framerate issues, and be more dynamic with tilt control.

But I played Stunt Race FX so frame rate in racing games, when they aren't a simulation isn't really a deal breaker for me.

will have to dl the demo and see for myself. Doesn't sound good.

Its just middle of the road... ha ha... generic fluff.

Neither offensive nor unoffensive.

Feels like focus group development.

Well I find the Mario Kart re-hashing a bit offensive and pointless, it doesn't make me want to play. There is room for a Kart racer for sure, but it needs some new ideas for me at least.

Some Sumo dev is currently getting his knickers in a twist over my fairly tame criticisms over on ntsc-uk at the moment, but hasn't really explained by it isn't just a Mario Kart/Sonic Riders re-hash.

I'm not sure Sonic Riders is a valid comparison?

...other than Sonic is in it?

Well yeah - but it also has Ulala, Aiai, Nights, etc.

... and sega themed levels.

... and something similar to the all star power ups that are character specific.

I guess its about where your critiquing it from.

As a mascot racer.

As a Mario Kart clone.

As a corporate vision.

As the death throws of a marketing machine run by investors?

Well it looks like this is some kind of replacement for Sonic Riders after the ropey Wii sequel. Which also gives you some idea who it is aimed at.

There aren't many mascot racers are there, there was a Konami one and a Hudson one, but they all rip the most recent Mario Kart.

It isn't really a corporate vision as there doesn't seem to be much creative control of all that Sega IP. I think Sega's only real motive, other than Sonic racer mash em up, is keeping other Sega characters in people's consciousness.

Mechanically it isn't much like Sonic Riders at all agreed, that was a hoverboard racer of some kind, more like XG, and the track designs are totally different (much larger, with distinct components, interiors and exteriors). It fit the Sega aesthetic a lot more sensibly for that too.

It feels exactly like Mart Kart Wii to me, with a simplified drift and prettier looking but blander to play tracks. Or track.

For a weak Mario Kart Wii clone, its a weak clone.

Not even the mighty Nintendo can get weapons balance right. At least they can get character art direction right.

The last Mario Kart klone I played frequently was probably Street Racer on the Saturn, 8 playas baby.

Sonic Riders was close to something interesting. Sonic R was closer. Swap where applicable.

The fact that Sonic IS IN A CAR, and then ISN'T for turbo mode is indication enough of a completely wrong thing.

Street Racer is utterly abysmal though yeah?

I have to admit that Sonic Riders to me at least was an OK experience, nothing to get all hot and bothered over, but a fun little game that at least tried to be a little different.

Sonic R was and still is a great little game. The level design is spot on and the control, which is very strange, made sense after a while. Really it was let down by the hardware as the draw-in was pretty awful in split screen mode.

Jib I rinsed you at Mario Kart last time we played and I'm totally balls at it. Which is pretty much proof positive that the game is about as balanced as Katie Price.

Drift button sounds like a cop-out. I want to feel like I'm in control of the drift (Outrun 2 style) as opposed to just pressing a button.

I NEED TO PLAY THIS before posting anymore really. If the core is good then I could still be sold on this.

Why does everyone remember rinsing me at things?

So for Street Racer, honestly I can't remember, I just remember the 8 player. And maybe managing a 6 player. That many people makes anything entertaining.

It should it really should. Truthfully the last time I played Street Racer was pre MASSIVE PLASMA and 8 players split screen was a bit of a push on a smaller TV. Mechanically however I recall it being a turd. For whatever reason it just didn't appeal to me even in a multiplayer sense.

Remember when we were round Paper's yard ages ago? F-Zero GX?

rrrrRRRRINNNSED~~~~~~OOOOUUUUTT!!11! XD

....

....

....

sobs

....

That aside, there is no drift... initially you are deeply deeply offended that its been designed to look good for someone watching you play it... so the angle of the drift when you press the button is OutRun2Tastic, but it forces you to have a turn at a certain arc, and y'know there's a strategy there... just like Mario Kart... without the skill.

TT_TT

NO Proper Drift!

I thought that was mandatory in all Sega games. Are you sure there isn't a menu option to put the DRIFT back in?

@Saur you should have been there when we rinsed him at Sega Extreme Sports. All he had to do was press ONE BUTTON at the right time to disengage the bungie rope off the start. instead he did the best impression of a human yo-yo I've ever seen. NOOB.

It looked something like this:

I'm forced to hand this one over to the Kitty Committee, their judgement may be harsh.

This, THIS! is why I am playing Star Trek Online.

The last 4 posts have made my day .

Winter Heat. We need to play that again too. I see we have a hopeful this year in the women's Skeleton

Pic from the Daily Mail (sorry)

Yep she's going to hurl herself down a bobsleigh track face first. That deserves some props.

Downloaded and played the demo over the weekend. It is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Infact I enjoyed playing it. I would say that the criticisms levelled at the demo in this thread (and elsewhere) are valid, but my take on it is a little more positive. Sure it brings nothing new to the genre, but what is on offer here seems reasonably solid. The drift mechanic is fine. Having a button to execute a drift is no different to Mario Kart or in reality Outrun 2 double shifting. The conteol during the drift is a watered down version of Outrun2 with less subtlty, which I suppose is a concession to the family friendly orientation of the game.

It's not as good as Excite Bots or Truck for that matter.

Oh and Ryo smiling is just horrible. A wry smile I could handle, but he looks way too pleased with himself.

Sounds like you managed to have low enough expectations.

I came out about the same.

Have you managed to win yet?

My concern is weapons balance isn't very good... Or the AI is too rubber bandy. etc etc.

You know, like its a bag full of cheap tricks.

No second is the best I have managed.

I was out in front for about a lap in one race, but then got pwned. The system does balance your weapons to give you only defensive weapons when you're out in front (or at least that was my experience). If there's a similar deal with the all-star power-ups then it may be a case of hanging back to start with to get the all-star, racing to about half way through the pack and then unleashing it on the last lap.

Drift boost seems to be key, although there's an obvious trade off between grip and drift+boost, which shows promise in terms of circuit design.

I couldn't work out why sometimes I didn't get a boost from a trick during a jump whereas other times I did.

What's bloody missing from all these games is a proper rock paper scissors weapons model or at the very least a way of driving that nullifies weapon effects. For example it would be cool if you get hit by a missle whilst in a drift it has no effect. This makes timing offence more interesting and gives the guy on the recieving end a fighting chance.

That smells of broken to me.

If neither you nor me can get first, when we are obviously the zenith of human gaming evolution (minus any extreme sports based games).

And I didn't really get a chance to understand the weapons, the art direction is to arty to see what they are in the weapon box, they might be colour coded in someway but this is the case where TOO MUCH COLOUR means I can't see it.

I agree, the tracks and the boosts are interesting, and the track itself was Sonic-y enough to imply its Sonic... but as we know, the character integration and art design don't mesh enough... what the hell would a Shenmue level look like?

Hong Kong circa 1980s probably? Faith (was that her name) had a motorbike yeah!

Weapons wise I counted the following:

Defenze
Shield
Cone thingies x 3
Rainbow (not sure what that does)

Offenze
Homing Rockets (red x3)
Bombs
Green boxing gloves?
all-star powerup.

Do you know if the bumpers at the side of the track work? I don't remember hitting one, so didn't try this out. Also I've only picked up on the 1 shortcut thus far, where the track splits near the end of the lap before you enter the tunnel.

The environment feels right for a Sonic themed stage. I would hope the others are on the money also.

Oh and what the hell are Banjo and Kazooie doing in there. Yeah so this is the Microsoft version, but I don't want no Nintendo/MS characters ruining my Sega party, plus their kart handles like poo.

Joy!

I played for about 45 mins, and after about half that could win every time if I made about 80% of the tricks and drift boosts. I ignored the items pretty much.

I think for trick boosts to work you need to wait until reaching the peak of your jump before initiating.

I'm not certain, but there might be an increased boost for longer drifts too. It seems sometimes from vibration that you get a double boost for holding longer drifts just like Double Dash, but there is so much vibration anyway I couldn't be certain.

That jump near the end of the course is the only short cut I spotted.

The bumpers do work, but aren't that useful as the corners they are on are pretty wide. There is only one corner I can think of that you could drift into and use a bumper to fix your exit angle, but it would probably be slower that a well executed drift.

I didn't find anything OutRun2-ish about the drifting other than the car visually turning sideways. The cornering you get from a drift seemed very similar to Mario Kart DD/Wii, where once initiated you can only subtly influence how tightly you were turning, so the most important aspect was entering a corner correctly. Tweaking the drift in fact is where the controls seemed really dead to me, compared to Mario Kart.

Hmm not sure my experience is the same as that. Sure entry point is key, but you can adjust your transverse position across the track using left and right anaolgue inputs. This feels similar, but not the same, as Outrun2; to me at least. What is missing is the finesse of the gas peddel control present in Outrun2 or any need for skill to come out of the drift in a smooth way.

I've not played enough Mario Kart to say whether it's closer to that system, but doesn't that hinge around slight changes to the drift angle as opposed to big movements across the track? I was certainly able to apex the corners whilst in drift in SaSASR very easily, which felt good. Timing drift release on exit is also pretty key as you need to memorise the layout and make sure you are pointing in the right direction when you get the boost.

What I haven't worked out is if there's a way to inertia drift: link left and right drift motions together. There doesn't appear to be a way to do this, which makes the wiggly section of the demo track quite tricky. Probably need to experiment a bit more.

What you are describing is pretty much how drift works in Mario Kart. I found that I had a little more control over track position in that than in All-Stars. In All-Stars it seemed like there is less flexibility when it came to adjusting position and staying in the drift. With both the turning arc is pretty much set from the time you start drifting, but with jumping and finer control in MK you can do more with it once you are in a drift, I think.

Neither really allow inertia drifting, however MK lets you trick it by hopping from one drift to another and carrying over momentum (turning directions while in the air).

The gas/brake speed control on OR2 is a lot more entertaining, which is all down to being able to initiate and maintain drift with speed control alone.

In OR2 turns are impossibly long, side forces impossibly strong, and your turning circle impossibly large, all to allow that crazy amount of drift control. The direction of a turn also has an absolute affect on your steering, completely ignoring any other factors - the chicanes will punish you in ways they really shouldn't as the direction changes. Whereas in All-Stars the tracks are coherent 3D environments, and the drifting feels completely different to me. It doesn't make any kind of sense, compared to the cleverly exaggerated OR2 which has some logic behind it.

Other than starting a DriftWiki and going through the different types of drift... I'm not sure how granular you can be about it really.

WHAT

You get button drifts, turn drifts and brake drifts... with different types of reward... boost, grip, turning circle... in my very hastily categorised view. And certainly all games use a certain percentage of each type.

A

You could argue that OutRun2 uses a Mario Kart style initiation of the drift when you flick the gears and turn, and indeed, this gives you a better turn, grip and a boost in Mario Kart and minus the boost in OutRun2. But you can also get into a drift with the brakes and so on blah blah blah, but OutRun2 is the drift king, so it can do it all really well.

GEEK

But y'know when it comes to SaSASR you button hold to get into the drift, and can alter and adjust the direction, but you can't feed out?, and you get a boost.

OUT

I need to draw a chart, or graph. The drifting in say, Burnout Paradise, is quite a subtle brake drift, where you tap the brakes and get into a locked drift.

Then there's Ridge Racers where you can initiate a drift in the opposite diection to the corner and still make the corner O_o

That game really does drive itself.

Yeah Ridge Racer 64 you could do 720s and get around a corner. Fun!

It was the same in Rave Racer too - brilliant system! Should never have been changed.

What I want most is for someone out there to acknowledge Daytona. The drift system in Daytona so much fun but not one game has anything remotely like it. Even Daytona 2 was shite in comparison.

Agreed even with the Pro level cars in Daytona 2 it was nowhere near as good as the first game.

The drift initiation in Daytona is properly deep too as you have to use all manner of tricks to position the car perfectly. Every control input effects drift in some way. The algorithm that controls that should be etched in stone for posterity.

Really you want is something like Fighters Megamix, but for driving games: Drivers Megamix. A game that gives you Sega Rally, Outun 2 and Daytona car sets and handling meshed with all the circuits from those games plus Scud Race and InitialD. CAN YOU IMAGINE.

Why has nobody done a proper cross-over driving game before? I mean you get cross over robot games and fighters, but not driving games. Odd.

As the release of All Stars approaches, I find myself quite angry about it, in an obvious fan service exploitation kind of way.

First of all the dopey developer reaction to gameplay criticism, rather than just dealing with the reasonable technical and functional criticisms that the demo deserves. Or simply not responding at all, which would have been far more sensible.

Second of all the very clear way that Sega and Sumo just don't appreciate the heritage they are dealing with, and what some of those games might mean to people. You can't have a happy bike wheelie-ing Ryo. You just can't! He shouldn't even be there! And in all honestly - Sonic in a car? Whywhywhy? Gum (or whoever it is from JSRF) driving a vehicle rather than blading? Itmakesnosensearghhelp!

They are pissing all over their past, and cynically churning out shite like this to take a bit more cash out of my wallet for all the good will that 1999-2001 period of greatness gave them.

I mean stop for a second, and think - a Sega arcade racer not developed by Sega? Does that make any sense whatsoever? No - not in the slightest, not ever.

I forgave Superstars Tennis for having a decent game underneath, and having some care devoted to incorporating Sega characters, and least in terms of audio-visual quality. Taking the same approach with a wider range of characters though, shoe horning in Banjo Kabloodyzooie (at Sega's request apparently), and dumping the resultant mess on top of a completely average Kart racing clone and my patience snaps.

Sega - stop taking the piss. Please. Either properly revive these classic games, or let them rest in peace. This marketing experiment is the worst possible way to keep these characters around. This game is Sega's gravestone.

Sega is an absolute fucking nightmare and no matter how much people scream at them they will never take anything onboard.

The company seems full of people who are obsessively trying to put their own little personal stamp on something. This is why they never take outside critisism on board, the latest bizarre scheme is someone's baby - that someone always seems to be some clueless twat who thinks he knows best and nobody can tell him different.

Having to work with them last year was sickening and infuriating. Anything you try and arrange with them is completely ignored, even though we were working on an "official" product they'd ignore our emails. We had many promotional ideas which would have been beneficial to us, them and the developer but they completely ignored us.

The worst insult was all correspondance from Japan was never passed on to us, the.....people.....at Sega Europe insisted everything went through them - it turns out they never passed anything to or from Japan.

None of them care. These muppets rape Sega's heritage with bonkers ideas, fail miserably then move on to another company and forget about it.

The last 2 posts make me sad , because they're true. I love the hardware, the heritage and the characters, but not what Sega is today. There's still enough back cat that I've not experienced to keep me going for some time yet on my Sega romance, but it is a sad state of affairs. Sega need to stop farming out their IPs to third parties as their in-house Japanese studios can still deliver the goods. 3rd party for ports seems to work OK, but not for original content.

The bloody annoying thing is that other studios are prepared to take a punt at the games that Sega should be making. I mean look at Heavy Rain. JUST LOOK AT IT. IT's basically Shenmue with different characters and less freedom. I bet it's going to sell by the truckload too.
x 10

PS3 demo out today:

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/02/18/%E2%80%98heads-up%E2%80%99-playstation-store-update-18th-february-2010/

Meant to have slightly better frame rate. Also rumoured that the review code was the pre-release unoptimised version.

http://www.segabits.com/?p=288

Hmm.

You called it!

PS3 demo frame rate is a little better, a near-solid 30 fps. But then... it is a different track, and Sumo have said that the circuit in the 360 was the most demanding, so who knows. I'm abstaining for two weeks until it hits the bargain bins.

The Cardigan likes it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/21/sonic-and-sega-all-stars

Main streaming it baby

The DS demo is worth trying - the drifting really is like OutRun2 in that version, and it has a near-solid frame rate too.

OR2 drifting still doesn't make much sense in a map rather than on a procedurally generated track, but at least you have more drift control and can continuously drift through entire chicanes.

Yep, the DS demo is more fun than the 360/PS3 versions.