| IndyCar Series Facts : | ||
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A few years ago Tony George, the owner and Chairman of the Board at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, decided to break from his long-standing relationship with CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) and create his own stand alone racing series. Such was formed the Indy Racing League or as it's known today as simply the IRL. Although many outsiders thought he had purely lost his mind, Tony had a vision of an open-wheeled oval series that would both reduce the skyrocketing cost of the competitors and also even the playing field somewhat to create a more competitive series. Not too many individuals or businessmen have the foresight, the resources and the pure audaciousness to discard a formula that had worked so well for many years. But when you are a majority owner of the most famous racing circuit in the world; you can take a few liberties. Regardless of your position, the proof is there for all to see. The IRL is alive growing and CART died a slow and painful death. Even though both entities in this battle to the death had their ideologies to defend and rightly so, the competition is what eventually won the trophy. Now that I've painted myself into a corner and opened up a can of worms that may take months to put the lid back on, I'll get to the point of the story. Around the same time that the IRL was starting to emerge as a legitimate series, John Bodin and Thomas Heineman had opened the source-code from Hasbro's Nascar Heat to create what was then know as IRL-Heat. The IRL-Heat Mod was a valid project that hopefully would fill a long-standing void in Simulation Racing for open-wheeled-Indy Car fans. Their project was the first of its kind since the days of Indy Car Racing II by Papyrus, circa 1995. Fans were ecstatic that there would again be Indy Car racing on the PC. IRL-Heat was built on a solid, proven platform with accurate car shapes, realistic physics, competitive AI drivers and a dependable Multiplayer code. About all these guys needed was a little more time to fine tune some of the details and this would have been a pure open-wheeled racing simulation born solely from the desire to create a title unlike any before it. Unfortunately, they received a cease and desist order from none other than the IRL office threatening a lawsuit if they continued. As fate would have it, Tony had already made a deal with the devil (read: Codemasters) by contracting with them to build "Indy Racing Series". I'm left to assume that Tony must have put his Brain in a Jar and left it on the shelf somewhere. This project (IRL-Heat) did continue on under the name of the All-American Open Wheel Racing but after the severe blow dealt by the action of the IRL, the fire that had once driven the endeavor was snuffed out in an instant by corporate greed. Although this review started in a rather unusual manor, it's important to know where we've been in order to know where we are going. It's not the design of this review to bash the reputation of Codemasters because they have been quite good to our business and the industry. They continue to listen to our suggestions and improve on their product, which is more than I can say for the majority of publishers. I'm also certain they had no part in the demise of the IRL-Heat project. They innocently won the bid to publish the Indy Car Series title. It is however my opinion that the IRL-Heat project was prematurely terminated without an honest evaluation of the validity of the project and what it could have become. Having digested the assessment above I need to profess that I actually enjoyed racing the Indy Car Series title because the cars are actually fun to drive. As a lover of motor sports, that is what it's all about in the end. Like I stated earlier, when you have the most famous race circuit in the world at your disposal, you can take a few liberties. Yet after a few trips to the track and then back to the garage, I discovered that this game had some flaws in it and there were more that I hadn't seen in my initial trial run.I was trying my best to bring an open mind to this review because I wanted this to be the open-wheeled racing simulation that has been missing in our community for so long. Regardless of what other platforms and situations came before, I think it only fair to judge a game on its own merit. Even the fact that the game came on 2 CD's was somewhat impressive. Surely a title that comes in the form of 500Mb would have a tremendous amount of depth to it, although at this point I'm beginning to wonder what took up so much space! It certainly wasn't in the victory lane celebration after my first win. There were a couple of things that really put me off right from the start. The first was in the initial install. Anytime there is an advanced option for the install of any software, that's the first button I look for. Even though I'll never fill my hard drive to capacity, I always look for ways to save space and more importantly there's no need to install a bunch of junk that I'll never ever use. Obviously, I must have chosen not to install something that was critical to the game function because the second time I installed it, it wouldn't work. It would be nice if the installer mentioned just exactly what was critical to the game and what was not. Because I would honestly like to know what it was. I guess my best advice would be to install the game to the directory of your choice and leave the rest of it alone. The second item that got me hoppin' mad was the fact that I could not calibrate my controller within the game. There is just no excuse to omit that critical part of matching the users' controller to the input of ANY game engine. DirectX is there for a reason and I just don't understand why these coders can't get that through their head. Now there are some controller options that are within the game to adjust for speed sensitivity and dead-zone and they honestly do what they are supposed to. But on the other hand there is absolutely no information in the readme or anywhere else I could find that would actually explain how to adjust these settings. You have to just cut and try the settings until you can drive the car the way you want. In my own situation, I had to drag another controller out of the closet just to be able to drive the game. The controller that I built many years ago and works with every other title that I've wanted to buy simply would not work. I could steer the car but the brakes and gas were full on. There was a suggestion in the readme to disable the brake for a hard-wired split-axis-type controller. I tried the suggestion but I still had to push down on the gas to slow down in the corners. One thing that I did discover was that the game will accept multiple controllers. My trusty wheel and the Act Labs pedals and still more cut and try efforts in the controller options were the only thing that let me drive the game in the manner I am used to. Now that I can actually drive and explore some of the other options in the game, I thought I would try out some of the other tracks to see what they were like. Since I have had some seat time at the Kansas Speedway, I thought that would be a logical place to start. I know where the groove is there and I'm familiar with the banking as well, so I figured that to be a good place to test my setup knowledge. After reading a few of the help tips in the setup menu, I thought I had the car setup well enough to race. I seem to remember that one of the setup tips stated that at tracks where good speed is maintained that the down-force on the body itself is generally enough to balance the car. In other word, you don't need a bunch of wing in the setup to make it handle. I'm left to assume that 200 mph isn't enough speed to create down-force with the body alone because I had 14 degrees of wing angle in the front, negative 4 degrees in the rear wing, completely bottomed out the weight-jacker and the car was still an under-steering pig. With that series of setup parameters plugged into a real IRL car, it would have flown down the straight with the rears off the ground. I don't expect to need a mechanical engineering degree to create a decent setup within any simulation but at least they could come closer than they did. I tried every setting in the menu and the car still pushed like a shopping cart. I even dragged another controller out of the dungeon thinking maybe it was my wheel that was the culprit. After wasting another 30 minutes getting that contraption installed and configured to the game, nothing changed. Now there are 2 wheels and 5 pedals attached to the game and the darn thing still won't turn.Even though I could not achieve the balance that I desired, I still wanted to mix it up with the AI and see what they had to offer. Since the game has no multiplayer option at all, this was going to be my only chance to actually race. Although I had heard some grumbling about the lack of mirrors in the game from some others that had tried it, I hadn't really noticed that there was no mirror until I got on the track with some other cars. In test-drive mode, I was so concerned with trying to keep my under-steering pig off the wall, I didn't have time to look in the mirror. I even exited back to the controller options to find out how to set my wheel buttons to look left and right. To my disappointment even that option was missing. There is an option to look behind you but I don't have the desire to see where I've been at this juncture. I need to know who is on each side, not who is behind me. At this point, I'm not sure that I even want to go back and resume the race. I know I'm going to be an accident waiting to happen if I can't see where my competition is around me. Fortunately, I started in the tail of the field and since, as predicted, the AI cars start on warm tires, they were well ahead. When I did eventually catch up, that's when things got interesting. The AI does seem to respect that there is another car beside them and do try to avoid that car. When one of them enters the corner with you and your spotter is calling, "Outside�. Outside" and you can't see or hear where he's at, that's a scary place to be. Since I'm driving a car that only turns when you lift off the accelerator, you make an easy target to be overtaken. Then the car that is passing suddenly appears from behind the front tire. You see the perspective of the in-car view is so narrow that the car that has just passed you seems actually smaller than your front tires. From the cockpit the view angle is so narrow that all you can see to the left and right are your tires and even though there is a car right beside you, you can't see them until they are past the front end of your car. And the odd thing is that the AI car looks to be about half the size of your car. I recently watched the Miami IRL race and even from the visor cam, you still have some peripheral vision. When a car pulls up alongside, you can see the wing approaching and then the tire as well. Another thing I noticed in that IRL race was that the car alongside looked to be the same size. Certainly your eye has a wider view angle than a lipstick camera and even with a helmet on, you should still be able to determine by sound positioning where other cars are around you. The longer I drove, the more I felt like I was looking the wrong way through a pair of binoculars. Then when it came time to pit, suddenly I wasn't driving the car anymore. Instead, I'm a passenger in a blimp watching the car I was driving proceed down pit lane on its own. I was sure I turned the Auto Pit option off. I can only assume that the tire modeling was so bad that no one would have been able to control their car at less than race speed and the fix was to simply have the game take over and drive you on and off pit-road. Why not model the pit speed rev-limiter that the real IRL cars possess and leave us in the car to watch the crew work? Honestly, the one exceptional feature in the game is the action of the crew. They actually remove the tires and at least pretend to be fixing the necessary damage. It sure would be neat to see that while sitting in the car.There are a few good points to this title and I think that they are valid and worth mentioning. At some of the tracks the AI are quite aggressive and even when you pass them, they don't disappear behind you. The actual sounds of the cars are spot on. The menus to get into and out of the race are simply and effective. There are options to run races at 10 laps, 20 laps, Quarter-length, Half-length and Full race, which depicts the actual IRL race at each particular venue. Although I don't feel the need to be asked twice if I'm sure I want to exit or move on to another track but the process would eliminate some accidental keystrokes. The tracks are well defined, accurate as to shape and size and look correct. All of the buildings and surroundings of the tracks are in their proper places and well modeled. The sky textures at many of the tracks are visually pleasing but there seems to be a commonality to the weather throughout the series. Meaning that the weather is fixed at one scenario at every venue. The Richmond race is run at night, which one would expect to see stars and the moon seeing as how the weather is clear at the other tracks. The team logos are correctly represented so you definitely get the visual sense that you are an IRL competitor, although about the only time you can clearly view the other car textures is during a pit stop or while viewing a replay. And lastly at some of the tracks where you can simply lift off the accelerator to allow the car to turn in, the actual driving of the cars is pleasant and fun. At tracks such as Miami, Richmond and Phoenix where you would normally use the brakes to set the chassis for the corner, the physics of the cars simply don't match and the player's car is absolutely at a disadvantage to the AI. The brakes are absolutely worthless throughout the game. There is a mention in the Master Class tutorial about not using the brakes but I assure you at tracks like Richmond and Phoenix, you need them. Just a slight touch of the brakes at any track and the left front tire is locked solid. I also noticed that after you release the brake, that the left front wheel stays locked for a few milliseconds after you let off the pedal. This could have been an issue with the interim pedal set that I was using however I seriously doubt it and I certainly wasn't about to spend another 20 minutes trying to configure another set. One of the races that I ran at Chicagoland Speedway, I clouted the wall but was able to continue with a damaged wheel. The odd part was that I actually ran my fastest lap with a damaged right front and there was definitely no sensation of the vibrating wheel input to the Force Feedback. Going down the straight at 220 MPH with the right front tire jumping off the ground, one would certainly expect some sort of input back to the wheel. You also wouldn't expect to be able to make the corner with damage like that either. When there is contact with another car or your car is merely damaged due to contact with the wall, the caution flag never waves in any mode of the game. The player is either ejected from the race by irreparable damage, or destined to struggle on behind the field with no possible means to catch up. The game will implement the black flag if you jump the start, but that's the only time I saw anything but green. Then when my car was sent to the pit to serve the stop and go penalty, even though I had damage to my car, there was no option to fix it. The player is driven out on the track by the game and you must pit again to repair the damage. That is providing you make it back around. I don't generally rate games in a review. Some reviewers like to give a score but at times I think people go right to the score and skip the article itself. I feel it's important to just explain the things I see and describe them the best I can. If I were to give Indy Car Series a rating, it would be: incomplete because there are just too many things missing in a game of this caliber. With such a competitive series to emulate as the IRL and with the inclusion of the Indy 500, you just have to do a better job than Brain in a Jar has done with this title. In this day and time it is inexcusable to omit a controller calibration applet with the wide array of controllers that are on the market today. If you fail to connect the player to the game, you can never expect that player to continue on and play. I also believe that today's racing games must include a multiplayer function. After all, it is a racing game built with competition in mind and the PC-gamers expect to be able to race other humans. There are some good features and implementations in this title but the bad far outweigh the good. I even searched other forums to see if someone out there had discovered something in this title that would bring some life back to it. Unfortunately it seems that most of the topics related to Indy Car Series died only a few short months after it was released. That right there tells a big part of the story. But there is one bright point in all of this. I just found 500Mb of hard drive space that I didn't have before and I have two brand new coffee coasters to put into circulation. |
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Comments : |
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| Author: kenchy | 03-03-2004 |
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I was really looking forward to this "sim" being released. I even pre-ordered it but decideed not to buy after I played the demo. I'ts such a crying shame that Codemasters are prepared to release this sort of crap. |
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| Author: Loafy | 03-03-2004 |
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Spot on! I thought I was the only one who thought that game was a piece of shit! Funny thing is, you read the forums, and some people love the game and enjoy it! I have been playing racing sims since World Circuit (anyone else remember splitscreen?) through all the Papyrus Nascar sims and GPL, F12000 on to F1C, all the related mods, Rally Trophy, DTRs, various CMRs, etc. I really missed Papy's ICR, and wanted to like this game, but the handling is soooo way off its just NOT fun to play, at least not if you are into realism! |
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| Author: 350plus | 03-03-2004 |
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This game could have been really good... IRL racing is so exciting and they only managed to release a bad mix between arcade and simulation...I played this game for one day and when I went back to nascar racing 2003... what a difference... |
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| Author: David B Harrison | 03-03-2004 |
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Thanks for the comments guys. I hate to slam any game but this one deserved it and honestly, it's not a slam: Just the way it is. It was hard to keep going on it just to have enough info to finish the review. I only got this review copy about 3 weeks ago. That tells you something about the publisher doesn't it?? My only regret was that I didn't get a chance to warn people sooner. |
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| Author: badrider | 03-03-2004 |
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just one thing i can sey about this sim'' i'ts junk |
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| Author: Scott Michaels | 03-03-2004 |
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sounds like its good for a blast, i quite enjoyed the demo, but not good for what it should be made for, real racing. a real shame |
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| Author: dave | 04-03-2004 |
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People go right to the score of a reivew because they don't always have time to read some fool's ramblings. Sometimes people just need to get to the point a little quicker. You should try it... |
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| Author: Paul Mazzulla | 04-03-2004 |
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as a long time indy fan I was very dissappointed with this game. I played it once and have nver touhed it agian...great review, you were to kind. |
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| Author: Bert Baker | 09-03-2004 |
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I agree with you completely. After racing the papy game for so many years with all one can do with it, plus the Nascar 2003 game and an even easier time to use and enjoy it, I must admit I have been BIG TIME disappointed with this game. At times, I wonder if Codemasters is even listening or they have the ability to develope a state of the art Indy game. No on-line play with ai adjustment, plus all the other things afforded in Nascar 2003 make this game look much like the l989 first ever game by Papyrus. I believe this is inexcusible. Dale Jr. and Bobby Lebonte openly talk about the Nascar game they play. That sells. I have been surprised the IRL hired such an inept company such as codemasters to do this game at a time when Indy badly needs more people to become interested in its very good product. The game however stinks. I have read some who like it, but I do not believe they are hard core simulation fans because this game runs really in arcade mode. I understand someone is doing an open wheel mod from Nascar 2003 and am looking forward to it because I know that will be better and will include on-line play. One more thing, I have read that the new 2005 ICS game will have on-line play, but again only up to sixteen cars. Once again, SUB PAR. Prov. 3:6 |
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| Author: FTG | 24-04-2004 |
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The IRL sucks, the cars suck, the tracks suck, and the author of this review is an idiot. |
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| Author: De | 03-12-2006 |
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Hi! Once I solved the understeering problem, I actually enjoyed the game a lot. Turn up the speed sensitivty of the wheel to 100%(game main menu-option-steering wheel options), try it! To be fair this a very good game. |
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