Hello, in this blog I suggest we figure out what Dangerous Driving is and whether it is a spiritual successor to Burnout. If anyone is not in the know, a short excursion into history will correct this situation.
The Burnout series, created by Criterion Games, has been famous for adrenaline-pumping racing and juicy crashes since 2001. Has 7 main parts, a couple of mobile branches, one portable game and 2 re-releases. Critics’ ratings averaged 8 points, the developers have maintained the quality bar for many years and delighted fans, but for the last 10 years store shelves have been empty in anticipation of a new full-fledged game, while the development company is under the wing of Electronic Arts and is engaged in auxiliary work on NFS, Battlefield and Battlefront 2. Alex Ward, the head of Criterion, left the studio and founded a new one, years later there were loud headlines like – people from Criterion are preparing a spiritual successor to Burnout, well, let’s see what they did, but first a few words about Ward’s new company.
Three Fields Entertainment consists of 7 people and develops games using the Unreal Engine 4. Dangerous driving, which we will talk about today, is the fourth game of the company. And, it would seem, what could go wrong, because the founder of Criterion is at the helm, who better than him would know what to do? And then there was one big hairy one lurking, BUT. A staff of seven people and a modest budget could not allow the guys to realize everything they had planned, which is not surprising, because these factors are not a good reason to take on a spectacular, and what is important, arcade race.
“Five years ago, when we founded the studio, we immediately decided that our game would be called Dangerous Driving,” Alex Ward said in an interview. Apparently the developers were busy doing anything but this game, and when they realized it six months before the release, they quickly put together a techno demo and put it on sale. Although in an amicable way, they should have gone to kickstarter – show their work and ask for money, but apparently they understood that they would not raise the required amount. The current state of the gaming industry allows us to release games into early access and feed them with promises about the rapid development of the game, release frankly bad games and sell them for pennies, which STEAM is crap with. I think the developers took advantage of this successfully.
And so, Dangerous Driving is a whirlwind race with mind-bending gameplay… that will make you sad. The game has no analogues, such accidents as here… um… are in NFS and mobile Asphalt. An extensive fleet… consists of six poorly drawn cars, they also have the same physics of behavior on the road, but for each car there are 3 variations… although they are distinguished by a few body changes. Briefly speaking.
The game has 6 stages for each car, each stage offers a number of races, for example, Circuit races, sprints, time trials, elimination races and takedown (knock down as many rival cars as possible). I’m sure I missed something else, but it doesn’t matter. All modes are equally dull. The player starts with the SEDAN class. Completes all races and unlocks the next class – JEEPS. The player repeats the same procedure until the end of the game. A set of races where you essentially have the same car and the dumbest rivals – bravo to the spiritual successor.
“Basic console configurations could probably https://spybet.co.uk/mobile-app/ run the game at 60 frames per second, but that would require a full year of non-stop game optimization work from a dedicated team of five people. There are only seven of us, and we are making a game for three platforms at once. More time and money would have allowed us to fix this, just like for any other developer,” said Alex Ward in response to the remark that the team chose graphics quality over high frame rates for PS4 and XBOX One. QUALITY OF GRAPHICS INSTEAD OF HIGH PERFORMANCE THAT?! Thank you for being in Full HD. Speaking of the technical component: I didn’t notice any bugs during the short hours of play, the game ran at a stable 60 fps on the GTX 1060, if only this crap didn’t run at 60 fps, hello consoles, another proof of the superiority of the PC boyars.
I understand everything, 7 people cannot produce graphics of at least an average level, although wait, there is Yan Bing with his techno demo made in 2 years, there is Bright Memory also made by one person. And there’s no point in justifying the developers, they themselves set their sights on such a project, they set the price tag at 1.299. This is not just a technical demo, this is a full-fledged game. You can see for yourself that the graphics are toilet. I can’t even call it tolerable. The game has no style, the developers have no taste. Games from ten years ago look better, but why does Flatout 2 look better?. The game shows the level of mobile graphics. Now regarding the musical accompaniment.
There is music in the game menu, although only in the main menu of the game, otherwise we will have to be content with this. The game has an extremely sparse picture, and there is also no music during the races, which makes you sad and despondent. Only the sound of nitrous oxide will caress your ears throughout the game.
As the game progresses, you don’t get the feeling that the car is driving along the road, it seems to be hovering above it and reacts very sharply to button presses. Separately, I would like to thank the developers for their meticulous attitude towards PC players, they have the opportunity to play on VASD, arrows and even MOUSE, and all modes are enabled by default and during the race you can decide for yourself what is more convenient for you.
Bots are naturally stupid and cannot provide any competition to the player, although they are always hanging on the tail, it generally seemed to me that they adapt to the player’s speed and always stay behind. Their only chance of winning is if the player crashes on one of the last turns. Your big rival is oncoming traffic; as soon as you get hit, you will immediately find yourself behind all the bots and will have to catch up, which in general will not be difficult; they are actively freezing off before the finish line.Bots only create the appearance of confrontation, they can be shot down, thereby replenishing the nitro scale and admiring the excellent damage system, don’t doubt, the camera will select a cinematic view, because the developers have done a great job so that you enjoy these moments (no).
In fact, the game provides us with 6 poorly drawn cars and 3 variations of them, which differ in body kits, sometimes so slightly that it’s difficult to notice at first glance. These cars can’t even be called attractive. I also noticed that one of the variations has a POWER, if you can call it that – the car cannot use nitro until it has accumulated a full scale, after it is filled the supply will be infinite until you press the nitro button. It’s hard to say why this was introduced, because filling up the nitro scale is very simple, you need to drive in a lane, drift or hit someone. All cars have the same, extremely lousy, it’s hard to even call it arcade-like physics of behavior and the same speed +-. It is very difficult to get pleasure from driving, I would even say impossible. Regarding the tracks, we have Typical ones: winter and desert tracks, races through the jungle and forests. Even the effect of wet asphalt was brought in and oncoming traffic! The maps are not memorable, like a set of turns at different times of the year.
The average global rating for the game is 64 from critics and 51 from players, although in my opinion the game does not deserve this. The closest competitors in the field of arcade racing have gone no further, although the quality is enormously different. Need For Speed PayBack, The Crew 2 – 62 and 66, and users gave even less, which is to blame for the publisher’s desire to lure more money from the players. I’m not defending The Crew and NFS, but it’s stupid to deny that they are much better, of course, the budget and team are clearly larger, but if they didn’t succeed, then it was stupid to hope for the success of a team of 7 people.
The market for arcade racing is not large, but there is clearly plenty to choose from, and the choice here is definitely not in favor of Dangerous driving. For example, we have Forza, the same The Crew and NFS, or you can return to the original Burnout, fortunately we have Burnout Paradise on all major platforms, or on Xbox you can play Burnout Revenge through backward compatibility.
While I was writing the blog, I came across several videos about the game, and the guys spoke flatteringly about what they saw. Nobody paid attention to the terrible graphics or the identical physics of behavior of all cars.
Guys, if the developers are threatening to kill your families, then write to me, we will come up with something. I just can’t believe you paid for this game and were happy with it. Although they say in their videos that they need to support the developers with a coin, they will see the demand and make every effort to develop this project. Why pay money for a vague prospect, after all, over the 5 years of the company’s existence, they have made a simulator of the destruction of everything and everyone using a golf ball and 2 accident simulators, is there any point in trusting them??
The decaying STEAM, unfortunately, will not be able to provide you with this game, fortunately the godlike EPIC STORE comes to the rescue, for only 1.300 rubles. ON XBOX the price is 25 dollars and 30 dollars in PS STORE, which is approximately 1500 thousand rubles. You know very well even without me that with this money you can afford a lot of things in any of the stores listed above, fortunately frequent discounts are in our favor. Let’s go back to the competitors and what we see: The Crew 2 – on ps 4 1.200, on PC 1999, but the sale can knock the price down by 40% for sure. NFS – 1.200 on PS 4 and 625 on ORIGIN! Burnout Paradise Remastered – 1.500 rubles, and on STEAM the original game will be sold for 300, on sale it’s even cheaper.
I don’t understand at all why the developers are asking for 1300 wooden ones, although even for 500 rubles and below I would not advise anyone to buy this. If you really want to try it yourself, then the special torrent edition is quite easy to Google. And if someone says: buy a little one, let him play, it doesn’t matter to him what he drives, as long as the cars drive. NO. Even a six year old would spit in your face if he had to play this.
At some point I thought that the authors decided to make fun of the players and journalists. “No matter what shit we do, someone will still buy it. Let the gameplay be as boring as possible, for sure, we won’t even import the soundtrack into the game.»
I spent about 3 hours on the game and completed about half of the game, all this time I was accompanied by a Finnish sad face.Rating 1 out of 10, ok, ok, maybe this is too critical, so 2.63 out of 10. In general, when compared with other, even old arcade racers or the same Burnout, it becomes obvious that the game does not deserve attention.
Good luck to the developers and their projects, but at the moment they have not created a spiritual successor – but a pathetic semblance, a pseudo-ji, and generally shit.
Thank you for your attention, don’t be discouraged and don’t be dumb. Maybe I’ll see you again.