NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT>> A HONDA AND A MAZDA IN TOKYO
I hope I'm not boring you with these Need for Speed SHIFT stories. Just a few more and regular broadcasting will be resumed ;>…. I'm very excited by the finished game and as I was personally involved in some creative design aspects of the project in its initial stages, I'm enjoying the opportunity to share and discuss the project with you lot.
Here's an FD that I just built for myself. This is just one of several body-kit packages that you can purchase on its way to being transformed into a full blown, silhouette GT racer… But rather than show you the final evolution of the car, I wanted to make a nice track day, Time Attack car for myself….
The location I chose to shoot the screen shots was the Tokyo Dockyards.
Although a fictional series of roads, designed for maximum fun, the track is based a real life area of the Tokyo Docks.
For anyone who has been to Tokyo, you can see this location from the train that you take from Narita airport into the city. Just look out for the dockyard cranes and you'll see the area were this fictional track has been constructed.
Now the RX7 model which has appeared in many guises in various Need for Speed games over the years is based on the USDM model. So this means its LHD which perhaps is a little quirky since I've themed the story with a Japanese location. Oh well…
Most people who end up playing this game will do so with full race fields rather than solo time attack hot laps around an empty track….
For the moment I'm enjoying just designing and hot-lapping these different cars.
We can all imagine we're Russ from RE Xtreme, living the Japanese FD dream for a moment in time….
Do you think we've managed to capture the latest thinking in FD Tuning? I need to commend Bryn Alban from SMS for doing a good job with the styling of the car. As Bryn is a grass roots drifter in the UK and a (sometimes) contributor to Speedhunters he had a pretty clear idea what the RX7 needed.
I couldn't resist flooring the throttle as I took this offramp into the entrance to the dockyards… the backend stepped out but the FD handles so well that I could easily control the oversteer.
Overall this car is a big joy to drive. Looks great too!
I don't need to write anything more about how cool this car is do I?… let's move on…
I thought I would try out the second Tokyo Dockyards course with this bad boy… a fully maxed out Honda S2000.
Now I drove the RX7 on a high speed, flowing course whereas the S2000 was driven on a tighter layout of roads…. and boy, it really didn't like the tight circuit.
I think the car needed a serious bit of setup as it suffered from chronic understeer on low and medium speed corners… I probably had the ride height set too low, as I could hear (and feel) the chassis rubbing on the ground which probably wasn't helping.
The car felt very, very nervous and snappy…. It was pretty stressful to drive… one lapse of concentration and the S2000 was going to swap ends. Gobs of wheelspin were only a twitch of my throttle finger away… This car is so fast that it's a little unnerving to drive
BTW this is what the game looks like to drive… the other in-cockpit shots I've been showing so far have been from the replay camera… All of the driver's limbs are fully animated including gear shifts as well as brake and throttle foot action… Check out the exposed wires in the cockpits as well as the ECU on the floor. Nice work SMS!
You can also animate the driver's head with the second joystick… what is really crazy is that the game supports a 3D mode on PC which has to be seen to be believed!
I'm liking my flat white/gloss black look… BTW this is the Works kit at the end of the S2000's evolution, which to my eye it looks like a high end time attack car rather than a Super GT style racer… Not that it's a problem for me.
I also have a thing for Black wheels…
Understeer, understeer…. bleck…
I also found out the car suffered from snap oversteer too. I let off the throttle at exactly the wrong moment on a high speed switch-back and lost the back end… luckily I didn't hit anything!
I need to try this car on a high speed circuit like Spa to see if it does better under these conditions or if some setup work is needed to tame its wildness.
Ack another spin…. This was happening in a very high speed section of the circuit which is quite scary with the close proximity of the walls.
Well that's it for today… Tomorrow I'll show you a group of my favourite AWD cars from the game including the R34, EvoX, Evo9 and the GDB Impreza.
:Rod
