I put this on last night with tense apprehension after the demo left me the coldest I've been on the series in its entire history. Having fiddled around in the options I settled on Racing Control scheme which maps the acceleration to the rear L and R buttons and the firing to the face buttons which is far more intuitive than the usual old controls which aren't up to the job in this faster paced sequel.
My first port of call was the multiplayer which was very mixed. The online set up defies belief, relying on the age old player host system. Despite being out in the US there's not too much online activity going on with far too many players happy to set up a lobby and sit there for half an hour when there are enough players to start a game. You can easily spend the better part of an hour and only have one or two games but eventually I located a decent host and things got going. I've properly tried out just over half of the meagre 8 levels the game has.
The levels are a bit of a mixed bag but are much better than the demo suggested. The demo suburbs level is okay but far from the star of the show. The ones that work better are ones like Diesel City which is a proper throwback to TM1 and 2's built up metropolises with lots of breakable walls, hidden routes and rooftop jumping. The real star is supposed to be the amusement park level but I've not tried it yet. The weakest so far is the Arena which is the typical dull bowl with a smattering of traps. The laugh is, once you get past the awful lobby system and into a game it plays flawlessly smooth and the racing controls make settling in much quicker and easier.
It does have that old charm in there but they've gone about it the complete wrong way. The games origins as an online, digital only release would have been perfect as they've made no attempt to make any obvious improvements or changes to make it anything but a TM Black expansion.
Single player is like an overly difficult training mode. Groups of levels are bookended by FMV story segments for each of the three playable characters and each level has an objective, each players story ending in a boss battle. It's okay but the only real incentive to play it is the requirement to do so in order to unlock the cars for multiplayer use. So far it is fun and better than I'd feared it would be but it's a lazy effort by the devs and going to be very shortlived. The trouble for those waiting for it to be cheap however is that it's likely the online mode will be dead by then. Good for fans but won't convert anyone, a missed opportunity of sorts.
My first port of call was the multiplayer which was very mixed. The online set up defies belief, relying on the age old player host system. Despite being out in the US there's not too much online activity going on with far too many players happy to set up a lobby and sit there for half an hour when there are enough players to start a game. You can easily spend the better part of an hour and only have one or two games but eventually I located a decent host and things got going. I've properly tried out just over half of the meagre 8 levels the game has.
The levels are a bit of a mixed bag but are much better than the demo suggested. The demo suburbs level is okay but far from the star of the show. The ones that work better are ones like Diesel City which is a proper throwback to TM1 and 2's built up metropolises with lots of breakable walls, hidden routes and rooftop jumping. The real star is supposed to be the amusement park level but I've not tried it yet. The weakest so far is the Arena which is the typical dull bowl with a smattering of traps. The laugh is, once you get past the awful lobby system and into a game it plays flawlessly smooth and the racing controls make settling in much quicker and easier.
It does have that old charm in there but they've gone about it the complete wrong way. The games origins as an online, digital only release would have been perfect as they've made no attempt to make any obvious improvements or changes to make it anything but a TM Black expansion.
Single player is like an overly difficult training mode. Groups of levels are bookended by FMV story segments for each of the three playable characters and each level has an objective, each players story ending in a boss battle. It's okay but the only real incentive to play it is the requirement to do so in order to unlock the cars for multiplayer use. So far it is fun and better than I'd feared it would be but it's a lazy effort by the devs and going to be very shortlived. The trouble for those waiting for it to be cheap however is that it's likely the online mode will be dead by then. Good for fans but won't convert anyone, a missed opportunity of sorts.
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