Game Review: DRIVECLUB

Released today, the new PlayStation 4-exclusive DRIVECLUB looks an absolute treat.

Sunlight plays off the dashboard and body of your car as well as the track surrounds in a thoroughly authentic way.

Some of the early single-player events take place at dusk, with rays of light mixing with blossom kicked up off the road and smoke haze diffusing the setting sun.

As the sun retreats below the horizon, flares and street lights illuminate the mountain-pass track as cars vie for position with the finish line looming.

Evolution Studios' latest car racing game has come a long way from what was to be a PS4 launch title in November last year.

We had some time with the game and also spoke to Simon Barlow, the lead developer of the PlayStation-exclusive Motorstorm series of crazy racing games, who said the latest DRIVECLUB instalment proved difficult to get out the door.

“We had a game at [PS4] launch that we could have shipped," he said. "It would probably have sold quite well and reviewed quite well, but our vision was pretty ambitious and it felt to us that it wasn’t doing that justice.”

Essentially the team was happy with the core racing game play of DRIVECLUB, but not with the surrounding social framework. And it is this 'club' aspect of the title that gives DRIVECLUB its identity.

However let’s cover off the 'drive' aspects first.

“These are probably the most detailed cars in the industry right now,” says Barlow of the DRIVECLUB cars, each of which takes seven months to create. All vehicles are 'built' based on manufacturers' CAD data, as well as real road tests.

“We have built this engine for the lifespan of the PS4, so not just DRIVECLUB but for games to follow.

“It’s one thing to capture the physics of a car. If you have the CAD data then you can do that.  However, we wanted to take that further and do what not many games do and capture the feel and the personality of these cars.

"We are car enthusiasts. We have been doing this a long time. We love cars and racing and we wanted to recreate that emotional connection with these vehicles," said Barlow.

"We’ve pitched it somewhere between arcade and sim. It is dangerous to do that because sometimes you try to hit both targets and miss all. It has to be accessible, it has to be pick-up-and-play, but it also has to have depth because if you are trying to build a community and it has a shallow handling model then nobody will stick around.”  

Driving through the hot-hatch tour events, it is evident this game is certainly edging more on the arcade side. There are no difficulty settings and no driving assists, but in the racing events you can – if you want – bump and crash your way to victory.  

You will, however, pay for that in terms of lost Fame -- the in-game experience currency used for unlocking new cars and paint jobs among other things.

“You can’t simulate everything in a game. Even if you get the mathematics correct for a one-to-one physics model, you cannot simulate peripheral vision, nor g-forces, nor that feeling through the bum that the car is on the edge of adhesion.” says Barlow.

As such the game consist of excellent visuals, including individually modelled cockpits, great audio and ultimately fun racing in a package that delivers something different to most racing games on the market today.

Most are shooting for even more realism, and it takes some time to get used to the lack of driving assist options, tuning customisation and a damage model that goes beyond the procedurally generated cosmetic-only effects.

“This engine has a full material database,” says Barlow. "When we look at a material we know its density, how it reflects light -- all the material data is there.”

Damage happens in layers. Materials will damage as they would in real life -- metal bends, carbon-fibre fractures and glass smashes at the point of impact.

“There is no mechanical damage, like you can’t pop a tyre or lose a gear, and there is no hinged damage like a flappy door or similar,” says Barlow.

The Artificial Intelligence opponents are reasonably challenging. Evolution has tried to avoid the AI rival becoming processional by keeping them on the driving line. There has been an induction of personality as much as possible, meaning each AI driver may draft, cut in across your driving line and make mistakes, adding greatly to the game's immersion.

“It rewards you for driving correctly; it rewards you for backing off and finding a better time to make that pass,” explains Barlow.

Thankfully, as is the case in many games, there is no rubber-banding (where the AI speeds up or slows down depending on where the human player is).

The game features atmospheric conditions based on actual altitude, latitude and time of year. "Even down to the star-field that would be accurate for that location. Yep, we are completely insane," laughs Barlow.

The game also features a lighting model that features a light-quality effect based on the geo-location atmospheric engine. Given the right location (ie: Norway) and conditions, it is even possible to witness an Aurora Borealis.

With an extra year to develop the game, the studio has been able to advance features on the development road map. Before the end of the year, expect weather to be a free download.

“We had a whole art team that has had a whole extra year to work, which is why we started to look at weather,” says Barlow.

Rain for instance will be volumetrically modelled, as Barlow explains: “Water levels will rise if you watch it for long enough. Park next to a river and that river will rise.”

“In Scotland it will rain, but take that to Norway and turn on the precipitation modelling and it will snow. Snow will build up and fall down the mountains correctly.”

But what really sets the game apart is the 'club' element we mentioned earlier. Everyone will want to form or be part of a club.

“They are deliberately small," says Barlow. "This is not like a guild or a clan -- it’s six people. Last year it was 12. Originally we designed clubs more like guilds – 30 or 40 players.

"We have refined it -- six feels about right. The idea is that it is you and five of your close friends. This way everybody feels part of the club, rather than a cog in the machine.”

The idea is to be as inclusive as possible. You might be more interested in Drifting events rather than Racing, so you can favour these events, earn more Fame and contribute to the club in that way.

Specific cars will only be unlocked within a club, each of which will be identified by club badge and club paint job. Club accolades that are earned can go on the side of your car like WWII plane kill markings.

Online game play breaks down broadly into asynchronous and synchronous styles. Synchronous is what you expect -- 12 cars on a track and away you go.

Racing has a start and a finish: “You have to be there at the start and what we found was in our own titles everybody waits around, waits for the start then a few people drop out and you end up with three or four people that finish the race. Then you wait for three or four minutes to start something else.”

DRIVECLUB takes a different approach, dynamically plonking players into match slots. When you go online you can see a series of upcoming events which you can sign up to. You can see what the event is, who has signed up already including friends. The game helps here, matching up friends, clubs and registered events.

Barlow is proud of this dynamic system, which was after all the code that caused the major delay in releasing the game.

“The match slots themselves will dynamically change depending on what is popular, and who has signed up for which events," he said.

The server will adjust the period between popular events and combine groups as needed to give players a fuller experience.

Barlow explains the Challenge system, the heart of DRIVECLUB asynchronous game-play.

“I pick this track, this car, this time of day, weather conditions (once we release the weather update) and this is the time and the score that I set. This I send to everybody on my friends list and beyond, with say, three days to beat it.”

There are individual Challenges and Club Challenges, and in practice it works fluidly. Players can attempt to beat the challenge for the timeframe allowed and, once expired, Fame points are distributed according to the challenge leaderboard. The more people that take part, the more Fame is awarded.

DRIVECLUB is exclusively available for the PlayStation 4 game system from today.