George Soropos thinks Live for Speed 2's S1 release promises good things to come.
In an industry that is increasing in size every year, and with budgets that would make an Australian film producer green with envy, it's almost impossible to believe that three guys could put together a PC title good enough to compete with the likes of EA and Atari.
Scawen Roberts, Eric Bailey and Victor van Vlaardingen began work on Live For Speed roughly three years ago after Roberts and Bailey had left the team at Lionhead Studios. A test demo of the game has been around for a long time now and many of you may have already had a bash using the three cars and single track available in that version.
The new 'S1' release is the first commercially available part of what will eventually be a four part release for LFS and offers quite a lot for around $25. S1 can only be purchased online from the developer's website, so you will need a credit or debit card to get your hands on it. For that modest outlay you will receive four more cars and three new track areas with multiple configurations, 28 in all. As in the demo the extra cars have to be 'unlocked' with race points gained from finishing in a podium position in either the single player or online games.
On the surface LFS is a fine looking piece of work with the car models sharp and spunky, although modeled on some dinky Japanese sports car types. The trackside details are fantastic, when you have time to notice them, and the game interface is straightforward with adjustments taking little time away from racing when you're in the 'pits' The controller setup page is a little confusing at first, but only because it has such a plethora of detail.
Which brings us to one critical point, in order to help keyboard players the game gives them a little help with steering, and at the time of writing a well practiced keyboard player can beat a player with a stick or wheel of the same skill level because of this. However by the time this magazine hits the newsstands this quirk should have been fixed with a suitable patch. The developers are also yet to implement visible car damage, although your car's performance will be affected by accidents if the server is set for it.
Under the bonnet, so to speak, LFS features some impressive physics modeling with details such as tyre flexing and your car's weight distribution adding to the driving experience. There is a detailed car setup system in the 'pits' and the ability to send car setups to each other from within the game so that all players have the same setup, or just to swap and compare. The different cars offer front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and four wheel drive action and handle appropriately most of the time. There is a small problem with the low speed handling of some of the cars with their rear ends fishtailing a bit too easily at low speeds, but again with all the player input this is bound to be touched up in an upcoming patch.
The single player AI featured in LFS is certainly not the best you've ever seen in a game, but acceptable while you're building up points to unlock new cars. AI drivers don't mind smacking your arse around so watch out! However the main focus of LFS is online play and for that it is superbly suited. Weather you're playing with a cable connection or a humble 56Kb LFS runs smoothly, requiring only very small packet transfers between PC and server.
Live For Speed also features the easiest custom skin creation system we've ever seen in a racer. Just grab a template skin from the game directory, plaster some graphics on it (doesn't matter if you go over the lines or outside the template) and the game does the rest. Unfortunately at the moment the only way other racers can see your skins is if you email them around. Hopefully the S2 release will see that situation remedied. If you start your own league you can always get players to upload their skins to a directory on your server.
There are a few independently developed racers in the works at the moment: 'Racer': http://www.racer.nl/, 'NetKar': http://www.drivingitalia.net/netkar/ and 'Racing Legends': http://www.west-racing.com/racing.htm. However Live For Speed is the first one to market with their 'S1' release and already building quite a following locally and overseas. Open wheelers, karts and off road vehicles are planned for future releases and with so much user input the game can only get better.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012