@t_havok said:
@bollard: How do you find the AI? Are they aware of your position on the track?
It's a bit of a mixed bag depending on the car and track. I've found that the AI generally is aware of you, and do try and stay out of your way if appropriate, or overtake you if they have the opportunity, but that their driving lines sometimes are not great - I would hope that these would be updated either before or immediately after release. The AI is definitely much improved from even a couple months ago, and they do make realistic-looking mistakes, although I've also seen them drive perfectly over the dirt in situations where you'd lose control. In the career mode they also seem incredibly slow off the line, not so elsewhere, so that's probably just a little tweak that needs making.
Using a G25, I feel like some cars are very enjoyable and you have a lot of good feeling, and others don't drive as you would expect, but they were tweaking all these up until recently and I've not had chance to go back through them all. The driving isn't going to get close to rF2 or Stock Car Extreme, but I would say, in most cases, it's close to Assetto Corsa, take that how you will.
The most impressive thing for me is the lighting and the weather conditions and change of time, coupled with the "real weather" on track wherever you are racing. I think the lighting is subtler than you might expect, and when the sun is setting and you're trying to pick your braking spot when driving into it, it does feel very much like the real thing - I've caught myself putting my hand over my eyes a couple times to shield the light, which I don't think I've ever done before with a game. Of course there's a bunch of different areas with the graphics where things should be better, such as the rain effect (especially compared to Driveclub), but I really hope they'll continue to work on it. The tracks are pretty. The replays are, in my opinion, the major disappointment with the graphics, the cameras are terrible - hopefully that's something they'll revise. Looking at the static cameras on Assetto Corsa, and the range of options you have in general, and then pCARS makes me very sad.
Anyway, I've seen a bunch of tweets from GAME over here in the UK having demos set up for people to play on XBONE / PS4, so if you're interested you might be able to find a place to have a spin. It's definitely worth checking out and I would say if you enjoy car racing at all then it's close to being a game you need to own on console due, of course in part to the lack of much else, and because it is a good game overall, and even though we're very spoiled at the moment for simracing on the PC, some of my most enjoyable moments recently have been with pCARS. This is turning into a bit of a novel, but two examples would be driving the Ginetta Juniors at Donington in the rainy fog, and realising when the sun came out and dried the track out a bit what a difference that made both in terms of game atmosphere and to the driving, and the time I started a 15 minute qualifying session in the sun, went to get a drink, got sidetracked, came back after about 7 minutes and it was starting to rain heavily, which meant that those who hadn't put a lap in (me and a couple AI) were going to be starting at the back of the grid.
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