Inside BugBear's studio in Finland - New Ridge Racer Unbounded action

[RVR72GV]

What for? I thought I understood you won't buy the game, because of all what you were detailing here for months; the bad stuff Namco & Bugbear did to the Ridge Racer franchise and so...

Or did I miss something? 

Hush, you remember why Split/Second developer have been killed right? They try to lock the FPS into 30FPS, make a horribly unoptimized PC port, and zero, yes ZERO customer support and/or patching for all their troubles. It's so horrifying for one of the best arcade racer of 2010....

And you don't want it to happen in your beloved Bugbear's creation, right?

Besides, nobody enjoys driving in slo-mo.

[GulBroz]

Now you're putting things backward; it's because it was an horrible, unoptimized console port that the FPS was locked to 30...

And you can't start whining about RRU being a bad console port while the game is not out yet... (I'm not defending Bugbear here, if they've done crap, I'll admit it, not buy their game and keep waiting for GRiD2...)

[RVR72GV]

Now you're putting things backward; it's because it was an horrible, unoptimized console port that the FPS was locked to 30...

And you can't start whining about RRU being a bad console port while the game is not out yet... (I'm not defending Bugbear here, if they've done crap, I'll admit it, not buy their game and keep waiting for GRiD2...)

It seems that you still don't understand about the situation yet....I'm not whining since we don't actually know what eventually will happen with the PC version, I'm just hoping that they don't make any ridiculously unnecessary screw-up that will cost them a lot of customers.

It already happened for the Xbox360 version anyway.

[Purple44]

It already happened for the Xbox360 version anyway.

**********************************************

How you get 60 FPS a second on a console with today's games? Both the 360 and PS3 have about reach their limit on what their CPU and GPU can handle. Which graphic wise, have done better than I ever expected of a console.

The consoles need the new console generation being release next year to keep up with the PC.



****************************************************


Just pre-order PC version of RRU from GAME.co.uk. Cost me £24.99\ $33.16 plus over seas shipping £4.95, = £29.94\ $39.73 total for RRU. Just hope my order goes through OK next week. I doubt game will arrive here in Washington state by next Friday, March 30, but do hope game make it here by mid week, about April 4.

Price is right, getting for $40 including tax and shipping charge. PC version of RRU going to cost at least $40 when it show up at local Gamestop some day, plus retail tax.

[RVR72GV]

It already happened for the Xbox360 version anyway.

**********************************************

How you get 60 FPS a second on a console with today's games? Both the 360 and PS3 have about reach their limit on what their CPU and GPU can handle. Which graphic wise, have done better than I ever expected of a console.

The consoles need the new console generation being release next year to keep up with the PC.

Then, how games like Burnout Paradise and even NFS: Hot Pursuit can have a smooth 60FPS without any problem? Even IMHO (no offense), Unbounded's graphics is totally inferior to Hot Pursuit.

Although the PC version of Hot Pursuit still rather...unoptimized (stuttering everywhere even using high-end rig)

[RVR72GV]

Also, some major oddity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryBN37XCB6I&feature=player_embedded

Check at 05:30. You can see the player's car getting killed....by ramming the other car's back

At least, I'm glad Bugbear didn't put overrated blur effect like in FO3

[Heddly]

The game has not been released yet and making assumptions about it will not ease your concerns. Just let it be.

[RVR72GV]

I thought so. I'm just making observations based on the released Xbox360 version.

edit: from Bugbear

PC retail copies will be activated on Steam, so yes, it will be linked to your Steam account.

Get yer Steam account ready until then.

[Purple44]

Here a link to a preview article:

PREVIEW: Bound to impress.

Unbounded's campaign splits itself into various districts, each with a number of races to unlock. To begin with you'll only have a handful, but winning - or rather, dominating - races unlocks further tracks. Many of these are of the most typical 'domination' mode, where the goal is to win but you can use Power to destroy objects and rivals. Some are Shindo racing, where Power is swapped out for Nitro and you race supercharged vehicles in a theoretically 'clean' race to the finish line. Then there are Frag matches, where the goal is - yes, you guessed it - to frag a number of other racers in a mode that feels like it belongs in Burnout, but is no less enjoyable for that. One of the races in the preview build I got to play had me driving a massive truck cab, tasked with taking out as many police interceptors as possible. I won't deny, that was great fun. Most of the cars are of a more sporty variety, however, and whilst you won't find any licensed vehicles in Unbounded, the cars that are available do a good job of passing themselves off as the real thing.

*********************************************************



"Some are Shindo racing, where Power is swapped out for Nitro and you race supercharged vehicles in a theoretically 'clean' race to the finish line."


I hope this racing mode is online. This mode would be more like Flatout and the way I race with friends online. And if this mode is online, will have to design some tracks with shortcuts that don't need power boost to destroy wall to open shortcuts.


*********************************************************


Saw in this video there are races with traffic, like TDU2. 

Ridge Racer Unbounded Walkthrough - Part 10

Did not find any video of a player using the track editor yet.    ConstipatedOwl said he do some track editing after he get done with career mode.

[RVR72GV]

Did not find any video of a player using the track editor yet.    ConstipatedOwl said he do some track editing after he get done with career mode.

IIRC the track pieces have to be unlocked by progressing through the career mode, so yeah.

Domination mode is your very standard race mode, you blast your opposition while you doing you-know-what. Shindo racing is essentially a special event that straps you in a special Shindo car while doing specific event, so nothing special in particular.

Also, I love how Bugbear still strapping Race and Street classes in this game, even though this obviously is not Flatout.

[RVR72GV]

The very first official(?) review by an Italian video gaming site:
http://www.everyeye.it/ps3/articoli/ridge-racer-unbounded_recensione_16472

Rated:

TBH, If every site score it in such score level, I might consider borrow/buy it if the price drops like a rock. I still can't judge on personal opinions yet since their opinion are still too mixed

update: Another review by another Italian gaming site, this time it gets 8.5
http://www.mondoxbox.com/recensione/1452/ridge-racer-unbounded.html

update2: Another Italian reviewer. Still gets a relatively high rating despite of "This is not Ridge Racer" complain like mine
http://multiplayer.it/recensioni/101024-ridge-racer-unbounded-un-taglio-con-il-passato.html

update3: The highest rating so far, 9/10 by Edge Magazine
http://www.edge-online.com/reviews/ridge-racer-unbounded-review
I'm pretty sure most of us (including me, ironically) will going bananas with this

[Purple44]

Did some checking this morning, if you want to get your hands on Ridge Racer Unbounded in the US, you need to live on the east coast and go to Gamestop. They got limited supply of 360 version of Ridge Racer Unbounded. It may take a day or 2 before RRU show up in Gamestop stores on the West Coast.

There no PS3 version yet in the Gamestop stores, maybe by Friday. And no PC version to be found anywhere, retail or online in the US. No RRU of any kind in store yet at Best Buy.

So it would seem only the PC version delay in the US and PS3 if it not in stores by Friday.


Bugbear has posted that Steam will sell RRU world wide come Friday. But RRU still a no show at Steam for a pre-order. But if want a retail PC disk version of RRU, you are going to have to import it. I'm still waiting for email form game.co.uk that my PC version of Ridge Racer Unbounded has shipped.

[Purple44]

Does this mean RRU will not get ship to me this week?   

http://www.game.co.uk/wcsstore/holding_page/game/index.html?storeId=10151

MJA Jervis and SD Maddison are licensed in the United Kingdom to act as insolvency practitioners by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and we hope to be back up and running very soon.



Why did this have to happen this week.  GRRRR

[RVR72GV]

Does this mean RRU will not get ship to me this week?   

http://www.game.co.uk/wcsstore/holding_page/game/index.html?storeId=10151

MJA Jervis and SD Maddison are licensed in the United Kingdom to act as insolvency practitioners by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and we hope to be back up and running very soon.



Why did this have to happen this week.  GRRRR

No. Forget about GAME, they're already dead. But Bugbear twitter's said that it will be on Steam in 30, yes (although there's still hardly any signs of life on Steam)

edit: Most people said the X360 version is already available all over America.

edit2: Apparently the PS3 ver. has out as well. Shame the game won't show up in Steam till 30 though.

[RVR72GV]

Still, I don't want to put my expectation too high. Too high expectation and you'll be disappointed big time.

Still awaiting for IGN's review, though.

Although it seems that Bugbear's tactic not to show Unbounded in Steam is to avoid piracy. (Ironic since the Xbox360 version was leaked 3 days before the official release)

edit:

Here are some online details (just booted the game back up):
- User can create a city which consists of 5 tracks
- Each track can feature 1 of 5 events (Same as campaign)
- You can add traffic, time of day, AI difficulty, car class, time limit
- There are 9 areas to choose from in the tile editor (you can mix and match tiles from different areas)
- Anywhere from 5-15 tiles per area
- Advanced editor is too much to bullet out...you can basically do anything in there

When browsing through other peoples tracks:
- You can sort through cities by New, Cities of the Day, Hot Right Now, Top Cities, Favorites, and Published.
- Each track has a creator top time/score that you compete against with whatever bots he has set up (AI difficulty is chosen by creator)
- You can search for a city by creator name or city name
- 3 Featured cities appear on the main screen, 24 Hour Challenge, 6 Hour Challenge, and 1 Hour Challenge...seems like a neat way to rotate cities in and out
- You can also select multiplayer, and choose any user created city to play in

edit3:

the game will be available on steam on Friday.

edit4: Purple44, you might want to be disappointed at this:

The max racers in a lobby is 8. So, the max amount of players in one match is most likely also 8.