It isn't only for non-commercial projects. They will also set up free commercial distribution licenses.

"approved game developers on the PC platform can execute a commercial distribution license with Havok for free"

Most stores that I know of wouldn't even put DIRT on the shelves because the system requirements were so high that even brand new systems couldn't run it at all. The list of supported ATI graphics cards alone disqualified half of the new cards on the shelves at the time.

Brilliant.

Lots of burned customers there with new systems who didn't bother to check the system reqs.

However, Sony is giving something away for free which is nice.

This comment was edited on Feb 21, 19:17.

As far as hardware goes, there is no excuse these days for any even halfway modern computer not to be able to run a new title. Maybe they might be expected to cut the settings down but it should still run.

If a new title doesn't run on a relatively modern computer then then the programmers simply don't know how to(or didn't even bother to) optimize.

On the software end, Windows-Vista-only, in which companies go out of their way to make sure that the majority of PC owners can't use their title, is suicidal.

That "Games For Windows" label is like a kiss of death for PC titles. Making games only for Vista has just about killed the PC games industry. Too many customers got burned by unknowingly buying games that they couldn't play or return. Too many retailers got burned by having pissed off customers fuming at them and trying to return open software. Even if they change the label to not be only for Vista, the damage is done.

Most retail space was already vanishing for PC games. EB games here stopped carrying any PC titles at all. Retailers just don't want to deal with the hassles related to most customers not being able to run their games and then trying to return them after the box is open.

I will happily dance on Circuit City's grave.

I haven't entered one in years. They would always advertise these decent deals and then never once had any of the worthwhile deals they advertised in stock. What they did have was absurdly overpriced and randomly placed on shelves thus forcing people to look over the entire department's shelf space while searching for what was supposed to be there. The old bait-and-switch every single time that I ever went in to one.

I hope the whole chain goes under.

I'm passing on this one. Too cartoonish for me. They did tempt me by bringing back some muscle cars though.

They keep yanking multiplayer support so fast for their recent games that I'm sure they will do the same to this in a year or two.

What is up with the blurry graphics on the last NFS games ? They over-do the visual effects so much that it looks pretty bad. The shaking car also looks a little silly.

Get Flatout2 instead. It's so much better than this in so many ways.

I only drove the Camaro but it was way too easy to win. I was just messing around trying to crash and slide and I still won all 3.

The handling is too cartoonish. It also completely changes for no explainable reason on the drifting track. You slide like an ice rink on the drifting track even if you drive exactly the same as you do on the other tracks. What a bunch of b.s.

I like that they finally pulled their heads out of their backside and included a few muscle cars.

The car customization tools are interesting though the fourth option on the Camaro hood completely locked up my computer every time that I clicked it. You've got to love waiting through that blue screen checking for disk errors after a crash.

They also should have made the custom muscle car options more like something that would really get added instead of just trying to make them look like the imports. Overall I give them credit for at least trying though.

I don't think I'll get this.

There are posts by Bugbear over a month old saying that the patch had been already finished and sent out some time ago at that point.

Yes, manual transmission is added. Euro and U.S. players can race each other.

Great, now the mods can get moving.

Am I reading too much into this or do they sound less than pleased with something ? Maybe just the delay ? The patch and demo were sent out a very long time ago but just seemed to sit in limbo at Vivendi for some reason. They seemed to have just forgotten about it or something.

The demo should be out any time.

This comment was edited on Oct 26, 12:02.

This is surprisingly good. It reminded me a little of the earlier Driver and Need For Speed back when they were still fun. It also has a touch of Flatout added.

The handling is a little more arcade than I'd like and I wish they had another handling level though.

The demo only has freeway missions and races so it's hard to tell what the forest and city missions and tracks are like.

I'm guessing it doesn't have multiplayer other than splitscreen.

I tend to dislike what looks like console ports but this wasn't bad. There is nothing like racing the wrong way on a crowded freeway while trying to chase someone down and wipe them out. The damage modelling is better than most games other than Flatout.


edit: It looks like this is made by the bunch that made World Racing 2. The files look the same so this will probably be capable of being modded.
This comment was edited on Oct 21, 08:51.

That settles it, I'm not buying this.

I want no part of letting spyware get a toe-hold on my pc. If this gets through, the next steps will be even more intrusive.

Adding that to the overinflated cost and too large demo size makes this an absolute no-buy.

In addition, claiming that your IP address isn't "personally identifiable information" is a little questionable.

This just seems creepy. It certainly fails the "ick" test.

Great. Add yet another franchise that EA has managed to ruin for me in the past few years.
This comment was edited on Oct 18, 12:41.

The comment about compression not working well on most of the more common file formats like dds isn't entirely accurate. I just zipped a 1,366 kb dds file down to 302 kb. It is true that it doesn't do much of anything to ogg files, however, and many of the other comments were good.

Eesh, 1.1gb for a demo ? They just lost me. Why don't they ever compress these downloads ? They put them in zips or other formats but almost always turn off compression. That's just plain silly.

It is added in the euro version patch. So is chat and a few other things.

This should let the euro and U.S. players race each other but I'm not sure.

This comment was edited on Sep 26, 15:49.

A dev posted that the demo and the patch have already been sent to testing a while ago and they are just waiting to hear back.

I'm wondering what their next game is going to be. Flatout3 ? Some new title ?

Another idea for the patch would be an option to allow only subclasses of each class of car in multiplayer. For example, only that first group cars in street class. As it is now, it doesn't make sense to choose any but the fastest group of cars from each class. Most of the cars are wasted.

The U.S. patch is coming.

A lot of modding work is sort of on hold until they release the U.S. patch. It sounds like the U.S. patch will contain some anti cheat protection too.

The thing that I would like to see most is the ability to choose which cars can and can't be used within a class or at least the ability to disable the bonus car for each class. That or changing the ai. The ai cars have a catch-up mode for all but the last lap. It gets a little absurd. disable catch up and just improve them.

I'm looking forward to a mod that sets the handling back to the way that it was in Flatout1. Flatout2 is a great game but the handling is just a little too arcade for my taste.

This comment was edited on Sep 26, 14:25.

I don't buy EA games anymore and this is one of the main reasons. Why bother if they are just going to pull the plug next year ?

You can be sure that NFS MW will get yanked before long as well. So will their upcoming titles. What really bugs me is that they have been shown to have client based server programs for at least some of the titles yanked and they refused to release them even as unsupported addons.

I dislike EA more and more every year. Ruining good franchises just isn't enough. Now they have to kill the older titles that didn't suck.

I'm glad Atari is losing this. Ubi couldn't possibly do any worse.

I heard something about Stuntman2 being farmed out to another dev. I hope they don't blow that too.

I miss the early Driver games. Back when it was about, you know, driving ...

This looks great.

I loved the first one. The trick was to pick the right car. If you picked a very light car with too much horsepower, it got a little harder to control. Never take the Slider, Blocker, or other car like that unless you are looking for a tough challenge. This makes sense to me. The first thing that should always be upgraded was suspension and tires.

I'm a little worried about the arcade handling that I keep hearing about. I'm hoping they have some kind of "Pro" handling setting like they did with the first one so the sim fans can be happy too.

I eagerly ordered this one from Europe and I guess I'll see for myself before too long.

FO2 is looking great.

The ship date is now Jul 11 is U.S. and June 26 or so in U.K. Their plan seems to be to have a demo slightly before release.

I'm intrigued by the Flatout 2096 billboards in the background. I'm wondering if it's just kidding around or if they really might do it.

I can't wait for next month.