Thank you very much for taking the time to write this post! You gave a lot of useful info that helped me enjoy the game more. I love Ridge Racer 6 on Xbox 360, and this game has much the same feel, and even some of the same tracks. I understood the drift mechanic right away. RR6 doesn't have car upgrades though so I didn't understand what the various upgrade options meant, and your post helped a lot.
Drifting is hard to get used to at first, but boy, once one gets better at it, this game is great fun!
Game Impressions Yeah definitely. Some people earlier in the thread were comparing this game to Asphalt 8. I'd say this game has much more depth to the driving itself compared to Asphalt. I'm not saying the physics are more realistic, but there are a lot more subtleties to learn to exploit, and I think this game rewards precision much more than Asphalt. Asphalt makes up for it with all the other crazy stuff like jumps and spins and powerups and such, so I'm not necessarily saying one is better than the other. I think Asphalt is more about having fast reflexes and being able to keep up with lots of stuff going on at once, whereas Ridge Racer is more about precision and finesse. Also, while I certainly liked Asphalt's freemium implementation better than Real Racing 3's, Asphalt did start to require a lot of grinding after a couple of seasons, and I got tired of it. At first I was worried this game would be similar when I saw it offered IAPs, but so far I haven't felt like I had to do any grinding at all. The races are difficult enough to win that it usually takes me several tries, which means I'm earning credits just by playing normally. So far every time I've gotten to the point of wanting to buy an upgrade or another car I had plenty of credits to do so. The IAPs just seem to be there as a shortcut. The only flaws I've seen are, - There is often a bit of frame rate slowdown on my iPad 4. Not enough to spoil the game, but quite noticeable. On my iPhone 4S it's a bit worse; frequent slowdowns, and crashes too. - The game needs some kind of manual. There is no explanation of what the various tuning options do. Some are obvious, but without rapaleeman's explanation I wouldn't have understood what the nitro options meant. I'm not sure I would have figured out the drift mechanic completely either if I hadn't played the console version. - They need to add iCloud syncing so games can be saved across devices. Not a big deal to me since I play on my iPad 95% of the time, but still would be nice for that other 5%. - I seem to miss the darn brake pedal too often when trying to initiate a drift. I know that's just a hazard of virtual controls, but it seems like they could have made it a little bigger. - Also I use tilt steering, and wish the sensitivity was adjustable so I could make it more sensitive.
Actually, on the console version you don't ever need to touch the brake. Just lifting off the gas for a moment as you initiate a turn starts you sliding. I just realized the same thing works in the iOS version. The reason I didn't realize this earlier is that I was using the auto-gas option. The tutorial says to hit the brake to initiate a drift, and since the iOS version doesn't have proportional throttle control, I figured since I'd just be holding the throttle all the time anyway, using auto throttle wasn't taking anything away. I just tried switching to manual throttle and sure enough, lifting off the throttle works just like on the console. Since the throttle icon is larger than the brake icon, this also eliminates the problem of missing the pedal, at least for me. Cool, thanks synthemesc!
Do you like touch steering Do any of you like the touch steering in this game? I've been using tilt steering, and just tried the tap steering and it seems really hard to control the car accurately. The problem is it doesn't give you proportional steering control, just all the way one direction or the other, so I end up constantly oscillating back and forth. With tilt steering I get proportional control and can accurately steer. It's not a big deal to me since I usually prefer tilt steering anyway, but the touch steering just seems a lot worse in this game than other iOS racers because it doesn't have proportional control. Especially in a game which requires precision like this one, I would have thought they'd use a virtual wheel like in Real Racing rather than just left-right buttons. Just curious if others have the same impression, or if I just haven't mastered using touch steering.
Didn't realize this. Though I kinda like the auto throttle, will try this to see if I can control it better. Who knows, maybe I will like it.
I liked auto throttle better too when I thought I had to use the brake to initiate drifts, since I find it difficult to accurately switch quickly between two virtual buttons that are right next to each other. Now that I realized I don't ever have to use the brake, it doesn't make much difference which mode I use, since in both cases I only need to use one button. They're just the reverse of each other. When using auto throttle, you hold your thumb off the screen for the whole race and tap to initiate a drift. When using manual throttle you just hold your thumb on the screen for the whole race and lift for a moment to initiate a drift. I think the reason manual throttle works better for me is because, when I use auto throttle, my thumb is off the screen for most of the race, and sometimes it tends to drift away from the brake pedal icon and I end up tapping the wrong place. When using manual gas, my thumb is on the screen the whole race except when I lift for a moment to start a drift, so it stays in the right place.
I usually use tilt on iOS driving games but with this game I prefer touch steering. I think it's because of the muscle memory I've developed from playing the game with a dpad for so many years. Even when given the option of analog steering on the older games I sometimes find myself using the digital. With those games and this newest version, I just tap the steering buttons. The only time I hold it down is to initiate a drift or grip turn. Then I continue to tap so I can angle the car where I need it to be. I tried the tilt controls but I need a sensitivity setting. I find that I have to tilt further than I'm used to in order to start the drift and it throws off my game.
After uninstalling and reinstalling the game, it no longer crashes on my iPad air. Very good racer so far.
of course i do drift.. letting go of the gas, quick steer and then hit the gas within a split second - it will drift beautifully.. honestly, i don't think i ever brake in the whole RR series since the PSX version.. maybe Rage Rager is an exception. because i used the Manual Transmission (the only option) to drive the Lizard (now Danver in later versions) Hijack.. the bad-ass pickup truck - is also included in this RR Slipstream. i'm kinda disappointed that the game doesn't offer the option in between Auto/Manual transmissions because the MT is usually faster and what's with the missing RPM/MPH gauge? i don't like the digital speed at the top right of the screen i want it at the bottom right, each gauge should have a different artistic layout for each car. and where's the Crinale 13th Racing devil car?
So...if I lift off the throttle to initiate a drift, what do you recommend after that? Should I get back on the throttle right away or stay off the throttle throughout the drift? If I stay off the throttle I lose speed, yes? But if I get back on I shorten the drift? Yours confused but enjoying the game emensely. Edit: I'm using auto accelerate and just taping the brake to initiate a drift. Seems to work well but would like to know if there is a better way.
I don't know about you guys, but I have a Iphone 5s and the game was working fine until it crashes non-stop and it even crashes completly my phone one time, so I had to do a hard reset. Even after doing that and closing all the apps that were open, it still crashes. I'm was on the third tournament, at the first race and it's just before the race, when she say "3-2-1" that it stop working. Maybe I can try to uninstalled it and reinstalled it, which I didn't try yet, but I think that I will lose my current progress as there's no Icloud support and it will take a long time to reinstalled it. I was really liking this game, even a little more that Asphalt 8, but I guess for now, I'll put it in my seperate file with GTA:SA with the games I'm not playing anymore unless there's an update out. Unfortunately, even after the last update which is supposed to fix general bugs, like I say in my earlier post, it still crashed my phone at the exact same place that it did it last time. And I also tried to restart and close everything but no, it doesn't work . So I'll say this ; IF YOU HAVE A IPHONE 5S WITH THE iOS 7.0.4 AND ARE PLANNING TO BUY IT, DON'T BUY IT FOR NOW, MAYBE LATER, BECAUSE IT'S NOT OPTIMISED FOR THE A7 CHIP
They seem about the same to me. I'm no expert player though. Maybe a better player could notice a difference. The only difference for me is that when using the brake to initiate drifts I miss it more often and end up running into a wall, which is definitely slower!
You should definitely get back on the throttle right away. Just experiment to find the shortest amount of time you need to lift the throttle or hold the brake to start a drift, and get right back in the throttle. You can stay in a drift indefinitely while at full throttle just by using the steering. As for whether it's better to lift off the throttle or use the brake, I'm pretty sure they're equivalent, so just use whichever is easier for you. I think I like the throttle way better only because I kept missing the brake pedal, but if you don't have that problem, then auto throttle and using brake to initiate a drift works fine.
Framerates get too bad with touch controls on my ipad 4. They are barely passable with tilt controls. How are framerates on the ipad air? Can it handle this game with no framerate drops? Would love to play this game with framerates 30fps or better, it would rock in ipad retina.
Game Impressions Really loving this game so far!!! + Amazing sense of speed and runs very smoothly on my iPhone 5. + Better framerate than Asphalt 8 or NFS MW + Pretty graphics + Great gameplay mechanics + Most fun racing game I've had with racing game. It's right there with NFSU (when it first came out), RR2 (before RR turned into freemium), NFS MW and Asphalt 8 (my current fave racer). + Challenging but feels fair and as someone posted a few pages back, it's not either you lead or are behind by 2 laps. + There's no paywall (or massive grind-fest) like in RR3 so far. - NO REPLAYS!!! (I always love watching replays.. WHY is there no replay? Even RR Accelerated had that. I thought they were gonna upgrade it so we can save / upload the replays, not remove the feature!) - No enough instruction (thanks for everyone for sharing the tips) - No realtime reflection like the Vita version (based on youtube clips) - Occasional hiccup (probably once every 3 races), crashes (only happened twice in the 3 hours I played) and glitches (where the car is suddenly stuck not moving at all #in the middle of the race). But once I do a hard restart these problems go away, so maybe it's memory glitch after playing it straight for a few hours.
