Two games which were hyped as launch titles seem to have vanished... Afterpulse was one of the games shown to press at the launch event, the iOS version is out, but still no ATV version? What's happened to GT Spirit? Anyone know? It was meant to be an ATV exclusive before the mobile version hit.
Well GT Spirit, potentially the best driving game on mobile devices and micro console, will be out by Christmas Day as it was submitted to the App Store this week I believe. It may even already be out in some markets as I think this is a review of the game? I can't read the language though: http://www.iplayapps.de/gt-spirit-neue-renn-simulation-fuer-apple-tv-25916/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oQTpjmIJek
Yeap, GT Spirit is now on the Apple TV App Store. So go grab it.... And then post on here what it's like as I haven't got an Apple TV lol. It's freemium based so would be good to know how intrusive the in app purchases are?
GT Spirit is up on Apple TV Store. You can only race ghost cars for now, but they said they are working on an update for actual realtime racing with A.I. And possibly online opponents.
Just go into the App Store and go under search and type in Afterpulse. It is right there. The handling is not bad. Visually, it looks like it is going for a Forza Horizon kind of feel, only without the open world. Handling feels more like a car compared to the Need for Speed games, but not as good as Forza Horizon. Acceleration is automatic and I only need to steer and brake manually.
You can go into settings and change to manual acceleration. I prefer that option to auto-acceleration. You can also upgrade your vehicles. The cars are licensed. More manufactures will be added over time. It looks like it has some IAP. I tweeted developers and asked if we could get a premium version. They did not get back to me on that, but they did responded to two earlier telling me that actual racing against AI and maybe online will be added.
GT Spirit: Meh. It's a great example of what's to come for Apple TV as it's a very ambitious game that tries to behave like a AAA racer. Unfortunately, it just doesn't follow through at all. The most important thing -- the controls and handling -- are terrible. They're not broken but when you compare it to any console racer, they're not in the same class. The handling is too twitchy (even with adjusting sensitivity) and the camera work (especially on the bumper cam) is poorly tuned and distracting. At first glance, the visuals are very impressive. The cars look excellent and are highly detailed, but in their obsession with crafting the cars, the developers have largely ignored the environments. The tracks are so poorly lit that everything seems so flat. It makes more a visually incoherent game when you have spectacular-looking cars against a drab background. I appreciate they're likely pushing the Apple TV to its limits, but there are a lot of tricks they could've employed (like static lighting) to make the world more consistent with its vehicles. Even still, I would've considered lowering the detail on the cars if it means bringing more visual fidelity to the environments. The vehicle sounds are excellent -- I'll give it that -- but sadly, the game falls apart in very key areas. The team behind this has clearly played many AAA console racers but I suspect they've never had any experience making one. The vision is great, execution is poor. If they continue working on this game, I wish they'd spend all the time on polish rather than adding more content. And if they made a "GT Spirit 2", I'd rather they were a little less ambitious and tried do less and focus on reaching higher quality. Not a perfect example (as this game is too dumbed down for me), but they would've been better off doing what NaturalMotion did with CSR Racing. It's simple but very high quality and made sense as it was, I believe, their first racing game. tl;dr - skip this unless there's a massive update.
I find with the Nimbus it controls OK. It's not bad, but it CyrusG is right, it does not compare to modern console racers. However this can be better tuned as the game get updates. My biggest issue is that the game has a lot of distractions from actual racing. I really don't care about laying out the floor space in my garage. It just feels more designed to push freemium IAP troupes than making a good racing game. I really want a good racing game on iOS. I'd pay as much as $40 for a true premium redesign of RR3 with no IAP.
$40? I am paying $60 and above for AAA racing games on my XBox. Ultimately it is the publisher's decision to make it a premium or freemium title, although there are now paidmium titles too.
I say $40 because I really don't expect a forza 6 on mobile. I am specifically talking about a 3 year old product re-worked to a premium model. That said, it is our choice to support what we want. I will either give them $40 for a premium game or $0 for a freemium. It is a lost market for them that is not being catered to right now. (I am not against all forms of IAP. In fact I think it is important to let people play a game in a limited way before expecting them to pay. For example IAP to unlock other car classes, more tracks, a persistent career mode, etc. I wil pay to unlock content, but never for consumable currency. That is the line I draw. Buying 'progress' hurts my enjoyment of the game whether I play for free or buy currency.)
I will be very interested to see what price Apple TV games eventually stabilise at. That said, I still find myself playing Minion Rush and GT Spirit most of the time since they're quite mindless games. Something went wrong with my Modern Combat 5. It keeps reporting some kind of connection error whenever I try to play now.
Yes, I'm playing with the Steelseries Nimbus. I dropped sensitivity all the way to the lowest setting and I still found it very twitchy and required way too much precision to take corners nicely. Now granted, others may have a different opinion, but I'm comparing this to my experience controlling cars in games like Forza, Need for Speed and other console racers.
