Codemasters - DIRT 2

[Wol]

Right.

This game looked pretty good, and the last codemasters game I got was okay....

.... until I installed this one.

1) I have to be signed into steam, msn live, games for windows live, as well as "dirtnet"
1.a) wtf is "games for windows live", apart from a load of bulldinkle.
2) Graphics settings
2.a) They start so fucking high that it lags hurrendously on startup
2.b) How do I change the options without having to edit an XML file?

3) loading videos
3.a) Why are there so many? amd, intel, ... someone, codemasters, dirt 2, another one.... all before i get the "press enter" pointless splashscreen.

*tries again*

right.... so I press enter and then it starts "loading"....... Where it doesn't really use the hard drive much..... 55 seconds later.... I get another video. This one is now showing some in game footage.... sorta like I could be doing myself if i wasnt being forced to view this video..... as escape nor enter jump out of it....

65 more seconds later .... I get.... ooo. another loading video showing a wacky waving inflatable flailing arm man. and "me" picking up my phone... talking to someone....

.... ooo, my car.... yea.... right. .... keep going.... ooo and my motorhome. fancy. ooo skanky table. oo another table..... ooooo Tyrual is playing garrys mod ~*-) what a good idea.

Aha. 90 more seconds later, I finally get to the "driver details" screen....

when trying to enter the firename / surname, instead of the display turning into a textbox, the fucking msn windows live games thing pops up... with an aero skinned box for me to type into.... fuck it. I'll be "player One" today. Yup - thats my audio name. and wow. now theres a map. about 15 seconds later it zooms in... showing some squiggles. and then starts wanking around and takes me to "event setup".....

up/down/left/right let me choose the type of event, escape doesnt do anything. Enter just goes outside to let me choose my car.... and after I choose my car, I get the option to race.... and only now do i manage to find the "options".... by hitting right a few times (not that it hinted anywhere that you could hit the right arrow key there....)

right. graphics options (now its taken me about half an hour to find them). WHY are they all on high?! It knows I'm on my laptop with a shitty ATI mobile graphics card...... if course I dont want all settings .... ooo tyrual is now playing tf2 *-) now theres a game that doesn't take ages to load. Its as though steams popping up going "dont bother with this shit - come play a proper game".

right. changed everything to "low" .....

now is it me. or was that whole thing really overfrickingcomplicated?!

*calm*

*goes off driving*

 

[thatbloke]

The game itself is good

The menus, and the incessant talking inbetween is also annoying, however if you can see through all of that and actually just play the game, it's damned good fun

 

[Wol]

Oh. and why on earth am I getting RGB tearing in game.

If this is meant to be like I'm sitting in the car myself, then, last time I looked, if i got knocked, my vision didnt go all strange colours....

 

[thatbloke]

Oh. and why on earth am I getting RGB tearing in game.

If this is meant to be like I'm sitting in the car myself, then, last time I looked, if i got knocked, my vision didnt go all strange colours....

you sure your computer meets the game requirements?

I've never had an issue with it...

 

[Wol]

As far as I can tell its a deliberate effect, where they twitch the RGB channels individually, that they put on EVERYTHING that happens in game.

And apparently if i clip the side of a cliff a little bit - rather than just spinning the car, I get shot sideways off the road down the cliff.

*gives up for today*

CMR2 was a lot better.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Buy it on console.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

3) loading videos
3.a) Why are there so many? amd, intel, ... someone, codemasters, dirt 2, another one.... all before i get the "press enter" pointless splashscreen.

In most games you can delete these and it just skips them so you can go straight to the opening menu.

 

[waterproofbob]

I've never had an issue once I got in a car.

I would agree that the intro is annoying and that there is too much crap between the races.

 

[Wol]

Buy it on console.

dont have one unfortunately

In most games you can delete these and it just skips them so you can go straight to the opening menu.

i tried that as suggested by some people online, but it sort of just locked in a black screen until I put them back

I've never had an issue once I got in a car.

I would agree that the intro is annoying and that there is too much crap between the races.

There is definitely too much shit around it! Need to play it on a decent computer really. mebbe need to upgrade my gfx card too.

 

[Kasatka]

All these issues are why i really hate developers making cross-platform games. Us PC gamers get lumbered with all the console crap like long loading screens, unskippable intros and standardised settings.

 

[Nanor]

Pressing enter (ie hammering enter) skips the movies. I'm pretty sure in the demo you could change the options out of the game but apparently they've removed this. What's the big deal about having to type your forename in a GFWL box? Sure it's superfluous but nothing worthwhile complaining about.

Also if it takes an hour of searching to find the options you're definitely doing it wrong.

I don't have any problem with the game. I was actually impressed by how optimised it was and the graphics. Plus it's damn fun to play. My only gripe would be when you're starting a new race there's a short tutorial video you can't skip, but otherwise I'm very happy with it.

Oh, and I didn't have to sign into anything called "DirtNet". All I have to be signed into is Steam (Which lets be honest, you're signed into anyway) and GFWL which I'll admit is a pain but after you set it up it auto logs in. Don't you have it set up for DoW2, anyways?

 

[thatbloke]

Actually Nanor has a point. WTF is "DirtNet".

Also, You can skip those movies - I just hammer the A button on my 360 pad and they all go away

 

[Wol]

Hammering enter doesn't seem to do much. Unless you have to hammer multiple times for each video, rather than steam games, where you just hit esc once....

And in the same way that when I type in something on a form on a webpage, I don't have to wait for it to load up an input box to type in, I don't see why it can't just accept letters straight into the program, rather than having to wait for the GFWL overlay to gleam up, and then the input box to gleam up, and the same after you hit enter.... Seems an incredibly roundabout way of accepting user text.

Finding the options just seems counter intuitive to me. I'm used to having a root menu with: load / save game, new game, options, exit.... in a list, like CMR2 had, all on screen at once. Whereas as far as I could tell with DIRT2, I setup my profile, then selected an event type, then was taken to the car select "table", and then when I hit enter it took me to an option to start the race. Nothing there said "actually, this 3d pit area when we give you the "start race" option, is actually a giant menu system". Would have thought that the graphpics settings should have been earlier on in the process.... e.g. so I can turn the quality of the menu down before having to wait during all these loading menus for it to render at 3fps.

The game looks really good, but my graphics card is a bit shitty at times so its quite tricky to play even with the settings all low. I think itll be more fun on my desktop.

Actually Nanor has a point. WTF is "DirtNet".

Also, You can skip those movies - I just hammer the A button on my 360 pad and they all go away

No idea what dirtnet actually does. I think its like the collective term for the save games and profiles and stuff like that on top of gfwl. meh.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Microsoft is so stupid, the GFWL client when closed/minimised doesnt go to the notification area.