Unplayable, even after disabling Full Screen Optimizations the menus are broken and the game shuts down the display after a few seconds. I hate to think that the pre-Remaster version is like.
I'm told this game has aged a lot better than World Party due to updates. I don't know if GOG ever got those updates, it doesn't feel like it, the resolution is hardlocked in the menus and whenever the game changes the resolution (I.e. when starting a match) the entire screen glitches out as if the GPU was broken, it stays that way even if I restart the device.
Low industry standards aside, from a visual and gameplay perspective this is generally a pretty good remaster. Every change is significant enough to enhance the original game's feel, while remaining subtle enough to not appear like a garish amalgamation of poorly thought out mods. All and all, the art and design teams did a very good job. Unfortunately, it suffers from an issue that's been plaguing remasters for as long as they've existed, namely the fact that the focus has been placed exclusively on the visuals and gameplay while the audio has gone completely ignored, and The Thing's audio has not aged well even for a PS2 era title. It's disappointing to see that Nightdive has continued the trend of making no effort to improve it despite how heavily this title relies on atmosphere to sell itself: - There are frequent moments of radio silence where there's literally no sound playing, then you start crawling through a vent or reload your weapon and the most awkward Half-Life-esque sound kicks in like a phone ringing in a library. - The music, although true to the movie, is so poorly timed that it almost feels like it's bugged at times. You open a door and the game goes "dun dun... dun dun... dun dun..." then 10 seconds later it abruptly goes back to total radio silence. - Some sound effects like the aforementioned reload sound felt pretty outdated even by PS2 era standards, and they haven't exactly aged well since then. There's a huge discrepancy in terms of sound quality between the various sound effects. Some are relatively crisp while others sound like they were captured with a tape recorder. - They removed the credits song, After Me by Saliva. The original track they replaced it with is arguably more fitting, but the old credits were a piece of early 2000's nostalgia that should've been preserved, since that's kind of the whole point of remasters like this. C'mon guys it's just one song, can't be that expensive. Maybe wait for a sale.
And the developer/publisher is actively pushing/forcing GOG and console users to register Steam accounts to get it. Don't buy this shit, seriously, it's not even that good. It's nice if you want a "game" where you fly around a fictional galaxy and build ugly bases on every planet you find but none of it is even remotely challenging, immersive or well designed. Game is jank as hell and you can tell most of it was developed post-release, nothing fits in and nothing adds up to a cohesive experience.
I'm glad they decided to release this on GOG, we don't get a lot of racing games here, let alone in early access. And this one definitely has a lot of personality, which is rare for new racing games. That being said, it definitely has a lot of issues that need to be ironed out, and not all of them have to do with it being in development: - There's a disclaimer at the beginning of the game that verbatum says you can lose your saves if you're not connected to the internet. I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, but even so it's a pretty scummy thing to add in your game, especially when it's supposed to be a DRM free release. I really hope this game doesn't become on of those shoddy GOG releases that's kind of "DRM free" but not really. - For some reason the game doesn't let you shift into 2nd at the start of the event, there's like a 2 - 3 second delay before you can change gears. I'm mentioning this because I don't think it's a bug, it's only an issue at the start of the event. May have something to do with real rally regulations, but I'm not aware of anything like that. I haven't tried playing in automatic because I'm not American. - Right now the game is very easy, I haven't lost a race so far despite the fact that I've hit just about every wall and cut just about every corner I've come across. The penalty system doesn't really discourage cutting corners, personally I like it that way, but that's not really how rally is supposed to work. Anyway, needs a difficulty bump. - No music apart from the one menu track, OST can make or break a racing game but no OST definitely breaks it, events have no energy. Some noteworthy positives: - Nice variety of cars, even has 1 or 2 muscle cars for General Lee fans. - A surprising amount of customization for the cars. Doesn't look like there's a way to change liveries though, which is mildly disappointing. - Not a fan of cartoon graphics but this one looks ok. The car models look really nice. - Can rebind keys, thank god.
If they underperform they'll be pulled off GOG and abandoned, see House Flipper. Why is GOG still publishing them?
