The Things I've Learned...
Arnaud: Indeed, going backwards bites the big one. It happened to me a lot on Manortop recently (Over 40 golds! Yay!), just from hitting walls head-on. 8 P
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Uncreated
The absense of tips makes the thread perfect, IMO. :)
8 D That one had me laughing for at least a minute.
Anyway, the continuing saga of my Pure Enjoyment...
I got past Venom recently, and it was quite the hump for me. I had to realize two important things:
1) Lift to turn. Not lift the nose, but "lift" as in the 4-wheeled racing term, take your foot off the gas, that'll slow the vehicle down a bit, shift the weight forward, and with the extra weight on the front tires you can turn. I was playing Vector in the usual foot-to-the-floor-all-the-time way, and managing with a disturbing amount of airbrake, but that wasn't as easy to time in Venom and to really do the corner right (as in, have any traction at all for sharp turning) I had to learn to come off the X for a moment at the apex. This blew me away. This ain't your daddys wipeout! Like, "woah". Blows... My... Mind. Suddenly Citta Nuova wasn't wallbang-wallbang-wallbang, it was thrust, let off, turn, thrust, let off, turn, it was like figure skating it was so smooth and choreographed. I haven't heard this specifically from anyone else, but I'm finally appreciating what everyone meant about how it's a totally different WO from anything there's ever been before. Still... it bothers me a bit. Along the lines of "You got your Gran Turismo in my Wipeout!". I don't use airbrakes in wheeled racing, I didn't expect to have to lift to turn in AG racing. Yeah, my mind is _still_ blown by this. This was two days ago. I think I've adequately communicated just how huge a revelation this was.
2) Triakis is really important. I took Zone into Citta Nuova since I wanted the high thrust and handling to take that track on. I got some really nice scores, but I also earned my first elimination in there. As in "I got eliminated", not as in "I destroyed someone". Not really what I was looking for! So I try out this "Big T" that I hadn't liked in Vineta K/Vector/TT so long ago that it might as well have been last year, and I taste the difference that whole eggs make! I've got the shields to survive any kind of enemy fire, do some barrel rolls, and scrape half the walls on the track. Nice. ALSO, I don't spend that half moment dead in the water while doing a seriously tight turn! Despite the low thrust, that beast can just slide through normal turns with no appreciable loss in speed! So the Big T is now my SR vehicle of choice. Still liking the Zone for most TT work, but oddly enough the Big T does fairly well in that venue as well. I guess Al got his supership. 8 )
This leads me into the next important thing I've learned. Now that I've got Flash open, I expected to have some difficulty with it at start. After all, it's faster than I've gone in Pure so far. In actual fact, I'm finding the game gets EASIER when you go faster. Yeah, really. Here, let me spin you a tale... In the grand old days of WO3, you'd earn the mythical Icaras and take it to Porto Kora for a spin. Start with some Vector TT, just to get a feel for it. After burning it around the track a couple times, you figure you've got the hang of it, a bit of nose control here, a bit more there, the track is fully navigable at pretty fearsome speeds (for Vector). So you crank it up to Venom. Now you need to tap the airbrakes in a couple turns, and the other turns likely need some good nose control to navigate without scraping. The low handling of the craft wasn't such an issue at Vector, but it becomes more of a challenge as the speeds increase. Now you go for the real challenge, try this beast on Rapier! Eventually you've got the hard airbraking timed correctly in the few places you really need it, and you've got smooth brake-tapping most other places. If you're really hardcore, you go up to Phantom level and try to finish the race without blowing up. Wow that's fast. Still, you're sure that with some hard airbraking _combined_ with timely nose control, you can do that track.
Okay, so story time is over, now we look at Pure. While your Speed and Thrust increase as you progress from Vector to Venom to Flash and up and up, not only are you going faster and recovering sooner, but also your Handling is increasing! If you needed a slight tap of airbrakes in Vector, you'll need... a slight tap of airbrakes in Venom and Flash as well! I imagine this carries on up the rest of the way. This explains why Hellfire only gives track guides for Phantom, they're all the same! So the different speed classes are really just about less reaction time because of the greater speeds involved, what you're doing on the track is the same all the time. I still have no idea what I think of this. It's just really different. I certainly like how the game gets better as you go faster, it's really becoming more and more like the WO that I know as I progress further in it, but I'm kind of wishing that I didn't have to sacrifice quality in the lower speed classes (where racing is a bit clunky) in order to get the high quality (the racing gets really smooth!) high-speed races.
So with all that out of the way, here's some other random points:
Barrel Rolls: There's a whole lot I could say here, but I think it all sums up to "I prefer hyperthrust".
Bomb: Definitely wins the award for Bestest New Weapon. Go boom!
VR Tracks: I love the look of them, Tronnic == Awesome to me. Unfortunately though, they've taught me a hard lesson: I pilot tracks based on visual cues from the scenery. When you take away all that scenery and replace it with featureless VR-land, suddenly I can't fly a track worth a damn. I know it's time for the jump and going left so I can cut hard right when I see the fat cat come into view. I know how close i can get to the curved railing with the large gaps in it. When the track is all green and surrounded by vague blue lights, I have no idea where I'm at on it. Damn. So there won't be any more of them, and that's definitely a good thing, but I really wanted them to work. Damn.
And that's definitely enough typing for me!