Don’t call World of Speed a racing game. It’s not. It’s an MMO that just so happens to have cars and race tracks in it. It functions like many of its genre brethren, down to squad-based actions and lite RPG elements. It’s also free-to-play, allows for use of virtually any control method, and runs on just about any computer since 2006.
It’s definitely an MMO. With cars.
But hey, these cars drive great, too.
There’s an explosion of a new social racing gaming subcategory in the last few years, coming to a peak this Fall with The Crew, Forza Horizon, and DriveClub all releasing nearly concurrently. While they’ll be focused on the consoles, social racing has been a mainstay on PCs for a long time already, though it’s mostly been centered around realism and precision and individual achievement.
World of Speed, built on the Madness Engine that powers Slightly Mad’s other game in development Project Cars, takes realism only to the point where it would start to alienate the non-hardcore racing fan. Yes, the cars still look amazing, and the Madness engine allows for scaling to better or worse hardware. During my time with the game last month, I jumped into a stunning white stock Mitsubishi Lancer EVO X. Our hardware was only set to a mid-tier level, but the visuals still looked amazing and accurate, with every aspect of the vehicle and road as good as (probably even better than) anything I’ve seen on the new gen consoles.
As I raced against my opponent on the demo track, I realized how tight the controls were. In fact, I kept drifting into corners and crashing, applying “console physics” to a game that clearly isn’t meant to be played that way. It only took a couple of laps to understand how to actually drive the car, and soon thereafter I was catching up to him and passing around bends. That’s where I found the biggest difference between WoS and other racers: I felt like I was actually “driving” a car instead of just controlling the direction and speed I was moving in.
It felt much more like my crappy driving skills in real life, in which I forget to speed out of corners until the third or fourth time I encounter one on a track.
Though (to me) driving and control are the most important aspects of making a connection to a racing game, Speed is much more than that. It’s a team game, heavily biased towards group racing and clubs. In fact, replace many big MMOs usage of the term “guild” with “club” and we have the structure of the game defined.
Each race has specific objectives: drifting, finding shortcuts, passing, slowing others down. All of these amass team points. Sure, winning helps, but if we’re not great at finding our way into first place, then we wouldn’t have much fun racing cars. Instead, World of Speed allows for a sort of “class”-like gameplay. Letting our best racer take the lead in winning the race while the rest of us accomplish other tasks that we personally specialize in is one of the best ways to win. These are almost like MMO raids, but instead of bosses we’re teaming up to take down other clubs on paved roads instead of caves. I didn’t get the chance to try any of the team-based stuff but I’m great at crashing into others, so if slowing down opponents helps my team then I’d be a perfect addition.
That extends to the amount of vehicles as well. Speed will never match up to Forza or Gran Turismo, but it isn’t trying to. Slightly Mad found that people generally care to race as their favorite cars far more than the ones they may acquire only for collection purposes. And as such, the cars aren’t classified by rank but by body style: sedan, coupe, etc. There will be a starting set when the game is released, with more being added over time, but players will be encouraged to take ownership in their favorites. Again, this is a lot like the traditional MMO model instead of the typical racer.
Customization follows the same methodology. There’s no idea of a “fully upgraded” car, with the best engines, brakes, shocks. Instead all of the customization will be visual, but incredibly deep for being so. Paints will allow for gloss levels, chrome, color flop, metallic specks and more. A full livery editor will be included. Aspects like bumpers and spoilers won’t affect performance, just personalization. Too many people were buying the same things in other racing games to max out their vehicles, limiting who they could race against (or who could race against them). Personalization (and team livery) could go a long way.
I found this incredibly welcoming as someone who’s just started diving into similar online games (World of Tanks and DOTA). I don’t know the best car for the best course or task. But, I *do* know how to drive a car that I love. It’s a lot like choosing one racer in Mario Kart 8 over and over again, based purely on your connection to them. (For the record, it’s always Waluigi.)
Slightly Mad Studios and my.Com are planning a long tail for World of Speed. It’s the focus towards the MMO aspect that separates it from games like The Crew and DriveClub. Monthly calendars of events will let players know what’s coming up (I saw events planned for several months ahead) and should keep the game going for a long time after it’s released.
For the record, I lost my race (even though the dev was consistently slowing down to let me catch up) but I managed to get parity on the overall points. If anyone wants to recruit a crashing specialist, I’ll be around when the game launches later this year.
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