Reply With QuoteWhat has been Sony's response so far to people creating copyrighted content? Are they leaving things be, or are they taking down infringing content?
Tom's take on it.
This finally arrived in my mailbox and I put a couple of hours into it last night. The basic gameplay is much more faithful to the Mario Kart formula than something like Blur -- very arcadey handling, drifting, ultra-twisty tracks with shortcuts and ramps, nitro boosts...
And getting screwed ten feet from the finish line by a barrage of attacks, dropping you from first to sixth. You can spend boost power to shield yourself against attacks, but I'm still getting the hang of it. It's random what attack you get when you pick one up, but you can hold on to it and pick up more to increase its level for a stronger attack.
The content creation options are pretty robust, as seen by the zillions of familiar-looking characters and cars being shared already. It's purely cosmetic for them, but you can create tracks as well, which is where I'd look for getting more longevity out of it.
Unfortunately I'm kind of disappointed by the online so far. Every race starts from scratch with a lobby filling up with new people, but in the races I tried it would rarely get more than half-full before starting the race. I kind of prefer Blur's persistent lobbies where people drop in and out between races, but I guess it's a matter of taste whether you prefer to keep racing with the same group or want an entirely new batch each time. But what's less forgivable is all the loading as it dumps you back and forth between running the races and the Modpark, though at least it asks you if you want to run another race to avoid driving back over to the online race entrance each time.
Online races are divided into casual and ranked (xp), but the rankings don't seem to do much besides open more slots for sharing creations, and ranked races are a lot more restricted, with no control over the race options except for a veto option I didn't take a close look at. Casual races let you control a lot more options, but I haven't tried them yet.
What has been Sony's response so far to people creating copyrighted content? Are they leaving things be, or are they taking down infringing content?
As I don't have a PS3, I haven't played this or Little Big Planet so I can't comment on their actual gameplay mechanics. However, in concept, I'm not a fan of the user-created content placed on top of a random game genre. The creation tools and the actual game end up feeling like two completely different things. I'm much more a fan of the concept of something like Nuts & Bolts which completely integrates the creation system into the game. So even if you're not creating for others, you're getting something out of the creation tools for yourself. And if you happen to make a Tie Fighter just for fun, you can share it with others.
I haven't seen any response about it yet, but it took a couple of weeks before they started purging stuff from Little Big Planet.Originally Posted by Cubit
I was actually being a bit facetious about the copyright infringement, but I am curious what's going to happen. Can they have Mario, Spider-Man, and Iron Man drivers? That sort of stuff got yanked from Little Big Planet, so this should be the same, right?
Also, someone in the comments section at Fidgit mentioned they're working on the loading times. But if there's actually some way to shorten them in a patch, I'm even more astonished they let it ship with such long loading times. It really is an absolute chore to have to load up the ModSpot and then the track and then the ModSpot and then the track. Good lord, what an ill-conceived lobby system.
-Tom
They engineered the level storage to make sure downloads of user create tracks would only take a few seconds. But that means the PS3 is basically building the level from scratch each time it loads up. It's not just a problem of disk speed, there's a lot of computational overhead. That's what takes so long. They may be able to improve it, but it probably won't be a quantum leap.
There was a big "to do" near the launch of LBP when a few levels got pulled off supposedly due to copyright infringement, but I don't think it went much further then that. If you browse through the LBP levels today they are full of Mario 1-1, Silent Hill, Family Guy, etc.
I agree. I was in the beta and noticed right away that the loading times and the framerate would be instant deal-breakers for a kart racing game. Those were by far the two largest issues that were brought up among testers. The developers promised that those two issues were being worked on, but It's obvious that they weren't worked on hard enough. Now that just about every review mentions how atrocious the load times are, they're scrambling for a better fix.Also, someone in the comments section at Fidgit mentioned they're working on the loading times. But if there's actually some way to shorten them in a patch, I'm even more astonished they let it ship with such long loading times. It really is an absolute chore to have to load up the ModSpot and then the track and then the ModSpot and then the track. Good lord, what an ill-conceived lobby system.
There's some fun to the actual racing, but wating mintues between each race is unnacceptable, especially when you're loading a useless & tiny lobby. I think the best bet would be to wait for a sequel that completely revamps the system.
Having said all that. I think kids would like the game a lot. It's very easy to create cool racers and karts. The eyerolling cutscenes seem tuned for a younger audience and there's split screen races to keep multiple kids glued to the screen.
I've been playing the PSP version of this (downloaded to my Go) recently, and while it's not incredible above all it's a fun kart racer. The load times are much better than the PS3 demo I tried out! There's probably less scope in the track creator, but I haven't even broke ground on that yet.
A patch is due out tomorrow, most notably improving the load times and adding an easier difficulty level.
Too little too late I say. The game could've been a revolution if they had made it a lot more user friendly. Last I heard the patch was to reduce loading times up to 50% which isn't enough IMO.
Here's hoping they do a sequel that really addresses the issues.
Game looks ok, I am just not a huge race fan, when it his that 19.99 sweet spot I'll grab a copy.
Wow you guys are harsh.
The loading times are no big deal, no worse than other games I own. Granted it is a few patches in at this point.
This is a hidden gem, if you like to build stuff, little dudes and cars, and like a crazy competitive racing game, you are missing out. This has become hands down my favorite racing game in years.
When we can have threads 98 pages long on something as derivative and boring as Bad Co. 2 and half a page on this gem...fellow Qt3'er you should be ashamed of yourselves.
I missed the amazon sale on this sadly :(
The game could have been the be-all end-all of kart racers if they just had rock solid frame rate and quicker loading. Maybe all the patches fixed those two things, but I just couldn't stand driving around the track and having the slow frames cause me to screw up and waiting forever to start the next race (with atrocious music). Hopefully they have enough faith in the franchise to give it another shot.
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