Super Woden GP 2, and why older approaches are still valid.
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 27 июн 2024
- Developers in the indie sector have long been champions of gameplay styles that the mainstream has cast aside. The excellent Super Woden GP 2, for example, brings back isometric perspective arcade racing and marries it to a Gran Turismo-esque structure. And Lord, does it ever work well.
Buy the game: store.steampowered.com/app/20... 
Игры
Hi all! Thanks so much for your support of this video. It's not an exaggeration to say this has done exceedingly well for me to an unprecedented degree, so thanks for taking the time to stop by and watch.
I'm going to be pausing comments now as frankly the response has been a bit overwhelming! For the most part people have been very kind and pleasant, but there have been a few folks who clearly showed up with the intention of starting an argument over something that doesn't really matter.
Most of those comments have gone straight in the sin bin, but I kind of want to move on from this video now and get back to what I normally do. I have no desire to be "RUclips famous" and just do this as a bit of fun. And, as I suffer from anxiety to quite a considerable degree, not knowing when the next unpleasant comment is randomly going to show up in my comments sets me on edge a bit.
As such, the wisest thing to do for me is to simply press pause on comments for this video. Thank you to all of you who stopped by with a kind word to say, and thank you very much for your understanding!
Play quality indie games
Support quality indie developers
Support quality indie game reporters
I worked on _Need For Speed_ (PS1). Even back then us devs were aware of *three types of racers: casual, simcade, and simracer.* We never looked down on those who preferred different “house rules” such as rubberbanding (cheating) - people had different tastes in what they wanted out of a game and how “accessible” it was. The simcade was the biggest market because the arcades were considered too “simple” while the simracers too “complex”.
2D died because it is too hard to gauge cornering and 3D just offered SO many more advantages - especially cameras.
NFS was influenced by the _Daytona USA_ arcade because we had one rigged for free play in the cafeteria. Brad and Laurent got so good racing they started racing the tracks backwards which is how we got mirrored tracks.
Daytona USA was my first introduction to silky smooth 60 FPS. Sadly we had to ship at a choppy 29.97 FPS for NTSC but we ran our physics sim rate at 100 Hz rendering every third frame.
this reasoning has a fundamental flaw and explains a lot about the NFS series: arcade racers being considered simple. a good arcade racer has different rules but it can and often is even harder to master than a real sim racer.
WOW! RUclips algorithm suggested again a small but really good quality channel. Wonderful review. You sound like some old professional videogame journalist and production is nice too. Well done!
Thanks! As it happens, I *am* some old professional video game journalist (PC Zone, GamePro, USgamer, occasional IGN) so it's good to know those skills have transferred to video intact :)
When doing things the Old School way feels innovative... This looks very good indeed.
Yeah, I'm loving this one, an attempt to bring a little bit of depth to the super sprint form is more than welcome and they seem to have judged it very well.
The Mini is actually one of the most successful Rally Cars of all time. just a little bit of car-nerd trivia for you! thanks for introducing this very cool game!
Original mini? Or German not mini at all?
(And yes I hate the new minis in case you were wondering haha).
the real mini @@lolocaust4967
@@lolocaust4967 Paddy Hopkirk won the 1964 Monté Carlo rally, with other Cooper S entries winning 2 of out 3 of the following Monté rallies (disqualified from leading the one it "failed" to win).
Ah yes, it's obviously a nod to spanish 90s arcade racing games from Gaelco like World Rally or others like 1000 miglia. People complain now about the viewing distance but those games were hard and the view much smaller to show big graphics.
You really had to roll that wheel like crazy to make those turns, on a stick it just doesnt feel the same
Isometric/top-down games have always had the problem that you can’t see far enough to judge your corners unless the car is a lot smaller than most devs want to make things be pretty at.
The other option is forward=up to help with that, but it only really works if you have a portrait monitor.
have you tried "art of rally" game? that has a hybrid forward looking and isometric camera and works fine...
@@Napoleonic_S good point, it does. Fun game, that - I should go back; I left it about 3/4 of the way through.
This is exactly the kind of game I've been keeping my eye out for ever since the days of games like RC Pro Am, RPM Racing, Super Off Road, and even some of the neo geo greats like neo drift out.. but nothing I've come across since that time seems to quite capture the magic of those games. Art of Rally isn't the same perspective, but it is a wonderful low-poly 3rd person perspective take on the racing genre, and Circuit Superstars is an isometric gem in recent years, too, but both these games have somewhat realistic handling models, and as a result, are actually quite difficult to master. This game looks like one I need to pick up, and soon. Thank you for your review.
If you go back to those games though, they arent great. So people are asking modern games to capture something that never existed.
You're smashing this video format, Pete!
This looks epic. Judging by your footage, the handling looks realistic enough to feel engaging without losing the arcade audience.
As much as I love Gran Turismo and ToCa Race Driver, I do enjoy more casual entries such as Micro Machines, Mashed, Lotus Turbo Challenge, Top Gear/Racer, World Rally (thanks to Evercade/Gaelco/Piko), Destruction Derby, Ridge Racer, Mario Kart, Initial D, etc. However for me the car has to feel vaguely like a car engaging with the road; there are games where the car feels dumb to control - Need For Speed Underground and Fast & Furious Arcade spring to mind.
Gaelco world rally, played with a steering wheel, was a pure joy. I really like this new game and I will buy it, looks silky smooth.
This video is filled - rare thing - with information, parallels, comparisons, gems...
Journalism, I missed you!
Great work.
I love top down/ isometric racers ever since first playing Racing Destruction Set on my beloved Atari 800XL. This looks great fun and very involved. I shall certainly take a look. Have a great week Pete!
Yeah, remember Rock n Roll Racing!! so cool
This looks incredible. Absolutely my favorite sub-genre of racing games thanks to Neo Drift Out on the Neo Geo.
That is an underrated gem of a game
i love the Idea of this game being called Super Wednesday GP
Enemy to Sunday drivers everywhere!
This looks like a great racing game, and I can already tell it took lots of work from the developer - lots of tracks and events and cars... but more importantly: they nailed the camera (isometric and top down racers need a great camera system). If it gets on consoles, I hope they implement local multiplayer, these types of games can do it fairly well without splitting the screen :)
Almost bought this recently, as I havent been satisfied completely with many other top down/isometric racers lately, even tho generally the indie racer scene is thriving. Imagine one of these types of games with liscensed cars, tho it does well with the lookalikes (they nailed the Mclaren F1)
I rather be with unlicensed cars/brands/locales to not compromise it's longevity with licensing issues. which means it can't be delisted in the future.
As much as I love Gran Turismo, always hated the attitude that "more realism = more better". Be with graphics or mechanics. There's a beauty and elegance to nicely abstracted arcade-style games, and often a whole bunch of effort and fine-tuning into making an actual engaging core loop that I wish was put into the more "serious" games out there as well. Think the Rance series is also a pretty fun example of a series that refused to "evolve" into realism as its contemporaries like Ys and instead went all in on abstraction, with some pretty phenomenal results. As the medium matures, I hope this attitude will die out in favour of the realization that different styles of games with their own merits and idiosyncrasies can co-exist and speak to individual preference and don't simply represent a linear progression of things getting "better".
Also on the topic of arcade-ish top-down racers: quite liked Stardrift Evolution from a couple of years back. Admittedly much preferred using the hood cam, but also a good example of how much you can achieve for the moment-to-moment with a lot of precision fine-tuning and balancing.
And the problem GT and indeed Forza have is, while they have "More realism = more better" they are not the best choices for that these days. The PC supersims like iRacing and Assetto Corsa are better at realism than either. So that crowd considers them simcade. Meanwhile everyone is put off by the fact both appear to have forgotten somewhere in the last decade that they were supposed to be making GAMES. The video Pete borrowed my footage from is basically "Who is this for?". Because as far as I can tell, whatever you want from a driving game, there's now a better option for you than the big 2. Be it this, Need for Speed or say, Auto Mobilista 2.
@@Yesterzineagree with you Forza is very arcadey. Kinda of realism lite, or more proper the game cashes in the illusion of realism for console audiences.
@@Yesterzine Dunno, as someone who has tried both Assetto Corsa Competizione and Automobilista 2, I can't say either is a good replacement for GT7 for me. Sure, they offer more realism, but I really don't care about that. Otherwise I wouldn't also love CTR, Wipeout (the old ones at least) or Ridge Racer. I've never even driven a car in real life, so even feel-wise I really can't care. I just like the specific feel of driving in GT7, the fact I can feel a lot of the factors at play and that it's a pretty rewarding experience. Same as getting good at Wipeout was a fun challenge - despite not being realistic at all. There just isn't any other game out there with the same level of physics fidelity, amount of varied content and overall polish and accessibility (and vibes - GT7 is still extremely strong there). The new FM bungled a whole bunch of things for me, though if I didn't have a PS5 and it at least ran acceptably on my PC... Pretty sure I'd be playing that a good amount instead.Or at least would be a lot more interested in that than ACC, Automobilista (or NFS, The Crew etc). It's not a question of realism, but simply the whole package on offer.
GT in particular really doesn't feel like they forgot they're a game... unlike ACC or AM, there still is a pretty structured and gamified approach to its general presentation and progression (and I can see why people who just want to race specific cars on specific tracks in specific ways immediately would dislike this), with the Circuit Experiences, Mission Mode, Licenses and of course the Cafe menu books, which did a pretty good job of getting me hooked and making me engage with a whole bunch of cars and concepts I would have never touched otherwise - which for me is the big draw of these games compared to the almost pure sandbox that ACC and AM are (aside from the fact the latter just don't feel great on pad).
I completely agree. Although I do appreciate being able to play realistic simulators, that's not necessarily the kind of fun I want to have when playing a racing game: I would rather master a simplified but arcade version of physics rather than the real thing with all its complexities and the required enormous training it implies.
I mean, action RPGs like Elden Ring do not pretend to be a walking/running/fighting simulator. Their mechanics are 100% artificial so why do car racing games keep pretending they are the real thing?
This game is flawless on Steam Deck. I play it every night before going to sleep.
Amazing, thx for this content! These are 2 types of games I was looking f9r A LONG TIME. One is Gran Turismo 2 type of racing game, but due to career mode way of progress, and the second is this type of racing game, which is not typical racing-car game. And you mentioned both of these things, so seems we have similar thougts on both topic. I'll buy it asap, thanks again!
I'm certainly glad it's such an improvement over the first game - I'd given that a whirl when the PS port was released, and really didn't gel with it at all, but the demo from earlier this year managed to convince me to keep an eye on it. So it's deffo one for the list at some point in the future.
Though, if you're after the chance to fling a Mini around a Safari rally, then there's certainly a racer which'll artistically scratch the itch :)
I love the bit about the etymology of the name!
Subscribed! Only heard of this game just now and will buy it after watching this video.
This game looks great! Reminds me of Art of Rally a little bit! Definitely recommend checking out that game if you like this for that elegant, flow like driving, you mentioned! It also has a camera option that's a high angle, but not fixed. Cool vid! :)
The isometric view is neat, but the view distance is a big turn off for me.
Your Woden intro was charming.
I got Gran Turismo 7 as I've been a fan since I was a kid. Yet, I find myself playing my son's Lego 2k drive every time 😂
Looks awesome! Thanks for sharing, will check it out...
This looks like a fascinating take on the genre. I've always like slidey handling and isometric games, but have tended to keep the two separate when I play things. Isometric for the tycoon/strategy, slidey for the first-person racer. Something I value in tracks is elevation change, which is why top-downish racing games didn't have any appeal, but the handling shown in this video looks quite compelling. It reminds me of Cranks and Goggles, another isometric racer on Steam which I've thought on and off about purchasing.
Super Cars 2, what a game.
What a great little game this is. Thank you for the informative video as well.
I love this game. Art of Rally meets Gran Turismo .
Mashed: Fully Loaded was the last top down racer I really enjoyed. Finished the single player several times and it really shined in multiplayer. My flatmates and I dedicated an hour or two every day to that or Crash Team Racing.
Love that you tackle the name off the bat, because I was curious about that the moment you put it in Discord, though not enough to distract me from work long enough to look it up I guess. It's quite jarring going from the early 80s games to the mid-80s Super Cars - the frame rate drop is a killer. Interested that you didn't like Forza Horizon so much - I spent ages playing that, but probably more time exploring than racing. Am enjoying Woden so far though, so appreciate the heads up!
I love isometric racers, and I'm always on the look-out for more. Because one can never have too many isometric racers!
This game look brilliant, Pete! Nice find.
So excited to play this as I have the first one, fingers crossed it comes to PS.
Without wanted to sound too cheeky I have been working on a top down racer for over a year now called Super Power Racing.
Would be more than happy to share a key.
The only thing I dislike about this game is this constant glow and chromatic aberration that most indies made in Unity seems to have.
What a nice review video! First time watching your channel and I like it very much. Have you tried The Art of Rally? This game reminds me of it.
I watched this video a week ago but came back to make sure 'Art of Rally' and 'Circuit Superstars' got a mention in the comments. You folks have got it covered already.
Neo Drift Out is an arcade game that I fell in love with, playing through a MAME-emulator from an emulation console. It's also isometric but more on drifting at the right time than conventional racing.
Awesome video! I miss Formula 1 on the Commodore Amiga - weather effects, I believe it also had slip-streaming.. but most of all... watching from competitors vehicles/replays were awesome...
Nice! Downloading tonight.
I do like how this game takes inspiration from Gran Turismo: menus, map, events and upgrades. But it's entirely different from GT!
A game like Art of Rally, in 3D but with a great feeling near of 2D games with top view, is really fantastic in his controls. I love this game. I very interested about Super Woden GP too because I'm a huge fan of this kind of games ! Love Power Drive Rally on Jaguar (the best version by far compare to Snes/MD version) and Sprint series on Arcade.
Gorgeous looking game, have had Super Woden on my wishlist for some time now.
Have you tried Rush Rally Origins? Another solo dev isometric, nostalgic racing game. Race enough with a car, unlock upgrade points that can be used to improve generic concepts such as speed, acceleration and grip through more concrete tires, engine and so on. In a deeply hilarious choice, the obvious rally cars can be renamed… lol. Now, Super Wooden GP2 was exciting when I found out it was coming, and wishlisted it. One day I finished checking my emails, forced another check… Super Wooden GP2 released! Bought it almost instantly. I love the music. It’s brilliant chiptune stuff, brings me back to my Amiga with Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 and Jaguar XJ220 (any game with a Testarossa, Esprit and XJ220 makes me smile nowadays). About Forza Horizon as much as obviously tastes vary, have you tried a different approach? It’s not a racing game, it’s a set of events for you to enjoy. Get morbidly attached to that one car? Nothing stops you from using it in most events! In FH4 I had a bloody drift tune of the Mini spider! Plus the map is just gorgeous, I spent a lot of time just driving around. I memorized the longest race, and would find myself running it.
Also rip Ridge Racer, Wipeout, Motorstorm and Driveclub. They’ll be always be missed. Oh! Wipeout has an indie clone that miraculously feels like Wipeout! It’s called Ballistic NG. Beautiful, sweet PSX era glory.
Yeah, I get what you're saying about Forza Horizon -- I just found myself craving a bit more "game" to it. I understand why they did it the way they did (I think, anyway) -- it just felt a bit jarring to have done terribly in a previous event and then have people telling me how amazing I was and how I was heading for the upper echelons of racing society :)
Haven't played Rush Rally Origins, but had my eye on it for a while. Will give it a look!
Oh there are sooo many of those momentarily... the Art of Rally, Mini Motor Racing Evo, Toybox Turbos, and so many more... all of them good :) and fun :)
And now, I know one more for the collection
I'll be honest, I almost closed the video during the greek god tangent but I'm glad I stuck around! really cool game and nice insights.
I played a good many of these type of games back in the day.
this game rips, ive been loving it
Looks fun that does!
Excessive Speed is my favorite isometric racing game. Sound track is great it has the weapons and the graphics are charming pre renders.
This was a very nice review I stumbled across in my youtube recommendations.
I love racing games but I feel a lot have reached the point where they are indeed too sim like or too arcade like. Rather than that nice mix that the early Gran Turismo titles had.
I have also seen other indie games do this perspective and I usually dismiss them as being too arcadey and rather limited in gameplay depth and loop. But from what you say this is not the case with this game.
So you made me interested and I have wishlisted the game for when my budget allows for another purchase.
Great review, you just sold me on the game which I have then wish-listed on Steam and will be buying on Switch as soon as it releases there (the author is apparently on the console versions at the moment).
I really loved your review, from the introductory slightly out of band context to the video game racing environment including the historical context following into the detailed review of all aspects of the game you kept me interested throughout. I just regret that you did not engage in a comparison with the Neo Geo arcade orthographic (*) racing game Neo Drift Out since it seemed quite appropriate at least in terms of camera perspective and overall looks despite being fully 2D.
I will be following your channel with attention, keep up the great work!
(*) people tend to say isometric for such games but that's valid only when the three x/y/z dimensions have the same size on screen which they usually don't (the vertical dimension being generally squished a little bit to simplify tiling), in which case the proper term is the more generic "orthographic projection".
Great overview, I love this game! I only need a few more achievements for 100% but collecting 100 cars is going to take forever lol
This reminds me of a racegame I loved on the NeoGeo!. Will check this out. edit: haha ok you showed that game I was thinking of in the video I see now :)
Agree with pretty much 100% of this
SRB2K is a nice example of a modern game with a historic approach.
Easily the best kart racer around at the moment.
I've been replaying Death Rally recently. pre-3d style racing games are still fun
Hello, lovely video. Not heard of this game so definitely going to have a look. May I say that if anyone is looking for more modern top-downn racers, I can HIGHLY recommend Circuit Superstars. Lots of tracks, lots of different vehicles, and joyful handling physics.
Your pronunciation of mercredi was pretty good!
Can't do isometric camera in race games since the early 90s. Considering this game's pace and thematic, could be a blast to play it with a rear camera such as in SNES Mode 7 games (Exhaust Heat came to my mind)
Why can't you?
So Woden is like a name, works like other racing games like Colin McRae's or Richard Burn's Rally. This is Woden's GP2 Rally.
I just love this kind of game, thanks to let me know about it, I'm going to play it on Nintendo Switch.
This game gets quite hard when you reach 400HP cars and upwards, but it's really fun
This honestly reminds me of Cars on the GBA.
i'm actually trying to produce a racing game of my own with unapologetically unrealistic physics. it's fun to not overthink stuff to build too and then just make things work the way something can be imagined.
may have to pull the old neo driftout now
I'm thinking of making a sequel to an isometric racer I made a few years ago and I'm torn between making it an arcade game like the last one (that featured 3 tracks, 3 cars, no upgrades, checkpoint based racing for $3) with a few more tracks and a bit of progression for $10...or something more like a console game with full progression, tuning, upgrades, and manual transmission for something like $25.
Woden 2 really has me thinking about including more but it does mean a higher price and longer development time. I get the feeling that people aren't really into arcade games anymore because the scope is just simply too small. They need a bit more meat when playing on console or PC. The lower price (and lower install size) of an arcade game doesn't seem to be an enticing thing.
Also, prices of games in the $5 to $10 range are perceived to be low quality rather than smaller scoped titles.
Woden 2 seems to do a fantastic job of offering great value and enough meat to chew on.
Wow! I love this video and the game style too. Where can I find more info about these slightly avante garde driving games?
I need this
I have been looking out for games like this since I was a kid. Art of Rally is also good. Whilst I definitely appreciate the art style and nostalgia, how good would it be if there was an realistic isometric driving game….anyway, great review. Thanks.
Try Reckless Racing trilogy on Android / iPhone
With widescreen or even ultrawide monitors being the norm, why don't they change the camera zoom, so that regardless of your aspect ratio, you can always see the same distance ahead regardless if you're moving left/right or up/down the screen?
So when you're going up it zooms way out so you can see as far as you do when going left where it would zoom in again? Sounds like you just invented a vomit simulator 😂
I'm off to the patent office for that.. :D @@chunye215
This is a great review. It’s easy to slip into the territory of just slandering newer games unnecessarily. But you point out their flaws in a measured way, while also praising SWGP2 for its own uniqueness instead of just being ‘retro’. Well done.
Sure hope this comes to Switch!
eastasiasoft ported the first one, so hopefully they'll give this one the same treatment. A physical release would be nice too!
power drive spiritual successor
there are only a few isometric racers in like - this one looks interesting though
Wishlisted. :-)
Woden is also a district in Canberra, Australia 🤷♂
This Game Is Pretty Much The Remake Of The Arcade World Rally Championship By Gaelco From 1993... Needless To Say It Was An Arcade Game So You Only Got Three Letters To Put After You Finished Your Run... Can You Guess What Game My Name Came From 😂 Yup That Exact Game... Zum
I strongly recommend you to check out Art of Rally. The only thing I'm saying about that game is that it's amazing. It has charm.
It's a nice game, I love the concept of driving cute little cars on cute little racetracks in top-down perspective, and it looks great. Although it's a deeply frustrating game for me and I kind of have a love/hate relationship with it. I've beaten most of the races for max stars on normal, and I still haven't gotten used to the game's physics. I really don't like the excessive driftiness, race cars shouldn't start going sideways when you slightly turn on dry tarmac. I started enjoying driving on circuits pretty much only after buying an endgame Group C car, since it's quite a bit less drifty and feels more like a race car and less like a drunk pig on ice. Rally, on the other hand, is very sweet and enjoyable (as long as you aren't driving a tarmac stage, that is). I think I would enjoy this game more if it only had rally stages, though maybe rallycross and dirt ovals could be fun too (the game doesn't have those). I haven't played Art of Rally so I can't tell how these two games compare.
AI in the game is not too great, it will be insanely fast through some corners and really slow through others for no reason, so it doesn't really feel like fair competition. It's also pretty much impossible to race cleanly against them, they will most certainly bump into you, or block you. Bumping is another part of this game's weird physics, because it just speeds up the car that is ahead regardless of the nature of the contact.
The more you progress in the game, the more you're forced to restart the races over and over again if you want to get all stars. This is mostly caused by having to drive faster cars, so it's much harder to deal with the car behavior and anticipate corners. It feels very difficult for me to learn the car/track combination in top down perspective compared to cockpit view. Not finishing first feels like a waste of time, sure, you get some money, but you don't get all the stars you need to progress, and it's not like you need to farm for money too much anyway. So no, I don't really feel like this game 'respects my time'. Not especially when I'm murdered by AI halfway into an 'endurance' event.
Car washing and oil changing is just irritating and shouldn't even be in the game imo. Maybe I could tolerate it if you could do it quickly, but for some reason you can't do it in 'Garage', you have to go to 'Workshop', and in order to access it you need to exit from the race menu and wait for it to load and navigate to the workshop, and then go back to find the race you were trying to complete. There's also an issue of only having the 'red' oil warning after it's completely gone bad, you don't get and indication that you're going to need to change it soon. So if you don't want oil going bad suddenly in the middle of the race, you have to change it regularly between races and it's just annoying.
So yeah, as nice as this game is, very often it makes me feel like I'm playing some kind of rage game, like 'Jump King'. But most people seem to love everything about the game, so maybe that's just me being stupid or something.
What a cracking review! You have a new subscriber 😁
If you like this, you would lose your mind playing Tokyo extreme race zero.
You might also enjoy Circuit Superstars or Rush Rally Origins.
3:!4 Super Cars!
You should try RC DE GO
"Super Skid Marks..."
how often do you hear a *for pete's sake* joke ?
👍🏾
rc pro am was awesome
Was Wreckfest successful?
I beg some indie devs to give me a throwback SSX Tricky please please please
Man the hours and hours I wasted playing super skidmarks. Cow cars anyone? 😂
It still uses polygons so it's still 3d. I want to see a game using a modernized version of a sprite scaling engine. This game also looks a bit slow, and lacks the intensity of for example, Super Sprint or Neo Drift out.
try star drift evolution too
Reminds me of PowerDrive
I had bought it and returned it to Steam. The passing landscape is too jerky for me. I rarely look at the car but always a few meters in front of the vehicle and the jerking of the trees and the road drives me crazy.
If the guy’s name is in spanish, then you pronunced “ViJuDa” correctly.
That's what I thought! :) Figured it best to cover my back though, haha.
@@ThisIsPete Just shows that you care about the quality of the content you are trying to distribute. By the way, I didn’t know about this game and I’ll be definitively trying it out, so thanks for the content! I also just suscribed to your channel :)