I played more of Real Racing 2 and I think it's the most fun I've had with a racing game in ages. Maybe since TrackMania.
The game certainly isn't perfect or anywhere close to that but since I'm not a total racing/sim nut I never, ever purchased a wheel for any of my consoles so these analog tilt controls are the closest experience to that for me outside arcade games that I haven't touched in ages. They really work well and make for a very fun experience, especially with the in-car view. I don't even mind the lack of manual transmission and analog gas/break yet.
You could argue Wii could offer a similar experience and also have buttons for gas/break/transmissions but few, if any, bothered serious racing attempts on it, and I actually think having the screen so in your face helps the experience too. At least for whatever reasons I never felt the Mario Kart Wii controls this fun. In this game so far it just feels great to be able to hold your racing line pretty damn precisely (I've disabled all aids except a little break level for now).
That said, are there any racing games that do have manual transmission and such? At first I thought it just wouldn't work. I found myself wishing for a certain company to port a certain retro game to it (I'm not port begging that's why I'm not mentioning which, it's just something I thought to myself and not the point of my post) before I remembered how important manual transmission is for that, and then thinking it would be impossible.
But I think I then came up with some schemes that could work for some games, as an option based on preferences and play styles.
At least better than not having the option for a manual transmission at all.
One option could be to give you controls that have the gas always floored and just give you manual digital break by touching anywhere on one side of the screen and 4 or so big ass easy to reach and tap transmission speed buttons on the other side.
Another option could be manual gas on one side of the screen and the transmission speeds + break on the other. Or gas + break on one side (you aren't usually supposed to push both at the same time, right?), the transmission speeds on the other side.
Another could be setup so that touching anywhere on one side would be gas, but do nothing by itself, you'd have to also slide your thumb up, down, left or right, each representing a different transmission speed, with manual break on the other side of the screen.
I think different setups like that could work good enough to give you a deeper driving experience while keeping the fun tilt steering controls.
For automatic transmissions you could also have analog gas and break by using slider style controls. Tap and hold to enable gas or break for whichever side to 0%, move upward to increase up to 100%. Or also take this slider idea and make upward sliding gas %, downward sliding break %, and transmission buttons on the other side.
Maybe depending on the racing game style it would still be gimped compared to what even a gamepad allows technically but the tilt steering ontrols alone would tip the scale to favoring that scheme for me. Hell, it already does even without these options!
Oh and I'm suggesting these as someone who really doesn't like touch controls for actions games on iPad2, I couldn't control that Super Crate Box rip off at all, but I feel it would be a different and doable thing to have such car controls, it's not the same as controlling a character's directions and actions to me.
Are there any racing games that do incorporate any options similar to these or do all so far opt to not give you manual transmission and such at all? Or perhaps do it in a better way I can't think of, this is my first racing game on iPad2 and it seemed to be the most in-depth one.
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