Who acts like that? It's an incredibly difficult goal to achieve. No question about it.
I do feel that the results are worth the effort, however. As I noted on the last page, Reflections pulled off a small miracle with Driver San Francisco.
I wonder what features were cut or what compromises were made, however, to get the game to run at 60 FPS on console. Or even what middleware they used.
I feel like we'd not get a great feature like Harmony or the new physics engine (or one as complex in its simulation aspect) if the folks at EAC attempted to get SSX running at 60 in 3 years. Maybe the next SSX game will do this because, at that point, the physics tech and Harmony will be ready to
re-use, rather than building these tech packages during the actual development cycle.
im pissed about the balance mechanic for grinding is gone...
I hope they re-iterate a legacy grinding mode like they have a legacy trick mode.(even if the legacy trick mode is only input and not physics based)
Connor Dougan explained it in the GB QL that the team felt it was best to just drop it because sometimes, on a short grind (or grinds made shorter by faster speeds -- and boosting on top of that), you'll be engaged on a rail for a very short amount of time. It doesn't make sense, and detracts from the fun, if you're forced to engage in a mini-game for not even 2 seconds to keep your string going.
When we visited in the summer we were also very adamant about Uber grinds being in the game. If they require directional inputs, I'd rather be able to focus on those operations rather than Uber grinding
and balancing at the same time, or even interchangeably.
I totally understand where you're coming from, but I think it's a smarter design decision that we'll all appreciate when we get our hands on it and start stringing MASSIVE combos together by using rails to chain tricks.