[quote name='jmbreci']I am about to do a Steve Martin impersonation at the car dealership in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on IC-1. I think >15 times < 0.06 from gold....must be the lag time from gas to break. Still need to go back and work on a few others, but just have to open some stuff up since a demanding 4 year old wants me to get as many cars opened up ASAP.
Mad - nope, A-9 was the other one....I keep shooting out too far and a car passes me each time. Don't have A-8 on gold, but was close.[/QUOTE]Dude I almost had it with NASCAR, I scored silver at like lets say it was 13.254 and gold was a 13.2 or better, the next like hundred attempts aside from nailing a crap ton of cones and just laughing about that, I sequentially beat my score by 13.248 then 13.238, 13.231, 13.227, 13.218, 13.217, 13.216, 13.215 then finally down to 13.208 before I somehow got it at 13.195.
For A8 just power on the right into their turn, brake late, it's okay if you brake slide past onto the green, try to correct quickly and finish the chicane ahead of the 3 other cars. That one was more brute force than finesse, don't finesse it.
[quote name='daschrier']I missed out on one of the B license tests by .008 sec. Boy that pissed me off.
Didn't know that ABS slows you down...
Is it considered "cheating" in the game to use ABS and trac. control, or is the handicap that you can't go as fast?[/QUOTE]ABS very noticably slows you down in A10 when going from a setting of 1 and off on the ABS is the difference between passing the yellow car almost immediately or having to bump him out of your way since you aren't going fast enough to pass him. It's not cheating though. These things are aids, you'll want ABS for those stupid turns that damn near bring you to a halt because without it, you're locking your tires and just not stopping. Traction control really is hit or miss. If you don't use it, you'll have to watch your launch and you may find yourself spinning tires if there is too much torque and not enough grip. If you do use it, you lose power when you power slide or break traction with a nasty torque spike(torque makes you spin tires, not horsepower).
[quote name='daphatty']Using Traction Control will hinder your performance. Even APEX (The CE guide book) suggests turning Traction Control off. Keep in mind that doing so will FORCE you to learn how to drive your car (i.e. not mash on the accelerator). Chances are you are going to spin out quite a few times until you figure out what your tires can and cannot handle.[/QUOTE]A good set of tires and properly balancing the car's suspension along with the right application of aerodynamics will definitely help keep the four to the floor. The rub is you probably want to reference the APEX book for that.
[quote name='daschrier']I definately agree with their complaints about the AI. I'm not a skilled racer by any means, and even remember the first GT taking many hours to perfect the license tests to even be able to race. In the last few games they have made it possible to race without a license, and even make the bronze extremely east to get.
The biggest issue with the difficulty is that I have only not gotten a gold on a race maybe twice, and I'm almost done the third tier of races. The same exploits that you could use in the old games is still present...I love not needing to learn to take corners since I can just t-bone the competition at high speed and use their car to slow down
Overall it is just a pretty version of GT, but then again if you look back at how groundbreaking and ambitious the original GT was, the flaws are easier to dismiss.[/QUOTE]The problem you're facing is you are admittedly not a skilled driver. It's not a dig at you, it's the truth. A skilled driver can win races or put up a serious fight with cars that otherwise outclass them in specs. It's all about the driver, the license tests are there to help hone those skills in untuned cars so when you hop into your pride and joy, you have some idea of what to do.
Difficulty is not really hard. Load the race, get into the lead, hold the lead. Nothing hard about that. Most drivers you encounter at lower levels are Blue drivers, they won't put up a fight but they're stupidly accurate and hold their pace well without stressing out. Just because you nor the reviewer understand how the AI works, doesn't mean it's dumb, I suggest reading my B-Spec primer and skim down to the personality section. Blue to Red offers a lot of flavors of driver with upsides and downs, you'll never intimidate a Blue driver so you have to muscle past them or overtake them on a straight but you can certainly piss off a Red driver and cause him to make a huge mistake.
me. Do you know what my driver's greatest weakness is? Straight lines on Suzuka in the Nostalgic race.
