IC Forum Archive

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

So, in order to celelbrate FKW, I picked up WE9 and Enthusia Racing. Now, WE does deserve its own topic, undeniably, but I won't be the one to do it, since I have no fucking clue about soccer or soccer games. I do enjoy playing WE though, for what it is worth.

This thread, however, is not about WE.

On the surface, Enthusia is a basic realistic racing sim, in the great Gran Tourismo style. But then, it is not. There is no money in the game. You actually level a car up by being good at driving with it. This is a strange concept, however, since being good at driving in enthusia is NOT just about being in first. You need to actually not hit things, a radical thought for GT. You need to stay on track. Whereas all of these were somewhat of a requirement to get the fastest times in GT, you could very easily win races by abusing collisions and such.

Enthusia actually has a meter (the Enthusia Points meter) that gets bigger as your drive levels up. This meter drains whenever you do something wrong, and only refills a bit after each race. Races take place in weeks, and if you have no points left in your meter, you have to sit out for a week to recharge. The game gives you incentive not to be a dick.

The game also does away with having to hunt for races. I never really realized this was a problem until I played Enthusia. See, when you have your car, you just pick a rank of races, and the game picks out which races you qualify to run automatically, and places them in a convenient menu to pick from. I can't explain how much smoother this makes race selection.

Despite what most reviewers say, the soundtrack is amazingly sexy in places. The menu is a little dull, but some of the tracks on the tracks are great. I didn't turn the music off as fast as, say, GT4. Hell, I still have it on.

So yeah, I will probably be writing more on this game, but I am just throwing this out to all the racing fans on IC (if there are any). Go get this.

DaleNixon · Posts: 766

You forgot to describe the totally awesome intro movie.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Oh shit, I could write a paper on that shit. I mean, fucking symbolism in a racing intro? Oh no konami didn't!

Yeah, the old guy...the chick...the crash...I can't describe it. MAybe google video can help.

DaleNixon · Posts: 766

I remember something about a wizard even... Looking through some kind of mirror to the future!

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Yeah, that is the old guy. He is out in a desert while cars are racing. He has a magic pendulum. He sees the future. He has kanji superimposed over some fo his footage.

And then there is a girl who is photgraphing the race, and almost has a nervous breakdown during an accident.

She then sees her image reflected in the broken windshield glass. This is just the grad school English fucker in me talking, but Lacan would have an orgasm at just that moment.

chazumaru* · Posts: 480

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Well, then I will do it, but later. Probably like tomorrow later. Man, being an American with no cable TV, I have no clue what even happens in a soccer game.

Kazu · Posts: 894

unfortunately i didn't get my hands on one of the Enthusias around ... despite the fact that people are really willing to get rid of it since it is a bit harder to approach than GT4, which makes it even more tempting ...

speaking of GT4, there is something i have to do, though.

another god · Posts: 1629

boojiboy7 wrote:

Well, then I will do it, but later. Probably like tomorrow later. Man, being an American with no cable TV, I have no clue what even happens in a soccer game.

I ordered Fox Soccer Channel to supplement my Winning Eleven 8 addiction.

My roommates are also addicted. So.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

You know, I would almost be willing to do this based on my weekend with WE9 alone. The game just draws me in.

As for GT4/Enthusia comparisons, I have to say I find myself liking Enthusia a bit more, once I get into it. The physics are a bit more difficult, but there is such a sense of joy I get when I win a race that is kind of absent from GT. I'm not sure why this is, but I think it has something to do with the way Enthusia doesn't try to overwhelm you with number of races. There ARE a shitload of races, but it doles them out slowly, so that oyu feel like you are getting somewhere.

I'm liking this game more and more.

Takashi · Posts: 820

While GT4 loves cars, Enthusia loves racing. By pushing people to get 3rd and 4th places it reflects more the reality of actual racing - unless you have a darned good car and a darned good driver, you aren't going forward.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

Takashi wrote:

While GT4 loves cars, Enthusia loves racing. By pushing people to get 3rd and 4th places it reflects more the reality of actual racing - unless you have a darned good car and a darned good driver, you aren't going forward.

This seem right. It is kind of interesting right now. We have three different realistic racing games (GT4, Enth, and Forza) all focused on different aspects of the culture. GT4 is for the collector (jay leno), Forza is for the community (customization and teams) and Enth is all about the lone driver (or, ya know, car ninja). I really want to start writing about this.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

Hmm!

It looks like I'll have to break my mantra (for FKW at least,) and pick this up. It seems well worth it.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Just realize that you will suck when you start, and that the only person who will make you get better is yourself.

It really almost seems like a shooter in that regard. You dont drive to get cars (gt4) or impress your XBL bros (forza) but just to get better. You will unlock more powerful cars, but you will stick with an old one because you know it and love it. At least I did.

Takashi · Posts: 820

As a curiosity, the opening is a leftover for when Enthusia Life actually had a storyline.

Also, my ranking is 107. I'd try and rise it a bit more, but my cousin broke my PS2 analogue pad playing Ultimate Spiderman.

Kazu · Posts: 894

well then, i did a little research yesterday and finally found two Konami-related Racing-cars in GT4. I knew there were two tracks which had Konami-ads, but i wasn't sure about cars. And hell, there really are two:

Fuji '80 and '90 features the Konami-ads as you cross the start/finish-line.

A closer look reveals another, not that-easy-to-see logo which is actually a
high-quality-texture in comparison to other ads.

I still wonder why....

well, the second track to feature konami-ads is the
Suzuka Racing Circuit - not exactly a small one, heh ....

speaking of cars:
The only car to feature the real "KONAMI"-logo is the Nissan Skyline GT-R (Xanavi Nismo JGTC 2003)-car
you can see it on the left side as well as on the
right side of the car, it is above the "bridgestone"-ad and below the "XANAVI"-ad, as can be seen on the doors.

And since Genki seems to belong to Konami (i think?) there is the second one:

The HKS Racing Genki Hyper Silvia (or how it's called) and since it's a tuning car (dragster?) you can only obtain it at the HKS cars-shop.

well then, with a
quickshot PSP-work i wish everyone a happy FKW2006.

And yeah, the "rising sun" above the Konami-logo still misses "lens flare"-effects, but since it's a good shot, i'll leave it at that.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

So I just fired up enthusia for antoher bout of driving, and to see if I have some more stuff to add to the post I am writing about the game currently, and I just noticed that the voice that says ENTHUSIA sounds very, um Resident Evil, oddly.

chazumaru* · Posts: 480

So where is that big Enthusia post, Takashi?

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

All FKW, I have been trying to write about Enthusia. What comes below is what I have, for what it is worth. Enjoy it and most likely tear it to shreds. I'm sure it needs it.
___________

I want to write something about Enthusia.

This is a challenge, because there is a lot to write about, all of which may or may not actually fall into something coherent. There may even being a somewhat internal acknowledgement of this incoherency, if one takes it to be there. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The most basic thing worth examining in any driving game is the actual driving. This seems like a somewhat self eveident proposition, except that there is a lot more to the modern driving game, particularly any one attempting at realism, than just the drive. Yet, it is the drive that is supposedly why we are there.

I can't really talk about the physics of driving. I don't drive a car too often, and when I do, it is certainly not under any conditions that resemble racing. Borrowing you Mom's Saturn to pick up some groceries does not lead to intense battles on the highways of Cleveland. They do feel different from other raginc games though. The car's have a lot more weight, and a little less traction. Sliding can really screw up a perfect run.

While I can't talk about the actual physics of driving in comparison to this game, I can talk a lot about what the game finds important in physics. It is obsessed with momentuum, and as a corolary, the center of gravity. And it knows it is simulating this, and simulating driving with a focus on this, and it puts a display dead center of the screen that is a top down view of your car, with a little yellow dot that shifts around as you weave your way through the course. It even leaves a residual behind for a few seconds, so you can tell where your center of gravity was about 3 seconds ago, if that helps. You can turn this off, of course, but its default presence is really indicative of the focus of the engine.

The edges of the screen show this focus a little bit too, but also bring in something a lot more interesting. The screen is bordered by a dark tinting, one that moves as the car turns, corresponding loosely with the center of gravity again. The book talks about this being meant to indicate how a driver would feel the pull of gravity on his body as he whirled around the track, or something like that. And it does change how I view the game. It directs my eyes in different ways, and even, after playing a little bit, gives a little bit of the feel of motion. When combined with the motion blurring at the edges, a decidedly non-realistic graphic touch that most simulation themed games would quickly discard, there is a definite sense to this game of speed.

In obsessing over the edges as much as they clearly have, the designers of Enthusia have really revealed what they think is important, not in physics as much as in the driving experience itself. They want to simulate the feel of the drive as well as they can. They want me, the gamer to feel like I am in that car. Even the obsession with center of gravity and motion is actually an obsession over how the driver feels in the seat.

There might be some missteps with this. Forza racing indroduced a relatively intuitive camera for use in the cockpit, in which one used the right analog stick to rotate the driver view, allowing you to check your blind spot in a pretty eficient manner. Enthusia is still stuck with the same centered rear view mirror that any Gran Tourismo player will know and either hate or love. To focus on this though may be misunderstanding the focus of the Enthusia team though, as accurate visual presentation of driving might not be their number one priority. The meters are always the same, no matter what the car (with variations only in RPMs shown on the tac, since that does vary with different cars). There is no attempt to present a real cockpit, since the central locations of both the VCS (the center of gravity thing) and the mirror clearly aren't meant to mirror reality.

But, does the rest of the game reflect the team's desire to focus on how it feels to be in the seat?

Maybe. Of the two main single player modes, Enthusia Life, aside from having the priority of title, is clearly meant to be the game you play too much. It really does a lot to remove all the stuff one finds in driving sims that isn't driving. You have a ranking, and you drive races, which gives you points (even for finishing in places other than 1st, which can sometimes be advantageous to have as a goal) which moves you up in the ranking and gives you experience levels for both.

Yes, experience levels. Unlike most other sim drivers, Enthusia isn't focused on the tuning scene. You can mess with your car's settings if you want. No one will stop you. As you level up a car, you gain more access to tuning it. You just aren't able to go buy a bunch of parts and overpower that new Honda whatever you just bought. You won't actually be able to buy anything, as there is no money. New cars are doled out from your competitiors rides at the end of each race in a little random raffle. It can be frustrating in that you sometimes end up getting nothing, but it really just circumvents the entire buying process, a process I can only understand as repetitive and useless now that I have played a game without it.

Gaining experience also involves understanding the Enthusia Points system. A driver, in reflection of his level has a certain number of EP available to him. It starts at 300. Each screw up in a race takes some of these points away. Hitting a car is the most sever, but hitting a wall and going off track can also take them away. This isn't Project Gotham, so there is no way to get them back by doing some sort of trick while driving. The more of these you lose, the less experience you and your car will get at the end of a race. If you lose them all, you are out of the running for the next week as you need to recover them. If you don't lose them all, you will recover some points (the amont of which goes up with the level of the driver) so you will have a chance the next week. The game uses this week cycle as a way to set up some sort of measurment of progress, and it does feel bad to miss a week. Switching a car makes you miss a week as well, but you will recover a part of your Enthusia Points as a benefit. The game wants you to drive, but it doesn't want you to be a dick about it.

When picking the race you are going to drive, the game circumvents another whole annoying process that I didn't know annoyed me until I saw life without it. When you pick race in Enthusia Life, a menu pops up. Every race on that horrizontally scrolling list is able to be entered by you, right then. No car switching, no boxes popping up to let you know you are over/under spec, no licences. Just pick a race and go. The only extra info you need to consider is your car rating going into the race. Each car is given a point rating in relation to the other cars. The high the rating, the harder it is supposed to be to win the race. Also, the number acts as a multiplier to the points you earn. Once you get a feel for it, you find yourself able to balance out the highest number with your own ability to drive, thereby maximizing the points you get. It sounds a little complicated, and it might be, but it gets pretty intuitive after a few races.

The rating system introduces something interesting I alluded to before, as it can make it relatively profitable to finish in 3rd or 4th in a race, simply by entering a car with a really low rating (and thus a high multiplier) in a race. Odds are pretty decent in this circumstance that you will not finish in first. But, since you ran a car with a high multiplier, coming in 4th can actually end up being more profiatble than if you ran a high powered car and came in first. It's a strange system that works towards putting the focus on getting the most out of your car, and to some degree it works.

The fact that it works can be good and bad. I didn't mind it so much, except that of the 200 some odd cars in the game, I have mostly driven 1 of them, my Audi A3 Quattro. I've leveled it up all the way. And it just works for me. It is rated relatively low, so that in the races that come in the end, I can always focus on moving my ranking up. The ranking systme has some problems in this regard, as when you get about rank 100 (you start at rank 1,000), you find that you need more and more points to even break even in rank. So you have to get creative, and find a low rank car that can actually stay competitive. I find myself wondering if the game caters the other cars a bit to make sure you can stay in the race no matter what you are driving, as my Audi should probably not be competitive at all, but I can still eke out a win or two with it, and never finish below 3rd unless I really blow something.

The soundtrack may or may not be interesting, depending on who you ask. I think most gamers will mostly find it non-descript, and possibly complain about it being dull, which depresses me quite a bit actually. It's not full of licensed tracks in an odd attempt to appear cool, which tends to come off as forced and behind popular tastes (Gran Turismo, though I can say that 4 at least tried to give some alternative to this). The soundtrack is full of original tunes by four composers I hadn't heard much from: Masanori Akita, Shusei Murai, Shinji Usiroda, and Yuichi Tsuchiya. At least according to IMDB, the only thing most of these guys have done is the second recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes game, but given that it doesn't mention their work on Enthusia, it's a little suspect to say the least. One of them worked on a Suikoden, but sadly it was the generally not well received 3. I don't know a lot about game composers, but I am willing to bet that these guys are kind of looked at as utilitarian omposers, filling in on a game that won't be huge, but needs a soundtrack nonetheless. TMNT2 is not a big project. Neither was Enthusia. Yet, they put some really good work in here. The soundtrack sets a mood, and it really is done with a lot of care.

Rev City is a prefect example. The track feels incredibly inspired by the Ridge Racer series, and the music even reflects this, with a nice beat and some decent arrangement that is clearly meant to bring to the player's mind Ridge Racers past, but subtlely. I have probably tainted the experience by even mentioning it, because it certainly didn't hit me right away, but I think it is there intentionally. There is a course obviously meant to be in San Francisco, called Pacific Gateway. When you play this course, the sound of an electric guitar greats you as you start up, simultaneously giving nods to the American setting of the race, but possibly also to the great soundtracks of older driving game like Outrun, where that guitar/synth just screamed of open road.

I have a lot of respect for this soundtrack. The menu music is dull, certainly, but once again, I think this is another small way the game tells us where we should be.

There is one part of this whole game that I haven't mentioned, and I don't know how to. It is a relic of when the game was meant to be something a little different from what I have in my PS2 right now. It is the opening FMV.

There is a desert, and some kanji I can't read (which means, oh, any kanji) occasionally flash across it. There is an old man, who has a pendulum and looks like he can see the future, or pull out some exotic kung fu that no man that old should be able to do. There is a young woman, in maybe her late 20's, who watches the car races as they whirl by her, and photgraphs them. She becomes involved in the race on some sort of deep level, as she leans with them turning and looks very focused. When one of these surrogate cars crashes, she looks sad and terrified and like she might show up in Silent Hill for a few moments. There is this image of her reflected in the broken glass, in pieces. It's sad and mildly disquietting, and then the pendulum shows up and the title screen is there. What does it all mean?

There was original supposed to be a story in Enthusia Life. Maybe it involved that girl, I don't know. The old man seems like an auto prophet. There is stills ome meaning there. The game wants us to be our cars. When we crash, it wants us to find ourselves in the broken mirror. A lot of people have said that in Gran Turismo, you form a relationship with a car, like it was a girlfriend. This game wants you to be the car, and feel every jerk of the road, every bump and scratch. It wants you not to leave a car lightly, with the time penalty for doing it. It can hurt, sometimes a lot, but I have always heard you needed a bit of masochism to be a racer anyways.

I am currently ranked 3rd out of 1,000 in the game. In maybe one more race, I can top the chart. I don't know that this will actually accomplish anything, except maybe show me another FMV that would have made more sense with an intact story. I am almost afraid to do this.

boojiboy7 · Posts: 1104

EPILOGUE: I did it. I got the top rank. Rank 1.

AND NOTHING HAPPENED. AT ALL.

Still, FKW Cission Momplete.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

A fine finish for FKW.