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iRacing: All the gear and no idea!

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I love motorsport, it's about the only sport that really interests me to be honest. I follow the misfortunes of my local football club Brighton & Hove Albion, but I'm not a true fan of football. I also play a little bit of Snooker (badly). But I'm not a sporty person at all.

I love my cars though, and I love to watch a race! There's something about the control the drivers have over their machines that fascinates me. I've been a fan of Formula 1 for more years than I can remember. I make regular visits to my local-ish circuit Brands Hatch to watch various races from the now defunct A1-GP, the BTCC, the legends series and most recently truck racing! I also love going to Goodwood for the Revival and Festival of Speed.

It's fair to say I have more than a passing interest in the sport, though I would never think I could actually get in a car and survive even one lap without killing myself! That's where my other love comes in to it, video games...

I've played racing games for as long as they've been around, from arcade classics like Outrun to home console revelations such as Virtua Racing and Gran Turismo. On the whole though, I've been a PC gamer for the most part. I remember starting out with "Grand Prix Circuit" which ran in MS-DOS and moved on to other classic racing games like Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 2. More recently I've enjoyed the new Dirt rally and F1 games from Codemasters, the Forza games and Assetto Corsa.

To enhance my enjoyment I've used various racing wheels over the years. I started with the old MS sidewinder FF wheel and when the 360 came along I picked up the official wheel for that too. I've also had the slightly less spectacular Nintendo Wii "wheel" accessory for the Wiimote, the less said about that the better!

The MS sidewinder FF wheel was great in its day, but the cheep plastic pedals and lack of a clutch and gear stick left me wanting more. So a few months ago I splashed out and treated myself to a slightly more high-end offering. I bought a Thrustmaster T500RS with pedals and the TH8RS gear stick to accompany it. This wasn't cheap, but having researched the alternatives, namely the Logitech G27 and Fanatec Clubsport range. I decided that in terms of bang for the buck, the Thrustmaster was the only option.

The G27 seems to be a good entry level option, it has the wheel, pedals and gear stick all included and can be picked up for around £250. I'm sure if I'd bought it I'd have been happy enough, but one of the things that put me off my old MS Sidewinder was the size of the wheel. It was much smaller than a real steering wheel and the G27 was similar. It is also almost entirely made from plastic and has a gear driven force feedback system. Reviews suggested it was rather weak as a result.

The Fanatec is supposedly the holy grail of wheels, I'd have one of those every day if money was no object, but the reality is that money very much is the object that stops me getting one of these. The wheel base alone (no actual wheel with that, you buy it seperatly) is £450, the wheels start from £140. Then add on the cost of the pedals (£200) and the gear stick (£150), suddenly I'm looking at spending the best part of £1,000 on a wheel! HAHAHAHAHAHA... If I win the lottery I'll have one, but until then....

So, the T500RS from Thrustmaster was the choice for me, a £350 investment plus an extra £100 for the gear shifter. Less than half the price of the Rolls Royce listed above. It's a thing of beauty too, the wheel is big, the pedals have a fantastic build quality and feel superb. The feedback through the massive motor and belt is enough to rip the wheel from your hands when you have a big crash. It transforms the experience in ways you can only imagine until you've tried it.

Being able to feather the throttle with your right foot, or apply just a small amount of brake to nose in to a corner just can't be replicated with a controller. The feedback you get from the wheel gives you so much information, you can feel the cars grip!

After using the wheel for a while I wanted to take my virtual racing to the next level. I'd heard a lot about iRacing which sort of a bit like an MMORPG for racing. It's expensive, but then what MMORPG isn't? Fortunately I signed up during a half price sale and went for the full 2 years to maximise my savings. It's a big commitment given that I'd never played the game before!

The thing with iRacing is that it's a racing simulation, there's nothing arcade about it. This is all about real tracks, real vehicles and the most accurate physics you'll find! The graphics aren't the greatest, but frame rate is king here and they are more that adequate (I think it looks very nice). The people who play it take it very seriously too, each player has their own license with points attached. Your license level is what dictates which races and vehicles you can access. At the entry level (Rookie) you only have a couple of cars and tracks to choose from.

This seems harsh at first, but it's actually a good thing, as it forces you to get good with the limited access you have. Master the entry level Mazda MX-5 and Summit Point Raceway, then you can improve your safety rating and open up more of the game ... sorry, SIMULATION!

Having grown up playing lots of racing games, I thought I knew a thing or two about racing. Turns out I was wrong, as most rookies, I went into my first race not really knowing what to expect and not having practised enough. I went off the track a lot and got into a couple of crashes, that was my race over and my safety rating took a hammering.

It's all about your Safety Rating in iRacing and it's a brilliant idea. It's what allows you to "level-up". Stay out of trouble and have a clean race and your rating improves, but just going off the track will lead to a penalty. As will losing control and colliding with other cars, it forces you to race properly. You can't just floor it off the line and pile up in the first corner, you won't get anywhere doing that. It still happens at the Rookie level, but beyond that the players... sorry DRIVERS, take things a lot more seriously. You can't afford to crash for fear of losing your licence.

The key to success is practise, practise, practise. You can make as many mistakes as you like in practise sessions, it's only qualifying and racing that will actually effect your rating. So you have to pump in lap, after lap, after lap learning the braking points, turn in points, improving your speed but most importantly improving your consistency! You need to be able to do around 20 laps and not spin off or lose control, keep the wheels of your car between the white lines at all times before you contemplate actually racing. I learnt that the hard way and I'm still stuck in the Rookie class :-( I'm getting better though.

The game looks amazing on my system, I've added a picture of my setup just to show off a little bit. I'd actually love to get myself a racing cockpit for it all, but I just don't have the space for that, and my PC has to do more than just play racing games. Again, if I win the lottery I'll be picking one up just as soon as I can. I've also been tempted to buy some racing shoes, it's tough to do a full race with the pedals while wearing socks. I've tried using slippers but they just don't work


Shadow of Mordor: Enraging not enjoyable!

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Middle Earth : Shadow Of Mordor is one of those rare games. It's a game that I had absolutely no idea was in development until AFTER it had been released! Not only that, but when I heard about it from a friend and looked it up I discovered it was getting rave reviews. This is something very unusual given that my on-line social networks revolve mainly around gaming. Therefore it was without hesitation that I purchased this game on Steam without a second thought. This was my first mistake!

I'd heard it was very similar in style to the Assassin's Creed and Batman games, I have played both these games and they have given me varying levels of enjoyment over the years as different versions have been released. I was happy to hear this as I'd read that Shadow Of Mordor improved on the ideas and mechanics of those games, so I was very eager to see what was in store for me.

The first hour of playing felt extremely confusing, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing, I didn't know who I was or where I was going. I looked at the map and didn't really understand anything on it. So I started to explore... and that's where things started to go wrong! I was attacked by Orcs.. or is that Uruks... I'm still not sure I understand the difference, or if there even is one.

Inevitably I died as the 5 or 6 creatures bludgeoned me to death in a fairly swift and efficient manner. It seems the one who killed me got a promotion, but that wasn't really explained very well. I repeated the same process about 4 or 5 times, each time I'd try to explore the map and each time I'd encounter a group of enemies who would dispatch me back to the afterlife/wraith/ghost tower. Eventually I managed to survive long enough to figure out the ranking/army system used by the hordes of Uruks. I even managed to kill a captain at one point!

For the most part though, it was a case of trying to figure out where to go, ending up in a fight and dying... rinse and repeat for an hour or so. This, I'm sure you can imagine, became somewhat of a chore so I quit.

Not to be outdone, I returned to the game an hour or so later having read more reviews to try and figure out exactly what the hell I was supposed to do to survive for longer than 5 minutes. I thought I had some ideas, stay hidden was one of them. It worked to a degree, but eventually you have to emerge from hiding and as soon as I did, I'd get slaughtered again.

The thing is, Shadow Of Mordor does a good job of ticking just about all the boxes on the list of things I hate in a game. The principle one being re-spawning enemies. I will often quit a game without hesitation if a game introduces re-spawning enemies. Boderlands 2 was a classic example of this, I missed the first game but purchased the second one on the recommendation of friends. I didn't realise the game involved a lot of backtracking and retracing your steps, which the developers figured would be more fun if you had to kill the same groups of enemies over and over again. Not even randomly generated ones, they were the exact same characters in exactly the same locations every time. Needless to say that game lasted a couple of hours before it went in the trash.

Normally, if I know about it in advance I won't bother to buy the game, but I didn't in the case of Shadow Of Mordor. The argument goes that giving you endless enemies to fight enables you to level up your character by grinding away. My argument is that it's a lazy game mechanic that enables the developers to add several hours to the game play without having to make any additional game! If I clear out an area, I expect that area to be clear when I return, unless there is a valid reason for re-enforcements in the story as a one off. But in Shadow Of Mordor, you can be fighting a group of 5 or 6 Uruks, and as you're fighting them, 5 or 6 more will just appear from nowhere, and then another 5, and another 5 until you are totally overwhelmed and dead!

On the occasions that I found a Captain (or one just randomly appeared in the middle of a fight), I would already be in a weakened state with no way of regaining any health. So inevitably the captain would kill me, and he would level up. That's one of the "clever" things in this game and what it's being given huge credit for. As enemies kill you, they level up, become more powerful etc.. they also remember their past encounters with you. The problem with this, as I've found out, is that it sort of breaks the whole difficulty progression.

You see, every time a Captain kills me, he levels up, but I don't. This means the next time I encounter him, he's harder to kill, but I'm still just as weak as the last time I fought him and lost. Do you spot the flaw in this design? It means the game gets harder the worse you are! That's some screwed up logic right there isn't it?

I guess you could just spend even more time grinding the endlessly re-spawning grunts, but even they kill me after a while, and frankly it's just boring.

You start the game seriously under-powered to face the enemies around you and trying to escape that at the start is very difficult. The game at the beginning is punishingly hard and I rage quit countless times. I kept coming back though because the reviews were all so glowing, I couldn't find a bad one! I thought I must be missing something and it would all come together, I can tell you now that it didn't.

I now have 8 hours of play time registered on Steam and I don't think I've actually managed to get anywhere! I think I've completed maybe two missions so far, and that was only through endless repetition and eventually getting lucky. Certainly not because I was able to accomplish it through any skills I'd developed.

I like a game that presents a challenge, but that challenge has to be enjoyable. I don't think I can honestly say I've enjoyed any of the time I've spent playing Shadow Of Mordor, it's just got me stressed and frustrated. I understand that you are supposed to die in this game, that's how the whole Uruk army/nemesis thing works, but I just didn't appreciate being overrun every time I got into a conflict. Essentially, if I started a fight, I'd end up dead!

I felt helpless and powerless to make any progress within the game, you can level up and improve your abilities, but you have to be able to survive some fights to gain the XP in order to do that. I can't!

Now normally a game offers difficulty levels, easy, normal, hardcore etc... and when it does, I invariably chose the easy option. Because I know I'm not that great at games, but I like to experience them and absorb myself in the story and world. If a game doesn't do that, it will usually have some sort of adaptive AI where the fights get easier and it will set itself to be just enough of a challenge to keep you on your toes. Not so in Shadow Of Mordor, it will happily just kill you again and again and again and again. In fact it goes further by punishing you for being bad by making the captains more powerful!

One of the missions I failed numerous times was a stealth mission where if the alarm was raised, you failed the mission (another of my pet-peeves). Well I must have attempted that 30 or more times, eventually getting through to the target, and when I did, I locked on to the wrong enemy by mistake and failed it AGAIN!!!!

The encounters with the Captains are totally random too, I knew the location of one of them as I had him marked. He was the opposite side of the map, but right in the middle of a fight in a camp, suddenly he shows up! That's just stupid and unnecessary.

I can't see any way to escape the misery of grinding hours and hours of grunts to try and match the Captains now. That's my idea of gaming hell and I really wanted to like the game, that is evident by the 8 hours I spent trying to get on top of it. But the repetitive nature of the game play, the endless deaths and retries have finally taken their toll.

The saddest part of all is that I bought the game on Steam so I can't trade it in for something else!


Populous: the Beginning: unexplored territory

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I have now progressed further than ever before.  Bloodlust has been conquered.

Back in 2005, I wrote of my troubles.  I started optimistic, settled for a war of attrition, then got a bit gung-ho and lost it all.  I tried many times to complete that level, and never managed it.  I did this time, though - on the fourth attempt.  This was a hard level.

I think my focus was initially misplaced. Just over the ridge from my starting position was a stone head, which the red tribe began worshipping at pretty soon after the start of each game.  I was dashing over there as soon as possible, to stop them gaining a spell that I thought would be catastrophic for me.  In fact, by leaving them to it (and blocking off access to the reds from my village) they used the bloodlust spell they gained on the yellow tribe part way through the game, causing chaos in my enemy's village.

So, rather than attacking the reds, I concentrated on killing off the greens as quickly as possible.  I built up a small army of preachers and warriors, and opened a pathway as quickly as I could down to their village.  I sent my followers down for a scrap, and quickly demolished the village.  One enemy down.

This then gave me a lot more space to expand my village, but I was suffering from attacks from the reds and yellows in the older side of my settlement.  I built a huge wall across the level, separating us off - though I left a small gap through which the red team was constantly funnelled, including the shaman.  I put down about 20 swamp spells there, meaning that I kept on gaining a nice manna boost.

As I said, the reds and yellows were fighting among themselves as well.  This meant that the yellow settlement shifted over time, and the yellows moved closer to the newer side of my settlement.  I was suffering a constant influx of armies, so I eroded the land around the edge of my settlement to create a water channel.  I still had to contend with balloon invasions, but that was soon sorted.



My settlement was thriving, now that I was concentrating on defence (you can see the cliff wall on the west of the map in the screenshot above, and the balloons around the edge of the village), but there were a few issues.  Firstly, the other settlements were also growing quickly, and secondly I was running out of building materials.  I needed to be able to build more balloons for defence, but had nothing to make them out of.  I just had to wait for trees to grow, to build up my army, all the time repelling the yellow army's attacks.


Note in the screenshot above the odd spit of land coming from the south of my settlement.  I had noticed another stone head in the middle of the sea, and rather than using precious balloons to ferry people over there, I just raised land all the way across.

Eventually, I decided to make my move.  I closed off the narrow cliff to make sure that the reds couldn't get through to my village just by sacrificing large numbers to overcome the swamps, and I raised a land bridge towards the yellows.  I sent a huge army of preachers, warriors and some balloon-based firewarriors across, led by my shaman in a balloon who killed off the opposing firewarriors before they could attack.  I killed the shaman, I destroyed the balloon factory and firewarrior training hut with tornadoes, I killed the shaman, I positioned a number of warriors and firewarriors around the resurrection site to kill the shaman every time she resurrected.  It was a rout.

Until I noticed that the reds were on their way down the coast to attack my village.  I quickly positioned all the remaining firewarrior balloons along the coast, and sent the shaman back to cast swamps to make sure.  It took ages for my army to finish off the yellow village, because the iditos kept rebuilding it ...


... but eventually, with a bit of help from earthquakes and tornadoes, it fell.

Two down.

The reds were still a force to be reckoned with, however.  They had a huge village and a huge army.  My excursions to the yellows hadn't hurt my fortunes too much, luckily, and my villages were replacing the dead pretty quickly.  I just needed to train more warriors and preachers - and particularly firewarriors.

But I had a trick up my sleeve.  I'd found another stone head, which had given me four spells of bloodlust ... but the one in the middle of the sea had given me angel of death.  Coupled with the fact that the reds hadn't built up a balloon army, this made things pretty easy.  I took over my balloon army, destroying the firewarriors as we went, and then I unleashed the angel of death.


Once the enemy was reduced to a manageable amount, I ordered the rest of my followers to come up and destroy the village.  They didn't even get there before the reds fell.


Nine years after I first started, I've completed Bloodlust.


I didn't stop there.  The next level was good fun, with an armageddon spell available in the middle of the map.  I think that the level is meant to see you stopping the others from getting that spell and then casting it for a massive brawl, but instead I wiped out two of the villages before casting the spell of a much reduced yellow army.  Still fun though.

Populous: the Beginning: unexplored territory

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I have now progressed further than ever before.  Bloodlust has been conquered.

Back in 2005, I wrote of my troubles.  I started optimistic, settled for a war of attrition, then got a bit gung-ho and lost it all.  I tried many times to complete that level, and never managed it.  I did this time, though - on the fourth attempt.  This was a hard level.

I think my focus was initially misplaced. Just over the ridge from my starting position was a stone head, which the red tribe began worshipping at pretty soon after the start of each game.  I was dashing over there as soon as possible, to stop them gaining a spell that I thought would be catastrophic for me.  In fact, by leaving them to it (and blocking off access to the reds from my village) they used the bloodlust spell they gained on the yellow tribe part way through the game, causing chaos in my enemy's village.

So, rather than attacking the reds, I concentrated on killing off the greens as quickly as possible.  I built up a small army of preachers and warriors, and opened a pathway as quickly as I could down to their village.  I sent my followers down for a scrap, and quickly demolished the village.  One enemy down.

This then gave me a lot more space to expand my village, but I was suffering from attacks from the reds and yellows in the older side of my settlement.  I built a huge wall across the level, separating us off - though I left a small gap through which the red team was constantly funnelled, including the shaman.  I put down about 20 swamp spells there, meaning that I kept on gaining a nice manna boost.

As I said, the reds and yellows were fighting among themselves as well.  This meant that the yellow settlement shifted over time, and the yellows moved closer to the newer side of my settlement.  I was suffering a constant influx of armies, so I eroded the land around the edge of my settlement to create a water channel.  I still had to contend with balloon invasions, but that was soon sorted.



My settlement was thriving, now that I was concentrating on defence (you can see the cliff wall on the west of the map in the screenshot above, and the balloons around the edge of the village), but there were a few issues.  Firstly, the other settlements were also growing quickly, and secondly I was running out of building materials.  I needed to be able to build more balloons for defence, but had nothing to make them out of.  I just had to wait for trees to grow, to build up my army, all the time repelling the yellow army's attacks.


Note in the screenshot above the odd spit of land coming from the south of my settlement.  I had noticed another stone head in the middle of the sea, and rather than using precious balloons to ferry people over there, I just raised land all the way across.

Eventually, I decided to make my move.  I closed off the narrow cliff to make sure that the reds couldn't get through to my village just by sacrificing large numbers to overcome the swamps, and I raised a land bridge towards the yellows.  I sent a huge army of preachers, warriors and some balloon-based firewarriors across, led by my shaman in a balloon who killed off the opposing firewarriors before they could attack.  I killed the shaman, I destroyed the balloon factory and firewarrior training hut with tornadoes, I killed the shaman, I positioned a number of warriors and firewarriors around the resurrection site to kill the shaman every time she resurrected.  It was a rout.

Until I noticed that the reds were on their way down the coast to attack my village.  I quickly positioned all the remaining firewarrior balloons along the coast, and sent the shaman back to cast swamps to make sure.  It took ages for my army to finish off the yellow village, because the iditos kept rebuilding it ...


... but eventually, with a bit of help from earthquakes and tornadoes, it fell.

Two down.

The reds were still a force to be reckoned with, however.  They had a huge village and a huge army.  My excursions to the yellows hadn't hurt my fortunes too much, luckily, and my villages were replacing the dead pretty quickly.  I just needed to train more warriors and preachers - and particularly firewarriors.

But I had a trick up my sleeve.  I'd found another stone head, which had given me four spells of bloodlust ... but the one in the middle of the sea had given me angel of death.  Coupled with the fact that the reds hadn't built up a balloon army, this made things pretty easy.  I took over my balloon army, destroying the firewarriors as we went, and then I unleashed the angel of death.


Once the enemy was reduced to a manageable amount, I ordered the rest of my followers to come up and destroy the village.  They didn't even get there before the reds fell.


Nine years after I first started, I've completed Bloodlust.


I didn't stop there.  The next level was good fun, with an armageddon spell available in the middle of the map.  I think that the level is meant to see you stopping the others from getting that spell and then casting it for a massive brawl, but instead I wiped out two of the villages before casting the spell of a much reduced yellow army.  Still fun though.

Populous: the Beginning: a love affair with balloons

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Level 13, Aerial Bombardment, saw the introduction of balloons.  There were two enemies - the greens, who were building up on the other end of my island, and the yellows, who were on a separate island which was much smaller.  The yellows knew of building balloons; the greens knew earthquake.

It wasn't long before the yellows started to attack one end of my island, coming over a large cliff with their balloons filled with fire warriors and spies.  My village was severely damaged, and I had to quickly rebuild my firewarrior and priest training huts.


The greens were leaving me alone, which I ensured by raising a tall cliff across the island.  No boats meant no access.  After a few more raids by the yellows, I was able to train us a decent number of firewarriors, and I placed then across the cliffs which the yellows were travelling over.  This was a remarkably successful tactic, and it meant that I was able to collect a fair few of the enemy balloons myself after dispatching the occupants.  This meant that my defences became ever more strong, as firewarriors' reach increased.


It also meant I could take my shaman, along with a lone firewarrior, in a balloon to start to terrorise the greens.  I first concentrated on killing all the firewarriors and destroying their training hut, which meant that nothing could touch me as I hovered above the sea - other than the shaman, of course, who kept coming over and getting hit by lightning for her trouble.  Much use of tornadoes, lightning, erode and hypnotise later, and the greens fell.

I prayed at the nearby vault, and gained the earthquake spell.  Back to the cliff, and I find that several yellow balloon parties have been foiled, meaning that I can grab loads of balloons and fill them with firewarriors for a bodyguard party.


I pray at the second vault, learn how to make balloons, then build a land bridge across to the yellow's island so I can get a huge army of warriors and priests over, to join my firewarriors.  The limited size of the yellow island had ensured that their army wasn't too large - even though they were mostly firewarriors - and the level was completed.