Finally, Some Initial: D Version 4 action for you all!

Earlier today I took a little video for you all and edited it up. Ta-da!

I added English subtitles but at YouTube’s video quality they pretty much get lost, so follow the link below for translation. (in the video description sidebar)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2mAB5GP9Bg

As you can see, even though I don’t have my 240SX to drive here in Japan I’ve gotten decent at driving it in a game. Too bad I’m not really this fast, haha! Keeping it real for you guys stuck on version 2 and 3. And I will never play version 2 or 3 again because the way of driving is completely different. More on that at the bottom of this entry.

Props to Tsry, Zeke, Isaiah, Kyle, Buckler, Josh, and anyone else who’s given me a good race in the past. And also to Japanese Version 4 Racer D・S, who I battled to many boost off complete losses when I was a B3 rank and now am running pretty much even with (boost off) at A3 or A2 rank depending on how my luck goes with rivals.

As for the ranking system: Initial: D Version 4 uses a letter+number ranking system. The lowest level is D and within it are 1, 2, and 3. So D3 (worst D rank), D2, and D1 (best of D rank). The Letters go from D, C, B, A, S, and finally after S1 is SS. SS is a class by itself and has no number ranks.

Unlike the previous game’s star level, you can only earn or lose ranks through versus battles. To be specific, only through online multiplayer battles. You don’t gain anything from battling the guy next to you. All opponents are randomly chosen and are usually within one rank of you. At worst a C3 may face a C1, but usually it’s vs a D1/C2 or another C3. The online battles are All-Japan, as are the time trials. At the end of your run in a time trial it will tell you how you placed against every other Japanese I:Dv4 time attacker on that course/condition. Pretty cool. So anyway, when it says that I’m A3 in the video, it means that through battling people all over Japan at random, that’s how I stack up. I was A2 earlier today when the video was made, but had some bad luck and lost that rank before I recorded this.

By default boost is always on and it’s much stronger in this version in my opinion. AKA you can get beaten by scrubs who are only good at blocking, which is something anyone would use to win at the last second, but lame when someone slower than you uses it for an entire race. Unlike previous versions where I could talk to my opponent in the flesh and specify that I only want to do boost off battles the online multiplayer feature takes away that ability and 75% of the time it’s a boost battle. Meaning 75% of the time it comes down to a blocking battle. As those of you who have raced with me know, I hate blocking and being blocked so this fact led to alot of frustration as I was beginning and still does now and then. I’d much rather lose to a faster driver than win by blocking him. On the other hand I’ve developed a style that tends to rely on passing from behind in a place where boost will not allow the opponent catch up by the goal line…still depending on their blocking skills it can end up resulting in a loss from not trying to pass earlier.

For future versions I hope they give the player a decision to go to one of two “rooms” when choosing online multiplayer battle. One a boost-on room, and one a boost-off room. Simple as that. Having boost default to off is too non arcade-like to expect that to occur.

As for the driving differences, here’s a few quick ones:

1) You can understeer from trying to turn too much and too fast at the same time. Even a full tuned car will do this, but it’s only an issue on the 2nd course (most of the course cause it’s a high speed one) and certain turns on the other courses. Still, as you get faster it will continue to come up.

2) You drift in this game. Getting the countersteer right isn’t hard because the game physics are very kind. If you look in the hairpins I’m turning the wheel into the turn as much as possible just like V2 or V3…but in plenty of turns you have to countersteer. This is the main reason I can’t play V2 or V3 after this. But if I get my hands on a V4 machine at any point I should be pretty competitive, even in a 180SX which is historically a pretty lame car for the latter courses. ^_^

3) You can lose speed when cornering. If there’s one thing that’s not realistic in previous versions it’s going into a series of turns full throttle and turning through them, picking up speed the whole way. That never happens. In this game you can actually gain speed by taking a line closer to a straight one at times, and you can lose speed by gripping a turn you should be drifting or drifting a turn you should grip. The degree of grip:drift changes depending on the corner, course condition, and drivetrain of the car. Car balancing seems pretty good for the most part, as in V2/V3 the 180SX was extraordinarily slow in the turns (for me) but it drives about the same as the S2K which I thought drove fine and I’ve beaten and been beaten by pretty much every kind of car in the game at some point or another.

4) You can understeer mid-corner from entering too fast. This one is especially hard because you are usually countersteering and when you let off the gas the car will whip in the direction of the countersteer if you aren’t very careful. It still seems like the gas is an on/off switch despite being a pedal though, so in my opinion it’s about being able to get the angle you need when letting off the gas (from the whip) and then get on it again (back into the understeer) to keep you from whipping too much and hitting the wall. Adjusting the steering may be faster but it takes longer and with the courses narrow-ish the throttle-off whip, throttle on that tends to be the option I choose if I get caught in an understeer. Of course in reality it’s a bit of both.

5) Boost is strong. This is great cause you can use it to beat people you shouldn’t even be able to consider keeping up with. The following point is not to brag, but it’s lame when this is used against you and back when I was a D and C rank there were few times the opponent would have kept up with boost off. B rank was a little faster. A rank has plenty of people who know how to get the most out of the game engine but in the end they’re generally more comfortable with boost on so I don’t have a good idea yet about how fast they are. Generally if someone opts for boost off before a battle it’s going to be fun.

Well, that’s my write up for Initial: D Arcade Stage Version 4. Hope you enjoyed it, and maybe after awhile I’ll put a real entry up. Sorry about the delay folks, the winter break has kept me busy. Hope everyone had a happy holiday season!