I could not disagree more - I loved every second of SRL (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, December 29, 2015, 16:03 (3347 days ago) @ Phoenix_9286

Man did this bring me back to old F-Zero days!

- I had fun the whole time. Last place? Still fun. Lost by 0.005? Still fun. Had a perfect race going until I hit the final fan in lap 3? Still fun!
- The sparrows are all basically identical, which meant the deciding factor in races was skill more than anything else.
- The rewards were plentiful and felt powerful for the game mode. Even if you lost you knew the odds were good that you were getting something sweet anyway.
- Racing with friends was a blast. There just are not enough PvP modes where I can challenge my friends at something in this game (Rumble and SRL, basically). It's a lot more fun to talk trash to your buddies when your own success isn't married to theirs.
- Normally I like a racing game with tight controls, but the really loose sparrow controls felt great. The "Bungie steering" system is really nice and intuitive.
- I loved the track design. Putting secret passages with "slow down goo" bombs tied to the first place player's passing meant players in back had a decision to make about whether or not to take the passage, while players in front were punished for it.
- Increasing gate size for players in back is a MUCH better way to balance the race and keep everyone involved than rubber-banding, which is what most racing games do. I really liked that the races were fair for all players. If I lost, I didn't feel cheated; I felt like the other guy was just amazing.

One minor gripe: The red bull sparrow actually had higher boost stats than any other trick sparrow. And my buddy with it absolutely smoked in races. This felt a bit pay-to-win-ish, but I also saw a guy with the exact same sparrow as me (the lightning one) beat my buddy's best ever time by 5 seconds, so it clearly wasn't the only factor. Still, learning about the higher stat made me disappointed.