Miss Old Single Player

I really liked how the old single player was. I am talking about it's very first implementation where you couldn't progress through the single player unless you beat the mission you were on.

This was very difficult and it took me several try's to beat the very first mission where you have to drive around this desert area and reach the checkpoints before time runs out. I had so much trouble in fact I had to look up online for some help and tips. But man was I satisfied when I beat that mission and I was able to progress to the other missions.

I hate how you have to play multiplayer races in order to get keys to unlock missions. The single player missions barely give you any type of RP or EXP so why do I have to spend time racing other players if I just want to try and beat some other part of the game?

Although it was exceedingly challenging I did find the single player enjoyable and I actually found it more fun after they gave you three victory options of gold, silver and bronze. I can usually get bronze on my first try, but it will take me a few try's before I can beat it on silver and even more time and effort if I want to beat it on gold.

Hardcore Racing Gone

I was reading through their new forums, and I saw a post titled greetings to former Project Torque players. I decided to read it since I am a former Project Torque player. The post was from the forum admin so I assumed he had good information.

His post was about how the developers are changing the focus of the game from a hardcore racing sim to a more casual and easier to drive racing game. I think he was trying to infer that the developers wanted to do this earlier, but Aeria Games suggested that they keep the game-play more of a hardcore racing sim.

I'm not sure how I take this news. It was the realistic driving that first made me fall in love with Project Torque, but now that the game has a new name maybe it is better that they are moving into a new direction. Unfortunately the game did fail at Aeria Games, because it had too few players.

Hopefully this new driving will be easier for new players to get a handle on and becoming long term players. This way the game can grow again. I really hope that Heat Online can attract some new players and retain the older ones, because it is such a fun game that people should try out.

Nice Referral System

I was browsing the Heat Online website and noticed they have an affiliate program. I read through their program and it was pretty cool.

Both the referrer and the referral will benefit from this program, which is pretty nice because usually its only the referrer that gains anything from an affiliate program.

How it Works
The person that is referred will receive some free cars that have a limited duration from one week to three days. This way they get to have some fun with different cars and different game modes right away and don't need to spend all their time with just the starter car. The cars they get are a Kawana, C-Racer 4x4, and a TA Rookie.

The person that refers people will receive ten double experiences and ten double RP items after the person they refer becomes level 15. So this encourages them to play with their friends and help them level up by showing them the ropes of the game. This also discourages them from signing up multiple accounts, because it is basically a waste of time to level up a new character to level 15.

Heat Online Problems

Well I am kind of glad I missed out on the first couple weeks of open beta testing phase of Heat Online. From reading through their forums it seems like they are having many server problems with the server crashing, not being restarted right away, and people losing levels and accounts.

I'm already pretty disappointed that I will have to start all over anyways and if I had been playing I might have lost some of my progress from their bugs.

I also learned that they removed solo capture the flag and replaced it with team capture the flag. I'm not sure if I will like this change. I really liked the old style capture the flag with driving away from everyone and planning your course of action. Although I can see how team capture the flag could be fun with teammates blocking the flag carrier and I'm sure really organized teams that are communicating well would be tough to beat. Maybe they are putting in team capture the flag to try and bring the racing crews together and give it a better sense of community.

Since this game is pretty much a solo-adventure it is called an MMO. But the sense of community isn't really there yet.

Tried Logging In Today

I know the servers were closed for Project Torque on August 1st 2010, but I wanted to see what would happen if I tried logging in anyways.

I double click on the icon and the program starts to run. It is checking my version of the game and it tells me it needs to update. Interesting I think to myself, I thought I had lasted updated the game in July, but maybe I had to stop mid-update and it still needs to finish. Sometimes the updates can take a while, and I don't want to wait fifteen minutes so I just close it.

It finishes updating in five minutes. I click on play and the screen goes black for a second as it loads the game and then I get an error. The error seems like a general connection failure error. It looks like you can't play Project Torque anymore.

After this happened I did a search on Project Torque to see if this was the end or if the developers were going to go with another publisher. As it turns out they did find another publisher and the game is called Heat Online. I went to their website http://www.heat-online.net/ and they have an open beta starting August 17th so all is not lost Project Torque fans.

Although I am assuming everyone will have to start over so that is a little disheartening, but at least the game lives on.

Closing Down Game

Well it gives me great sadness to say that I read on Aeria's website that they will be closing down the Project Torque servers in August of this year.

I can't believe they are doing this, it was such a great game, if only they hadn't changed it so much and got away from what made the game so good in the first place.

Oh well I guess I still have 14ish more days to enjoy this game before it goes the way of the Dodo.

Thunder Alley

I mentioned the racing mode Thunder Alley in my first post. I wanted to expand upon it and describe a typical race. This is one of my favorite race modes as long as people don't try and crash everyone, then it is really terrible. Unfortunately it only takes one bad driver to mess everything up.

You start out the race with airplanes flying over head and the cars are already in motion, but moving slowly. Your starting position is random, sometimes you'll start out as lead car and other times you'll be way in the back. I prefer starting out in the back of the pack, because usually within the first 3 turns there will be a huge crash and most cars will be out of the race.

The problem is it's so easy to crash if you don't know what you are doing and in the beginning everyone is tightly packed together and bumping/nudging is very common.

To get ahead of everyone you really need a driving partner. If you don't have a friend you can usually come across a random person that is willing to partner with you since it is beneficial for both of you.

In order to get the lead you and your racing partner must drive so that you will be exchanging the lead with each other. Let's say you are behind him at first you will see blue waves behind him, get your car into those blue waves, and you will cut down on your drag and this will increase your speed. Then when you have enough speed pass him, and he will get behind your blue waves and he'll start to move faster.

You keep doing this until you catch up with other players or pass them. It can be pretty difficult especially around turns, but once you get the hang of this maneuver it's pretty easy to do as long as your partner is competent.

Fun Racing Game

I've been playing Project Torque off and on since May 2008, it is really a fun racing game from time to time and I enjoy it. It's a MMORacer, which means massive multiplayer online, you can play a single player game where you do missions, but you have to get keys to unlock some of these missions by playing online.

When I first started playing they didn't have any single player missions all it was, was multiplayer racing. I really prefer the ghost racing because then it is all about skill of knowing the track and racing well instead of people trying to wreck you which is really annoying. Some of my favorite race modes are capture the flag, regular racing with ghost mode on, and I do enjoy Thunder Alley from time to time, but a lot of the time Thunder Alley turns into a couple of people getting the lead and then one of the leaders wrecks the other person and a huge pile up ensues and then the rest of the pack is trying to play catchup. I really wish they allowed ghost mode for Thunder Alley.

Anyways I'm going to be posting about this game and what cars I like etc.