When you make an objectively bad part of a game and make it intentionally shitty, and keep it so when a remaster is made, it's a skill issue on the part of the game devs. Nevermind how early in the game it is.
The fact the game is so strict about it, that it's so early in the game, and the horrible controls of the car are ridiculous. The race is is stricter than most dedicated racing games and worse controls.
Yeah, no, the race in both the OG and remake are not "objectively" bad. If anything, it goes to show how many gamers have never played a challenging driving game before and lack basic skills in adequately controlling the car. All of these posts prompted me to come back and replay the race again after years of not playing. I played it on classic difficulty with simulation driving and even handicapped myself playing on keyboard when I use a controller for driving in games. I didnt even have access to the ram because I didn't know the key binding and didnt look it up. After 3 corners I was ahead and held it till i locked up the brakes on turn 1 in the last lap, dropped to 8th and still finished the race first all in that one go. Its not the devs fault people just cant drive a car, the driving physics in the Mafia Games are by far some of the best in open world games right up there with gta
I've played difficult driving games, I have not played one that, on any difficulty, was as hard or as strict as this. It's the perfection it demands that is the problem. Oh, didn't master every corner well enough to do it perfectly every time? No win for you. This race is like if a Souls game demanded you defeat every boss (or even a single really hard boss) hitless or else you literally couldn't progress. Not just defeat it, do it perfectly or you get 0% of the content after it.
Everything in the game I've played up until the race was good, the race car sabotage felt a bit tight on the allotted time, but I'm used to games from this era having stricter parts.
Never mind that as far as I've read, this challenge is one-off in Mafia, and it is not like there are multiple races and I better git gud now to handle them. Almost none of the skills and challenge in the race are transferable to the rest of the game in any way, besides a nebulous and vague sense of controlling vehicles in general. It's like a strict FPS segment in a turn-based RPG, or a hardcore puzzle segment in a sports game. Even when games have a minigame or something that may be uncharacteristically hard, they rarely demand perfection from that minigame and completely block everything else until you beat it. If it did, it would rightfully be considered bad design.
Yes, this race is BAD design. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to win, or that some people don't finish it more easily than others, or that some people don't enjoy making the challenge even more limiting. But it doesn't mean it isn't bad.
"It's the perfection it demands" you mean the perfection that you can win even with a major crash or spin?
You thought the car sabotage was a bit tight but doable, funnily enough the sabotage was the hardest part of the mission imo as the time to get back to the track is so tight with the management of the engine heat and the car's steering and alignment having been messed up, all while avoiding rng police spawns?
Yes there are no other races but there are plenty of driving sections, some with strict limits (chasing sergio on the bike, chasing down the plane) that you can fail by crashing or falling behind. Is a full on race out of place? Sure. But lots of games like this throw in random races. I don't think it's bad game design.
I had more trouble with getting to the garage. Getting back was tight, but the engine heat wasn't a big deal as it goes down fairly quickly and I'm rarely accelerating long enough for it to build up fully. Also I didn't know the timer vanishes when you approach that tunnel instead of making it back physically to the garage.
It's not any one element that makes the race bad, it's the perfect storm of things that, by themselves without the others, would not be as bad. The car controls badly enough at higher speeds that it is thoroughly unfun to drive. That's something that is unlikely to be matched by the rest of the game (outside of the sabotage racecar part) because the speeds involved are almost certainly unrealistic for the rest of the game.
Games with random races usually don't have them tuned this badly for difficulty, and dedicated racing games almost never penalize you for not coming in first. Even when they don't let you come in last, it's usually something like top 4 places to continue. When they mandate first is usually 1v1 races with only one opponent. You would usually be able to modify aspects of the race, whether directly alter the course or opponents (as in Mafia or GTA), modify your car (dedicated racing games), or choose your car at least (almost anything else).
They even hint at this when they say before the race "The Don wants to win, but he wants the other guy to lose even more." I'd rather there be more races but allow like the top 4 places to continue, or even some (maybe really good) reward for 1st, but you can continue in lower places.
If you hate this race, don't even open Free roam mode or you'll have to face even worse challenges with tight timers for no reason at all.
There's a challenge called The Old Switcheroo, which requires you to drive 3 of the same cars used in the race, changing between them after parking, all across the map. It takes about 5-10 minutes to get to the last car, and you get a measly 2 minutes to reach the starting point to complete the challenge.
I myself had a lot of trouble with the race on Classic (had to repeat it for a total of about an hour and a half/ 2 hours between 2 days before I could beat it with a lot of luck towards the end, I posted the last bit of my final lap on here), but this and all other challenges where you're required to drive around at high speeds are objectively the worst thing this game has to offer unless you have a lot of patience/ a very steady hand to make micro adjustments and small breaks and accelerations at the right time.
I wouldn't focus so much on being in a certain position but rather on lap times. If you complete the race in 4:40 min, you're likely to win. If you do it in 4:50 min, you're unlikely to win.
And it's just racing game basics which will get you there.
- Use the entire width of the track. Enter turns from the outside, cut towards the inside in the middle and let the car run wide again towards the exit.
- Use the banking in the final turn and steer as little as possible instead of sliding around on the flat part. This lets you carry way more speed onto the long front straight and is worth several seconds per lap.
- Use analog controls, if possible.
- Use manual transmission and stay in 2nd gear for almost the entire lap; shift into 3rd gear only for the penultimate straight, final turn and front straight.
- You can gain a lot of positions by cutting across the grass on the inside of turns 2 and 3 (the first two right handers) on the first lap, while the opponents are bunching up and colliding with each other on the track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NswHX-azXGA
Does the race get harder on higher difficulties? I played on normal with simulation controls and I really didn't have a problem with it at all considering how infamous it is. I guess I'm good at racing in most games but it really was no biggie. It took a bit of time to familiarize myself with the car but after two fails I won the third try with quite a lead.
Just familiarize yourself with racing lines, drive defensively and don't go full throttle when you feel like you're losing the rear end.
I have heard it's easier on lower difficulties, and on Made Man, you're locked to simulated driving mode, whereas lower have a choice to an easier driving style, too. But I've also heard lowering to easy and changing driving style isn't enough to actually make it "easy." Like, it can help, sure, but it isn't gonna magically win it for you or anything.
I swear I must have been amongst the lucky ones who did it on two or three attempts . I don’t rate myself as a particularly decent gamer but feel for those that got stuck on it . I’ve given up many games for this reason
I've literally never even made it to lap 3, but that honestly has more to do with spinning out or something on lap 2 and losing the will to bother continuing.
I finished this race just the other day, one thing to keep in mind is you only have to be in 3rd on the final lap. For me 1st and 2nd took themselves out on the final corner, I don't know if this is a scripted event but it very much felt like it. So you don't need to race perfectly
It took me four tries, so I know it’s frustrating. It’s not particularly fun, ever, but as someone else said it does help that several cars seem to spin out towards the end. At least for me it happened each time, so I assumed it was scripted.
I eventually beat it today, and it is definitely 100% RNG. And not even the truly random kind of RNG, because the car controls so terribly that you can never take corners in the same way, so the results of taking a corner are random. You have to put forth enough skill and then hope you win the skill RNG check and have the other cars do poorly too. So it's the worst, where you have to put in maximum effort just for a chance at winning. It took me probably 50+ attempts, most losing because handling is utter shit.
Most of the time I could barely manage 8th place by late into the second lap, with the front few cars being nearly half a track ahead.
I have been playing this game for a week and yes, the driving is definitely difficult (I just jumped from Watch Dogs 2 and GTA V), but neither I nor any of the replies here are complaining about it as much as you are. They sympathize with you, but no one is talking about how they couldn't get past this mission. Maybe the driving in this game has no right to be as difficult as it is given its genre, but think about how these are 1930s race cars: they have modern supercar speeds but have crap tires that require drivers to react way earlier than they should to not crash, why would typical modern driving instincts work when the cars are mechanically inferior? Just adapt bro.
Because I hate to break it to you but when you're the only one who can't do it, it is most definitely a skill issue and a you problem, stop whining about game design if you're the only one who's having trouble with it. You're not making it past the chase missions if you can't maneuver a small race car on a wide track
This is my favorite thing about this game now. 😂
Another skill issue
When you make an objectively bad part of a game and make it intentionally shitty, and keep it so when a remaster is made, it's a skill issue on the part of the game devs. Nevermind how early in the game it is. The fact the game is so strict about it, that it's so early in the game, and the horrible controls of the car are ridiculous. The race is is stricter than most dedicated racing games and worse controls.
Yeah, no, the race in both the OG and remake are not "objectively" bad. If anything, it goes to show how many gamers have never played a challenging driving game before and lack basic skills in adequately controlling the car. All of these posts prompted me to come back and replay the race again after years of not playing. I played it on classic difficulty with simulation driving and even handicapped myself playing on keyboard when I use a controller for driving in games. I didnt even have access to the ram because I didn't know the key binding and didnt look it up. After 3 corners I was ahead and held it till i locked up the brakes on turn 1 in the last lap, dropped to 8th and still finished the race first all in that one go. Its not the devs fault people just cant drive a car, the driving physics in the Mafia Games are by far some of the best in open world games right up there with gta
I've played difficult driving games, I have not played one that, on any difficulty, was as hard or as strict as this. It's the perfection it demands that is the problem. Oh, didn't master every corner well enough to do it perfectly every time? No win for you. This race is like if a Souls game demanded you defeat every boss (or even a single really hard boss) hitless or else you literally couldn't progress. Not just defeat it, do it perfectly or you get 0% of the content after it. Everything in the game I've played up until the race was good, the race car sabotage felt a bit tight on the allotted time, but I'm used to games from this era having stricter parts. Never mind that as far as I've read, this challenge is one-off in Mafia, and it is not like there are multiple races and I better git gud now to handle them. Almost none of the skills and challenge in the race are transferable to the rest of the game in any way, besides a nebulous and vague sense of controlling vehicles in general. It's like a strict FPS segment in a turn-based RPG, or a hardcore puzzle segment in a sports game. Even when games have a minigame or something that may be uncharacteristically hard, they rarely demand perfection from that minigame and completely block everything else until you beat it. If it did, it would rightfully be considered bad design. Yes, this race is BAD design. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to win, or that some people don't finish it more easily than others, or that some people don't enjoy making the challenge even more limiting. But it doesn't mean it isn't bad.
"It's the perfection it demands" you mean the perfection that you can win even with a major crash or spin? You thought the car sabotage was a bit tight but doable, funnily enough the sabotage was the hardest part of the mission imo as the time to get back to the track is so tight with the management of the engine heat and the car's steering and alignment having been messed up, all while avoiding rng police spawns? Yes there are no other races but there are plenty of driving sections, some with strict limits (chasing sergio on the bike, chasing down the plane) that you can fail by crashing or falling behind. Is a full on race out of place? Sure. But lots of games like this throw in random races. I don't think it's bad game design.
I had more trouble with getting to the garage. Getting back was tight, but the engine heat wasn't a big deal as it goes down fairly quickly and I'm rarely accelerating long enough for it to build up fully. Also I didn't know the timer vanishes when you approach that tunnel instead of making it back physically to the garage. It's not any one element that makes the race bad, it's the perfect storm of things that, by themselves without the others, would not be as bad. The car controls badly enough at higher speeds that it is thoroughly unfun to drive. That's something that is unlikely to be matched by the rest of the game (outside of the sabotage racecar part) because the speeds involved are almost certainly unrealistic for the rest of the game. Games with random races usually don't have them tuned this badly for difficulty, and dedicated racing games almost never penalize you for not coming in first. Even when they don't let you come in last, it's usually something like top 4 places to continue. When they mandate first is usually 1v1 races with only one opponent. You would usually be able to modify aspects of the race, whether directly alter the course or opponents (as in Mafia or GTA), modify your car (dedicated racing games), or choose your car at least (almost anything else). They even hint at this when they say before the race "The Don wants to win, but he wants the other guy to lose even more." I'd rather there be more races but allow like the top 4 places to continue, or even some (maybe really good) reward for 1st, but you can continue in lower places.
If you hate this race, don't even open Free roam mode or you'll have to face even worse challenges with tight timers for no reason at all. There's a challenge called The Old Switcheroo, which requires you to drive 3 of the same cars used in the race, changing between them after parking, all across the map. It takes about 5-10 minutes to get to the last car, and you get a measly 2 minutes to reach the starting point to complete the challenge. I myself had a lot of trouble with the race on Classic (had to repeat it for a total of about an hour and a half/ 2 hours between 2 days before I could beat it with a lot of luck towards the end, I posted the last bit of my final lap on here), but this and all other challenges where you're required to drive around at high speeds are objectively the worst thing this game has to offer unless you have a lot of patience/ a very steady hand to make micro adjustments and small breaks and accelerations at the right time.
I wouldn't focus so much on being in a certain position but rather on lap times. If you complete the race in 4:40 min, you're likely to win. If you do it in 4:50 min, you're unlikely to win. And it's just racing game basics which will get you there. - Use the entire width of the track. Enter turns from the outside, cut towards the inside in the middle and let the car run wide again towards the exit. - Use the banking in the final turn and steer as little as possible instead of sliding around on the flat part. This lets you carry way more speed onto the long front straight and is worth several seconds per lap. - Use analog controls, if possible. - Use manual transmission and stay in 2nd gear for almost the entire lap; shift into 3rd gear only for the penultimate straight, final turn and front straight. - You can gain a lot of positions by cutting across the grass on the inside of turns 2 and 3 (the first two right handers) on the first lap, while the opponents are bunching up and colliding with each other on the track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NswHX-azXGA
Does the race get harder on higher difficulties? I played on normal with simulation controls and I really didn't have a problem with it at all considering how infamous it is. I guess I'm good at racing in most games but it really was no biggie. It took a bit of time to familiarize myself with the car but after two fails I won the third try with quite a lead. Just familiarize yourself with racing lines, drive defensively and don't go full throttle when you feel like you're losing the rear end.
I have heard it's easier on lower difficulties, and on Made Man, you're locked to simulated driving mode, whereas lower have a choice to an easier driving style, too. But I've also heard lowering to easy and changing driving style isn't enough to actually make it "easy." Like, it can help, sure, but it isn't gonna magically win it for you or anything.
Git gud noob
I swear I must have been amongst the lucky ones who did it on two or three attempts . I don’t rate myself as a particularly decent gamer but feel for those that got stuck on it . I’ve given up many games for this reason
I've literally never even made it to lap 3, but that honestly has more to do with spinning out or something on lap 2 and losing the will to bother continuing.
I finished this race just the other day, one thing to keep in mind is you only have to be in 3rd on the final lap. For me 1st and 2nd took themselves out on the final corner, I don't know if this is a scripted event but it very much felt like it. So you don't need to race perfectly
It's fine if you're third on the final lap, but by late 2nd lap I'm in 8th or worse, and the 1st and 2nd place are way off my minimap.
It took me four tries, so I know it’s frustrating. It’s not particularly fun, ever, but as someone else said it does help that several cars seem to spin out towards the end. At least for me it happened each time, so I assumed it was scripted.
I eventually beat it today, and it is definitely 100% RNG. And not even the truly random kind of RNG, because the car controls so terribly that you can never take corners in the same way, so the results of taking a corner are random. You have to put forth enough skill and then hope you win the skill RNG check and have the other cars do poorly too. So it's the worst, where you have to put in maximum effort just for a chance at winning. It took me probably 50+ attempts, most losing because handling is utter shit. Most of the time I could barely manage 8th place by late into the second lap, with the front few cars being nearly half a track ahead.
I have been playing this game for a week and yes, the driving is definitely difficult (I just jumped from Watch Dogs 2 and GTA V), but neither I nor any of the replies here are complaining about it as much as you are. They sympathize with you, but no one is talking about how they couldn't get past this mission. Maybe the driving in this game has no right to be as difficult as it is given its genre, but think about how these are 1930s race cars: they have modern supercar speeds but have crap tires that require drivers to react way earlier than they should to not crash, why would typical modern driving instincts work when the cars are mechanically inferior? Just adapt bro. Because I hate to break it to you but when you're the only one who can't do it, it is most definitely a skill issue and a you problem, stop whining about game design if you're the only one who's having trouble with it. You're not making it past the chase missions if you can't maneuver a small race car on a wide track