On April 25, the 18th Beijing International Automobile Exhibition (Auto China) officially opened at the China International Exhibition Center (Shunyi Pavilion and Chaoyang Pavilion).
The theme of this year's auto show
On the same day, a live scene attracted the attention of the teahouse - Mercedes-Benz exhibited a "different" E300, which allows users to use a Bluetooth controller to play the latest product of Tencent TiMi J1 Studio, Need for Speed: Assemble. Judging from the display effect, the operation is not bad.
The drift of the vehicles in the game, the rapid movement of the street view under high-speed driving is smooth and clear, and there are almost no frame drops when multiple vehicles compete on the same screen, and the key feedback of the Bluetooth controller does not seem to have much delay, which makes the teahouse really a little surprised.
Mercedes-Benz E series teahouse is no stranger, as a well-known executive luxury model, both style and performance, is the mainstay of Mercedes-Benz product line, and "Need for Speed: Assembly" (hereinafter referred to as "Assembly") this day of the United States J1 seven years of sharpening the sword of the latest masterpiece, the teahouse has long heard of it, it has just completed a round of testing It has been set for the summer, and the first few tests have been included in the racing game racing ashes player, "Oka " retired scenery party "old gun" including the unanimous praise of multiple car game players "certification", The early adopters released by many game media have also made teahouse, a fan of Need for Speed who has played all the way from "Heat Tracking" to "Unruly", gear up.
Not to mention that after the news was released, the official "Assembly" also struck while the iron was hot, officially announcing that the Mercedes-Benz E-Class exhibited this time will land in the game soon, and at that time, players will be able to drive it in "Assembly" to indulge in galloping.
The real car brand real car landing game is nothing new, but the game into the car this "play in the car" mode is relatively novel, Mercedes-Benz and Tencent's cooperation really aroused the curiosity of the teahouse, how did Mercedes-Benz and "Assembly" come together?
To answer this question, the teahouse found that it had to start with the origin of the IP of "Need for Speed" and Mercedes-Benz.
01
Mercedes in Need for Speed
If you've played the Need for Speed series, you'll probably know that adding real-life cars to the game is one of the attractions of this type of realistic racing game. As a famous German car brand, Mercedes-Benz often appears in the game Need for Speed. The collaboration dates back to 1997's Need for Speed 2, which featured the Isdera Commendatore 112i powered Mercedes-Benz's M120 6.0-liter V12 engine.
For example, in Need for Speed 17: Most Wanted, the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG was added to the racing lineup as an optional vehicle, allowing players to drive this performance monster with a maximum torque of 650N/m and a 000 acceleration of 3.8 seconds in the game to stage "Fast and Furious" with the "Rockport City" police.
Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG featured in Most Wanted
The reason for cramming real cars into racing games is simple, that is, to enhance the realism and immersion of the game, and the emergence of real brand cars is undoubtedly more able to blur the boundaries between games and reality than overhead models.
Mercedes-Benz occasionally does the opposite, and carries out some offline cooperation with EA, the developer of "Need for Speed": For example, in 2022, when "Need for Speed: Unbound" was released on the main street racing culture, Mercedes-Benz teamed up with EA and American rapper A$AP Rocky to carry out a three-way linkage to reproduce a Mercedes-Benz 190E in "Unbound" in reality.
Game (top) Reality (bottom)
In the intersection of Mercedes-Benz and Need for Speed, car brands and car games have completed common and mutual infiltration, and the so-called "car culture" has been constructed. As a driver and racing gamer, it's hard not to feel the love of cars in this group of people in their interactions with Need for Speed Mercedes.
As Mark Riccioni of SpeedHunters puts it: "When a group of die-hard car enthusiasts come together, their motivation is often not always dictated by brand values or OEM goals, but in fact the starting point may be very simple: to inspire gamers and fans around the world." ”
What we can notice is that before this, although the cooperation between Mercedes-Benz and "Need for Speed" has a deep relationship, the characteristics of the cooperation are: there is always one party as the main body, and there is always some realistic distance.
Due to the development of modern car performance and on-board electronic control system, the car can now be regarded as an intelligent transportation platform, which can not only assume the original traffic function of "moving", but also assume the vehicle monitoring, navigation and pan-entertainment functions.
According to the teahouse, the E300 car machine MB.OS operating system is independently developed by Mercedes-Benz, tailored for a series of models, its 3D game engine processing tools as the basis, combined with AR and VR technology to build a new MBUX immersive navigation (MBUX Surround Navigation) system, can seamlessly integrate route guidance and driving assistance, road environment information, navigation information and the car's dynamic information in real time, seamless presentation on the screen.
With the support of the dedicated 3D graphics architecture, the E300's vehicle can not only reproduce road condition information realistically, but also provide new possibilities for the entertainment function of the vehicle.
As the mainstream entertainment method nowadays, the game is naturally one of the preferences that Mercedes-Benz adds to its car machine, and "Need for Speed" is the most natural choice among these preferences, the reason is not only that the two have been cooperating for a long time, but also because of the appeal of the IP of "Need for Speed": incomplete data points out that the player base of "Need for Speed" is highly overlapping with the people who hold driver's licenses in reality, and the publisher EA is also an old manufacturer, which can be regarded as a door-to-door match with Mercedes-Benz.
However, if you directly move the stand-alone version of "Need for Speed" into the car machine, it is a little too simple and crude, not only is adaptation a problem, but the characteristics of the large volume of the terminal game and the long play time per unit are also contrary to the tonality of the pan-entertainment platform of the car machine.
The birth of Tencent TiMi J1 Studio's "Need for Speed: Assembly" just completes the missing piece of the puzzle of Mercedes-Benz car machine, because it is not only the orthodox successor of the "Need for Speed" IP, but also tailored for mobile terminals.
The only question is, what is the quality of "The Buildup"?
02
"Assembly", a two-way "Mercedes-Benz"
Judging from the performance of several tests, the teahouse believes that as an IP derivative of "Need for Speed", "Gathering" has achieved the restoration of the racing sense of the original IP "hormone rising", and integrates the research and development experience accumulated by TiMi for more than ten years of mobile game racing, so that the IP of "Need for Speed" will not appear "unsuitable" on the mobile terminal, showing quite excellent quality.
Landing on Mercedes-Benz's powerful MB.OS can be described as a "combination of two swords".
Speaking of the R&D team of "Assemble" Tencent TiMi J1 Studio, they were a smash hit with the popular "QQ Speed" IP in the early years, and they were also labeled as specializing in racing mobile games, but after that, there was no new action, and a silence was seven years of spring and autumn, so "Gathering", as a "re-entry" product of TiMi J1's "sword edge from sharpening", must shoulder the heavy task of "reshaping the glory of competitive mobile games", and its condensed efforts can be seen.
Since it is a sequel to IP, the critical inheritance of the original IP must be the top priority. If you want to say that one of the most representative of the "street hormone racing experience" of "Need for Speed", it is none other than "heat tracking", this mode has been popular with players since it first came out in 1998, and many old players born in the 70s and 80s are still tirelessly discussing the shock of their first time playing the "heat tracking" mode in the community, which is a well-deserved crystallization of feelings.
As an open-world racing game, according to official data, the "Hot Bay" area where the player is located covers an area of up to 100 million square meters. On such a vast map, the thrill of racing with "heat tracking" is taken to a new level.
The core gameplay of heat tracking in "The Gathering" is largely the same as that of previous Need for Speed games. That is, the game between the driver and the pursuer, the driver needs to complete the race as quickly as possible, obtain the heat value to become the "heat enemy" retreat, and gain ranking points, and the players of the pursuing team have to become the attacker of this "cat and mouse chase battle", try their best to use "American interception" and perseverance to destroy the competition of these street drag racing parties, and the collision and grappling of the driver's vehicle will reduce the durability of their vehicle and deduct the heat value.
In the process, there is also a helicopter chase of the "alien vehicle" in this racing game. And TiMi has also added a lot of new things to this model.
Image source network
For example, the different means of confrontation brought about by the open world. For the driver, in addition to using superb driving skills to shake off the pursuit, you can also use your knowledge of the map area of the heat tracking area to "take this trail", stage a cat-and-mouse play, and choose a route that does not chase the player to the end of the race.
In addition, you can encounter the truck that impounds the drag racing party's vehicle, and after "cutting off the beard", you will get a new car in full condition, which can be replaced by the player in the garage. Yes, in Heat Tracking in The Assembly, the Driver Player's car is unfortunately "damaged" and can be changed in their own garage, and each time before the start of "Heat Tracking", the Driver Player needs to choose three cars, one to participate in and two to spare.
As far as the teahouse personal understanding, this mode should be the culmination of the PVP gameplay of "Gathering", but according to the current news, the teahouse believes that the strength of the driver players and the confrontation solution are a little more, and after the game is launched, the pursuit team should have some other means to seize these scurrying supercars.
In short, it is foreseeable that the racing intensity of "Assemble" will make fans of racing happy.
But on the other hand, TiMi has not forgotten about the leisure party. When racing players are in the dark in the heat tracking area, casual players can drive their cars away from these noisy "battlefields" and have a "CarWalk": roam freely in the exquisite scene modeling and realistic light and shadow of the Hot Bay Area, feel a tranquility, and then turn on the photo mode from time to time to take a picture, this kind of hybrid of racing and leisure, is also a unique experience of "Assembly".
Not to mention, TiMi also designed a kind of "follow the car" gameplay, players can choose another person's vehicle to follow, and then they can free their hands to "autopilot", at this time players can not only see the scenery more comfortably, but also free their hands to type words and communicate, chatting, this kind of friendly design emphasizing social experience, but also closely related to the previous popular game producer Takuro Tsubabe said that "games that can't be played with friends are the most boring" The full expression of social elements may be able to penetrate many new generation users who pay attention to social interaction, and the player portrait of "Assemble" may be diverse.
The teahouse also noticed that in the official display of the picture, there are similar figures of "GTA5" player-made pictures, which are called "poison maps" by GTA players, which belong to the category of UGC, which is an extension of the game itself, and is very popular in the player community. If "Gathering" can produce a similar UCG engine, with the diverse users mentioned above, the teahouse believes that it will form a fairly strong community ecology.
In terms of visual performance, some media said that "Assembly" has achieved a "host-level" picture quality performance on the mobile terminal, in which the protagonist, that is, the shaping of various vehicles, needless to say, the painting of each car is varied, and the light and shadow performance of carbon fiber parts and rubber, alloy structural materials have also made differences, and details such as surrounding, calipers, and wheels have also been exquisitely polished.
Another noteworthy point is the art style of "The Assembly", in various promotional videos and actual videos, TiMi has added many street graffiti-like particle effects to the car racing performance in "The Assembly", such as small wings after taking off. The teahouse believes that this is also a rather stylized place of "Assembly", which does a good job of softening the hard visual performance brought by the machine of the vehicle, adding a lot of points to the visual tension of the game, and also highlighting the sense of speed of racing and the "street" element, which should be very attractive to the new generation of players.
And the adaptation of the mobile game,TiMiJ1It is also very exquisite,Throttle sensitivity and the brake feedback required for drift,There is a pretty good operation experience at the fingertip,This is not a teahouse's words,Judging from the previous test experience or user feedback,The difficulty of operation of "Assembly" is relatively moderate,For example, the gravitational potential energy of the vehicle、Tire grip are adjusted very close to the people,To a large extent, the player's vehicle and the buildings on both sides of the track and the anti-collision beam"Close contact。 However, there are also a lot of S drifting, landing spraying, and broken double spraying that racing games should have, which ensures the upper limit of the game's operation.
Easy to use, difficult to master, should be a major feature of the "Assemble" operation experience.
Speaking of which, the general outline of The Assemble is also clear: inheriting and innovating the classic gameplay of the Need for Speed series, the "specialized" operation tuning on mobile, the original street racing, the open world, and the potential UGC content. These all prove the excellent quality of "Assemble", as well as TiMi J1's determination to do a good job in the IP sequel of "Need for Speed", after the official launch, it should make the track of racing mobile games lively again.
The speculation of the teahouse is not unfounded, judging from the data, a total of 165,000 players participated in the first test of "Gathering", and each track was refreshed an average of 48,000 times.
Image source network
In this way, the reason why Mercedes-Benz chose "Assembly" as the object of Mercedes-Benz's first car game integration cooperation is naturally self-evident:
On the one hand, the quality of the game itself can show the excellent performance of Mercedes-Benz MB.OS, and the diverse and large user group can help Mercedes-Benz further penetrate the complex user layer and expand its brand influence.
It can be said that the old partners of Mercedes-Benz and "Need for Speed" have once again achieved a "two-way rush" under the glue of the domestic manufacturer TiMi J1.
epilogue
The cooperation with Mercedes-Benz is not an isolated case in "Assembly", at the first "Assembly" Club Invitational Tournament that ended in April, producer Hao Sheng said that many car companies have reached cooperation with "Assembly", including many domestic manufacturers.
A variety of models from domestic car companies such as Hongqi and NIO have appeared in the game, including hybrid, pure electric, and fuel, and the different operating feel brought by models with different power can give players a unique driving experience.
NIO EP9
Hongqi EH7
Image source network
Whether you are a "veteran driver" who loves real driving, or a fan of car games, you must have your own driving pleasure in "Assembly", and TiMi J1 is probably really aimed at all car lovers, and wants to make a "assembly" in this game.
Special note: The teahouse also wants to say that although "Assembly" has entered the car, if you want to feel the atmosphere of the hot bay in the car, you might as well park the car on the side of the parking space and then enter the game to play, after all, safe driving can not be sloppy, and only if the car is in a non-driving state can you start the game experience.