A screen grab from the PS4 game Driveclub.
There's a grating irony about a game that's all about getting to the finish line quickly and cleanly having taken so long to actually make it into the shops, all banged-up on arrival.
Driveclub was intended to launch alongside the PlayStation 4 last year but, according to its developers at
Evolution Studios, more time was needed to refine it. Comparing the reality of Driveclub against its hype, it's hard to work out what this refining process was all about.
Touted as an all-in-one solution for car enthusiasts and petrolheads, Driveclub's ambition is to be a cluster of virtual motoring clubs, with the racing a vital part of the experience, that could be alive and growing for the life of the PS4 console.
At the time of writing, however, Driveclub's online experience has been on life support. Server issues have crippled the delivery of online features, and play is a once-an-hour kind of thing. That would be forgivable if the play was good, but it's not.
The game struggles to render remote players' vehicles in real time, and sometimes your own wheels as well, resulting in an unfortunate throwback to the early days of online gaming.
