Skybird
07-03-11, 11:07 AM
It was mentioned in a thread several months ago.
Although the game is new, I got it because I had the opportunity to acchieve a very nice price: 10 Euros. That is because it is cheap by default (around 20 Euros), the shop in question offered it for 15 Euros (German Amazon as well), and my copy came in a damaged DVD case, which made them reducing it by another 5 euros. For more money I wouldn't have bought it. But recently I have enjoyed the very-very good OMSI (see the separate thread), and I wanted to compare the two.
B&CC is published by Astragon, who have a name in Germany for releasing cheap and usually not really good simulations for farming, caterpillars, house demolitioning, chimney building, bridge building, Bus Driving, Police car driving, Taxi driving, firefighter driving - etc etc. Not in my dreams I would consider Astragon titles to be on my list of interesting items - but B&CC got developed by TML, whom I know from their World of Subway series, and their Streetcar and Subway modules for Train Simulator. I thought this would indicate this new game to be something better than the usual Astragon stuff. I thought wrong. This title is not really to be recommended.
Scene of the action is San Francisco, with realistic ups and downs over the hills, and realistic street grid. That gives you a huge driving world with over 1200 bus and cable car stops. And this is already the best one can say about the game: world size. The graphics however are not really something that would water your mouth: viewing ranges are short, light effects are either exaggerated (traffic lights at night) or too dark (houses at nights, street lamps). The raindrops on the windshield look nice and are a small eye candy, but in general, the sight is nothing special. While all the streets are there, it is relatively boring to drive them, mostly they are straight (in typical US square block fashion), and the houses are having all the same generic looks and offer little diversity.
By comparison: OMSI gives you only one bus line (plus addon lines that have been done by people via the editor), which does not sound like much - but this bus line gives you plenty of individually looking buildings and places that offer an extremely high recognition factor when comparing to reality. Traffic lights look far superior. Colour contrasts are more realistic, although the graphical style in general is a bit outdated - but it does not really matter. Weather effects are better done in OMSI, and more diverse, also night rides give more joy and atmosphere. 1 point for B&CC for the size of the playing world, 1 point for OMSI for being more individual and having - imo - better weather and time-of-day visual effects. 1:1 is the score after round 1.
The traffic in San Francisco is rare. Streets look empty like after a nuclear strike, there are cars and pedestrians, but not many, and if you drive a bit faster, you see them being dropped on the road or being deleted by the computer 200 or 300 meters in front of you. This has nothing, really nothing to do with a traffic simulation that mirrors reality. The difference of traffic density depending on time of day, is not big. I had all density sliders maxed out.
In OMSI, you have hundreds of cars, you may have traffic jams at rush hour and long lines of cars at traffic lights or crossroads - depending on time of day. You have other buslines and dozens of busses circling on their own lines, you meet them in places according to their own timetables. You need to watch out for pedestrians when making a turn at a crossroad. You find that you drive your bus in very much the same way and with the same viewing behavior of yours like you do with your car in real life. You use - and need to use - the mirrors a lot. You overtake, and get overtaken, and with trucks being left and right of you on a street with three narrow lines, you really start to sweat and staring in panic into the mirrors left and right, since you easily feel uncertain about the dimension of your vehcile and wether your tail is scratching another vehicle, or not. The difference between B&CC and OMSI regarding the traffic simulation, is stellar, the traffic density varies greatly at different times of day (even house and shop lighting is different at different phases of the evening and night, and day-length varies at different seasons of the year) . After traffic comparison, 2:1 for OMSI.
The physics in B&CC are - almost non-existent, at least unworthy to be called like that: physics. Steering behaviour is extremely unrealistic like in a cheap aracade racer game (although the busses move slow), there is zero feeling of the size and length and mass of the the vehicle, there is no realistic acceleration and braking behavior. No noticable mass momentum. Physics are another big let-down of this game. Nothing that comes close to be called "simulation".
OMSI: incredibly good physics in all regards and at every driving and weather condition you could think of. You get realistic, "feels-like-life" acceleration and breaking times, believable slipping behaviour on wet or frozen surface, and you really feel the sheer size of the vehicle you are controlling. 3:1 for OMSI.
Sounds in B&CC: like what you expect from playing with tiny Matchbox toy cars you used to have when you were a small kid 20 years ago. Cheap, ridiculous. Motors sound like anything but motors. City sounds are weak and not well done. Environmental/Weather sounds - well, at least the rain dropping on the tin roof of your pickup when you ride to the bus depot is well done. But sounds in general are totally unimpressive. San Francisco in general seems to be as quite as a hotel room long after midnight.
In OMSI: well in the other thread I called the sounds in OMSI as the benchmark against which you can compare any simulation from any genre you want. I know how the busses in Berlin sound from inside and outside - and the sound environment in OMSI I cannot differ from reality. Accelerating, hard or soft braking, shifting gears, passengers stepping up and down on the upper floor traffic environment, rain and wind, listening from inside or outside the bus, windows open or closed: it all sounds as realistic and diverse in detail as it should. this is a real bus you drive, this is a real city you drive in. Benchmark, I say again. 4:1 for OMSI.
Cockpits: in B&CC, you get them, I cannot tell if they are realistic since I do not know the busses in SF, but the cockpits are not well-rendered, but look like painted toys. There is some functionality for vital switches, and sometimes the light effects when they are activated look nice. But these are no cockpits that qualify for a description of being impressive, or complex.
OMSI cockpits: hardcore realism in photorealistic cockpits. Many different versions, with all of them looking fantastic, and being fully functional down to almost the last of the many buttons. No comparison to B&CC. 5:1 for OMSI.
To me, these are the most essential and important things to compare. Playing modes differ greatly in both games and are a question of taste. The menu in B&CC is offering what is needed, but offers little surprising game content indeed. The menu in OMSI is rough around the edges, and needs a bit of learning, but is very powerful and offers much more things to do and how to get into different playing situations (6:1). B&CC has no in built TrackIR support, but you can use mouse emulation mode of TrackIR (2 axis). OMSI has inbuilt 6dof TrackIR support (7:1). The AI in B&CC often let me down when pedestrians for some reasons where trapped in the entrance area of the bus, and then did not enter or leave, and the game situation was locked down, and session was over. There is no free saving in B&CC. The AI of other cars also is nothing impressive, while in OMSI other cars usually behave more believable and close to reality, and passengers blocking each other in the doors get it sorted out after some seconds all by themselves. There were some occasions when tight traffic on crossroads led to blocked traffic, though, but not often, so I score again an advantage for OMSI in the AI department: 8:1 Also, despite two patches, B&CC had me facing several crashes, while OMSI with one patch did not fail me a single time: 9:1. And driving the bus, finally feels boring and meaningless in B&CC, and unrealistic. In OMSI, it can be a challenge that you do not believe until you have tried it yourself. And since both titles are about just this by essence: driving busses, this is what it comes down to: how does it feel to drive the bus? 10:1 for OMSI.
If you are interested in driving something long and huge, get OMSI and be positively surprised. However, I cannot recommend B&CC as long as you do not plan to discover the whole city as a pedestrian (which is a possible movement in both titles). OMSI is a hardcore simulation of its object. B&CC is a game, a cheap one and a game not really well done. Also possible that they published it far too early. There was promise of potential due to the idea and huge game world. But the potential got carelessly wasted, and I see little if not nothing that compensates the player for that loss.
For 10 Euros, I can live with having done this experiment, last time I did something like that, I got overwhelmingly positively surprised (OMSI). This time, I got not. Sometimes you catch the bear, sometime the bear catches you.
P.S. Vehicles in B&CC need to be unlocked, but I had no nerve to stay for many hours with this game just to finally try the cablecar, so you hear nothing from me about the included cablecars and streetcars. I cannot imagine that they are any better than the disappointing bus experience.
Although the game is new, I got it because I had the opportunity to acchieve a very nice price: 10 Euros. That is because it is cheap by default (around 20 Euros), the shop in question offered it for 15 Euros (German Amazon as well), and my copy came in a damaged DVD case, which made them reducing it by another 5 euros. For more money I wouldn't have bought it. But recently I have enjoyed the very-very good OMSI (see the separate thread), and I wanted to compare the two.
B&CC is published by Astragon, who have a name in Germany for releasing cheap and usually not really good simulations for farming, caterpillars, house demolitioning, chimney building, bridge building, Bus Driving, Police car driving, Taxi driving, firefighter driving - etc etc. Not in my dreams I would consider Astragon titles to be on my list of interesting items - but B&CC got developed by TML, whom I know from their World of Subway series, and their Streetcar and Subway modules for Train Simulator. I thought this would indicate this new game to be something better than the usual Astragon stuff. I thought wrong. This title is not really to be recommended.
Scene of the action is San Francisco, with realistic ups and downs over the hills, and realistic street grid. That gives you a huge driving world with over 1200 bus and cable car stops. And this is already the best one can say about the game: world size. The graphics however are not really something that would water your mouth: viewing ranges are short, light effects are either exaggerated (traffic lights at night) or too dark (houses at nights, street lamps). The raindrops on the windshield look nice and are a small eye candy, but in general, the sight is nothing special. While all the streets are there, it is relatively boring to drive them, mostly they are straight (in typical US square block fashion), and the houses are having all the same generic looks and offer little diversity.
By comparison: OMSI gives you only one bus line (plus addon lines that have been done by people via the editor), which does not sound like much - but this bus line gives you plenty of individually looking buildings and places that offer an extremely high recognition factor when comparing to reality. Traffic lights look far superior. Colour contrasts are more realistic, although the graphical style in general is a bit outdated - but it does not really matter. Weather effects are better done in OMSI, and more diverse, also night rides give more joy and atmosphere. 1 point for B&CC for the size of the playing world, 1 point for OMSI for being more individual and having - imo - better weather and time-of-day visual effects. 1:1 is the score after round 1.
The traffic in San Francisco is rare. Streets look empty like after a nuclear strike, there are cars and pedestrians, but not many, and if you drive a bit faster, you see them being dropped on the road or being deleted by the computer 200 or 300 meters in front of you. This has nothing, really nothing to do with a traffic simulation that mirrors reality. The difference of traffic density depending on time of day, is not big. I had all density sliders maxed out.
In OMSI, you have hundreds of cars, you may have traffic jams at rush hour and long lines of cars at traffic lights or crossroads - depending on time of day. You have other buslines and dozens of busses circling on their own lines, you meet them in places according to their own timetables. You need to watch out for pedestrians when making a turn at a crossroad. You find that you drive your bus in very much the same way and with the same viewing behavior of yours like you do with your car in real life. You use - and need to use - the mirrors a lot. You overtake, and get overtaken, and with trucks being left and right of you on a street with three narrow lines, you really start to sweat and staring in panic into the mirrors left and right, since you easily feel uncertain about the dimension of your vehcile and wether your tail is scratching another vehicle, or not. The difference between B&CC and OMSI regarding the traffic simulation, is stellar, the traffic density varies greatly at different times of day (even house and shop lighting is different at different phases of the evening and night, and day-length varies at different seasons of the year) . After traffic comparison, 2:1 for OMSI.
The physics in B&CC are - almost non-existent, at least unworthy to be called like that: physics. Steering behaviour is extremely unrealistic like in a cheap aracade racer game (although the busses move slow), there is zero feeling of the size and length and mass of the the vehicle, there is no realistic acceleration and braking behavior. No noticable mass momentum. Physics are another big let-down of this game. Nothing that comes close to be called "simulation".
OMSI: incredibly good physics in all regards and at every driving and weather condition you could think of. You get realistic, "feels-like-life" acceleration and breaking times, believable slipping behaviour on wet or frozen surface, and you really feel the sheer size of the vehicle you are controlling. 3:1 for OMSI.
Sounds in B&CC: like what you expect from playing with tiny Matchbox toy cars you used to have when you were a small kid 20 years ago. Cheap, ridiculous. Motors sound like anything but motors. City sounds are weak and not well done. Environmental/Weather sounds - well, at least the rain dropping on the tin roof of your pickup when you ride to the bus depot is well done. But sounds in general are totally unimpressive. San Francisco in general seems to be as quite as a hotel room long after midnight.
In OMSI: well in the other thread I called the sounds in OMSI as the benchmark against which you can compare any simulation from any genre you want. I know how the busses in Berlin sound from inside and outside - and the sound environment in OMSI I cannot differ from reality. Accelerating, hard or soft braking, shifting gears, passengers stepping up and down on the upper floor traffic environment, rain and wind, listening from inside or outside the bus, windows open or closed: it all sounds as realistic and diverse in detail as it should. this is a real bus you drive, this is a real city you drive in. Benchmark, I say again. 4:1 for OMSI.
Cockpits: in B&CC, you get them, I cannot tell if they are realistic since I do not know the busses in SF, but the cockpits are not well-rendered, but look like painted toys. There is some functionality for vital switches, and sometimes the light effects when they are activated look nice. But these are no cockpits that qualify for a description of being impressive, or complex.
OMSI cockpits: hardcore realism in photorealistic cockpits. Many different versions, with all of them looking fantastic, and being fully functional down to almost the last of the many buttons. No comparison to B&CC. 5:1 for OMSI.
To me, these are the most essential and important things to compare. Playing modes differ greatly in both games and are a question of taste. The menu in B&CC is offering what is needed, but offers little surprising game content indeed. The menu in OMSI is rough around the edges, and needs a bit of learning, but is very powerful and offers much more things to do and how to get into different playing situations (6:1). B&CC has no in built TrackIR support, but you can use mouse emulation mode of TrackIR (2 axis). OMSI has inbuilt 6dof TrackIR support (7:1). The AI in B&CC often let me down when pedestrians for some reasons where trapped in the entrance area of the bus, and then did not enter or leave, and the game situation was locked down, and session was over. There is no free saving in B&CC. The AI of other cars also is nothing impressive, while in OMSI other cars usually behave more believable and close to reality, and passengers blocking each other in the doors get it sorted out after some seconds all by themselves. There were some occasions when tight traffic on crossroads led to blocked traffic, though, but not often, so I score again an advantage for OMSI in the AI department: 8:1 Also, despite two patches, B&CC had me facing several crashes, while OMSI with one patch did not fail me a single time: 9:1. And driving the bus, finally feels boring and meaningless in B&CC, and unrealistic. In OMSI, it can be a challenge that you do not believe until you have tried it yourself. And since both titles are about just this by essence: driving busses, this is what it comes down to: how does it feel to drive the bus? 10:1 for OMSI.
If you are interested in driving something long and huge, get OMSI and be positively surprised. However, I cannot recommend B&CC as long as you do not plan to discover the whole city as a pedestrian (which is a possible movement in both titles). OMSI is a hardcore simulation of its object. B&CC is a game, a cheap one and a game not really well done. Also possible that they published it far too early. There was promise of potential due to the idea and huge game world. But the potential got carelessly wasted, and I see little if not nothing that compensates the player for that loss.
For 10 Euros, I can live with having done this experiment, last time I did something like that, I got overwhelmingly positively surprised (OMSI). This time, I got not. Sometimes you catch the bear, sometime the bear catches you.
P.S. Vehicles in B&CC need to be unlocked, but I had no nerve to stay for many hours with this game just to finally try the cablecar, so you hear nothing from me about the included cablecars and streetcars. I cannot imagine that they are any better than the disappointing bus experience.