Lockwood Throws It Into Reverse
Courtesy of Alex Loffstadt, Lockwood Community Manager
One AU — Astronomical Unit — is ninety-three-million miles. That’s the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
So far, Sodium2 players have collectively raced over two thirds of the distance from the Earth to the Sun! That’s more than 2.7 million races.
However, the three-millionth race is nearing! And when this impressive milestone is reached, Lockwood Publishing will be rewarding the community with new reverse tracks!
To be clear, this means that you would start tracks such as the Rocky Speedway and Industrial Sector from what has been the finishing line, not that your Velocity Racer will run backwards. Reverse tracks are fiendish in plces, but really fun — and they should add a nice bit of variety for players.
Head to Sodium2 now and do your part to reach this figure in time for the Thursday 28th update! Reverse tracks will be unlocked for players in Asia, North America and Europe.
NorseNote: This is a brilliant idea. If you’ve read our sixth issue’s cover story — a behind-the-scenes interview with Lockwood about Sodium2 — then you know that reverse tracks have been a discussion topic since the beta.
Running a track in reverse can be a real challenge. When you drive a circuit enough times, you develop muscle memory and learn how to find the right racing line. While you’ll eventually achieve the same prowess with the track reversed, you also have to cope with going against your natural instincts at every corner and having no signage to help indicate the severity of a turn.
Sodium2 really is a brilliant business model. Absolutely free to play, but using social interaction — leaderboards, multiplayer classes, “taunt” features, etc. — to create subtle pressure to purchase upgrades. And with new the occasional new content release — a new track, new upgrades, etc. — the long-term profitability of this venture looks quite stellar.
I would write more, but I’m actually itching to go race some more. Home detractors, take note: you should sign into Home in order to play some cool games. Hell has officially frozen over.
July 23rd, 2011 by NorseGamer | 5 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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To quote one of my favorite Laugh In characters, “Very, very, interesting, but not funny!” More like fun than funny should be interesting to see what this does to everyone’s stats.
now your talking it will be fun and challenging to run it from the finnish line it means new track times and more scratchs for my ship good idea
Haha i’m absolutely useless at this game, I tried to play ‘WipeOut’ (Of which is the Game’s inspiration) and i failed miserably. So doing this in reverse is a bad idea too. I suck at racing games. If I’m really brave, I’ll dig out Gran Tourismo, but I can’t play it without a good Steering wheel peripheral. If this game was move compatible or wheel compatible, I might stand a chance.
bring it on…
I suppose calling it “BackTrack” is just too obvious?