Something else to note about BeamNG is that you can make your own cars and drive them! You need to buy another game (Automation: The Car Tycoon Game), but it has a built in importer that works 99.9% of the time.
@@TheCouch-Co-Op As a guy who has owned BeamNG since 2016 I have seen it come a long long way, and I don't even think it's reached its fruition yet so putting that as the cover of "we killed racing games" really doesn't make any sense. BeamNG is going to come out on top and everybody who's driven that simulation with a force feedback setup knows it. I know how awesome it was in 2016 and how awesome it is now in 2024 and it's only going to get better.
I gotta give y'all some props. I usually assume that the YT channels that don't normally cover car stuff don't know shit about car stuff (from what I've experienced it tends to be true). This had some research put into it. I also appreciate that it was delivered in a way that didn't disrespect newbies and oldheads to the Racing genre.
My problem with modern racing games is that many racing games today no longer have a ‘personality’. I am a single player, almost exclusively. Unfortunately, games have been dumbed down more and more in recent years to appeal to more players. The single player experience has become more and more sacrificed for multiplayer.
I game almost exclusively online (co-op with friends rather than competitive with hoards)... and the same problem affects multiplayer... I've gone from spending hours every week with Forza 3 / 4, including shelling out big money for the Fanatec Forza racing wheel (only for MS to then break compatibility with their next console release a few months later), preordering the collectors boxsets etc... to... maybe playing for free on gamepass for a few weeks after they come out. Forza 4 was the best. Forza horizon was fun when it came out... Now... they all feel boring and repetitive clones with less and less desirability... no character... no aim... no fun... Now I barely play racing games anymore, my wheel has been sat under the desk in my office untouched for nearly 2 years... and the whole genre has nothing that really interests me... just a lot of clones of repeats of the same game...
That's why I find it interesting that when a big studio does try to give a game personality, it tends to get a lot of push back. For example, NFS Unbound, regardless of what one thinks of the physics, gameplay, etc. is trying to introduce an art style beyond just "realism," with a cast of animated characters. In that regard, it is trying something different, but one of the most common complaints I've heard about the game is how "annoying" they find it all, and how they wanted to disable all the decoration and animations that set it apart, with the result being it would just look like any other racing game visually. The NFS series in particular seems to suffer from the problem that too many people demand too many things, and it seems that every title gets criticized for having too much or too little of something, or being either too "samey" or too different. While I think that NFS has had its problems over the years, I think that the developers are in a spot where it is extremely difficult to produce something that will be widely well received as a result.
The Problem for me with those effects is that it feels like they took the easy route to have a different art style. It clashes with the otherwise realistic image of the City and the Cars that just looks like NFS Heat in a different but similar town. I would like them to go all out with an actual art style. Make the City and the races more interesting if you are already employing unrealistic effects. Not to a Mario Kart Level but there is potential for Need For Speed to get a little more creative. I think people want to turn those effects of because it just feels like an added Layer and not something that was intended or really had a lot of thought put into it in terms of game design. @@SynthAir
@@affectedrl5327 Thank you for the well-written reply. Personally, it never really felt tacked on to me, but I do see now how others might feel that way. I also fully agree that I would like to see NFS fully commit to an art direction, rather than adding something to the existing, realistic look. It feels like maybe they only half committed to it in Unbound, perhaps because they thought it would be less risky, but ironically it might have been why it received such mixed reception.
You are 100% right! The AI seems to get dumber and dumber as time goes by. I understand how hard it is to make great AI. It is almost impossible to make it feel like playing with real people. But now it is just an afterthought since reviewers care mainly about the multiplayer part.
My 2 cents: I consider boring games that feature ONLY supercars. I want to battle with other pilots in a Fiat Panda, in a Suzuki Alto/Swift, in a Mini Cooper. I want to update and upgrade those cars. If I only have to change tyre pressure, I will stop playing almost immediately. I hope SHs undestar that...the sooner, the better.
One of my personal favorites of all time was Big Red Racing, it was pretty nuts and in need of a sequel. From the commentary that I'm 98% sure is just out takes to the ability to race things like fan boats and helicopters to the multiple planets. It's just a shame that it's old enough that the graphics really don't hold up and is a bit of a pain to install.
@@MravacKid You can hack any car in GTA, i did many weirdo cars. Just get a model in MAYA, export in the game using the tools made by the community. can't see them online....
I worked on _Need For Speed (PS1)_ and this is a _very_ well done mini-documentary! You've summarized all the main the issues perfectly. i.e. The heart and soul of racing games got sold out for microtransactions.
A couple of minor thoughts: * I would have liked to seen a slight discussion on rubberbanding and how it: a) positively impacts Mario Kart (everyone has a chance of catching up) and b) negatively impacts simcades like _Gran Turismo_ (the AI cheats) I asked Wei (our physics programmer) at the time about why there was rubberbanding for both AI and Players in NFS 1. His answer was: _"Because you could just ram the AI cars off the road and easily win. So we give a slight boost to the players behind to always make the game interesting."_ * You've briefly touched up THE reason Need For Speed was so popular and I agree with that: NFS, pardon the pun, *took the middle of the road between arcade on left and simulation on the right.* Simulations have never really sold well due to their high learning curve. We've seen several genres die over the decades -- the latest causality would probably be the Flight Simulators. * Car Licensing has played a huge part in the decline of developers making racing games. Small studios can't afford the licensing fees. * Casual gamers usually don't have the patience to patience to practice over and over unless it is in niche genres like rogue-likes and Souls-like games.
When we did the car interiors for Need For Speed PS1 there was a bit of an internal discussion about how much time should be spent on them. The team was pretty divided! * Some people LOVED the extra detail, * Some people NEVER view the interiors. We were too busy using the bumper cam and racing. 🙂
What are your thoughts on games like Gran Turismo [7] possibly using AI players disguised as humans on their online daily races to make up the numbers? Is that theory far fetched?
@@smokescreen2146 It is possible. You would have to study replays in depth and look for AI "tells". If you didn't care about your rating ramming the other cars (!) would probably be the fastest way to tell (by their reaction.)
@@MichaelPohoreskiThere was this one time where I braked hard to knock the car behind me out. He later somehow caught up to me on the last lap (rubberbanding?) and bumped me out. All this despite posting slower lap times than me on the replay, except the last lap. I also find it odd the daily online games are always full of players in GT7, even early in the morning. This was never the case for GT6.
After playing through Forza motorsport 8 I always found it dumb how the singleplayer "career" mode doesn't have a dedicated motorsport section in it despite the game literally having "motorsport" in the title.
The new Forza Motorsport "Reboot" was the final straw that made me turn my back on Microsoft and Xbox after mainly gaming on their systems since the 360, in 2007. Some would say that I am insane for hanging on, that long. The PS5 was the next one that I turned my back on, not too long after. I bought an OLED Steam Deck and haven't looked back. My next goal is to build a monster PC for Assetto Corsa.
@@LanceCorporal_Waffles Still playing AC on XB1X here. Never was a fan of Forza (Motorsport), even tho Forza Horizon was somewhat fun to play casually with some friends on the couch.
when Underground came out, us car guys were literally telling every car guy about how "i spent like 10 hours last night making my car....you can customize EVERYTHING......" Because they were car games, made by car guys, for car guys. AAA gaming is dead people. They arent into making games anymore, theyre into making money.
I felt the exact opposite about Underground. I was like "cars are so pretty when stock, why do we have to put ugly make up on them?" Because you HAD to in order to progress. (Plus the fact it didn't and still doesn't feel like a Need for Speed game at all)
what? underground was by people trying to capitalize on the popularity of fast and furious and overly decorated cars, what are you on about lol AAA was always about money, its just that at some point they realized that they don't need to make interesting games anymore, because people will just buy the next slop with a recognizable title.
Doesn't help that large studios are too scared to try anything new, it's all about micro transactions and loot boxes and the same old formula every time with a few new things. It's up to the indies and small studios to revive the genre.
@@mattylatvala43 They're just poorly marketed. Take Blur for instance. If that was released today it would sell gangbusters because there's nothing else like it on the market.
The funny thing about drawing the distinction between "racing games" and "motorsports games" is the same divide exists in real life. There's plenty of overlap, of course, but lots of car guys who enjoy modding cars and going to meets don't care about organized racing, and lots of professional racers don't care about street cars, no matter how fast.
I see virtual drivesim worlds much more with the mindedness of a skateboarder than a racer. I prefer skill over speed and both genres barely reflect what I want. I research driving simulator history (see playlists) and I would e.g. love to make a parody on serious driving school training simulators, with very realistic car physics but all kinds of crazy unlikely stunt challenges those no driving teacher ever came in mind to train for. E.g. avoiding objects falling out of a truck, or steering a car with broken brakes or damaged steering down a twisting mountain road, or passing a collapsed bridge full of holes and obstacles. This can include slow and awkward cars like a broken Citroen 2CV or a Trabant overweighted with a huge stack of baggage strapped to its roof that makes it tip over by steering too much. The car brands in the game may be real or not, but to me matter more correct phyiscs. (Cars have mass. Do not make them move like on rails in a hairpin curve or brake instantly from 300 km/h to zero.) The setting could be a disaster driving simulator, in that the player has to supply and rescue injured people in all kinds of natural disasters (flood, earthquake, forest fire, storm, volcano eruption) instead of the typical crime or war topic of average "action" driving games.
I will never fully understand the in-depth complaints, ending on "I still buy those AAA games" - hating them and still buying them just makes sure the companies behind those will never change. Why the hell should they? And with them - the industry itself will never change. It just means digging your own pit. As well as for everybody else.
I do market research for games. I see that when it comes to AAA, sports games or mega franchises like cod you have what's called a seasonal buyer. It's someone who's not super involved but wants to play the game they will pre-order the deluxe editions and play for probably a week at most. They may be the ones that complain but we'll do it all over again when they have the craving. It is very weird but can you blame them for the longest time you could buy the newest sports game and it was a sure bet that it was going to have better graphics and features in the last. The problem comes when you have that person who wants to play an F1 game but there's only one game with the drivers and cars he knows and likes. It's the same with 2K monopolizing the NBA license. The solution is to not buy but they feel compelled too in thus we get this cycle
Yep, I personally still play racing games, but the ones that I play are much older. Just the other day, I pulled out the 32x version of Virtua Racer for another go. And I love the Moto Racer games. The most recent racing game that I own is Nitronic Rush and that was definitely not a AAA studio game, even though you really wouldn't notice.
The last AAA racing game I bought at full price was Forza 7. I bought Horizon 4 during a steam sale years after it came out tried it and got bored in about 30 minutes. I was almost tempted with GT7 but I remembered being burnt by GT5/6 buying a ps3 just for them and just hating what they had become. The last racing games I ever put decent hours into are Forza 4 and the first Horizon game. After that really nothing ever made me wanna play as much. Like I've pretty much dropped racing games completely now and the only thing close to it that I play is ETS2/ATS. During the PS1/PS2 eras I played so many racing games and even that continued on when I got an Xbox 360 with Forza2/3/4/Horizon. Genki recently announced they are making a new TXR game and I'm gonna be honest thats the most excited I've been for a racing game in years. I've never really liked the NFS games at all, but like every Genki Racing Project game I've loved. I've still got japanese copies of TXR3, the kaido battle games and the lesser known C1 Racing battle. All have slightly wonky physics but have a great gameplay loop and amazing car customistaion. So I honestly can't wait to get back onto the wangan again to battle some wanderers. Really the gutting of the AA industry killed a lot of the smaller more interesting racing games. Even Capcom had Automobelista which was such a cool game with great car customistaion and a unique artstyle for a racing game. Now all you really have is AAA Slop full of MTX and fomo. Or just full on sim racing that requires a wheel setup to even enjoy. I know there are some indie projects both for touge and highway racing but none of them seem to be developing at a decent pace. I know AC is also meant to be amazing for being almost a big sandbox in what you want to do but again the wheel is a hard requirement. I know this as I attempted to try using a controller with it and just could never get it to a decent point.
Assetto Corsa kinda disrupted the market, the effect of it is real. It has grown so much from a barebones sim to an all encompassing hub where you can do anything youd like, no matter if gamefied highway servers or brutal realism esport racing. I am not interested in any other racing games anymore because none of them do singleplayer right and then they dare deliver a bad multiplayer experience
Yeah, I can practice my local track with street cars. Or, if something's missing, I can just hop in to the community and learn to participate, eventually being able to make the track or car I'm missing.
I agree with a lot of the points made but I think there is something you missed. Modern games are either a sandbox with no structure or a collectathon, but they are not really games. Beamng is great but its still just a sandbox. There is a limit to how much fun you can make yourself. I would be much more resilient to bugs and mediocre graphics if there was a modern game with actual economy and progression. If you want an example of a game that was similar to beamng but had a lot more structure, take a look at street legal racing
What killed racing games for me is the fact that if I wish to be competitive I need a steering rig twice the price of my gaming PC. I miss the day where I can play offline, with a keyboard and waste a few hours on the weekend getting my "need for speed" in, in an environment "just realistic enough" to engage my suspension of disbelief.
This pretty much explains why I consider Project Gotham Racing 3 to be the best "simcade" racing game of all time. What I wouldn't give to have a port of that game on PC (for whatever reason Microsoft refuses to allow back compat on racing games from the Xbox 360, even the games Microsoft published themselves, nope no back compat for racing fans).
You can buy a used g27 or g29 for 200 bucks and use that. It's all I ever used. If you enjoy it enough then consider a premium wheel but it's 100% not necessary to spend more than 200 for a decent wheel to learn to drive and drift on. If you get bored sell the wheel for 200 and you're back at exactly 0 dollars spent but the driving practice will be valuable in real life because drifting in a Sim translates to real life. Me personally I can't stand driving without a wheel now. It just doesn't compare to how much better it is.
For me that kind of limitless spending ceiling is attractive. I like the idea that I could buy a guitar for £50, practice every day, and eventually justify a room full of gear that's worth more than the house it's in.
This isn't so much a "racing games are dead" issue, rather, it's the state of game companies in their late stage being acquired by private equity firms who have no connection to what they are creating with inflated budgets. Sadly, this same sentiment can be said about any other video game genre. The best we can do is to vote with our hearts and closing our wallets against the corporate machine that tries to play on your emotions and nostalgia to feed it
I think what people miss is the fact that racing games much like other genres became a victim of Esports thought. Where if the player makes money streaming these games, well the developer will make money from that free exposure and focus on that player base. So its become a game of exposure. The majority will be excluded from these choices because in the eyes of devs the majority doesnt bring in money.
That's just a subset of player retention. They lean into esports aspects because it drives (no pun intended) player retention and playtime. Esports are far too volatile and expensive for any corporation to actually want to be invested in them. It's ultimately just advertising and "inspiration" for casual players to play the game more to feel like they have a shot at making gaming a career. More playtime = bigger numbers to show to happy shareholders and more chance at you clicking on the store to buy a skin or seasonal pass.
That's probably it, ever since Star Craft companies have been delivering games with that intention. Star Craft 2 was absolutely horrible if you weren't into esports or multiplayer as they completely destroyed the singleplayer experience for the sake of having it balanced for competitive multiplayer. Not to mention that Diablo 3 didn't even have an offline singleplayer option because they wanted you to play online so badly. Personally, I still love playing the older game, although they can be somewhat hard to get your hands on due to the licensing agreements for the cars often times expiring and needing to be renegotiated. I'm not sure the studios really want to do it as they'd rather sell a new game
@@SALEENS7GTR5 You should tell Blizzard, they pretty much completely destroyed the singleplayer campaign for Star Craft 2 just to have something that would be useful for esports.
@@Ben-Roguedon't get it on steam, it corrupts your save file and even backing it up won't save you when it corrupts again. Not fun having a game break and constantly fixing it.
I just don't see myself enjoying any of the newer AAA racers when I could just go back and play all the good old shit. One new game I'm excited for is night runners since ive played the demo, and that was really good
Remember how in psx era devs explored racing with not just cars but also snowmobiles, motorboats and heck there was at least one running game too that worked more or less like car racer. I wonder if any indie studio or medium sized could explore these weird and rare racing platforms again.
I’ve always wanted a street racing sim. Finding cars in junkyards, manually buying and installing parts. Finding mechanics. Mild gang violence to get money. Played out in real time with an online community
i love it! ❤️ my idea is a street racing roguelike: race across the country, each leg of your chosen route being a race for pink slips, aka "permadeath." different cities are the "in between" levels where you can repair, tune up, and modify your car with your earnings. 👍
I will as I like to do, recommend Wreckfest. It's a game built around the insanity of demolition derbies and banger racing. Because of this, the game has very realistic driving physics that can have you cause all sorts of crashes easily. However, it is still more arcade than something like Beamng and has a great multiplayer with community servers and custom races.
Was going to shout out that one myself. Not a complex a destruction model as Beam but it does exactly what it says on the tin. Also helps that the A.I. drives like a open lobby in Forza. Keeps it interesting.
Yeah, Wreckfest really rangles the damage physics of beamng and multi-surface features of some rally games and makes it into a more streamlined racing experience that is loads of fun and more approachable for casual users.
nope, things are failing because everyone got the mastrubation toys (VR goggles) and they are pretending like they are using it for something else. Nobody is putting any effort into anything. All they do is few laps and then back to faps. Nobody with the "VR" goggles really cares about anything else.
I don’t think there is a problem with people liking realism and almost wanting to live out their dream or fantasy. I just believe that many people have grown up and the stuff that interested them when they were young has now changed. Many of us enjoyed Arcady racers when we were young, but now having grown older we thirst for a bit more substance and something closer to our life now.
@@TheCouch-Co-Op Dude, you're missing out if you like racing games and you haven't played Wreckfest. It's a pretty modest game in terms of scope, but the handling is a perfect blend of arcade and simulation, and the damage modelling is very good. Online races are very fun and it's still pretty easy to find active servers.
Wreckfest, the racing game without any weird bugs that I know of after playing it for hundreds of hours. You can choose what assists you want, but it is not the most arcade racer, no pickups or powerups, just brutal, honest, racing.
I recently looked at the Wikipedia page for Freespace 2 because nearly 30 years later it's still the best space combat game, and there's something in there I'd like to quote; "The game was restrained from becoming too realistic by the team's recognition that most players only want believable worlds to have a blast flying around in and blowing things up."
Terminal Velocity is the best. You've got a bunch of different planets to explore and really the only thing that I miss is that the "high def" graphics are definitely not high def by modern standards.
It's amazing how modern developers can't replicate Freespace or the X-wing Series. It's layed out infront of them but they can't do it. We get crap like Star Citizen and Elite dangerous as are space sims today and they don't even try with the combat let alone have real missions like those games, but people praise them for some strange reason.
@@tek_lynx4225 I've only ever heard people "play" ED on a second screen while watching movies as they fly out in some random direction of space to "explore." But yeah, they're space trucking and it's boring. Everspace 2 was okay, but being a loot-based shooter was I think a mistake and you spent way too much time in menus fiddling around with inventory and comparing weapon stats.
I don't want to have to have to be a mechanic to be able to be competitive. I don't want to have to drive each car 2 hours to level them up to be able to be competitive. I want to fire the game up, pick a car class, choose a car and go compete on equal footing with everyone else. PGR3 FTW.
I loved that you had to learn to drive different cars differently in PGR, in Forza you just modded everything until it felt like a racing car then drove it the same. I also loved that lap times could be compared globally because we were all driving the exact same car on the same track, the tracks were interesting because they were built in cities, the handling was just the right blend of real and arcade, it was just a great series.
Mention how live service killed so many of them is something everyone seems scared to do, people not only want a single player most of the time, they don't wanna have to connect to servers or have a registered launcher just for it to work. . . basically what Rockstar forces on you know
Great video, spot on. As an indie racing game developer, this hits extremely close to home. I'm working on a simcade game but it's been painful to balance because I get an incredible amount of mixed feedback, both from racing veterans and from newbies: now it's realistic, now it's arcade. Now it's good, now it's bad. First and last simcade game I'm working on in my life. After this one, I'll be back to hyper arcade and as far from realistic as possible.
The whole reason why I begged my mom one day as a little kid to put in a certain CD into the CD player of our vehicle, bc that CD had GT4's "Panama" song as one of its tracks 😆😆
We didn't ask for them to become live services We didn't ask them to piece meal out content We did ask for another faithful Gran Turismo game or need for speed street racer...
In NFS Underground 2, you drove a maximum of like four cars throughout the entire campaign. You upgraded those one piece at a time. You took care to choose the best one for your driving career. You felt the process. Parts unlocked as the campaign progressed and the map opened up. Those cars grew with you. In modern games, disposable free cars are launched at you every third race and you feel like you're playing Jay Leno Simulator. The cars are cool in their own right, but it's disrupting the experience and I shouldn't be able to max out my real world approachable dream car at 1/100th of game completion. These games are designed with Hypercars in mind and I just can't be bothered to care about any of them.
Good video. I'm 42 and played mostly racing games in the 90's. I would softly argue that the original Nascar Racing from papyrus and Need For Speed 1 games are the actual catalysts for mainstream simcade titles. What Grand Turismo did was legitimized them on consoles by basically being better in almost every way, and NOT on PC.
I honestly feel like, Gran Turismo really paved the way for not just games, but also car culture in general. It’s like the Top Gear of video games. It even clashed nicely with Top Gear, which was very British/Eurocentric, and Gran Turismo (especially 1 and 2) was very Japanese-centric, but both had a huge profitable American market. This is why I know what a Lagonda is, or a Cappuccino, or a Calsonic Skyline, or that the ‘Austin Princess was the first vehicle with concealed windscreen wiper spindles,” or that a Gen 1 Viper was impossible to control if the only options are full throttle and no throttle.
I brought it up to someone else in the comments as literally the only arcade racer I play after binge watching Wirtual for so long. It has basically everything I hate in a vehicle based game. Lack of realism, TOTAL lack of car diversity, lack of upgrade systems or progression trees, zero economic grind, a damn subscription service, it's buggy as hell... And yet those are all things that SOMEHOW give me the dopamines harder than any of those features combined in any other game. And I think it mostly comes down to a sense of achievement, in that the only progression in that game, is seeing your track times go down, and your author medals go up, as you actually improve in the only metric that matters in any game: your personal skill at the game. That's something progression systems can actually mask completely. When everyone's driving the same car, there is only one thing you can improve, and that is yourself. And hyper realistic games that offer that AND teach you real driving skills... I dunno man, I always feel like I'm not performing at my peak because I don't have some 1,000 dollar sim racing setup. Trackmania meanwhile is accessible and competitive at the highest levels on just controller, or even keyboard.
@ 19:40 "so, you can pick your poison," you only gave us two choices, and they both stink. There IS a third choice: you can run emulation and play all the best classic, monetization free, race car games out there...
I feel like we are living in a “Twilight Zone” episode. There is no way I’m watching a video documenting Midnight Club LA like it’s history. Blows my mind. I remember beating it over a weekend when I was in high school.
I think one sub-genre of racing games that is often missed out, that technically doesn't have cars but is still about racing, is the anti-gravity racing genre (Wipeout, Redout, BallisticNG, etc.).
Anti-grav racers are top tier. Really hope one day we get a new Wipeout or F-Zero game again but there are a lot of heavily inspired ones now on Steam.
even none racing game players played the games from the 6th generation, i played Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition Remix for so many hours yet i was never a car guy
@@TheCouch-Co-Op I personally think it's really odd that you're playing up the car culture thing when that's a much more recent aspect of the genre. Most of the early games and through much of the '90s didn't have recognizable cars. I think a lot of that had to do with a combination of resources to model cars in a way that varied between the models and the attention to sign the deals. There probably was some element of that, but for most of the time frame that these games existed, it was playing at home against yourself or whichever buddies had time to come over. A lot of these systems couldn't even do network gaming, so no LAN parties either.
NFS: SHIFT was truly the last FUN and well produced arcade racer. What a blast. Prior to that, Project Gotham Racing. There just hasn't been any engaging, fun, good arcade racers like those since then.
Also, as an avid car guy and Beamng fan, the graphics in the game are amazing, it gets updated every 3 (ish) months and theres plenty of amazing community made mods (a lot are free), the graphics are okay by modern standerds (the clips you saw in the video were mostly from the trailers taken 4 years ago) and the best part is the vehicle damage. It is THE most realisitic damage simulator, allowing the frame and body to be seperated, the entire body crunches and bends with every crash, theres simulated technical damage (piston rings can get damage due to a lack of oil) and driveshafts/axles can get obliterated, paralyzing your car. The driving physics are really good too, besides a lack of drafting and tire thermals (tires heating up giving more traction) but there are community made mods for that, the devs are also car guys and they listen to the community, plus theres a huge range of cars to choose from (each car has different variations, such as a hatchback having an electric version, race/rally versions and sport versions/AWD and FWD versions). I really recommend Beamng.Drive, but it is very hard to run.
screw damage, the physics are fully simulated. Turning the wheel actually moves the steering linkage which in turn moves the wheel. Clutch slippage, ABS simulation, power steering simulation, industry leading automatic transmission simulation, the list goes on.
@@some-repliesPower steering isn't properly simulated in BeamNG. That's why no cars have it equipped by default. It just acts as a filter for the force feedback, no extra load on the engine, no extensive dynamic assistance, or wildly different profiles from vehicle to vehicle, like we've come to expect with most systems in-game.
I beat Toca Race Driver 2. And I agree. It is hard. I got rammed so hard by one of the opponents at the final race in the final lap when I braked, and I lost my entire Back Wheel on my F1 car. I was so mad
I beat Toca 2 with a keyboard as a kid. For the time, graphics were awesome. I learnt about the existence of Surfers Paradise there, and never found again in a game. But I'll remember a thing forever: the game often proposed two different race to choose from to proceed. At one point, race A was Aston Martin 1 vs 1 on the snow, and race B was a truck race. Me, already a car addicted, jumped on race A. And found that... snow was EXTREMELY slippery for my skill (and keyboard control). After countless retrays, I've chosen the truck race and won with ease... still disappointed though.
Along with BeamNG, i think Assetto Corsa (heavily modded of course) is one of the best examples of racing games BY the community, the ammount of FREE content (quality may vary) you can download with mods (along with obv CSP and Sol), greatly increses the game experience, physics, weather (the rain mod is absolutely amazing btw, almost feels like DriveClub) unlike any other game. I think Assetto Corsa Evo will be fine (if they keep their promise with modding).
Great video.... But I have a feeling Iracing hurt you. It was barely mentioned until the end there where all you did was provide some biased tongue in cheek criticism bordering straw man. It's not a big AAA title. It's very much grassroots from the beginning. They're sole intent is to provide the best racing experience and always has been. Iracing has issues, as with any of them, but it is by far the most realistic physics engine and best sim on the market.
Great video. Exhaustive and comprehensive. I race every Friday night with a few friends on the PS5 and there's a mix of skills, realism preferences and setups (some have wheels, some on controllers). We have settled into a rotation of F123 (everyone waited until it was free), Project Cars 2 (amazing array of cars, tracks and settings) and Assetto Corsa Competitione (my favourite).
I like how you included Mario Kart to this video as well, a lot of racing games UA-camrs are very dismissive of that game since it was essentially a "Mario" game whatever that means.
"mario game"do you have any idea how little that narrows it down? mario kart doesnt even grab many stuff from the mario series, instead grab more stuff and modifies until it becomes unrecognizable, or create something new, like the 3 shells and how they work, is a good itens gameplay wise, just not how it works in the rest of the series, is crazy that fire flower came to item list so much later in the series too only in double dash forward i start to see more mario stuff in mario kart and them we have the rainbow roads, aka the most iconic tracks of mario kart, doenst have anyplace in main line or other spin-offs, only after years we got rainbbow road on paper mario color spash and then the mario movie (incluing a blue shell koopa) and even mario kart 8 we got tracks i must a ask "is this even mario?" like sweet kingdom, mount wario, Sky-High Sundae
Just gotta say NEED FOR SPEED UNDERGROUND 2 & NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED on the GameCube were my introduction to racing games (SEGA's Daytona USA Arcades being included as well)
The problem, for me, is that arcade racers feel like driving with practice wheels. You can't spin out even if you wanted to. Realistic/sim racers will have one bump and you're going straight into a tire barrier. I genuinely love GTA 5's driving physics. It feels fairly realistic without being completely unforgiving.
Microtransactions , DLC, DLC, update update patch patch patch... Online only, cannot access the main game OFFLINE (looking at you GT) It's a mundane drag (excuse the pun) these days I miss the old days, of just popping in the disc and Bobs your uncle
I remember when I got my Xbox One, Forza Motorsport 5 came with it. The game was fun, had some of the best graphics for the time, and I thought it was cool as hell. Then Forza Horizon 3 came out, and I loved that game. Over time, it became the thing of just... it's the same game year in, year out. It's the same thing as Madden, 2K, or the UFC games, but at least those have significant roster changes (usually). Hopefully racing game devs start figuring out how to make them feel interesting again, I'd actually love to see good new flying or boating racing game.
lol, get volumetric clouds, and drive on whatever big maps you want from the forums, get BEAMLR career and race and truck stuff for money, freroam racing track racing...
Im glad to see this conversation happening. I lived through the golden days of gaming and what bothers me most is many people in the new gen has no idea how much better things could be and arent interested in finding out.
Burnout Revenge for Xbox 360 was the peak racing game for me 20 years ago, and I've been left disappointed by every racing game ever made since. "Realistic" racing games are so incredibly boring. I want high octane arcade action.
Iv just spent a year trying sim racing full on. The community is completely asinine. They are never happy, constantly fighting, full of whales, and generally the worst of the gaming community.
Thats all genre of games 😂 this whole internet age is people that are never satisfied, always want what they dont have, and just plain cry about everything from graphics, physics, the development…everything
Just the fact that FM4 seems, even today, like something more appealing that FM8 tells you all you need to know about the industry. I stopped buying racing games from big studios about 6 years ago. I now play BeamNG, Assetto corsa, RBR, and whatever's good in indie territory (and there's plenty these days). I started playing older games again too, dusting off my ps3 for GT5/6, plannin to buy a RGH Xbox 360 for FM4. I think sims are fun, i think arcade games are fun. A game that's shaped by corporate people, that's not even capable of outperforming now decade old, previous installments of itself, AND has the audacity to be listed for more money, *WHILE HAVING MORE THINGS TO BUY* to get the complete experience is indeed, UNfun. That's unfortunately not limited to games, and it's really reminding me of Dankpods "tech that let me down" series. The general enshittification of products these days is global, and i can't believe things havent already gone to shit.
One solution is to stop just using automobiles and make more diverse types of racing games; * On-foot racing (Sonic R, Pokemon Dash) * Hoverboards (Sonic Riders) * Aircraft
They started treating racing games like sports games as a service. It was a matter of time after the way they handled sports games on the PS2 and 360. Racing is all about high performing, minimalist, lack of bullshit insanity.
The problem with racing games is that the better you get, the less the gameplay has to do with cars and racing, and the more it "degenerates" into something rather stupid. This happens with practically every game in the genre, but arcade games are more affected. After a while, when you've learned all the tricks and ways of being a good player, the theme of cars and racing is just a suggestion, and you're often playing a pretty bad arcade game full of rubber banding, bugs, broken rules, and other undesirable things. I think this partly explains why simulators and simcades have become the focus of devs and gamers, while more arcadey and stylized games have lost some of their influence. But sims also have this same problem, there's an ex-F1 driver who explains that he abandoned iRacing because as the skill of the players improved, it turned from a sport simulation into a bad video game.
yup. it becomes about exploiting the edge of the rules, about "meta" and stupid bs like that. gran turismo has a billion cars in it but there are like only 2 or 3 "viable" cars per race, the rest is garbage that makes you automatically lose. and there's a thousand ways to exploit penalties to cheese the game, etc etc.
@@GraveUypo This plagues all of modern gaming now, especially online focused games. There's always "meta" gun or perk or car or build or item or playstyle where if you even dare go outside the box either you're instantly at a disadvantage or even if you make it work your teammates complain about it. It's why a lot of people are logging off and returning to older/single player games where you paved your way.
@@GraveUypo Real racing has the same problems: the Oreca 07 was the meta car in LMP2 to the point that multiple manufacturers had no entries at Daytona or Le Mans for *years*. Live SMT data in NASCAR has drastically homogenized driving styles.
>The problem with racing games is that the better you get, the less the gameplay has to do with cars and racing, and the more it "degenerates" into something rather stupid. just about every single game in general has this issue.
@@GraveUypothis is a necessary evil. Perfect balance is never going to be possible. More spec series options would be a more obtainable fix just like how real life “balances” drivers in series like mx5 cup, radical sr10 racing, praga cup etc.
I worked for a company that did a car racing game, but I was on a different game. What I was told by them was that the licensing kills the profits on these games, and even though the game seemed to be doing okay, the actual profits were anemic.
beamng has PLENTY of catches. it's a barren sandbox playground first, a crash simulator second, and i don't know if you can even ever call it a racing game. it's just a car game. i bought it, and i couldn't enjoy it because of that.
@@theminerboy5694 I'm currently using Automation to build out cars to test out configurations for beating Bonneville salt flat world records for certain categories... Just so happened someone made a Bonneville map, lol. I'm actually increasingly liking the game after not touching it much for years, I might have to try out racing mods and stuff for it. I think what the game really needs to be a true "racing game" though is racing multiplayer of some kind. I'm not sure it has any form of multiplayer though, does it?
great video and i hope game studios see this. i feel like racing games have steered away from arcade-y fun because mario kart dominates that market but the problem is that mario kart only exists on one platform so the majority of gamers can't even play it. there are tons of indie racing games that are fun but just lack in content and budget to really make an awesome game. im looking forward to test drive unlimited solar crown, i hope it is good
This is wrong. Modern games love cars to much. They only focus on them and completely abandon environments and extras. NFS: Underground 2 became iconic bcs of how immersive it was. It wasnt the graphics and driving engine but the atmosphere that carried that game.
Honestly I think it's more than just the physics and the microtransactions though. Even if all of those things were fixed, there's still a big issue - the progression. I remember, back in FM3, you started with some dinky little shitbox in E class races, and you barely made enough cash from wins to buy a single upgrade. But you kept upgrading it, and you kept competing in races, and you had to EARN THE RIGHT to compete in the higher tiers and access better cars. The last time I played a Forza game was Horizon 4. And they just fucking give you an Audi TT as a starter option. And within like two races worth of earning money, you can buy something in high S-class. There's no real feeling of progression anymore. There's no real sense of having to fight my way up through the ranks, or having to bond with and develop my car and actually learn how it drives. They just want to get you into Lamboshit as fast as possible... which ends up being to the player's detriment even if you are only there for the lamboshit, because lamboshit is HARD TO DRIVE! And unless you have that experience with the lower end cars, YOUR EXPERIENCE DRIVING THE LAMBOSHIT IS JUST GOING TO BE OVERSHOOTING EVERY CORNER AND SPINNING ON STRAIGHTS. Frankly? I'll take bugs. I'll take a monetization model that just exists to nickel and dime me. Just give me a career progression that feels in any way satisfying. Give me that Initial D Season 1 feeling. That's all I want.
Progression died to make way for microtransactions, cant have a player just play the game to unlock the cool thing when you can make them pay for the cool thing instead. 100% agree with you though and it is the same reason I wont buy another forza game unless the formula changes.
Gran Turismo captured everyone's heart because you could start in a daily driver that you personally had experience driving, and work your way up to GT cars and endurance racing. Marketing killed the industry. Ambitious advertising campaigns stole the soul of these games. Good devs are knee-capped by rich out-of-touch assholes. Or they don't have enough money to do things independently.
im suprised you didnt mention Wreckfest,it is an arcade racer but definetely one of the most fun games i've played in years,pretty cheap and a seemingly even better sequel on the way,while it is more focused on destruction,the feel of being in first place on the final lap while there is a bus heading straight towards you and someone behind you constantly trying to smash you off the road is very enjoyable,while the multiplayer is center between casual and competitive,there is no ranking or matchmaking,you just find a good server and roll with it,trying to drive as good as you can,or taking a bus,doing a 180 at the start and destroying the people driving normally,not for the sake of winning,but for fun.
nothing beats the feeling of sitting on your sofa, driving around the corner and seeing nothing but the fronted of a reinforced american school bus and by nothing beats the feeling i mean that wreckfest should be categorized as a horror game
Any game should be FUN to play. Now the racing game looks Really Good, but Really BORING to play. Why I no longer care about racing game ; it is more fun driving my Honda Civic home instead.
Gran Turismo 7 had a terrible economy at launch. But future updates upped the pay for a lot of events, so you can get decent amounts of money grinding events. There's even weekly challenges that often give out a lot of money and rewards for doing them. Still, $20,000,000 cars are still bullshit and I don't care how Polyphony justifies it. That being said, I still highly recommend GT7 even on the PS4. Or if you want a classic, then play Gran Turismo 4 on PCSX2 and there's a mod coming out soon called Spec II. It's basically an overhaul of the entire game. Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit on the computer was one of my first games. It had an R129 SL600 and my parents have the same generation model, but it was an SL500. Since then, I was enamored by racing games and cars. Then I got a PS2 and played Midnight Club, Gran Turismo, Burnout, and Tokyo Xtreme Racer. They really shaped my preferences in things like music. I love electronic music because of the early Need for Speed games. Racing games were basically all I ever played until I made a Steam account. I never really wanted to be a professional driver, but fantasized about street races in exotics or tuner cars. Midnight Club: Los Angeles really was the peak of arcade racers. The street racing vibe was there, and there were all kinds of car classes so you get to try out different types of cars at least once. The customization was also spectacular, only really matched by GTA Online. MC:LA's handling model is also one of my favorites in an arcade racer. It's weighty and grippy. I really want another Midnight Club game, but GTA just makes too much money for them to care. Midnight Club still canceled soz. 12:43 My Supra :) I really miss mid-range racing games. There was a lot more creativity and variety in the PS2 days and Xbox 360 days. Some indie games do capture the magic of that era, like Night-Runners. I love the atmosphere of 90s street racing in Japan like Tokyo Xtreme Racer. NR also has amazing customization and soundtrack. I definitely recommend anyone try it out. The Prologue is free, so literally anyone can play it, but you better add it to your Steam library before the dev unlists it and releases another demo. I backed up NR on Kickstarter because I liked what I played. Need for Speed: Unbound is a very good arcade racer and I do highly recommend the game. It got a lot of flak for its artstyle and soundtrack, but it's trying to do something unique and set a tone. It doesn't help that it's not Most Wanted 2005 or Underground, and there is no pleasing that crowd no matter what. Unfortunately, EA keeps cannibalizing Criterion for Battlefield, but the team that remains are actually improving the game a lot with updates. The most recent one added drag racing and a whole new drift handling model. Usually the modern NFS games don't get much support (RIP Heat). The Burnout series probably really shaped what I wanted in games: figuring out the best way to destroy things. My first Burnout game was Takedown. It features a crash mode (first introduced in 2: Point of Impact) where you are given an intersection to crash into and cause the most damage. It was a destruction puzzler, and I wanted more games like that not just limited to Burnout. Online only games shouldn't die because a bean counter says they should. stopkillinggames(dot)com
@TheCouch-Co-Op A new update for NFS Unbound just came out, a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer game just got announced, Night-Runners Prologue is free on Steam right now, and some other indie racing games are being made/already came out. I'd say racing games aren't quite dead yet.
This is more of a documentary then just a video about how "Racing Games have Crashed and Burned" and i totally agree with you. Keep up the good work... Blur was some much fun back then, as well as PGR 4
What has prevented racing games of becoming actually huge is the requirement of being more realistic. And that is true when it comes to the base physics, it needs to feel real. But what does not need to be realistic: casual gameplay. Go to a race, spend 15 minutes on practice and qualy, start the race and you get taken out in the first corner. Since it is casual, lets say that damage is off but the entire field of cars is now 10-20 seconds ahead of you and there are 8 laps left. What do you do? Quit? Yeah.. And you just invested in something that was over in ten seconds. The lack of rubberbanding is a huge one and that is something that HC simracers have demonized so much that it is unthinkable... Arcade racers do have them but they lack the feel of driving and usually have a ton of driving aids that can't be turned off since those kind of games are not built to be realistic, the "cheats" are deeply ingrained. And what is completely missing is realistic car handling in TRAFFIC, to actually run from the cops in a city.. that is what people have wanted since forever. It has been tried but they all miss the actual idea, which is to increase realism by ten times in open world games. GTA with rFactor1 era physics would be enough. So, track racing should be less realistic, it should have boosts and gimmicks to make the game play more enjoyable, and open world games should be way, way more realistic.
I feel the need to point out two honourable mentions. Assetto Corsa is a proper sim, ie realistic physics, but with content manager it’s pretty accessible and the modding community is insane, keeping the game alive for over 10 years now - thousands of cars and tracks. And on the other side, secondly, project cars 2. More accessible physics but still realistic yet more forgiving (ie simcade) but with arguably the best single player experience with a wonderful career mode.
@@SamLowry42 It's particularly wonderful if you're on the fence about sims. First thing I played on my wheel other than Forza and I couldn't go back. Ended up building a PC to get a full sim experience
I'm being playing gt7 for the las year and a half, and never feel the need to spend any money on it. What is exactly the reason people complain so much about the micro transactions in the game??
I like how anti-grav racing games have been making somewhat of a comeback but yeah man it sucks. I love racing games and the people around me don’t really like them either or as much as me. I love a good racing game with a great soundtrack or bumping my own tunes too. Making a cool ride that feels you can’t be replicated literally. Ford racing 3, Grand Turismo, Test Drive, and Midnight club were my real racers. F-zero, hydro thunder, cruisin blast, and CTR were my arcade racers. Thanks for a good video.
Need fort Speed Underground 1 and 2 were fun games. Carbon was fun also. Cop chases and bounty and heat and all the BS they added in game made the NFS series unplayable. I have the new NFS games because I keep hoping against hope that I can recapture the fun that NFSU 1 and 2 gave me.
NFS had cops in 5 of the first 6 games before Underground IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT THEY WOULD COME BACK MW was even planned to be another Hot Pursuit very early in development
I think one thing about racing games and car culture is that car culture itself is in severe decline. Cars aren't cool anymore. They're anonymous egg-shaped pods with wheezy turbo fours that spy on you or even more anonymous egg-shaped pods with EV platforms that are shared between multiple automakers. They're too heavy, they're too expensive, they're too complicated, traffic keeps getting worse, their controls have been numbed by electronic interference, the things that make them safer for the people inside them make them less safe for the people outside them, and every time people work on one way they pollute it exacerbates another way they pollute. Cars are increasingly disliked nowadays--how many normal people still want to play a game about them? Likewise, combat flight sims have become increasingly obscure and obtuse games for neckbeards, at the same time the romance has drained out of real combat aviation and fighter jets are more known for killing babies in the Middle East than chivalrous dogfights between officers. Do kids who grow up on news reports on Israeli atrocities in Palestine think "I want to fly an F-35 one day"? Of course not! I haven't really played GTA though I have played Saints Row, but the whole GTA style of game never seemed like a "racing game" to me, but rather a "crime game", or a "gangster game", where cars were only one part of the fantasy of being an organized crime kingpin.
As someone who has only become a "car" guy recently, in the last 5 years or so, and someone who literally grew up on combat flight sims to the point of neckbearding them... I agree with everything you said, lol. Oh god, dont even get me started on how bad cars have gotten. I was a jet engine mechanic in the USAF, and recently worked a brief stint at an autobody shop after I got out... Learned first hand just how hard the manufacturers are huffing that anti-repair BS right now. They're actively killing their own market by trying to fleece the middle class for the privilege of transportation. I will say a few things though: Old weird cars only get cooler by the day the more cars turn into amorphous blobs, I've gone out of my way to buy the weird stuff. I didn't own my first car till I got stationed in Okinawa in the military, I think that's what made me more of a car guy than I otherwise would have been, they still have all kinds of weird old easy to work on kei cars for a bargain over there. DCS surprisingly, I've found easier to compete with people on xbox controller than my full hotas setup, thanks to Tuuvas's controller setups... And I'm saying that as someone who used to tryhard on VR and an X-52 pro. And combat flight sims still offer air combat simulation from every period up to the drone strike and F-35 nonsense. At that point, yeah, it becomes increasingly a point and click adventure game, sadly how air combat is these days. And, if you want a modern car that isn't an anti-repair spyware nightmare... There's only one car today that actually excites me enough to say "yeah, I'd actually buy that new", and that's the Aptera. Mileage may vary, but I think they're the closest thing to an actually innovative company in a car market saturated by trash.
I'd say the opposite about Top Gear. It died because it stopped being about cars. The decline started under Clarkson but was well and truly there by the last iteration
The original Top Gear was seriously boring, and the change in format made it funny, exciting and very popular. However, as you say, it gradually become less about cars, and more about old men doing stupid things in cars. The Grand Tour took this to the extreme, and I thought that the little that I saw of it was terrible.
midnight club, burnout, split second, blur there is still is a desire for arcade racers but get neglected regardless need for speed is now on there third studio (criterion) after closing both black box and ghost forza motorsport was garbage the crew games are online only and get delisted gt7 is solid but no pc port forza horizon has no actual single player progression since 1 I miss my racing games mannnn
try wreckfest, second game was recently announced and the online scene of the frist game is still pretty active while the offline mode gave me a good 60h of entertainment
Beam and assetto are where it's at for me at the moment and it's been that way for about 10 years now. Really hoping ac evo is going to deliver on freeroam and mod support.
I liked when cars looked chonky and felt springy, iykwim. Realistic cars is cool, but those cartoonish racing games where you jump around causing mayhem hit different. That's why BLUR is so good. It came out at a time when those type of games were almost extinct and we haven't had a game like that ever since (NFS 2012 never existed, it was just a collective hallucination)
I don't know what you are talking about. I am 50 years old, been gaming for about 40 years now. GT7 is the best racing game i played in my life. Even nostalgia doesn't do it for me. I cringe when looking at old racing games i liked. It's all about the physics of the driving and yes the graphics. I don't care about micro transactions and content. Content for me is: different races created weekly on the same 20-30 tracks. Racing has never been better in the racing games history.
I'm 40, I recently started playing around with psx emulation on the steam deck. I started playing news for speed high stakes all over again and am having more fun with it than I did with fh5. It has something that I find lacking with modern racing games. Also most racing games have become SLOW!
Something else to note about BeamNG is that you can make your own cars and drive them! You need to buy another game (Automation: The Car Tycoon Game), but it has a built in importer that works 99.9% of the time.
That's sick!
That's the relatively easy way the other way is what the beaming forums usually at
That 0.1% was someone trying to make a double-double-double-double decker bus. I forgot which streamer did it though, but that was sad boi hours.
@@CaptPatrick01shinyodd?
@@TheCouch-Co-Op As a guy who has owned BeamNG since 2016 I have seen it come a long long way, and I don't even think it's reached its fruition yet so putting that as the cover of "we killed racing games" really doesn't make any sense. BeamNG is going to come out on top and everybody who's driven that simulation with a force feedback setup knows it. I know how awesome it was in 2016 and how awesome it is now in 2024 and it's only going to get better.
I gotta give y'all some props. I usually assume that the YT channels that don't normally cover car stuff don't know shit about car stuff (from what I've experienced it tends to be true). This had some research put into it. I also appreciate that it was delivered in a way that didn't disrespect newbies and oldheads to the Racing genre.
Appreciated!
exactly.
when they showed the clip of fernando alonso i immediately knew that this guy knows what hes talking about.
"guy" about that 😅
@@TheCouch-Co-Opu are a grill?
Big Green Egg
My problem with modern racing games is that many racing games today no longer have a ‘personality’. I am a single player, almost exclusively. Unfortunately, games have been dumbed down more and more in recent years to appeal to more players. The single player experience has become more and more sacrificed for multiplayer.
I game almost exclusively online (co-op with friends rather than competitive with hoards)... and the same problem affects multiplayer...
I've gone from spending hours every week with Forza 3 / 4, including shelling out big money for the Fanatec Forza racing wheel (only for MS to then break compatibility with their next console release a few months later), preordering the collectors boxsets etc... to... maybe playing for free on gamepass for a few weeks after they come out.
Forza 4 was the best.
Forza horizon was fun when it came out...
Now... they all feel boring and repetitive clones with less and less desirability... no character... no aim... no fun...
Now I barely play racing games anymore, my wheel has been sat under the desk in my office untouched for nearly 2 years... and the whole genre has nothing that really interests me... just a lot of clones of repeats of the same game...
That's why I find it interesting that when a big studio does try to give a game personality, it tends to get a lot of push back. For example, NFS Unbound, regardless of what one thinks of the physics, gameplay, etc. is trying to introduce an art style beyond just "realism," with a cast of animated characters. In that regard, it is trying something different, but one of the most common complaints I've heard about the game is how "annoying" they find it all, and how they wanted to disable all the decoration and animations that set it apart, with the result being it would just look like any other racing game visually. The NFS series in particular seems to suffer from the problem that too many people demand too many things, and it seems that every title gets criticized for having too much or too little of something, or being either too "samey" or too different. While I think that NFS has had its problems over the years, I think that the developers are in a spot where it is extremely difficult to produce something that will be widely well received as a result.
The Problem for me with those effects is that it feels like they took the easy route to have a different art style. It clashes with the otherwise realistic image of the City and the Cars that just looks like NFS Heat in a different but similar town. I would like them to go all out with an actual art style. Make the City and the races more interesting if you are already employing unrealistic effects. Not to a Mario Kart Level but there is potential for Need For Speed to get a little more creative.
I think people want to turn those effects of because it just feels like an added Layer and not something that was intended or really had a lot of thought put into it in terms of game design. @@SynthAir
@@affectedrl5327 Thank you for the well-written reply. Personally, it never really felt tacked on to me, but I do see now how others might feel that way. I also fully agree that I would like to see NFS fully commit to an art direction, rather than adding something to the existing, realistic look. It feels like maybe they only half committed to it in Unbound, perhaps because they thought it would be less risky, but ironically it might have been why it received such mixed reception.
You are 100% right! The AI seems to get dumber and dumber as time goes by. I understand how hard it is to make great AI. It is almost impossible to make it feel like playing with real people. But now it is just an afterthought since reviewers care mainly about the multiplayer part.
My 2 cents: I consider boring games that feature ONLY supercars. I want to battle with other pilots in a Fiat Panda, in a Suzuki Alto/Swift, in a Mini Cooper. I want to update and upgrade those cars. If I only have to change tyre pressure, I will stop playing almost immediately. I hope SHs undestar that...the sooner, the better.
One of my personal favorites of all time was Big Red Racing, it was pretty nuts and in need of a sequel. From the commentary that I'm 98% sure is just out takes to the ability to race things like fan boats and helicopters to the multiple planets. It's just a shame that it's old enough that the graphics really don't hold up and is a bit of a pain to install.
I also loved secret unlockables like Pirhana in Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3 challenge unlocks tough as nails but getting the Icarus craft so rewarding.
I would like to race in great circuits using a virtual model of my own car, a very simple Nissan Versa, but instead simple cars are rarely present.
I almost cried when I saw you can drive a FIAT Punto in Juiced. That was probably the first time in any PC game that was possible. :)
@@MravacKid You can hack any car in GTA, i did many weirdo cars. Just get a model in MAYA, export in the game using the tools made by the community.
can't see them online....
I worked on _Need For Speed (PS1)_ and this is a _very_ well done mini-documentary! You've summarized all the main the issues perfectly.
i.e. The heart and soul of racing games got sold out for microtransactions.
A couple of minor thoughts:
* I would have liked to seen a slight discussion on rubberbanding and how it:
a) positively impacts Mario Kart (everyone has a chance of catching up) and
b) negatively impacts simcades like _Gran Turismo_ (the AI cheats)
I asked Wei (our physics programmer) at the time about why there was rubberbanding for both AI and Players in NFS 1. His answer was: _"Because you could just ram the AI cars off the road and easily win. So we give a slight boost to the players behind to always make the game interesting."_
* You've briefly touched up THE reason Need For Speed was so popular and I agree with that: NFS, pardon the pun, *took the middle of the road between arcade on left and simulation on the right.* Simulations have never really sold well due to their high learning curve. We've seen several genres die over the decades -- the latest causality would probably be the Flight Simulators.
* Car Licensing has played a huge part in the decline of developers making racing games. Small studios can't afford the licensing fees.
* Casual gamers usually don't have the patience to patience to practice over and over unless it is in niche genres like rogue-likes and Souls-like games.
When we did the car interiors for Need For Speed PS1 there was a bit of an internal discussion about how much time should be spent on them. The team was pretty divided!
* Some people LOVED the extra detail,
* Some people NEVER view the interiors. We were too busy using the bumper cam and racing. 🙂
What are your thoughts on games like Gran Turismo [7] possibly using AI players disguised as humans on their online daily races to make up the numbers? Is that theory far fetched?
@@smokescreen2146 It is possible. You would have to study replays in depth and look for AI "tells".
If you didn't care about your rating ramming the other cars (!) would probably be the fastest way to tell (by their reaction.)
@@MichaelPohoreskiThere was this one time where I braked hard to knock the car behind me out. He later somehow caught up to me on the last lap (rubberbanding?) and bumped me out. All this despite posting slower lap times than me on the replay, except the last lap.
I also find it odd the daily online games are always full of players in GT7, even early in the morning. This was never the case for GT6.
After playing through Forza motorsport 8 I always found it dumb how the singleplayer "career" mode doesn't have a dedicated motorsport section in it despite the game literally having "motorsport" in the title.
It's wack. And mainly centered around street legal production cars.
It's more like Forza than Forza Motorsport.
Haha money
The new Forza Motorsport "Reboot" was the final straw that made me turn my back on Microsoft and Xbox after mainly gaming on their systems since the 360, in 2007. Some would say that I am insane for hanging on, that long. The PS5 was the next one that I turned my back on, not too long after. I bought an OLED Steam Deck and haven't looked back. My next goal is to build a monster PC for Assetto Corsa.
@@LanceCorporal_Waffles Still playing AC on XB1X here. Never was a fan of Forza (Motorsport), even tho Forza Horizon was somewhat fun to play casually with some friends on the couch.
when Underground came out, us car guys were literally telling every car guy about how "i spent like 10 hours last night making my car....you can customize EVERYTHING......"
Because they were car games, made by car guys, for car guys. AAA gaming is dead people. They arent into making games anymore, theyre into making money.
I felt the exact opposite about Underground. I was like "cars are so pretty when stock, why do we have to put ugly make up on them?" Because you HAD to in order to progress.
(Plus the fact it didn't and still doesn't feel like a Need for Speed game at all)
what? underground was by people trying to capitalize on the popularity of fast and furious and overly decorated cars, what are you on about lol
AAA was always about money, its just that at some point they realized that they don't need to make interesting games anymore, because people will just buy the next slop with a recognizable title.
@@llSuperSnivyll I had a pimp car just to pass those missions, i keptr my garage mostly stock.
I've been wanting another underground
@@myvideosetc.8271 Which is clearly not what the game expects you to do. It shows how bad it is.
Doesn't help that large studios are too scared to try anything new, it's all about micro transactions and loot boxes and the same old formula every time with a few new things. It's up to the indies and small studios to revive the genre.
Real. Check out Old School Rally.
@@TheCouch-Co-Op And Trail Out
Bc they don't sell enough ain't that hard
@@mattylatvala43 They're just poorly marketed. Take Blur for instance. If that was released today it would sell gangbusters because there's nothing else like it on the market.
@@markisaki979 sure buddy but the only racing game that generate money is Forza horizon,blur and horizon are similar mark?
The funny thing about drawing the distinction between "racing games" and "motorsports games" is the same divide exists in real life. There's plenty of overlap, of course, but lots of car guys who enjoy modding cars and going to meets don't care about organized racing, and lots of professional racers don't care about street cars, no matter how fast.
I see virtual drivesim worlds much more with the mindedness of a skateboarder than a racer. I prefer skill over speed and both genres barely reflect what I want. I research driving simulator history (see playlists) and I would e.g. love to make a parody on serious driving school training simulators, with very realistic car physics but all kinds of crazy unlikely stunt challenges those no driving teacher ever came in mind to train for. E.g. avoiding objects falling out of a truck, or steering a car with broken brakes or damaged steering down a twisting mountain road, or passing a collapsed bridge full of holes and obstacles. This can include slow and awkward cars like a broken Citroen 2CV or a Trabant overweighted with a huge stack of baggage strapped to its roof that makes it tip over by steering too much. The car brands in the game may be real or not, but to me matter more correct phyiscs. (Cars have mass. Do not make them move like on rails in a hairpin curve or brake instantly from 300 km/h to zero.) The setting could be a disaster driving simulator, in that the player has to supply and rescue injured people in all kinds of natural disasters (flood, earthquake, forest fire, storm, volcano eruption) instead of the typical crime or war topic of average "action" driving games.
@@cyberyogicowindler2448 Sounds to me like you want BeamNG
I will never fully understand the in-depth complaints, ending on "I still buy those AAA games" - hating them and still buying them just makes sure the companies behind those will never change. Why the hell should they? And with them - the industry itself will never change. It just means digging your own pit. As well as for everybody else.
they are an idiot who can't help themselves.
I do market research for games. I see that when it comes to AAA, sports games or mega franchises like cod you have what's called a seasonal buyer. It's someone who's not super involved but wants to play the game they will pre-order the deluxe editions and play for probably a week at most. They may be the ones that complain but we'll do it all over again when they have the craving.
It is very weird but can you blame them for the longest time you could buy the newest sports game and it was a sure bet that it was going to have better graphics and features in the last.
The problem comes when you have that person who wants to play an F1 game but there's only one game with the drivers and cars he knows and likes. It's the same with 2K monopolizing the NBA license. The solution is to not buy but they feel compelled too in thus we get this cycle
Yep, I personally still play racing games, but the ones that I play are much older. Just the other day, I pulled out the 32x version of Virtua Racer for another go. And I love the Moto Racer games. The most recent racing game that I own is Nitronic Rush and that was definitely not a AAA studio game, even though you really wouldn't notice.
I've been saying that for a decade.
The last AAA racing game I bought at full price was Forza 7. I bought Horizon 4 during a steam sale years after it came out tried it and got bored in about 30 minutes. I was almost tempted with GT7 but I remembered being burnt by GT5/6 buying a ps3 just for them and just hating what they had become.
The last racing games I ever put decent hours into are Forza 4 and the first Horizon game. After that really nothing ever made me wanna play as much. Like I've pretty much dropped racing games completely now and the only thing close to it that I play is ETS2/ATS.
During the PS1/PS2 eras I played so many racing games and even that continued on when I got an Xbox 360 with Forza2/3/4/Horizon.
Genki recently announced they are making a new TXR game and I'm gonna be honest thats the most excited I've been for a racing game in years. I've never really liked the NFS games at all, but like every Genki Racing Project game I've loved. I've still got japanese copies of TXR3, the kaido battle games and the lesser known C1 Racing battle. All have slightly wonky physics but have a great gameplay loop and amazing car customistaion. So I honestly can't wait to get back onto the wangan again to battle some wanderers.
Really the gutting of the AA industry killed a lot of the smaller more interesting racing games. Even Capcom had Automobelista which was such a cool game with great car customistaion and a unique artstyle for a racing game.
Now all you really have is AAA Slop full of MTX and fomo. Or just full on sim racing that requires a wheel setup to even enjoy. I know there are some indie projects both for touge and highway racing but none of them seem to be developing at a decent pace. I know AC is also meant to be amazing for being almost a big sandbox in what you want to do but again the wheel is a hard requirement. I know this as I attempted to try using a controller with it and just could never get it to a decent point.
Assetto Corsa kinda disrupted the market, the effect of it is real. It has grown so much from a barebones sim to an all encompassing hub where you can do anything youd like, no matter if gamefied highway servers or brutal realism esport racing.
I am not interested in any other racing games anymore because none of them do singleplayer right and then they dare deliver a bad multiplayer experience
Well said.
Yeah, I can practice my local track with street cars.
Or, if something's missing, I can just hop in to the community and learn to participate, eventually being able to make the track or car I'm missing.
AC is very good, yes. However the crash damage is not there. And the multiplayer could do with tightening up.
@@AutoAndChill Crash damage isn't necessary at all... and the multiplayer is fine, just don't join a server on the other side of the world from you.
@@gitrekt-gudson the thumbnail to the video is crash damage dude. It's cool if you don't wanna crash I guess
What puts me off 99% of racing games is multiplayer is filled with idiots that ram you off track the instant you pass them.
That's the best part of rally games, that's not possible.
Forza 5 is a Ramfest.
Well once I get spun a couple times by idiots.. I start getting real aggressive.
Play assetto Corsa competizione, just drive fair and you'll get a high safety rating and thus also be matched with similar drivers
@@BillyBob-wq9fl That would be the snowballing effect of aggressive driving. It's just a force of nature.
I agree with a lot of the points made but I think there is something you missed. Modern games are either a sandbox with no structure or a collectathon, but they are not really games. Beamng is great but its still just a sandbox. There is a limit to how much fun you can make yourself. I would be much more resilient to bugs and mediocre graphics if there was a modern game with actual economy and progression.
If you want an example of a game that was similar to beamng but had a lot more structure, take a look at street legal racing
Good point.
Wreckfest is pretty good.
BeamNG has W.I.P. career which you can play by spam clicking the icon and it's very fun, you should try it
I really agree with most you say. That being said, I have a lot of sympathy for Reiza. They really try without exploiting their customer base.
@@ethanwayne6973 Also all the maps have a ton of scenarios, time trials, etc. for people to play.
What killed racing games for me is the fact that if I wish to be competitive I need a steering rig twice the price of my gaming PC. I miss the day where I can play offline, with a keyboard and waste a few hours on the weekend getting my "need for speed" in, in an environment "just realistic enough" to engage my suspension of disbelief.
You can hit A+ level on Gran Turismo 7 with a controller
This pretty much explains why I consider Project Gotham Racing 3 to be the best "simcade" racing game of all time.
What I wouldn't give to have a port of that game on PC (for whatever reason Microsoft refuses to allow back compat on racing games from the Xbox 360, even the games Microsoft published themselves, nope no back compat for racing fans).
not true at all, some pros use entry level wheels....
You can buy a used g27 or g29 for 200 bucks and use that. It's all I ever used. If you enjoy it enough then consider a premium wheel but it's 100% not necessary to spend more than 200 for a decent wheel to learn to drive and drift on. If you get bored sell the wheel for 200 and you're back at exactly 0 dollars spent but the driving practice will be valuable in real life because drifting in a Sim translates to real life.
Me personally I can't stand driving without a wheel now. It just doesn't compare to how much better it is.
For me that kind of limitless spending ceiling is attractive. I like the idea that I could buy a guitar for £50, practice every day, and eventually justify a room full of gear that's worth more than the house it's in.
This isn't so much a "racing games are dead" issue, rather, it's the state of game companies in their late stage being acquired by private equity firms who have no connection to what they are creating with inflated budgets. Sadly, this same sentiment can be said about any other video game genre.
The best we can do is to vote with our hearts and closing our wallets against the corporate machine that tries to play on your emotions and nostalgia to feed it
I think what people miss is the fact that racing games much like other genres became a victim of Esports thought. Where if the player makes money streaming these games, well the developer will make money from that free exposure and focus on that player base. So its become a game of exposure. The majority will be excluded from these choices because in the eyes of devs the majority doesnt bring in money.
That's just a subset of player retention. They lean into esports aspects because it drives (no pun intended) player retention and playtime. Esports are far too volatile and expensive for any corporation to actually want to be invested in them. It's ultimately just advertising and "inspiration" for casual players to play the game more to feel like they have a shot at making gaming a career. More playtime = bigger numbers to show to happy shareholders and more chance at you clicking on the store to buy a skin or seasonal pass.
That's probably it, ever since Star Craft companies have been delivering games with that intention. Star Craft 2 was absolutely horrible if you weren't into esports or multiplayer as they completely destroyed the singleplayer experience for the sake of having it balanced for competitive multiplayer. Not to mention that Diablo 3 didn't even have an offline singleplayer option because they wanted you to play online so badly.
Personally, I still love playing the older game, although they can be somewhat hard to get your hands on due to the licensing agreements for the cars often times expiring and needing to be renegotiated. I'm not sure the studios really want to do it as they'd rather sell a new game
@@SALEENS7GTR5 You should tell Blizzard, they pretty much completely destroyed the singleplayer campaign for Star Craft 2 just to have something that would be useful for esports.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I'm playing Starcraft 2 SP right now, and I'm having a blast.
I miss split second that game had so much sauce
Michael Bay would have loved Split Second
I'll never forgive Disney for not giving us Split/Second 2.
It's still available for purchase on Steam
@@Ben-Roguedon't get it on steam, it corrupts your save file and even backing it up won't save you when it corrupts again. Not fun having a game break and constantly fixing it.
I have never been able to find a game that scratches that itch that Blur used to have covered. Genuinely one of the best arcade racers ever made imo.
I just don't see myself enjoying any of the newer AAA racers when I could just go back and play all the good old shit. One new game I'm excited for is night runners since ive played the demo, and that was really good
I'll have to check that out
@@TheCouch-Co-Op It's a spiritual successor to the Tokyo Xtreme Racer games.
Remember Ridge Racer, nfs pro street and shift 1 & 2?
Remember how in psx era devs explored racing with not just cars but also snowmobiles, motorboats and heck there was at least one running game too that worked more or less like car racer. I wonder if any indie studio or medium sized could explore these weird and rare racing platforms again.
I’ve always wanted a street racing sim. Finding cars in junkyards, manually buying and installing parts. Finding mechanics. Mild gang violence to get money. Played out in real time with an online community
i love it! ❤️
my idea is a street racing roguelike: race across the country, each leg of your chosen route being a race for pink slips, aka "permadeath." different cities are the "in between" levels where you can repair, tune up, and modify your car with your earnings. 👍
@ dang that’s a cool idea! Cross country high stakes races. Reminds me midnight club 3. Not enough racing games with multiple maps
@@matthewhanson498
yes! thank you! the "high stakes" part. make driving fun, and winning count, and I'm hooked! ✌️
I will as I like to do, recommend Wreckfest. It's a game built around the insanity of demolition derbies and banger racing. Because of this, the game has very realistic driving physics that can have you cause all sorts of crashes easily. However, it is still more arcade than something like Beamng and has a great multiplayer with community servers and custom races.
Was going to shout out that one myself. Not a complex a destruction model as Beam but it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Also helps that the A.I. drives like a open lobby in Forza. Keeps it interesting.
Trail Out>>>>>>Shitfest
Yeah, Wreckfest really rangles the damage physics of beamng and multi-surface features of some rally games and makes it into a more streamlined racing experience that is loads of fun and more approachable for casual users.
And driving into another now is a fun part of the game instead of a ragequit hate on all other players
Never have given the 1st game a try, but I'm very interested in potentially buying the second game now that it was announced a month ago or so.
And the racing games that do have character always fail because everyone's obsessed with hyperrealism instead of art Deco style graphics
Those games need sauce.
Not true I love racing games with character and style
nope, things are failing because everyone got the mastrubation toys (VR goggles) and they are pretending like they are using it for something else. Nobody is putting any effort into anything. All they do is few laps and then back to faps. Nobody with the "VR" goggles really cares about anything else.
Problem is majority of games with theses graphics often dont have a good handling feel imo
I don’t think there is a problem with people liking realism and almost wanting to live out their dream or fantasy. I just believe that many people have grown up and the stuff that interested them when they were young has now changed. Many of us enjoyed Arcady racers when we were young, but now having grown older we thirst for a bit more substance and something closer to our life now.
Man, Im so glad they're making Wreckfest 2
Gotta play Wreckfest.
ANOTHER WREKCFEST PLAYER SPOTTED, I HAVE TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE SUCH NICE TASTE IN RACING GAMES AND I APPRECIATE THAT 🔥🔥🔥
@@Pepe_theFrog404
@@TheCouch-Co-Op Dude, you're missing out if you like racing games and you haven't played Wreckfest. It's a pretty modest game in terms of scope, but the handling is a perfect blend of arcade and simulation, and the damage modelling is very good. Online races are very fun and it's still pretty easy to find active servers.
@@Pepe_theFrog404wanna play wreckfest togheter?
Wreckfest, the racing game without any weird bugs that I know of after playing it for hundreds of hours. You can choose what assists you want, but it is not the most arcade racer, no pickups or powerups, just brutal, honest, racing.
«An old game called gran turismo.» fuck. Now I feel old.
BeamNG Drive truly is a game made with passion for people who have passion.
Profile pic made me to a double take.
Its great at what it does but its a sandbox, not a game. Not even in 2024
assetto corsa is a better exemple
It's a game. You just lack imagination. @@randomfaca
I recently looked at the Wikipedia page for Freespace 2 because nearly 30 years later it's still the best space combat game, and there's something in there I'd like to quote;
"The game was restrained from becoming too realistic by the team's recognition that most players only want believable worlds to have a blast flying around in and blowing things up."
One of me and my friends all time favorite games. A tragedy that there will never be a Freespace 3.
Terminal Velocity is the best. You've got a bunch of different planets to explore and really the only thing that I miss is that the "high def" graphics are definitely not high def by modern standards.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade Oh man, I had a demo of that game on some magazine disc. I played the hell out of that demo.
It's amazing how modern developers can't replicate Freespace or the X-wing Series. It's layed out infront of them but they can't do it. We get crap like Star Citizen and Elite dangerous as are space sims today and they don't even try with the combat let alone have real missions like those games, but people praise them for some strange reason.
@@tek_lynx4225 I've only ever heard people "play" ED on a second screen while watching movies as they fly out in some random direction of space to "explore." But yeah, they're space trucking and it's boring.
Everspace 2 was okay, but being a loot-based shooter was I think a mistake and you spent way too much time in menus fiddling around with inventory and comparing weapon stats.
I don't want to have to have to be a mechanic to be able to be competitive. I don't want to have to drive each car 2 hours to level them up to be able to be competitive. I want to fire the game up, pick a car class, choose a car and go compete on equal footing with everyone else. PGR3 FTW.
I miss PGR
I loved that you had to learn to drive different cars differently in PGR, in Forza you just modded everything until it felt like a racing car then drove it the same. I also loved that lap times could be compared globally because we were all driving the exact same car on the same track, the tracks were interesting because they were built in cities, the handling was just the right blend of real and arcade, it was just a great series.
Trackmania? I mean it is literally the most streamlined way to have perfectly equal competition
@@sleepdeep305 I play Trackmania every day :-). It's not quite the same as roaring around "realistic" courses however. Thanks for the recommendation.
You want to be able to be competitive in a specific car without having to spend two hours learning how the car behaves ? Skill issue, git gud
Mention how live service killed so many of them is something everyone seems scared to do, people not only want a single player most of the time, they don't wanna have to connect to servers or have a registered launcher just for it to work. . . basically what Rockstar forces on you know
what is this speech cadence and intonation omgosh my brain is frying
Aislop will ruin future generations ability to speak normally or even understand human speech even more.
Great video, spot on. As an indie racing game developer, this hits extremely close to home. I'm working on a simcade game but it's been painful to balance because I get an incredible amount of mixed feedback, both from racing veterans and from newbies: now it's realistic, now it's arcade. Now it's good, now it's bad.
First and last simcade game I'm working on in my life. After this one, I'll be back to hyper arcade and as far from realistic as possible.
Godspeed soldier
have two selectable physics engines i believe the old need for speed games had cheat codes for rail driving.
Still play GT4 on a PS2 sometimes with the same safe since 2004 or so i started with it. Now i never skip the intro, the song is pure gold.
Those games always had phenomenal music.
The whole reason why I begged my mom one day as a little kid to put in a certain CD into the CD player of our vehicle, bc that CD had GT4's "Panama" song as one of its tracks 😆😆
still do on my steam deck :)
safe
Back up your save file!
WHAT WAS THE GOAL IN NFS MOST WANTED?? TO GET BACK THE M3!! We don't ever have a goal like that in any newer racing games.
Very good point
@@_PHIZM_ i didn't think anyone would get what i was saying!?!
@@theguyinthere ..ITS very specific.. yes
The M3 GT car brings back a lot of feeling for so many of us across the planet
@@Peanutdenver many times agreed😁😁
We didn't ask for them to become live services
We didn't ask them to piece meal out content
We did ask for another faithful Gran Turismo game or need for speed street racer...
In NFS Underground 2, you drove a maximum of like four cars throughout the entire campaign. You upgraded those one piece at a time. You took care to choose the best one for your driving career. You felt the process. Parts unlocked as the campaign progressed and the map opened up. Those cars grew with you. In modern games, disposable free cars are launched at you every third race and you feel like you're playing Jay Leno Simulator. The cars are cool in their own right, but it's disrupting the experience and I shouldn't be able to max out my real world approachable dream car at 1/100th of game completion. These games are designed with Hypercars in mind and I just can't be bothered to care about any of them.
Good video. I'm 42 and played mostly racing games in the 90's.
I would softly argue that the original Nascar Racing from papyrus and Need For Speed 1 games are the actual catalysts for mainstream simcade titles. What Grand Turismo did was legitimized them on consoles by basically being better in almost every way, and NOT on PC.
True!
I still play nascar 1. Doing a championship with 100% race length with all the extra tracks and names/team colours.
I honestly feel like, Gran Turismo really paved the way for not just games, but also car culture in general. It’s like the Top Gear of video games.
It even clashed nicely with Top Gear, which was very British/Eurocentric, and Gran Turismo (especially 1 and 2) was very Japanese-centric, but both had a huge profitable American market.
This is why I know what a Lagonda is, or a Cappuccino, or a Calsonic Skyline, or that the ‘Austin Princess was the first vehicle with concealed windscreen wiper spindles,” or that a Gen 1 Viper was impossible to control if the only options are full throttle and no throttle.
Always sad when one of the most unique ones, Trackmania is never mentioned in these retrospectives.
I brought it up to someone else in the comments as literally the only arcade racer I play after binge watching Wirtual for so long.
It has basically everything I hate in a vehicle based game. Lack of realism, TOTAL lack of car diversity, lack of upgrade systems or progression trees, zero economic grind, a damn subscription service, it's buggy as hell... And yet those are all things that SOMEHOW give me the dopamines harder than any of those features combined in any other game. And I think it mostly comes down to a sense of achievement, in that the only progression in that game, is seeing your track times go down, and your author medals go up, as you actually improve in the only metric that matters in any game: your personal skill at the game. That's something progression systems can actually mask completely. When everyone's driving the same car, there is only one thing you can improve, and that is yourself.
And hyper realistic games that offer that AND teach you real driving skills... I dunno man, I always feel like I'm not performing at my peak because I don't have some 1,000 dollar sim racing setup. Trackmania meanwhile is accessible and competitive at the highest levels on just controller, or even keyboard.
yet he took the racist joke from wirtual.
@ 19:40 "so, you can pick your poison," you only gave us two choices, and they both stink. There IS a third choice: you can run emulation and play all the best classic, monetization free, race car games out there...
I feel like we are living in a “Twilight Zone” episode. There is no way I’m watching a video documenting Midnight Club LA like it’s history. Blows my mind. I remember beating it over a weekend when I was in high school.
We truly live in a time
I think one sub-genre of racing games that is often missed out, that technically doesn't have cars but is still about racing, is the anti-gravity racing genre (Wipeout, Redout, BallisticNG, etc.).
Anti-grav racers are top tier. Really hope one day we get a new Wipeout or F-Zero game again but there are a lot of heavily inspired ones now on Steam.
Another pod racer with todays graphics would be a blast!
even none racing game players played the games from the 6th generation, i played Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition Remix for so many hours yet i was never a car guy
Exactly !
@@TheCouch-Co-Op I personally think it's really odd that you're playing up the car culture thing when that's a much more recent aspect of the genre. Most of the early games and through much of the '90s didn't have recognizable cars. I think a lot of that had to do with a combination of resources to model cars in a way that varied between the models and the attention to sign the deals.
There probably was some element of that, but for most of the time frame that these games existed, it was playing at home against yourself or whichever buddies had time to come over. A lot of these systems couldn't even do network gaming, so no LAN parties either.
"you dont even need to love cars"
"you dont need to be an engineer"
"you dont need to be good at math"
oh boy
NFS: SHIFT was truly the last FUN and well produced arcade racer. What a blast. Prior to that, Project Gotham Racing. There just hasn't been any engaging, fun, good arcade racers like those since then.
Also, as an avid car guy and Beamng fan, the graphics in the game are amazing, it gets updated every 3 (ish) months and theres plenty of amazing community made mods (a lot are free), the graphics are okay by modern standerds (the clips you saw in the video were mostly from the trailers taken 4 years ago) and the best part is the vehicle damage. It is THE most realisitic damage simulator, allowing the frame and body to be seperated, the entire body crunches and bends with every crash, theres simulated technical damage (piston rings can get damage due to a lack of oil) and driveshafts/axles can get obliterated, paralyzing your car. The driving physics are really good too, besides a lack of drafting and tire thermals (tires heating up giving more traction) but there are community made mods for that, the devs are also car guys and they listen to the community, plus theres a huge range of cars to choose from (each car has different variations, such as a hatchback having an electric version, race/rally versions and sport versions/AWD and FWD versions). I really recommend Beamng.Drive, but it is very hard to run.
That's an insane amount of detail for sure.
Also every car actually handles differently in a noticeable way, unlike games like GTA V.
It isnt that hard to run, i think its just a bit annoying with all the missing textures and stuff
screw damage, the physics are fully simulated. Turning the wheel actually moves the steering linkage which in turn moves the wheel. Clutch slippage, ABS simulation, power steering simulation, industry leading automatic transmission simulation, the list goes on.
@@some-repliesPower steering isn't properly simulated in BeamNG. That's why no cars have it equipped by default. It just acts as a filter for the force feedback, no extra load on the engine, no extensive dynamic assistance, or wildly different profiles from vehicle to vehicle, like we've come to expect with most systems in-game.
I played McRae 04 and TOCA 2 extensively in my childhood. They were HARD but finally passing the championships and unlocking cars felt so good.
I beat Toca Race Driver 2. And I agree. It is hard. I got rammed so hard by one of the opponents at the final race in the final lap when I braked, and I lost my entire Back Wheel on my F1 car. I was so mad
I beat Toca 2 with a keyboard as a kid. For the time, graphics were awesome.
I learnt about the existence of Surfers Paradise there, and never found again in a game.
But I'll remember a thing forever: the game often proposed two different race to choose from to proceed. At one point, race A was Aston Martin 1 vs 1 on the snow, and race B was a truck race. Me, already a car addicted, jumped on race A. And found that... snow was EXTREMELY slippery for my skill (and keyboard control). After countless retrays, I've chosen the truck race and won with ease... still disappointed though.
Along with BeamNG, i think Assetto Corsa (heavily modded of course) is one of the best examples of racing games BY the community, the ammount of FREE content (quality may vary) you can download with mods (along with obv CSP and Sol), greatly increses the game experience, physics, weather (the rain mod is absolutely amazing btw, almost feels like DriveClub) unlike any other game. I think Assetto Corsa Evo will be fine (if they keep their promise with modding).
DriveClub has such great graphics too.
SONY made a huge mistake closing DriveClub!!! The launch was rough but they turned it around! Still play the game on my PS5.
Great video.... But I have a feeling Iracing hurt you. It was barely mentioned until the end there where all you did was provide some biased tongue in cheek criticism bordering straw man. It's not a big AAA title. It's very much grassroots from the beginning. They're sole intent is to provide the best racing experience and always has been.
Iracing has issues, as with any of them, but it is by far the most realistic physics engine and best sim on the market.
Great video. Exhaustive and comprehensive. I race every Friday night with a few friends on the PS5 and there's a mix of skills, realism preferences and setups (some have wheels, some on controllers). We have settled into a rotation of F123 (everyone waited until it was free), Project Cars 2 (amazing array of cars, tracks and settings) and Assetto Corsa Competitione (my favourite).
Micro machine's was a brilliant little racer
So many fun games from that period.
Iggy's Wrecking Balls is still the best racing game.
I like how you included Mario Kart to this video as well, a lot of racing games UA-camrs are very dismissive of that game since it was essentially a "Mario" game whatever that means.
Yeah it's gotta have some at least passing mention
"mario game"do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?
mario kart doesnt even grab many stuff from the mario series, instead grab more stuff and modifies until it becomes unrecognizable, or create something new, like the 3 shells and how they work, is a good itens gameplay wise, just not how it works in the rest of the series, is crazy that fire flower came to item list so much later in the series too
only in double dash forward i start to see more mario stuff in mario kart
and them we have the rainbow roads, aka the most iconic tracks of mario kart, doenst have anyplace in main line or other spin-offs, only after years we got rainbbow road on paper mario color spash and then the mario movie (incluing a blue shell koopa)
and even mario kart 8 we got tracks i must a ask "is this even mario?"
like sweet kingdom, mount wario, Sky-High Sundae
people gotta give more love and attention to funselektor, he's been carrying car games for a while now with the hidden gem that is art of rally.
Just gotta say
NEED FOR SPEED UNDERGROUND 2 & NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED on the GameCube were my introduction to racing games (SEGA's Daytona USA Arcades being included as well)
The problem, for me, is that arcade racers feel like driving with practice wheels. You can't spin out even if you wanted to. Realistic/sim racers will have one bump and you're going straight into a tire barrier.
I genuinely love GTA 5's driving physics. It feels fairly realistic without being completely unforgiving.
Microtransactions , DLC, DLC, update update patch patch patch...
Online only, cannot access the main game OFFLINE (looking at you GT)
It's a mundane drag (excuse the pun) these days
I miss the old days, of just popping in the disc and Bobs your uncle
I remember when I got my Xbox One, Forza Motorsport 5 came with it. The game was fun, had some of the best graphics for the time, and I thought it was cool as hell. Then Forza Horizon 3 came out, and I loved that game. Over time, it became the thing of just... it's the same game year in, year out. It's the same thing as Madden, 2K, or the UFC games, but at least those have significant roster changes (usually). Hopefully racing game devs start figuring out how to make them feel interesting again, I'd actually love to see good new flying or boating racing game.
A new Hydro Thunder would go crazy
The games are boring because there is no goal. There is lacking a campaign or something like that. If there is no purpose why bother keeping playing?
lol, get volumetric clouds, and drive on whatever big maps you want from the forums, get BEAMLR career and race and truck stuff for money, freroam racing track racing...
I tend to revisit Wreckfest from time to time because it’s a breath of fresh air for me in the racing game genre
I miss Blur. I remember the commercial that would play during the NBA playoffs, mocking Mario Kart as a Baby's game
that local gamplay was amazing
Im glad to see this conversation happening. I lived through the golden days of gaming and what bothers me most is many people in the new gen has no idea how much better things could be and arent interested in finding out.
Minor Point: 25:30 Verstappen was talking about RF2, not iRacing
yes
Me and plenty of simmers just play Assetto Corsa with the endless available mods and it's better than most modern stuff releasing.
He was a real racist 😂 and a racer 😂
Top 5 Racists
facts
The fastest racist
casual or competitive?
@@ChandlerMakesVidya PROFESSIONAL RACIST
Burnout Revenge for Xbox 360 was the peak racing game for me 20 years ago, and I've been left disappointed by every racing game ever made since. "Realistic" racing games are so incredibly boring. I want high octane arcade action.
When local couch play died was the moment I realized it was over
Iv just spent a year trying sim racing full on.
The community is completely asinine.
They are never happy, constantly fighting, full of whales, and generally the worst of the gaming community.
Sim communities can be a mixed bag.
Thats all genre of games 😂 this whole internet age is people that are never satisfied, always want what they dont have, and just plain cry about everything from graphics, physics, the development…everything
If a community/fandom is talked about on the internet, it'll have all these said issues except the Smash Bros community. They got pedos lol
Just the fact that FM4 seems, even today, like something more appealing that FM8 tells you all you need to know about the industry.
I stopped buying racing games from big studios about 6 years ago. I now play BeamNG, Assetto corsa, RBR, and whatever's good in indie territory (and there's plenty these days).
I started playing older games again too, dusting off my ps3 for GT5/6, plannin to buy a RGH Xbox 360 for FM4.
I think sims are fun, i think arcade games are fun. A game that's shaped by corporate people, that's not even capable of outperforming now decade old, previous installments of itself, AND has the audacity to be listed for more money, *WHILE HAVING MORE THINGS TO BUY* to get the complete experience is indeed, UNfun.
That's unfortunately not limited to games, and it's really reminding me of Dankpods "tech that let me down" series. The general enshittification of products these days is global, and i can't believe things havent already gone to shit.
It's a shame
Another Recommendation for the PS3 is Sly Collection.
"enshittification" will be added to my vernacular lol
Keep doing what you’re doing guys! The views will come! Love this channel wishing the best
Thanks so much!!
One solution is to stop just using automobiles and make more diverse types of racing games;
* On-foot racing (Sonic R, Pokemon Dash)
* Hoverboards (Sonic Riders)
* Aircraft
They started treating racing games like sports games as a service. It was a matter of time after the way they handled sports games on the PS2 and 360. Racing is all about high performing, minimalist, lack of bullshit insanity.
Remember when some of the greatest racers of all time werent even car games? Sled Storm, Wipeout, ATV offroad fury, Pure.
Yes!
WipEout HD Fury, great anti-grav racer
Hydro Thunder, those boating beauties!
Mx vs ATV.
RIP drive club & GRID 1 , criminally underrated and forgotten about games that were so insanely innovative and made with pure passion
I mean literally everyone is praising GRID 1, it's one of the most overrated game of all time.
The problem with racing games is that the better you get, the less the gameplay has to do with cars and racing, and the more it "degenerates" into something rather stupid. This happens with practically every game in the genre, but arcade games are more affected. After a while, when you've learned all the tricks and ways of being a good player, the theme of cars and racing is just a suggestion, and you're often playing a pretty bad arcade game full of rubber banding, bugs, broken rules, and other undesirable things.
I think this partly explains why simulators and simcades have become the focus of devs and gamers, while more arcadey and stylized games have lost some of their influence. But sims also have this same problem, there's an ex-F1 driver who explains that he abandoned iRacing because as the skill of the players improved, it turned from a sport simulation into a bad video game.
yup. it becomes about exploiting the edge of the rules, about "meta" and stupid bs like that. gran turismo has a billion cars in it but there are like only 2 or 3 "viable" cars per race, the rest is garbage that makes you automatically lose. and there's a thousand ways to exploit penalties to cheese the game, etc etc.
@@GraveUypo This plagues all of modern gaming now, especially online focused games. There's always "meta" gun or perk or car or build or item or playstyle where if you even dare go outside the box either you're instantly at a disadvantage or even if you make it work your teammates complain about it. It's why a lot of people are logging off and returning to older/single player games where you paved your way.
@@GraveUypo Real racing has the same problems: the Oreca 07 was the meta car in LMP2 to the point that multiple manufacturers had no entries at Daytona or Le Mans for *years*. Live SMT data in NASCAR has drastically homogenized driving styles.
>The problem with racing games is that the better you get, the less the gameplay has to do with cars and racing, and the more it "degenerates" into something rather stupid.
just about every single game in general has this issue.
@@GraveUypothis is a necessary evil. Perfect balance is never going to be possible. More spec series options would be a more obtainable fix just like how real life “balances” drivers in series like mx5 cup, radical sr10 racing, praga cup etc.
ofc other options exist... just keep playing the good old ones, but you guys just CAN'T.
Can't make it this shit's stuck.
@@TheCouch-Co-Op lol
I worked for a company that did a car racing game, but I was on a different game. What I was told by them was that the licensing kills the profits on these games, and even though the game seemed to be doing okay, the actual profits were anemic.
beamng has PLENTY of catches. it's a barren sandbox playground first, a crash simulator second, and i don't know if you can even ever call it a racing game. it's just a car game. i bought it, and i couldn't enjoy it because of that.
There are literally AI races in the game, and the vehicle handling is very satisfying. It may not be a racing game, but you can make it one.
@@theminerboy5694 I'm currently using Automation to build out cars to test out configurations for beating Bonneville salt flat world records for certain categories... Just so happened someone made a Bonneville map, lol. I'm actually increasingly liking the game after not touching it much for years, I might have to try out racing mods and stuff for it.
I think what the game really needs to be a true "racing game" though is racing multiplayer of some kind. I'm not sure it has any form of multiplayer though, does it?
I like to think of BeamNG as the Gmod of racing games
It kind is XD
great video and i hope game studios see this. i feel like racing games have steered away from arcade-y fun because mario kart dominates that market but the problem is that mario kart only exists on one platform so the majority of gamers can't even play it. there are tons of indie racing games that are fun but just lack in content and budget to really make an awesome game. im looking forward to test drive unlimited solar crown, i hope it is good
This is wrong. Modern games love cars to much.
They only focus on them and completely abandon environments and extras.
NFS: Underground 2 became iconic bcs of how immersive it was. It wasnt the graphics and driving engine but the atmosphere that carried that game.
One thing that the developers also overlook is gameplay. Most games these days have lots of cars but no atmosphere and no gameplay.
I love these kinds of well researched and well thought out video essays. Thanks for a great watch
GT7. Haven’t spent a penny since I bought it. My only issues with the game are the suboptimal AI we have right now.
Real
Honestly I think it's more than just the physics and the microtransactions though. Even if all of those things were fixed, there's still a big issue - the progression. I remember, back in FM3, you started with some dinky little shitbox in E class races, and you barely made enough cash from wins to buy a single upgrade. But you kept upgrading it, and you kept competing in races, and you had to EARN THE RIGHT to compete in the higher tiers and access better cars. The last time I played a Forza game was Horizon 4. And they just fucking give you an Audi TT as a starter option. And within like two races worth of earning money, you can buy something in high S-class. There's no real feeling of progression anymore. There's no real sense of having to fight my way up through the ranks, or having to bond with and develop my car and actually learn how it drives. They just want to get you into Lamboshit as fast as possible... which ends up being to the player's detriment even if you are only there for the lamboshit, because lamboshit is HARD TO DRIVE! And unless you have that experience with the lower end cars, YOUR EXPERIENCE DRIVING THE LAMBOSHIT IS JUST GOING TO BE OVERSHOOTING EVERY CORNER AND SPINNING ON STRAIGHTS.
Frankly? I'll take bugs. I'll take a monetization model that just exists to nickel and dime me. Just give me a career progression that feels in any way satisfying. Give me that Initial D Season 1 feeling. That's all I want.
Progression died to make way for microtransactions, cant have a player just play the game to unlock the cool thing when you can make them pay for the cool thing instead. 100% agree with you though and it is the same reason I wont buy another forza game unless the formula changes.
Gran Turismo captured everyone's heart because you could start in a daily driver that you personally had experience driving, and work your way up to GT cars and endurance racing.
Marketing killed the industry. Ambitious advertising campaigns stole the soul of these games. Good devs are knee-capped by rich out-of-touch assholes. Or they don't have enough money to do things independently.
Great video. I think a lot of this applies to modern games in general, not just car games.
I love how you referenced Top Gear cause THAT show deserves the spotlight when it comes to cars.
im suprised you didnt mention Wreckfest,it is an arcade racer but definetely one of the most fun games i've played in years,pretty cheap and a seemingly even better sequel on the way,while it is more focused on destruction,the feel of being in first place on the final lap while there is a bus heading straight towards you and someone behind you constantly trying to smash you off the road is very enjoyable,while the multiplayer is center between casual and competitive,there is no ranking or matchmaking,you just find a good server and roll with it,trying to drive as good as you can,or taking a bus,doing a 180 at the start and destroying the people driving normally,not for the sake of winning,but for fun.
nothing beats the feeling of sitting on your sofa, driving around the corner and seeing nothing but the fronted of a reinforced american school bus
and by nothing beats the feeling i mean that wreckfest should be categorized as a horror game
Any game should be FUN to play. Now the racing game looks Really Good, but Really BORING to play. Why I no longer care about racing game ; it is more fun driving my Honda Civic home instead.
Gran Turismo 7 had a terrible economy at launch. But future updates upped the pay for a lot of events, so you can get decent amounts of money grinding events. There's even weekly challenges that often give out a lot of money and rewards for doing them. Still, $20,000,000 cars are still bullshit and I don't care how Polyphony justifies it. That being said, I still highly recommend GT7 even on the PS4. Or if you want a classic, then play Gran Turismo 4 on PCSX2 and there's a mod coming out soon called Spec II. It's basically an overhaul of the entire game.
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit on the computer was one of my first games. It had an R129 SL600 and my parents have the same generation model, but it was an SL500. Since then, I was enamored by racing games and cars. Then I got a PS2 and played Midnight Club, Gran Turismo, Burnout, and Tokyo Xtreme Racer. They really shaped my preferences in things like music. I love electronic music because of the early Need for Speed games. Racing games were basically all I ever played until I made a Steam account. I never really wanted to be a professional driver, but fantasized about street races in exotics or tuner cars.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles really was the peak of arcade racers. The street racing vibe was there, and there were all kinds of car classes so you get to try out different types of cars at least once. The customization was also spectacular, only really matched by GTA Online. MC:LA's handling model is also one of my favorites in an arcade racer. It's weighty and grippy. I really want another Midnight Club game, but GTA just makes too much money for them to care. Midnight Club still canceled soz.
12:43 My Supra :)
I really miss mid-range racing games. There was a lot more creativity and variety in the PS2 days and Xbox 360 days. Some indie games do capture the magic of that era, like Night-Runners. I love the atmosphere of 90s street racing in Japan like Tokyo Xtreme Racer. NR also has amazing customization and soundtrack. I definitely recommend anyone try it out. The Prologue is free, so literally anyone can play it, but you better add it to your Steam library before the dev unlists it and releases another demo. I backed up NR on Kickstarter because I liked what I played.
Need for Speed: Unbound is a very good arcade racer and I do highly recommend the game. It got a lot of flak for its artstyle and soundtrack, but it's trying to do something unique and set a tone. It doesn't help that it's not Most Wanted 2005 or Underground, and there is no pleasing that crowd no matter what. Unfortunately, EA keeps cannibalizing Criterion for Battlefield, but the team that remains are actually improving the game a lot with updates. The most recent one added drag racing and a whole new drift handling model. Usually the modern NFS games don't get much support (RIP Heat).
The Burnout series probably really shaped what I wanted in games: figuring out the best way to destroy things. My first Burnout game was Takedown. It features a crash mode (first introduced in 2: Point of Impact) where you are given an intersection to crash into and cause the most damage. It was a destruction puzzler, and I wanted more games like that not just limited to Burnout.
Online only games shouldn't die because a bean counter says they should. stopkillinggames(dot)com
Real!
@@TheCouch-Co-Opyeah I have too much to say about racing games lol
I love me some car games
@TheCouch-Co-Op A new update for NFS Unbound just came out, a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer game just got announced, Night-Runners Prologue is free on Steam right now, and some other indie racing games are being made/already came out. I'd say racing games aren't quite dead yet.
This is more of a documentary then just a video about how "Racing Games have Crashed and Burned" and i totally agree with you.
Keep up the good work...
Blur was some much fun back then, as well as PGR 4
What has prevented racing games of becoming actually huge is the requirement of being more realistic. And that is true when it comes to the base physics, it needs to feel real. But what does not need to be realistic: casual gameplay. Go to a race, spend 15 minutes on practice and qualy, start the race and you get taken out in the first corner. Since it is casual, lets say that damage is off but the entire field of cars is now 10-20 seconds ahead of you and there are 8 laps left. What do you do? Quit? Yeah.. And you just invested in something that was over in ten seconds.
The lack of rubberbanding is a huge one and that is something that HC simracers have demonized so much that it is unthinkable... Arcade racers do have them but they lack the feel of driving and usually have a ton of driving aids that can't be turned off since those kind of games are not built to be realistic, the "cheats" are deeply ingrained.
And what is completely missing is realistic car handling in TRAFFIC, to actually run from the cops in a city.. that is what people have wanted since forever. It has been tried but they all miss the actual idea, which is to increase realism by ten times in open world games. GTA with rFactor1 era physics would be enough. So, track racing should be less realistic, it should have boosts and gimmicks to make the game play more enjoyable, and open world games should be way, way more realistic.
I feel the need to point out two honourable mentions. Assetto Corsa is a proper sim, ie realistic physics, but with content manager it’s pretty accessible and the modding community is insane, keeping the game alive for over 10 years now - thousands of cars and tracks.
And on the other side, secondly, project cars 2. More accessible physics but still realistic yet more forgiving (ie simcade) but with arguably the best single player experience with a wonderful career mode.
PC2 has been so slandered but it was actually a great all-round general purpose sim
@@SamLowry42 It's particularly wonderful if you're on the fence about sims. First thing I played on my wheel other than Forza and I couldn't go back. Ended up building a PC to get a full sim experience
I'm being playing gt7 for the las year and a half, and never feel the need to spend any money on it. What is exactly the reason people complain so much about the micro transactions in the game??
Because they don't actually play the game
I like how anti-grav racing games have been making somewhat of a comeback but yeah man it sucks. I love racing games and the people around me don’t really like them either or as much as me. I love a good racing game with a great soundtrack or bumping my own tunes too. Making a cool ride that feels you can’t be replicated literally. Ford racing 3, Grand Turismo, Test Drive, and Midnight club were my real racers. F-zero, hydro thunder, cruisin blast, and CTR were my arcade racers. Thanks for a good video.
Need fort Speed Underground 1 and 2 were fun games. Carbon was fun also. Cop chases and bounty and heat and all the BS they added in game made the NFS series unplayable. I have the new NFS games because I keep hoping against hope that I can recapture the fun that NFSU 1 and 2 gave me.
NFS had cops in 5 of the first 6 games before Underground
IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT THEY WOULD COME BACK
MW was even planned to be another Hot Pursuit very early in development
The sound of "ridge racer. Type 4" has lived in my head rent free since 98
I think one thing about racing games and car culture is that car culture itself is in severe decline. Cars aren't cool anymore. They're anonymous egg-shaped pods with wheezy turbo fours that spy on you or even more anonymous egg-shaped pods with EV platforms that are shared between multiple automakers. They're too heavy, they're too expensive, they're too complicated, traffic keeps getting worse, their controls have been numbed by electronic interference, the things that make them safer for the people inside them make them less safe for the people outside them, and every time people work on one way they pollute it exacerbates another way they pollute. Cars are increasingly disliked nowadays--how many normal people still want to play a game about them? Likewise, combat flight sims have become increasingly obscure and obtuse games for neckbeards, at the same time the romance has drained out of real combat aviation and fighter jets are more known for killing babies in the Middle East than chivalrous dogfights between officers. Do kids who grow up on news reports on Israeli atrocities in Palestine think "I want to fly an F-35 one day"? Of course not!
I haven't really played GTA though I have played Saints Row, but the whole GTA style of game never seemed like a "racing game" to me, but rather a "crime game", or a "gangster game", where cars were only one part of the fantasy of being an organized crime kingpin.
You sound like you're mad because turbocharged fourbangers proved that there is replacement for displacement.
As someone who has only become a "car" guy recently, in the last 5 years or so, and someone who literally grew up on combat flight sims to the point of neckbearding them... I agree with everything you said, lol. Oh god, dont even get me started on how bad cars have gotten. I was a jet engine mechanic in the USAF, and recently worked a brief stint at an autobody shop after I got out... Learned first hand just how hard the manufacturers are huffing that anti-repair BS right now. They're actively killing their own market by trying to fleece the middle class for the privilege of transportation.
I will say a few things though: Old weird cars only get cooler by the day the more cars turn into amorphous blobs, I've gone out of my way to buy the weird stuff. I didn't own my first car till I got stationed in Okinawa in the military, I think that's what made me more of a car guy than I otherwise would have been, they still have all kinds of weird old easy to work on kei cars for a bargain over there.
DCS surprisingly, I've found easier to compete with people on xbox controller than my full hotas setup, thanks to Tuuvas's controller setups... And I'm saying that as someone who used to tryhard on VR and an X-52 pro. And combat flight sims still offer air combat simulation from every period up to the drone strike and F-35 nonsense. At that point, yeah, it becomes increasingly a point and click adventure game, sadly how air combat is these days.
And, if you want a modern car that isn't an anti-repair spyware nightmare... There's only one car today that actually excites me enough to say "yeah, I'd actually buy that new", and that's the Aptera. Mileage may vary, but I think they're the closest thing to an actually innovative company in a car market saturated by trash.
I've never thought about it like that but your comment does raise some good points at first glance.
I'd say the opposite about Top Gear.
It died because it stopped being about cars. The decline started under Clarkson but was well and truly there by the last iteration
The original Top Gear was seriously boring, and the change in format made it funny, exciting and very popular. However, as you say, it gradually become less about cars, and more about old men doing stupid things in cars. The Grand Tour took this to the extreme, and I thought that the little that I saw of it was terrible.
@gomezthechimp1116 there was a sweet spot around about the 3rd-6th or so series of the "new" Top Gear where the balance was right.
midnight club, burnout, split second, blur
there is still is a desire for arcade racers but get neglected regardless
need for speed is now on there third studio (criterion) after closing both black box and ghost
forza motorsport was garbage
the crew games are online only and get delisted
gt7 is solid but no pc port
forza horizon has no actual single player progression since 1
I miss my racing games mannnn
Rip The Crew
And MotorStorm and Driveclub, dead because Evolution Studios was shut down by Sony
try wreckfest, second game was recently announced and the online scene of the frist game is still pretty active while the offline mode gave me a good 60h of entertainment
Blur was so much fun, I bought an external dvd-rom for my modern(ish) pc just so I can fire it up once in a while.
Beam and assetto are where it's at for me at the moment and it's been that way for about 10 years now. Really hoping ac evo is going to deliver on freeroam and mod support.
I liked when cars looked chonky and felt springy, iykwim. Realistic cars is cool, but those cartoonish racing games where you jump around causing mayhem hit different.
That's why BLUR is so good. It came out at a time when those type of games were almost extinct and we haven't had a game like that ever since (NFS 2012 never existed, it was just a collective hallucination)
I don't know what you are talking about. I am 50 years old, been gaming for about 40 years now. GT7 is the best racing game i played in my life. Even nostalgia doesn't do it for me. I cringe when looking at old racing games i liked. It's all about the physics of the driving and yes the graphics. I don't care about micro transactions and content. Content for me is: different races created weekly on the same 20-30 tracks. Racing has never been better in the racing games history.
I'm 40, I recently started playing around with psx emulation on the steam deck. I started playing news for speed high stakes all over again and am having more fun with it than I did with fh5. It has something that I find lacking with modern racing games. Also most racing games have become SLOW!