Current Events > Let's talk about racing games

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've been playing F1 2019 the last few days. In past games, the AI was fairly cautious, prioritizing its safety over making passes or defending against your attempts. But they turned up the aggression here in a really nice way. The starts to races and the first couple laps are intense. But the nature of F1 is such that you eventually will find yourself in a fair amount of space where you can just focus on putting in good clean laps. Great stuff.
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I only play The Crew games so my opinion is invalid

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My favorite was the Outrun-style raster racer with on-the-fly 2D graphics. It was better that way than Nintendo's Mode 7 approach, IMO, because you didn't have distorted stretched visuals, and you could have hills and stuff too.

My first was a game called Top Gear. May have been based on the show? I dunno, I never saw the show. But this was a SNES game, and it freaking ruled. You had four cars you could choose from, you could use a manual or automatic transmission, and you had a fuel gauge. When you were low on fuel, you had to fuel up in the pits... Or if it was the last lap, you could risk it and try to YOLO your way across the finish line. There was a chance too that someone would rearend you and you would cross the finish line anyway lol. Plus you got three nitro boosts per track, though those didn't help if you were empty!

My favorite car as a kid was the white one. It wasn't particularly fast or good at acceleration (which was especially important since you would run into other cars all the time) but it had great handling and used very little fuel. You could get through tracks without ever refilling that the computer car had to refill on. And all the cars had their strengths. I forget what they are now, but when I played through as every car a few years back, I remember liking the blue one the most.

The sequel was also a great game. It ditched the multiple cars in favor of car customization. Which was obviously cool, but it kinda had the drawback of a positive feedback loop, since driving better earned you more money for upgrades, so if you did well on the first couple of races, you were gonna breeze through the rest. Or if you did poorly on the first few, you weren't gonna last very long.

After those, I went back in time and discovered Rad Racer. There were two of these games, for NES, and of course they were Nintendo hard. You didn't race against other cars though. You just had to hit all the checkpoints before the time ran out. Which was super hard because there would be cars trying to run into you to slow you down or stop you completely. Some of them even steered in your direction! I never would have beaten either if they hadn't included the level select cheat code. I didn't skip to the last level or anything, but I used it like a checkpoint for each track.

There was also one for GameGear that I played called Formula One. It was p legit but it was a GameGear game so the battery would always run out before I could finish the game. :P

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The best one I have played in recent years is GRIP Combat Evolved. Rollcage spiritual successor. Absolutely FUNtastic, and criminally under-marketed. Haven't had that much fun since Hot Pursuit on PS3.

https://youtu.be/bWLYTy2704g

https://youtu.be/ViggMpgJL_Y

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Honestly the most fun I've had with online multiplayer racing is GTA. Forza Horizon is really fun too.

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DarthWendy posted...

The best one I have played in recent years is GRIP Combat Evolved. Rollcage spiritual successor. Absolutely FUNtastic, and criminally under-marketed. Haven't had that much fun since Hot Pursuit on PS3.

https://youtu.be/bWLYTy2704g

https://youtu.be/ViggMpgJL_Y

I did not know this exists. Does it have all the fun modes Rollcage had, or is it kind of gutted and focused on just a couple things?

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I like arcade racers more than Sims. Need for speed heat really scratched the itch I had for Underground (2) type games but the devs aren't doing shit about content atm.

On another note, Horizon Chase Turbo is another racing game that's kind of unique and fun

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I can't talk about racing games because everyone thinks the genre is shit these days.

Forza Horizon 4 is worse than 3.

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The death of the Burnout franchise still makes me sad

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MC_BatCommander posted...

The death of the Burnout franchise still makes me sad

And that botched spiritual successor was just another blow to it.

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Still waiting for the glorious follow up to F-Zero GX. Or at least a Switch remaster.

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Lost_All_Senses posted...

And that botched spiritual successor was just another blow to it.

Oh yeah that one that had no music? What a weird thing

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I haven't played a racing game since GRID

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Umbreon posted...

Still waiting for the glorious follow up to F-Zero GX. Or at least a Switch remaster.

This.

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I'm a fan of DiRT 3
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Haven't played a good racing game since Motorstorm which has yet to appear on the PS4.

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Umbreon posted...

Still waiting for the glorious follow up to F-Zero GX. Or at least a Switch remaster.

Me and my friend had a pretty fun night with the N64 version last year. It's not even a childhood game for either of us. No nostalgia buff.

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Tokyo Xtreme Racer series was so awesome. Wish they'd make another one.
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F-Zero needs to make a comeback, hard.

I'm talking F-Zero SX, 4K graphics and music by Crush 40 and/or Zebrahead (yeah I went there), 50+ tracks includinf every location plus some new ones even including the less popular locations like Death Wind and Mist Flow, up-to-30-player online multiplayer, literally all the racers and machines, plus a few new ones too.

People who say Mario Kart has encompassed the F-Zero use case just because it has some twisty tracks just don't get it. Mario Kart has like none of what I love about F-Zero. Where are the advanced shoulder button techniques, or the momentum throttle? Where's the rockin' music? Side attacks? Health/boost meter? Gundam reject characters?

Nowhere, that's where.

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Lost_All_Senses posted...

I did not know this exists. Does it have all the fun modes Rollcage had, or is it kind of gutted and focused on just a couple things?

Exactly, criminally dreadful marketing for a hidden gem.
There is a solid campaign, and plenty of race modes and a good number of tweaks and customisations for races, and some great tracks. Classic race, combat race, pure speed, elimination (last one explodes every 20 seconds lol), pure combat arena, carkour, etc. A very solid number of vehicles, and their customisation, albeit cosmetic, is crazy. And they're still adding stuff to the game as it goes.
You can tell the devs put their passion in it (the guys from Rollcage actually), sadly they didn't have much money for marketing lol.
I think it's on sale on the PS store, check it out. If you get it, I'll add you for some mayhem :]


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Touch posted...

I like arcade racers more than Sims.

Same. Midnight Club 3 was my favorite.
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DarthWendy posted...

Exactly, criminally dreadful marketing for a hidden gem.
There is a solid campaign, and plenty of race modes and a good number of tweaks and customisations for races, and some great tracks. Classic race, combat race, pure speed, elimination (last one explodes every 20 seconds lol), pure combat arena, carkour, etc. A very solid number of vehicles, and their customisation, albeit cosmetic, is crazy. And they're still adding stuff to the game as it goes.
You can tell the devs put their passion in it (the guys from Rollcage actually), sadly they didn't have much money for marketing lol.
I think it's on sale on the PS store, check it out. If you get it, I'll add you for some mayhem :]

Tbf, I really am bad at staying in the loop as well. If Angry Joe or Dunkey doesn't talk about it, Im gonna find it late. Which is fine because it's a pleasant surprise when I find out and my hype can lead me to playing it immediately. I'll check the store, see if it's in my price range.

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@Lost_All_Senses Btw, before you buy, they're also taking care of the console versions, but they're mostly cuddling the PC version, the game was first a PC project, so if you play on PC, that version may be richer and with more stuff. The updates evenually drip into the console versions too, but yeah, PC gets the stuff first.
Still, as it is, the PS4 version has been vastly improved and polished since launch.

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gran turismo and forza are still my favorites by far

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Tag
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I only played GRIP because it was on Game Pass, I had fun with it though.


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DarthWendy posted...

@Lost_All_Senses Btw, before you buy, they're also taking care of the console versions, but they're mostly cuddling the PC version, the game was first a PC project, so if you play on PC, that version may be richer and with more stuff. The updates evenually drip into the console versions too, but yeah, PC gets the stuff first.
Still, as it is, the PS4 version has been vastly improved and polished since launch.

Eh, it's all good. Im a console peasant. Im fine with lesser versions because I never pay attention to what Im missing in other versions anyway. If the product justifies the price, Im satisfied. Thanks for the heads up tho.

@DarthWendy

Edit: Just looked it up. 20$ is still a lil up there for a broke bitch like me and an arcadey racing game. Since sometimes I play them for a couple hours and don't go back. BUT the splitscreen might sell me. It might provide me and my boy with a couple of those nights that F-Zero gave us. Bouncing on each others dicks needs some break days and this might be the perfect thing to do during those breaks. I got til the 17th to decide, but seeing as I don't want many future games. I'll probably pull the trigger at some point.

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Lost_All_Senses posted...

Eh, it's all good. Im a console peasant. Im fine with lesser versions because I never pay attention to what Im missing in other versions anyway. If the product justifies the price, Im satisfied. Thanks for the heads up tho.

@DarthWendy

Edit: Just looked it up. 20$ is still a lil up there for a broke bitch like me and an arcadey racing game. Since sometimes I play them for a couple hours and don't go back. BUT the splitscreen might sell me. It might provide me and my boy with a couple of those nights that F-Zero gave us. Bouncing on each others dicks needs some break days and this might be the perfect thing to do during those breaks. I got til the 17th to decide, but seeing as I don't want many future games. I'll probably pull the trigger at some point.

Oh then it's all good, the PS4 version is by no means broken or really inferior or anything. It's just that they favour more the PC community so it gets stuff first. The PS4 one is well polished by now.
The only problem is that since their marketing was dreadful, the online is pretty dead when you want to join a quick game. HOWEVER, there's a nice little PS4 chat community on the psn where people coordinate to play together. If you get it, I'll add you there. And there's an official discord, etc.

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DarthWendy posted...

Oh then it's all good, the PS4 version is by no means broken or really inferior or anything. It's just that they favour more the PC community so it gets stuff first. The PS4 one is well polished by now.
The only problem is that since their marketing was dreadful, the online is pretty dead when you want to join a quick game. HOWEVER, there's a nice little PS4 chat community on the psn where people coordinate to play together. If you get it, I'll add you there. And there's an official discord, etc.

I wouldn't use online anyway. All these flaws are missing me lol. Im very easy to please. Like I said, the split screen is what really matters for me. Not many splitscreen racing games these days.

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A thing I appreciate about the F1 games is that while they remain very approachable, and handle well on gamepad (unlike say Project Cars) there's a depth provided by the various systems you're tasked with managing: fuel, tire wear, ERS, DRS. It provides a tactical layer to these races that aren't present in say, Forza.
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Forza Horizon 2 is the best racing video game ever made

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I don't get into racing games so much.

The last good one I played was Split/Second.

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Behaviorism posted...

Forza Horizon 2 is the best racing video game ever made

Curious what you think it does better than 3 and 4?
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Antifar posted...

A thing I appreciate about the F1 games is that while they remain very approachable, and handle well on gamepad (unlike say Project Cars) there's a depth provided by the various systems you're tasked with managing: fuel, tire wear, ERS, DRS. It provides a tactical layer to these races that aren't present in say, Forza.

What difficulty do you play, also do you play a full race weekend....and do you have a racing wheel?
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Antifar posted...

Curious what you think it does better than 3 and 4?

Better scenery, better music(although 3's main menu music is phenomenal), better "story"(a nobody rising in ranks), plus it felt like an actual festival. You had to return home at the end of the day to party at the festival. I loved that. 3 and 4 didn't feel like festivals

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SiO4 posted...

What difficulty do you play, also do you play a full race weekend....and do you have a racing wheel?

I play with the AI on 80, full race weekend since most of my play is in career mode. And no, I don't have a wheel.
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Behaviorism posted...

Better scenery, better music(although 3's main menu music is phenomenal), better "story"(a nobody rising in ranks), plus it felt like an actual festival. You had to return home at the end of the day to party at the festival. I loved that. 3 and 4 didn't feel like festivals

Fair enough! Levante remains my favorite radio station, and the southern Europe setting is real great
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Antifar posted...

I play with the AI on 80, full race weekend since most of my play is in career mode. And no, I don't have a wheel.

Damn good job then. I play generally recreationally, but even at that, I can never make a good finish.
Though I do skip practice and qualifying and play abbreviated races.
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