GRcade

It's going to be interesting to see where developers take driving games in the next gen as the graphics available on PS4 Pro and One X are already pretty amazing.
There's not much left to add visually (the main cars are already almost photo realistic) so it's going to come down to good old fashioned gameplay innovation.

Peter Crisp wrote:It's going to be interesting to see where developers take driving games in the next gen... it's going to come down to good old fashioned gameplay innovation.

I hope so, Peter. We seem to have had so many sim racers in past years; cool for aficionados of that style but not so great for fans of arcade-style racers. I guess that the success (or not) of The Crew 2, OnRush and Gravel will be a factor in whether they'll make a reappearance.

Gravel is one racer I've got my eye on.

Trailblazers coming soon - its F-Zero meets Splatoon.

That's an amazing concept, the vehicles look a bit long and cumbersome though. When's my F-Zero-style short racers? Why does everything need to have sausage racers?

I think i'm going to ditch motion controls and go back to using the stick on a pad - holding a pad in the air looks silly and is way harder to actually drive. I don't have the money or time to buy a wheel and git gud so I think the precision of an analogue stick means I can actually do better.

Assetto Corsa Competizione

This sounds very promising. However, console versions possibly a long way off, perhaps even as late as ps5 and next-box.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018- ... -heres-why

That AC UE4 stuff is a little fascinating.

Eurogamer wrote:I don't need detailed career modes, loot boxes full of car mods or pages of fictional emails to scroll through; just give me a season of real races against real teams and drivers run to real rules, governed by a simple points table, and you've got everything I need.

This. Forza 5's career mode broke me because each race was completely unconnected; score at least half way up the pack to progress, no points, nothing on the line. I just got completely bored. I wish more semi-serious racing games would stop making you have to win to proceed and just let you win or lose. I was going to get pcars2 until i read a review that you have to finish top 3 in a championship to progress. There's an old game called Nascar Dirt to Daytona which is happy to let you stay in the shitbox dirt oval league and never make it to NASCAR proper if you aren't good enough consistently.

I don't even care about real teams and drivers, just recognisable names and rivalries to make each race matter would be nice.

I was going to get pcars2 until i read a review that you have to finish top 3 in a championship to progress.

Im pretty sure that's never actually been a thing or has been patched out as I play PCars 2 quite a bit and have never come across this in a championship.

It was definitely a thing in Dirt Rally (top 6 or out) and it spoilt what is generally a very good rally sim.

Gemini73 wrote:

I was going to get pcars2 until i read a review that you have to finish top 3 in a championship to progress.

Im pretty sure that's never actually been a thing or has been patched out as I play PCars 2 quite a bit and have never come across this in a championship.

It was definitely a thing in Dirt Rally (top 6 or out) and it spoilt what is generally a very good rally sim.

You may be right, I saw it in this review:

If you finish outside of the top three, it's deemed a failure and you're asked to retry the entire championship again. This can be utterly demoralising when you've just completed ten races or so, and I'm not sure why leading the midfield pack comes with such a harsh punishment. It actively discouraged me from raising the AI difficulty until I knew I could consistently place in the top three.

I have enough racing games with similar cars and tracks anyway that I didn't bother buying it, but that put me right off.

Trelliz wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

I was going to get pcars2 until i read a review that you have to finish top 3 in a championship to progress.

Im pretty sure that's never actually been a thing or has been patched out as I play PCars 2 quite a bit and have never come across this in a championship.

It was definitely a thing in Dirt Rally (top 6 or out) and it spoilt what is generally a very good rally sim.

You may be right, I saw it in this review:

If you finish outside of the top three, it's deemed a failure and you're asked to retry the entire championship again. This can be utterly demoralising when you've just completed ten races or so, and I'm not sure why leading the midfield pack comes with such a harsh punishment. It actively discouraged me from raising the AI difficulty until I knew I could consistently place in the top three.

I have enough racing games with similar cars and tracks anyway that I didn't bother buying it, but that put me right off.

I reckon the reviewer made that up having not played the game fully.

I've over 50 hours poured into the career mode alone, and have not once been asked to restart an entire championship due to crashing out of the top three. Not once.

Gemini73 wrote:
I reckon the reviewer made that up having not played the game fully.

I've over 50 hours poured into the career mode alone, and have not once been asked to restart an entire championship due to crashing out of the top three. Not once.

It is gamespot so i'm not surprised. Shame as i missed the excellent us psn flash sale with pcars2, but i probably wouldn't play much of it for a while anyways. I'm going back to stuff like Race07 and Automobilista I think.

V-Rally returns!

BigBen make terrible games, but it's nice to see a dead 90s franchise get a new lease of life.

Apparently the WRC games have improved a lot in recent years, but I would definitely wait for more details/gameplay. At least its coming to Switch.

NickSCFC wrote:BigBen make terrible games, but it's nice to see a dead 90s franchise get a new lease of life.

I think 'terrible' is a bit strong. The WRC series has always been serviceable with the last three seeing vast improvements.

No, no, don't start bombarding me with Metacritic.

Never thought I'd see this license back again, but then such is the PS1 revival at the moment anything seems possible. The original V-Rally sold by the truck load; I remember it being one of the biggest selling racing games of 1997. I vividly recall the pink flamingo's lining one of the tracks. Twitchy handling, though.

V-Rally 2 was incredible, the track editor revelatory - you could basically make a roller coaster such was its customisation. V-Rally 3 on PS2 was a pile of gooseberry fool though. It really felt terrible next to WRC and Colin McRae 3 (which also had off handling).

Milestone are releasing the next MXGP game, MXGP Pro, on June 29th.

I'm glad there are more racing games coming out, but they're releasing it on the same day as The Crew 2

This has been a pretty good week for arcade racing games. Firstly the Outrun-esque Slipstream is out on Steam for kickstarter backers with a full release soon:



Secondly Horizon Chase Turbo also came out on consoles and PC:



Finally Fast Beat Loop Racer GT, a Chinese Wangan Midnight-esque arcade racer has been ported to steam too:



All we needed was Drift Stage to finally come out, but it was not to be, sadly.