Sim, arcade, simcade, anything. I’m kinda disconnected from the genre and want to know what is considered the GOATs of racing games to try them out.
Me personally, I’d say Dirt Rally 2, very addicting gameplay.
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I don’t typically go for racing games, but I have fond memories of playing Extreme-G on the N64. It had wepons, high speeds, and a soundtrack that tricked a young me into thinking I might like techno music.
Mario kart, and need for speed carbon
I really enjoy Gran Turismo 7 even if it lacks a proper career mode and the AI isn’t good.
Looking forward to Asseto Corsa 2 as people were really happy with the first one and I haven’t played it.
I really enjoy open world racing games. Forza horizon and the crew being two of my favourites.
Lego 2k Drive is a great one. Micro transactions are sadly pushed pretty hard, but I just played with my Switch in airplane mode and that made it pretty easy to ignore them
Assetto Corsa Competizione (Sim), if you like GT track racing.
Metropolis Street Racer / Project Gotham Racing.
“It’s not about how fast you drive, it’s how you drive fast.”
Project cars 3 in VR is pretty slick. I still think the gran Turismo franchise is tops. I wish there was a pc version or anything similar.
Forza Horizon 4 is my favourite, 5 is mostly meh.
Then we have Beamng, that is increadible
Speaking of Forza Horizon, they’re really cheap on Steam currently. FH4 is only 4 dollars.
FH4 is only 4 dollars
What country do you live in? For me it’s currently $/€14 in the regular version, 20 for the
deluxeultimate edition.Also note that the game will be getting delisted in december, so now might be the last chance to get it at a discount.
It’s 16 canuck bucks for me here. You must get some good pricing in your region.
Ah yeah, must be one of the rare cases where regional prices are really favorable.
My all-time favorite was the first Test Drive Unlimited. Beautiful racing across Hawaii, absolutely no story lines which got in the way.
Dirt (series) - because I love rally racing.
Motorstorm (series) - because racing across an active volcano is fun as fuck.
Carmageddon (series) - because it’s insane and hilarious.
Twisted Metal 2 - not really a racing game, but close enough.
I always liked racing games combined with violence like Carmageddon and Twisted metal! Others along those lines are RC Pro Am, Spy Hunter, Road Rash 3D.
Not a “racing” game but you can race in BeamNG (and even do multi-player with a mod.) After trying it, other games feel underwhelming to me.
I have a work-in-progress list here, strictly games I would consider “must play” in the genre. Notably missing the Ridge Racer and Tokyo Xtreme Racer games because I haven’t played enough of them to have an opinion.
https://howlongtobeat.com/user/atmur/lists/40754/Peak-Racing-Games
Mostly arcade and simcade racers though. If you’re interested in sims:
For modding, Assetto Corsa is basically the modern rFactor.
For offline racing, Automobilista and Raceroom have pretty solid AI. Note: Raceroom’s pricing model is dumb, kind of like iRacing just without the subscription.
For career mode, Project CARS 2 (not 3) is basically the only sim that even tries.
For online racing, ACC and iRacing are unmatched.
For rally, you’re already playing DR2. Richard Burns Rally is also shockingly good for its age.
I really liked the Tokyo Xtreme racer games. They are still probably the best car RPG games. I would love to see what someone could do now in the same vein. Even tokyo xtreme never got quite as crunchy or difficult as I would have liked.
I want to go so far as to be like a tactical survival style game, where you are out there earning a living wage from daily(nightly) car racing, and putting most of it back into your car. Just the repairs and maintenance alone being a bar you have to meet and beat every day on average to stay afloat, and then you can think about upgrades after.
It basically takes an environment like that for it to matter in a racing game that there are upgrades between the worst and the best. If trying to save up for even one good part wouldn’t be possible without at least some middle parts first.
Meanwhile, could have some “roguelite” elements too in driver experience/skill. The car is only half of what’s winning the races afterall. And even if you really blow it at some point and your car is fucked and you need to salvage and pull together what you got and go back to a cheaper car to maintain/repair, you’ll still have all the experience/skill your character personally gained helping it go a little smoother this time.
You just described my dream racing game ❤
Gonna have to dig around for one like that again
I would love to see what someone could do now in the same vein.
Genki is finally making a new TXR, got announced a few days ago.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2634950/Tokyo_Xtreme_Racer/
There’s also Night-Runners which is very much influenced by the TXR/Shutoko Battle games. It’s an in-development crowd funded game, so take from that what you will, but there’s a demo up on Steam as Night-Runners Prologue.
For online racing, ACC and iRacing are unmatched.
I contracted the iRacing sickness this year. The online is indeed unmatched but I’d argue the single player racing is also best in class.
The iRacing AI is actually fun to race against and nothing else comes close to the level of customization per-racer. You can build whole custom rosters with individual behaviors. If you’re so inclined you can even share all this stuff through communities like Trading Paints and Race Department.
iRacing is a hole with no bottom. Both time-wise and monetarily. Even to do AI-only you’re still paying the subscription and one-time content prices. It really is the best though.
TrackMania – I recommend Nations Forever if you’re starting out; it’s free and Nations was the “meta” environment (different environments have different physics) for a long time, so there’s a fuckton of custom content for it.
As for what it is: it’s like the racing genre’s Quake equivalent. It’s also like super hot wheels. And it’s like Mario Maker. You make all kinds of crazy tracks with it, like Mario Maker. The tracks feature all kinds of wall rides, half-pipes, jumps, loops, and so on, with nothing more than inertia holding you to the track; like hot wheels. And finally, like Quake (and Mario Maker), the high-level players are bat shit insane.
This is the game where you get people who can hit a jump at just the right angle so they thread the needle through a series of holes barely larger than the car while travelling at speeds well above 300mph (welcome to TrackMania, I don’t think there’s a speed cap). They also do it using keyboards. Seriously. High-level TrackMania players use keyboards, not gamepads or, god forbid, racing wheels.
All of that said, no pressure because you’re mainly racing yourself, even in multiplayer. You’re trying to get the best time on a track, and multiplayer is basically the same, except your time is being compared with everyone else’s. There isn’t even any vehicle collision (strangely, there’s an option for it, but it doesn’t seem to do anything).
Play TrackMania. Is fun.
Seconding Trackmania, though I’d recommend playing the latest one released in 2020 rather than Nations Forever. A year’s access to everything is $20 and you get tons of content to play.
For a game that is at its core can be played at the highest levels with just 4 buttons it is incredibly complex with an insane skill ceiling. I’m pretty good and the difference between me and the top players is absolutely insane. The game is a bit beginner unfriendly, mostly because you are going to suck against good players because there are tons of mechanics that the developer tells you nothing about and unless you watch a video you aren’t likely to understand why players are leaving you in the dust.
This is the game where you get people who can hit a jump at just the right angle so they thread the needle through a series of holes barely larger than the car while travelling at speeds well above 300mph (welcome to TrackMania, I don’t think there’s a speed cap). They also do it using keyboards. Seriously. High-level TrackMania players use keyboards, not gamepads or, god forbid, racing wheels.
The max speed is 999 km/h, which is only acheivable with speed drifting, but speed in excess of 800km/h are not uncommon to hit in certain kinds of tracks. Your statement about controls also isn’t correct, most of the top players play with controller, but there are some that are keyboard players, there is even a couple insane ones that play wheel (most notably Granady).
Huh, I was under the impression that high level players used keyboards and that gamepads were unusual. I was almost certain I’d read that keyboards were considered better because they were full-on/full-off instead of analog; the logic being that it let you respond faster. Where an analog stick would have some ramp-up time when you switch directions, a keyboard would register a full press the moment the key is pressed far enough to complete the circuit. Meanwhile, the physics of Nations were made with keyboards in mind, so analog controls wouldn’t offer that much of an improvement.
At least, I was sure that’s what I’d read.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all the control schemes depending on the types of tracks you play, the surface you play, and the car/environment you play.
Most good players play with controller because there are many situations you run into where you want the precision of steering a specific amount around a corner, or you are playing a track where you want to either speed drift (SD) at a specific angle (e.g. fullspeed or higher speed dirt/grass/plastic) or want to keep your steering under a certain angle to no slide (e.g. low speed dirt/grass/plastic).
There are techniques such as neosliding where it is much easier to do them in keyboard as it requires multiple taps in quick succession. It is also easier to play keyboard when you need to make turns where timing of a full steer is important (e.g. ice).
Considering cars other than the stadium car you start getting into situations where one control scheme is far superior than others. The snow and rally environments require smooth steering so wheel is superior there, but controllers are a good middle ground. Desert is faster with tapping movements over smooth steering so keyboard is a bit better there. I recall canyon is a bit better with keyboard as well.
This all applies equally regardless of whether you are playing older or newer games, analog and digital controls are available in all the PC games.
I was curious enough that I looked into it a bit and it sounds like the difference is negligible at this point because they added keyboard binds for partial presses in response to analog keyboards(?). Again, I haven’t played TM2 or anything after, last game I played was TMUF/TMNF, so I haven’t tried using them myself, however when I was looking to see what the kb/controller/wheel split was I found a lot of people saying that there isn’t a strong reason to use one over the other anymore due to the new binds.
Edit: it actually makes me kinda happy to talk about this. I loved the games as a teenager, but they were too niche and I never had anyone to talk to about them.
Edit 2: damn, I remember finding the OG game at Fry’s and thinking it looked like the coolest game ever and getting confused when no one else thought it was sick as fuck (everyone was into Halo and CoD, and tbf, I was into them too; but I had patrician tastes that spanned multiple genres, not like the casuals I grew up around u.u)
Yeah they added “action keys” that can trigger different percentage presses (20-40-60-80-100%) as a “fix” because the bobsleigh blocks they added in the new game were not keyboard friendly and they wanted to even the playing field. They eventually changed the physics to get rid of that specific need (but not completely) but they are still useful in some situations.
Download the newest game! It has a free access tier which gets you access to the first 10 tracks of the quarterly campaign and to the ranked mode. It is a bit limited but enough to see if you might get back into it. There is a decent community on reddit for the game.
Growing up I’ve always been a keyboard racer. The only benefit i see from gamepad is that you can hold any angle while turning, even slight ones.
With keyboard every movement is timing and it’s easier to build muscle memory for me.
Edit: the reason I want a vr headset and racing wheel are the opposite of what keyboard gaming is
Crash Team Racing is the pinnacle of kart racing games. The driving is more skill-based than the leading brand name, and it doesn’t have shitty rubber-band AI.
Star Wars Episode 1 Racer is still great fun, easy to learn but hard to be good at.
Nothing compares to F-Zero GX. The abandonment of the franchise is a travesty, and should be considered abuse of the gaming community.
Crash Team Racing is the pinnacle of kart racing
Where do you play it? Your comment kinda made me want to play it in my Switch.
I’m playing the remake on PS5. I think they did a pretty nice job with the graphics upgrade, and with the new tracks.
I’d recommend getting a proper controller for it. CTR is a dpad and shoulder button masher.
Hmm, such as?
I only have the Pro controller and the joycons.
Yeah I meant don’t use joycons lol
Pro Controller at the very least. CTR is a game that should be played with a dpad for steering. You can use the analog inputs but some more advanced tricks (such as tight steering) will require a solid dpad.
I miss the arcade-y feel of older racing games. Everything these days tries too hard to be a simulator, that they end up stripping the fun out of it. I want sparks to fly out of my tires when I drift even though they’re rubber and wouldn’t actually do that, I want wacky announcers with color commentary, I don’t want to shift gears.
I want games like Ridge Racer and Need for Speed to make a comeback.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit or Burnout: Paradise might be the closest to what you’re looking for. They’re both open-world games, but I don’t think they really have that open-world filler that you see a lot of. They both got remastered releases in the last few years.
Hot pursuit is barely an open world game. There’s never a point to find around in the open world, in fact most people might even miss that you can do that.
I loved Project Gotham Racing because it rode the line between arcade game and simulator quite nicely. I haven’t seen anything like it since.
