Is there ever going to be a decent racing game, with above-average AI, good handing, decent cars and tracks, engaging career mode, and unbroken online?
Why is this so difficult to do? My G27 is looking forlornly at me, wondering if there is life beyond Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Let us run down the list of notable racing games shall we.
* Assetto Corsa. This game should have been 'The One', but was let down by poor AI, even worse 'career' mode, and twitchy online.
* Project Crap. I mean Cars. Apart from the unbelievably bad attitude by the head staff, and ludicrous business model, the game is effectively unfinished. Even worse AI than Corsa, crap career mode, and more bugs than Windows, it is a lovely looking game let down by egotistical belief in perfection.
* Grid: Autosport. Lousy car handling, but saved by beautiful interior car graphics.
* iRacing. Hideously expensive, horribly American, and totally unforgiving. Hailed as the 'best pure driving sim', but I found it impossible to drive, clunky web-based interface, outdated graphics, really poor UI, and the online community is about as snobby as the UK Tories.
* RaceRoom : See iRacing, but with better graphics.
F1 201x: I LOVE F1. I'm sad to see what's happening in the real sport, but I'm even more saddened to see what's happened to this game series. What started off promisingly with 2010 has evolved into a horrid, shine-infested consolised mess of a game. No career mode, questionable driving model, insultingly bad graphics, especially for the PC, and equally questionable AI (although I'd take this AI over Pcars and Corsa any day!) ruin what should be, by now, a very good simulation of the King of racing sport. (NASCAR can fuck off).
rFactor 2: Arguably the best AI in any game, but no career, no tracks, no cars and really no point. Of course I can add loads of mods etc, but no decent career mode makes it slightly pointless. At least the online isn't bad. Graphics are a bit old in the tooth.
Dirt Rally, not specifically a racing game as such, is turning into a satisfying rally game, which begs the question - why are these guys not writing F1?!
GP4: Grand Prix done right. Just a shame it doesn't seem to work for me on 64bit. And is as ancient as Stonehenge.
Playing Valheim every weekday at 10pm GMT - twitch.tv/kaltern
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would love some more racing games with a career mode like NFS 5:Porsche 2000/unleashed had. Buying and damaging individual car parts. iirc you could also to some extent chose what events you attended. good times
Forza Motorsport 4 is the best circuit car game IMO. Excellent cars, tracks, handling, career, online, framerate. Can't really think of a single negative thing to say about that game. FM5 sucked, but FM6 looks like will follow FM4 and will be good again.
Forza Horizon 2 is the best open world car game IMO.
PC exclusive racing games were always bland, soulless and broken. So if you are willing to step out of boundaries of only playing on PC you might find some great racing games on consoles
What about iRacing? Every review says good things about it.. but the game is behind a monthly pay
I quite liked pCars, the online of it is shit and most of the time the AI makes me rage to hell (like driving on the rain, with soft tires and making the same time as a dry lap ) but overall i'm having a lot of fun with it.
Assetto just received a major update today, maybe you can try it out. Some bug squashing, 5 new free cars (Alfa Romeo Mito Quadrifoglio Verde, Audi Sport Quattro, Lamborghini Miura SV, Nissan GT-R Nismo, Toyota GT-86 ), multiplayer improvement, AI improvement, active differential is now in game, free Zandvoort circuit.
Is there ever going to be a decent racing game, with above-average AI, good handing, decent cars and tracks, engaging career mode, and unbroken online?
All we have to do is wait for... Project Cars 2!
All jokes aside, indeed it's really hard (if not impossible) to find something on PC that includes at least the 80% of what we can consider the 'perfect package'. I don't care about the online, so for me the closest examples (even with their flaws and unfinished state) are undoubtedly Assetto and PCars, but they're far from being the definitive sweet spot for different reasons. Still, not bad at all in my opinion.
The more arcade (+ heavily modded) Shift 2 wasn't too shabby either (as for the multiplayer part though, it was already defunct after two weeks xD).
The thing is, there is still a lot of segregation when it comes to driving games on PC. While it's true that sim fans don't care at all about having a career (therefore the Rfactor's, Reiza Studios' games, iRacing etc.) and many people don't care about having good physics, as long as they can Ken Block their way to the top, it's also true that there is a huge audience waiting for something that can be both sim-like and game-y at the same time (in terms of features also). Something like this requires a huge budget though, and only AAA companies can pull it off on paper: not only they don't even bother, but even if they did, it would most likely be a failure riddled with nextgen green pears.
Right now Wreckfest seems to fill in that void of sim-like and game-y at the same time. But they are still a long way from release so plenty of time to feck it up.
Older racing games seemed to have a much easier time filling this sim-cade type of gameplay. Games like Grand Prix 4, NFS: Porsche, Mercedes Benz World Racing, Richard Burns Rally, Nascar Racing (by Papyrus. Feck, any racing game by Papyrus), Toca 2 (back when Codemasters weren't in full retard mode) were all great games that were just right taking in consideration the technology at that point in time.
It's mostly since 2003 or so that there's been an utter collapse in the PC racing world.
Edit: I've yet to try Stock Car Extreme though (based on rFactor engine). It's getting good reviews but graphically it is horrendously outdated.
Yeah, GSC is one the best options available in terms of pure driving experience, but the fact that it's based on the old rFactor engine doesn't help, since it's a really old tech. The devs are very talented and have masked it quite well, I'd like to see them venturing into something even more "meaty" in the future, it would lead to interesting results (once again, there's the problem with the budget, since they're a fairly small company).
The patch that came out for AC today supposedly makes the AI pretty good, which was the games biggest weakness imo. They go for overtakes and don't drive along the same line etc. I'm installing it now and will edit with my impressions later.
GSC is a great overall sim and the graphics aren't too shabby on max. With the recent funding they got and access to the source code of the rfactor engine it can only get better within the next few months. V8 supercars and super trucks! Problem I have with it though is the unfamiliarity with all the current tracks and cars so I find myself less interested then I should be. By far the best sim package around if you like open wheelers though.
edit: After a few races I can say the ai in AC is pretty great now. Not rf2 level but it's like night and day from what it was. They sometimes lock up brakes under pressure or trying to pass, take a variety of lines, defend decently and go for gaps. I even got passed on the outside from overdefending! If it had an aggression slider I'd say it's almost as good as GSC and RRRE now. AC officially no longer a hotlap simulator!
Found it in the bargain bin for PS1 games when I was a kid. Together with Motor Mash and Circuit Breakers, bought all 3 games at once. Played the crap out of these top-down racers back in the day. (and of course also Micro Machines V3 but everyone knows that one)
Is there ever going to be a decent racing game, with above-average AI, good handing, decent cars and tracks, engaging career mode, and unbroken online?
Why is this so difficult to do? My G27 is looking forlornly at me, wondering if there is life beyond Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Let us run down the list of notable racing games shall we.
* Assetto Corsa. This game should have been 'The One', but was let down by poor AI, even worse 'career' mode, and twitchy online.
* Project Crap. I mean Cars. Apart from the unbelievably bad attitude by the head staff, and ludicrous business model, the game is effectively unfinished. Even worse AI than Corsa, crap career mode, and more bugs than Windows, it is a lovely looking game let down by egotistical belief in perfection.
* Grid: Autosport. Lousy car handling, but saved by beautiful interior car graphics.
* iRacing. Hideously expensive, horribly American, and totally unforgiving. Hailed as the 'best pure driving sim', but I found it impossible to drive, clunky web-based interface, outdated graphics, really poor UI, and the online community is about as snobby as the UK Tories.
* RaceRoom : See iRacing, but with better graphics.
F1 201x: I LOVE F1. I'm sad to see what's happening in the real sport, but I'm even more saddened to see what's happened to this game series. What started off promisingly with 2010 has evolved into a horrid, shine-infested consolised mess of a game. No career mode, questionable driving model, insultingly bad graphics, especially for the PC, and equally questionable AI (although I'd take this AI over Pcars and Corsa any day!) ruin what should be, by now, a very good simulation of the King of racing sport. (NASCAR can fuck off).
rFactor 2: Arguably the best AI in any game, but no career, no tracks, no cars and really no point. Of course I can add loads of mods etc, but no decent career mode makes it slightly pointless. At least the online isn't bad. Graphics are a bit old in the tooth.
Dirt Rally, not specifically a racing game as such, is turning into a satisfying rally game, which begs the question - why are these guys not writing F1?!
GP4: Grand Prix done right. Just a shame it doesn't seem to work for me on 64bit. And is as ancient as Stonehenge.
Geniune question - do you really need a career in a sim racing game? I thought id want it .. but then realized I actually dont. AI is almost never great to race against and it certainly wont prepare you for the real humans.
I tried a lot of "hardcore" sims in the last 2 years, even played iRacing for months and it wasnt that bad, physics are OK but FFB is abysmal (even with irffb)
In the end, for quick online PC2 is actually quite good but make sure you get a custom ffb file. Especially on a DD wheel this is required for a decent feeling.
For hardcore racing, rFactor 2 is probably the only option, ACC isnt bad but its ... well ... kind of meh in terms of driving and only offers GT3/4. rF2 development is slow, there is no denying that ... but they are actively working on it, there is a lot of amazing mods and physics and FFB is unbeatable. You do need a group though, it will still take some months maybe a year for them to fix how online lobby works,
If you want to get into rf2 pm me, I have 2 or 3 discord channels for rf2 with nice people who do casual leagues or random racing (mostly GTE or GT3 cars, some times mods too).
It's fuuny tho. Nothing much has changed. F1 is still disappointing (bit better I guess but still no VR support ffs, probably because it's trying very hard to be the next iRacer...)
Dirt is just dirt
Project Cars 3 is a piss take
Assetto Corsa is pretty good - especially in VR - thanks to the Sol weather mod (Le Mans in full day/night is glorious) - but it has no real sense of event (FCY, safety cars etc)
iRacing might be the better racing game technically, but its track selection is far too US biased, the cars are not really my favourite, and it costs a stupid amount of money.
RaceRoom is not bad, but it still doesnt have proper racing rules.
F1 20xx is certainly the most feature complete game - but the graphics engine is starting to show its age, it still feels 'wrong', and the AI is still on rails
And yes, I like a goodprogressive career mode. I don't tend to race against humans because I'm simply not good enough, and I hate newbs crashing into me - so I won't inflict the same on others.
I also want the choice of both open and closed wheel ( I prefer open), and really prefer VR (but I will play pancake if the game is good enough).. I'm just very picky I suppose.
Playing Valheim every weekday at 10pm GMT - twitch.tv/kaltern
Follow me on Twitter if you feel like it... @kaltern
in that case, baring the hardcore simulations ... the only one I can think of is RBR or Dirt Rally 1 (not 2) , I really liked career in that one, you had to look after car parts, repairs etc. and the art style is much better than DR2. But there are no open wheelers of course... in which case, there is no game like that I think
If Reiza manage to keep their promises whilst fixing the current severe Earlyaccessitis, I can see Automobilista 2 becoming a pretty solid entry. It's based on Project Cars 2's engine with more focus on simulation (unlike Project Abortion 3) and it already is satisfying to drive, has complex weather conditions as one would expect, good visuals, supports VR out of the box and so on. There are quite a few open-wheel classes available as well (including the Classic ones) alongside the usual Stock cars, karts, trucks etc. The Career mode and associated AI are work-in-progress, though the game is being frequently patched so a man can hope. The major downsides are the limited contents + silly Seasonal practices for future DLCs and the fact that as per tradition the newest Madness Engine isn't exactly modding friendly, a stark contrast to Automobilista 1's amazing community-made contents and tracks.
At the end of the day, even with its many flaws Project Cars 2 is for me still the most complete package when it comes to single-player track racing and the one I always like to go back to. A 'jack of all trades, master of none' but..good enough to cover every basic need. Assetto Corsa is hands down the best sandbox in terms of community contents, though unfortunately that often means untested AI routines and incomplete features which make it more suitable for hotlapping. rFactor 2 is another awkward sandbox beast, its physics and AI really shine - yet everything else is still stuck in the mid-2000s and the greediness with DLCs has reached absolutely ridiculous levels. Codies' F1 series has definitely improved over the years in every department (even the physics, a miracle), though its simcade approach will never not feel like a giant missed opportunity to me.
When it comes to other disciplines, Dirt Rally 2.0 is the modern king in its field both physics-wise and when taking into account the audio-visual department, and has everything to put competitors to shame...minus the online-tied Career progression/mode, which is inferior to what the WRC series can offer. If you don't mind motorcycle racing, the MotoGP series is actually decent too. It's essentially the low-budget F1 series on two wheels, with similar simcade handling, serviceable AI, and a complete Career mode with all the trinkets (no VR, though).
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) but overall i'm having a lot of fun with it.
(as in get them stuck on em).
