Having finally bought a car, I found out I like driving much, much faster than I actually can. Therefore, I decided to be a calm and relaxed driver in real life, and to get my high speed fix using games. What are your favourite driving games?
Me, I have Colin McRae 2004 and it’s quite nice but I’m not keen on rally: I prefer speed racing. On the other side it has cars that are not your usual Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but more common ones, like the Subaru Impreza and even the Fiat Punto!
I’d like to find a driving game that is not too much of a management simulation (I want to drive, not deal with team management), that does not only have supercars (they’re OK in, but I want to see something I could happen to afford in real life - hey, is there any game with Skodas and Vauxhalls? ) and, most important of all, with opponents that do not go on rails whatever happens and take the same path even when you’re overtaking them. Suggestions are appreciated!
…more like crashing games than driving games, but insane fun.
The old Carmageddon series on the PC - no other games gets you a “Piledriver bonus” for smashing a pedestrian up against a building. I’m not into gore or anything, but the animantions of exploding people and limbs flying everywhere were really just funny in an overdone kinda way.
And Need for Speed II - one of the first PC games to support 3D hardware. I bought a 3DFX Voodoo card just to play it. It was beautiful, and a lot of fun, especially once you networked it and got some of the unlockables. The supercharged school buses were a riot.
And who could forget Rad Racer on the NES? I spent way too much of my childhood on that game.
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 /w the Jogcon controller. It was a controller with a little wheel that you steered with your thumbs. The wheel even had realistic force feed back. Everyone I know hated that controller but it and I somehow became one.
I wish I never traded it in.
The first F-zero also brings back good memories.
I always liked Quarantine for the 3DO. You’re a taxidriver in a city where most of the population is violently insane. It’s first person, and you use the money you get from carrying people to buy armor and guns for your cab. I always had a soft spot for the nuke with a smiley-face on it you used for the last mission.
I also like the Grand Theft Auto games, but I realized that they weren’t that good a guide to driving when I noticed I was constantly shortcutting to Azuka by driving full speed off an overpass and hopping out of the car after it crashed.
I haven’t played GT4, but I liked Gran Turismo 3. The physics are absolutely amazing, especially with a force-feedback wheel, and the tracks are good. It does have some regular, cheap cars as well as supercars. On the downside, the racing isn’t great. There’s no damage or penalties and the cars aren’t smart. Often the easiest way to win a race is at the first corner when everybody is bunched up; you just dive fast down the inside and bounce off.
The real problem I had though was in the tuning. It’s great but it takes too much time. For a given series, you have to get a car just right for it to be fun. A few seconds a lap makes it impossible to win, or conversely to lose. You have to do a bunch of tweaking and testing every time. I never got very far in the main racing part of the game. An alternative would be to just make the fastest cars you can, and keep going until it starts to get difficult regardless, but that means you blow through a bunch of races with no challenge or fun. I would have preferred if they had provided some default cars and setups for the various series.
If it’s pretending to drive a ‘realistic’ car, I love Forza Motorsport for the Xbox, with a wheel. (goddamn madcatz wheel died before it’s time) Right out the gate you have a LOT of cars available, and a good selection of tracks…including Nürburgring, which made me giggle like a schoolgirl. I would kill to drive a real car round the 'ring.
Don’t downplay the input method. If you truely want to drive the car, you can’t do it with a mouse, keyboard, or joystick.
I also really dug RallySport challenge, also for the first xbox.
I owned an N64 instead of a Playstation back in the day, so the selection of “real” driving games was pretty limited. A couple of average F1 games, one horrible one (F1 Pole Position). But my favorite was the Grand Turismo-esque World Drivers Championship. They didn’t pay for real car licenses but had a nice selection of knockoffs and lots of interesting tracks and an excellent soundtrack. It took some patience early on to learn to drive the crappy cars you are allowed to start with as a rookie, but as you build points the better cars are made available.
But the greatest driving game of all time: Grand Prix Legends, by a lap at the Nürbürgring’s Nordschleife.
Both games are excellent for a random “hop in and drive (or crash your opponents if you like that better)” games. 1 drives silky smooth and flooooows through the curves, 2 is a more realistic bumpy-almost-offroad-total-madness experience.
And, an oldie but goodie; Ignition. Almost top-down 3d racing with cute tiny cars and gorgeous landscapes. Problem is, it only runs on very old (pre-2000) versions of windows or just plain DOS.
Maybe I ought to go tinker with dosbox. That game rocked.
