It has come to my attention, that some of my claims aren’t accurate. Aussie yapping man made some shit the fuck up, so let’s fix that! 1: Fast travelling in NFS 2015 One of my nitpicks with 2015 came from how much sheer commuting you needed to do, and how tedious it ended up feeling because of how big the map is/spread out the races are. Turns out; there’s fast travelling! Something I didn’t realise even after playing through the game twice. Granted, after this was pointed out to me I did a quick google search to confirm it and found multiple Reddit threads of others also not realising fast travel was a thing, AND, it DID take over 600 comments and 24,000 of y’all to watch before anyone finally pointed that out. Regardless, I’ll take the L on that one, it’s a pretty silly thing to not realise. HOWEVER, I will say; the loading times in 2015 are so slow it’s probably faster to just drive to the next race than fast travel anyway. 2: EA play cars in Unbound I made a point of being annoyed that cars are just given to you in modern racing games, with Unbound being an example. Little did I realise, this was only happening in my game because I played it on game pass. Now, I’ll take this as a half L 🤭, cause let’s be real, a LOT of people would be trying this game on game pass and going through the same experience, so while it’s not universal, I’d imagine it’s pretty damn common across Xbox/PC. And I guess anyone on PS5 with EA play but I dunno how popular that is? It’s cheap as chips though so it wouldn’t surprise me if plenty of people signed up to try before they buy. What I WILL take the complete L on is a sub section of this take about the wraps, they CAN in fact be removed, I dunno what I was waffling on about. Thanks to the couple of peeps who brought these to my attention, I’ve replied to y’all individually anyway 🫶🏼 In the future, I’ll take a little extra time and care to be a bigger, better, and most importantly, more accurate hater 🫡
Developers sit around all day chief. "Crunch" is called overtime to us normal people. They aren't special because they make video games. I watched my mom work 65 hours a week for almost 40 years. These babies can do it for a few months at the end of a multi million dollar project. Not to mention they all get paid for that overtime and they are paid incredibly well. I bet you're one of those guys that says making games is hard and it's magic that we even get to play them. That is also a load of garbage right there as well
I am one of those guys that says making games is hard. To be precise making a good gameTEMPLATE is hard. If you have 5 star developers building on that template it's like a workingday in the office I agree. What baffles me is when a developerteam made a solid gametemplate with a game on top of it with a smooth menu and a bugfree game that runs smooth and sells well because of that.. "pause to breathe in" .. this developers team gets to deal with a (hostile) takeover by some a-hole company that doesn't allow them to work on that game template anymore. They only want to make money so pimp the menu a bit, take out some cars that will be DLC now and so on. What makes me very angry that most of the time they throw away a proven good working template and force developers to build a new one. Then throw it out to the public and actually tell them so if you find any bugs just tell us and we will patch them. This way they avoid the cost of beta-testing the game and let the gamesheeple that will buy anything work for free to test the game. Very good templates have gone to waste and others are still running with cracked codes and modds amateur developers make at home. Some of these modded/remastered games are the best you can play today. Why can't the big name game industry build us these games? Because they are greedy bastards that's why. And all the mistakes you made while making this video are forgiven. You are just another gamer with passion that doesn't want to see games suck and get destroyed. We talked about it all and some things we can agree or disagree about but the only thing stopping the killing of games are our wallets. Stop buying their crap!!!!! As always thank you for reading my rant. 😘👍🏻
oh i guess you haven't been paying attention, ubisoft literally said recently "gamers need to get used to not owning their games" lmao those crooks are trying to remove our ownership of *everything*
@@cheater00 not only that, they literally stole back the keys, I bought a key, they could have removed multiplayer, hell they could have still shut the game down and i would have shrugged, but they stole my god damn key.
My childhood was Burnout 3, NFS Most Wanted, Midnight Club 3. They were complete, content dense, and fun. Burnout has crash mode, most wanted had a cool story concept and the best police AI, and midnight club 3 had a unique atmosphere and used a fleshed out power system. Nowadays it just feels like copy paste.
At around 35 minutes... NFS Unbound doesn't have cops because they wanted to pad out the game. It was specifically in response to most other NFS fans wanting cops to be more prominent and more difficult to get away from
I know they weren’t actually there to pad out the game, it’s just when playing, considering how much of a nuisance they are compared to other entries, it just FEELS that way 😅
@@Viseakits the fact that the game doesnt give you any incentive to engage in cop chases other than a small cash reward when you go back to your safehous its really strange considering heat literally did implement a risk vs reward system by making the heat level serve as reward multipliers when you go back to your garage and honestly it wouldve suited unbound much more because of the time sensitive structure of the game
@@abslzero It's kinda strange though because even Carbon fumbled the cops horribly and it's literally just MW's cops again, but they're so disconnected from story progression that they're essentially meaningless and do nothing more than get in your way. The map also sucks which doesn't really help.
Newest NfS I got on sale was NfS Heat, but even with UNITE mod I just cant get over the fact that there are not meaninful ways to get rid of the cops. The world has so many opportunitys for pursuit- breakers but they just arent in the game. The only way to get rid of cops is to jump of stuff like the big mall which gets boring...
In Underground 2, there was a RPG-like feeling of progression involved with starting out with your unmodified, slow crapcan and winning races, building up enough money to afford nitrous, playing the next races with nitrous, buying engine upgrades, playing the next races with nitrous and engine upgrades, etc. The map unlocked as you completed parts of the campaign and finding the performance parts shops in the new area would allow you to purchase previously locked parts. New cars were scarce and it cost money you didn't have to build up too many of them. This made your car feel unique to you and incentivized you to upgrade and tweak a particular model to its limits. Ironically, being deprived of choices made the game more fun. When you have all the choices in the world, you don't need to upgrade a 350z. You can just buy a Corvette and it would really make more sense to do exactly that.
A good progression system goes a long way in a racing game. After almost every race in UG2, you unlock one more set of things, so you keep wanting to finish races to see what you might unlock next.
what I think is missing (as far as I'm concerned) is vision. the old arcade racing games didn't pretend to resemble reality, but were actually the fruit of a vision, an imaginary version of reality, and this was what gave them character. Today I don't think we can say that arcade racing games exist anymore, because both from a graphic and physical point of view they try in every way to be as realistic as possible. When I play a game I want to perceive it as such, I don't want it to be a bad copy of reality because video games, like many other things, for many, have been and are an escape from reality, different worlds that can titillate our curiosity. another thing that's missing is a well-organized system that encourages in-game competition (I'm not necessarily talking about tournaments). And yes, the sense of progression is non existent.
Couldn’t agree more And that’s why I was kinda saying I prefer good art direction to graphical fidelity, and why I think the style of Unbound was a pretty good direction to go The same thing happened with Halo where they’re trying to make it so much more realistic, when it was always a little campy and fun in early on, but shag been forgotten over the years
The biggest complaint for me is the reward system. That dopamine reward when you work hard to achieve a goal. Feeling satisfied and having something to look back on. Now they literally just hand it to you. No surprises, no consequences, no challenge, nothing to be proud of your accomplishments. Its like being spoon fed.
This hits the nail on the head. I can't remember the last time I struggled to win a race in Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport. The rewards don't matter because the races are easy to win. There's no restrictions, so you can just turn the difficulty down, pick a stupidly fast car, and ram your way to first without even trying.
They ve already won. As long as consumers are consuming anything they throw at them, we willnot receive anything better. For the last couple of years i played new and old games at the same time. I grow bored of new games, with some exceptions,but the old games man.... I uninstalled heat after 10 hours, but Porsche, Underground, Most wanted, finished all 3 , had a blast. Horizon, 4 yea, it was nice as it was the first game i played from the series. But eventually i grew bored and neve returned. The gameplay did not evolve naturaly. Of course i haven t played any other Horizon, because they are more the same. But i finished TDU 10 times, without breathing. Gaming is dead.
@@andipajeroking yeah I get the same feeling, I’ll play a new racing game in particular for an hour or so maybe? And never pick it up again But I can easily stay gripped into an older game the whole way through One game I’ve never played is MW 2005 funnily enough, and I reckon that’d be a good limit test cause it’s one I’ve got no nostalgia for and so many people regard it as the best game in the franchise
@@Viseak No my my friend... games now sucks in general.. and the first reason why the games sucks today is because you don't own them.. and in 10 or 15 years most probably you will not be able to show it to your kids.. like with The Crew today and so many others...... meanwhile If I still have a working compatible computer.. electricity.. and the disks.. I will be able to show my great-grandchildren Half-Life and Half-Life 2.... This was the standard you see »» ruclips.net/video/tUAX0gnZ3Nw/видео.html .. Now the standard is that they take your money and scam you ..........+......... The other reason.. Is that today the games are stupid.... look Stellar Blade.. soooo popular because they put a pretty teenage face in a body with the fat ass of my grandmother.. ¿¿and what is the game about??.. running around.. then fighting a tree story height monster that sounds like a horse while she jiggle her fat ass.. until the monster health bar gets to zero.. same mechanic of Mortal Kombat 35 years ago.. with the difference that Sonya Blade had an awesome ass and Mortal Kombat has really cool characters training to save the world and humanity.. instead of already being everything fuc^%&ked up and with everybody dead which is typical stuff of the current losers generation.. Anyway Stellar Blade then runs around some more.. sit down for a while.. and repeat with the next monster that also sounds like a horse.........+........... meanwhile 20 damn years ago!!.. it was also another game with a tree story height monster.... but when you heard just one of his sounds... you jump off running because half of the building was going to blow up around you »» ruclips.net/video/vRqN56XZOlo/видео.html .... then you hide from him in the building.. in the sewers.. under bridges.. (well actually that's not very effective).. »» ruclips.net/video/62XlsBn1o0g/видео.html ...... but you keep distance.. because otherwise it will crash you obviously.... now if one of the enemies that fight alongside that thing throw you a grenade.. you can pick it up and throw it back at them... or use it for destroyed the tree story height monster.. »» ruclips.net/video/62XlsBn1o0g/видео.html ..... and well even if they make a PC game.. they can not do any of this anymore.. they have to make it lame.... so the idiots that play with the stupid console controllers are not in disadvantage....
The annoying thing about the cops in heat is that you have a health bar. So cops can endlessly spawn and ram you like they have a respawn button but you gotta watch your health? Bruh
And you can have only 3 repairs per night. I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t make them so op and do more damage to me when I try to pit maneuver them and cut down the health by a third with just one hit to me but takes about 10 hits for me to deal the same amount of damage. I love that they brought back the ability to beat the game with your starter car with engine swaps, but the cops made me loathe nighttime racing.
I hope that some indie dev studio strikes gold in making the perfect NFS Underground 2 era throwback game... Early 2.5D racing games like NFS2 already have this in Horizon Chase, we just need one for the NFSU era.
It did it's job tho to convey the basic plot and set up the antagonist I always thought it was a deliberate choice to dumb down the story to make it more akin to the films that inspired it . Game was perfect bro come on lol
@@Baddman3000 trust me, I LOVE the game, I still bust out my PS2 to play it sometimes, I’d say it’s one day/night cycle away from being perfect. But it’s masterpiece status is why it’s format was copied, badly.
Tbh, I absolutely LOVE the Most Wanted story. Not because it's good, but because it's just so freaking bad. The over the top acting, cheesy early-mid 2000's edgy characters, absurd story, it's just fun. Paired with the soundtrack, it's like a snapshot of teen focused media as a whole around that time. I think the game is better for it. For sure, I can see why people hate it, but man I love it so freaking much. Also, unironically, the guy who played Sergeant Cross was genuinely good, and his scenes are super fun to watch.
@@PloopChute This^^^^^^ A lot of people act like "bad" and cheesy writing is bad, when it's almost good... It can even be a overall good thing, because it can make it less forgetable and more impactful... MW story is great because of that, it's terrible, but the blacklist model works great gameplay and story wise (gives a good story arch and great gameplay progression, by default)... The fact that it's so cheesy and 2000's makes it more impactful, specially between the ones that were lucky to play this as teens.
What happened is gaming became corporate and is just a line item for some wealthy dude who doesn’t care. The main motivation for making a game shifted from "how can we make this fun" to "how can we make the most money". All the big studios just produce trash now. I have no motivation to go next gen because all the AAA games are terrible and overly monetized. Thankfully I have decades of seasons in old NBA 2ks to play and a ton 2016-2021 racing games and RPGs for PS4. I have been accidentally boycotting this generation of gaming and I think I'll just turn it into a purposeful one. Its pretty easy when they don't make anything I want to buy. I pity anyone who sunk large amounts of money into this generation and has to convince themselves that it was worth it.
Oh 100% When a few micro-transaction sales eclipse the profit of entire games (Halo RUclipsr Mint Blitz just made a video about this too lol) of course developers aren’t going to put effort into the much riskier route of making a great game. Why tell good stories and create lasting experiences? That requires dedicated staff with varying talents that’ll see the project through to the end and create something they’re actually proud of. Much more profitable to just outsource some designers and sell skins! Sigh
It's also because the industry now is largely run by women and targeted towards women. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that men are better developers than women or vice versa, that's not the case. What I'm saying is that women don't care about racing, that's why the genre is dead and the few arcade racers left are trying to be everything but racers. PS. There's still good stuff around though, like the Hot Wheels games made by Milestone (an old school arcade racer developer), also Wreckfest.
@DioBrando-qr6ye Uhhh...I don't think women are responsible for microtransactions and greedy publishing companies. I'm sure there are women as well as men, but I'm not sure which games you are referring to that are targeted toward women and ruining the industry.
I understand that mid 00s edgyness is gone for good, but I hate how every racing game makes you the wholesome hero. In street racing games, it was understood that you're morally grey at best and a straight up domestic terrorist at worst. I would love to see the day/night dynamic from NFS explored to its full potential, where day is the wholesome festival racer and night is the illegal edgy underworld, but with actual consequences. For example, day could give you sponsorships and if you're spotted using your day race car to run from cops, you'd lose that sponsor and their bonuses.
Forza Horizon 3 kinda touched into that idea with its head-to-head system, street race events and midnight battles (it's actually how you unlocked certain vehicles, by "racing for pinks"), but then they turned a full 180 in FH4 and made it so that the underground events were just sanctioned simulations of illegal street racing as part of the Horizon festival.
I still need to catch-up from some of the stories for my cars in that game. I only got my 240sx (180sx) all the way to the max but I didn't unlocked the classic OST yet because of the BS requirements to do so.
Racing games have been going downhill since the 2010s. The late 90s and 2000s were peak racing games and while sure current games are a lot more realistic and modern they don't have the charm or satisfaction that the old games did like the midnight club games
I feel like the reason racing games are dying is because they are not splitscreen like before, a lot of us used to play NFS underground with our siblings, NFS Used to be simple and chill super arcade game that barely punished you for not braking around corners NFS is still an arcade game but not as much as before. Racing games are becoming more realistic/sim so the people playing racing games are people that actually love cars IRL the racing games that are thriving today are sim racing games and you need a wheel if u want to have the most fun.
Yeah not having split screen is definitely a con, but I don’t think it’s a make or break for these games Couch co-op isn’t quite what it once was, but regardless, I still think it should be a standard in most games that could support it; cause like, why the hell not?
that and The Crew style always online games like NFS 2015, TDU Solar Crown, The Crew Motorfest, and Forza Motorsport 8 could basically kill the genre as a whole, as in no way you'll ever enjoy these games in any shape or form whenever your internet gets cut off or EA/Ubisoft/Microsoft/Nacon decides to put an end to the online services for these games for good
@@adlibbed2138 definitely a HUGE problem we’re only just starting to see the effects of I wish games were just on the disk man, it’s not too much to ask for
I feel like a big problem is that indie developers can’t really break into this market effectively. Indie devs are responsible for every major success I can think of for the past 5 years but racing games hasn’t seen much love. I think it’s because they can’t afford licences for the cars. We expect to know what cars we’re driving, some of us prefer to drive specific brands. But each car comes with (I assume) a massive price tag. If a developer wanted to make a game like NFSMW 05, they would need to have about 20 or so cars in the game for the player to use and customise (to maintain that rags to riches style progression). If each car cost $1000 to license (which is a significant low ball estimate) then the development cost for the game starts at $20,000. The only way around this would be to do what Rockstar did with GTA (make off brand versions) or use models that certainly look like the real thing but has a few off details to make difficult to prove. The more successful a game, the more likely someone will lawyer up.
Great observation. I was thinking to myself while reading other comments why indie developers haven’t pushed into this space. I hadn’t t considered the licensing issues which would seem like a massive barrier to anyone starting out
Night Runners needs way more praise in this aspect. It's almost exactly what you're saying (though at a smaller scale). It avoids liscencing by using copycat cars with changed names (might have licensing issues at release) though due to small team, at launch it will have only 10 cars, though even with only one car currently playable, it feels very diverse, especially due to crazy amounts of visual customization and engine modifications. Highly highly suggest giving it a try since it's free on steam. Unfortunately it won't come to consoles as he actually mentions half way through the video meaning it won't catch mass success but is a phenomenal game nonetheless.
Gemini with their Tokyo Xtreme Racing 1 and 2, didnt have licensed cars, they just use the chassie code (which anyone can use) and took out the decals or just removed a part of the decals and they got away with it.
I dunno, the license thing is stupid excuse. You can perfectly fine make your own car designs based on real ones, and make your own lore. beamNG does this, just as GTA as you mention. No need to shill real brands to make an awesome racing game. The main reason I think is, too few Indie designers care about racing games. They all want to make a Zelda clone or a shooter, can barely find tutorials or devlogs on indie devs making properly fun racing physics for example. And most people who can create cars rather spend their effort making mods for existing games (like I'm doing) than going through all th effort of making an entire game. Also the publicly available game engines like unreal and unity, are not greatly suited for racing. You have to do a lot of custom code to to make it a proper racing game. While a 3th person action adventure or an FPS game like game is easy to start there. It shouldn't be too hard today to make an indie game with similar quality to fun old racing games. If you don't want to expect current gen graphics.
The one racing game I was looking forward to was Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown but then I found out that the actual racing will be essentially multiplayer-only. I'm not a competitive racer, I never will be a competitive racer, I just want to have fun in single-player mode as was possible in the previous Test Drive Unlimited games. I know the Jedi Mind Trick I've seen tried on those of us who are complaining is that "Test Drive Unlimited was always an MMO", which isn't really true. Test Drive Unlimited was always a (sub-)series that had the option to play as an MMO if you wanted to play that way but the first two games also had full-fledged single player career modes for those of us who are simply uninterested in multiplayer. There are faint rumblings that Nacon may be considering adding single-player racing, which I hope is true because I won't be buying it otherwise.
@@SteveBrandon for me that's the last good non-mandatory-online racing game. It has that PS2 feel and in fact the one that lead me into playing PS2 racing games after i ran out of it.
Aw man really I haven’t been keeping up with it but TDU Solar Crown was the most promising racing game I’d seen in a while If it’s all just straight up multiplayer that’s such a damn shame. But hey, like I said in the video, I’m done getting my hopes up anyway.
@@SteveBrandon If you're into PS2 era racing games, you owe it to yourself to try out Wreckfest. It's basically a spiritual successor to the Flatout series. It's the only racing game I've played in a very long time where you could see that the developers main goal when making the games, was for it to be fun.
I recently played through Underground 2 again, and it really stuck out to me how deliberate the design of every part of the map is, even to the point that the COLOURS let you tell which part of the city you're in. The atmosphere is just perfect. I was also attached to my 240SX from start to finish, and it's awesome how much every performance upgrade changes the driving feel, like it's so noticeable going from a rickety clutch that stops your acceleration for a good second every shift to a sporty transmission that lets you zip through gears.
ive been playing racing games since as a kid, and man games certainly changed a lot after the 2010s rolled out. that decade was truly memorable to be as i could get to experience most of the games during that time, (nfs hp 2010, blur, mw12, split second, tdu2) and most of the games something had in common, they were just simply fun. whether they financially did great or not, they simply were better than the modern games we have nowadays.
I gotta say NFS: Heat was a breath of fresh air when it first dropped man…I didn’t bother with Unbound because I don’t like all the graffiti effects and it turns out it wasn’t all that anyway…I went to a retro gaming store and saw NFSU2 and Most Wanted 2005 for sale and I’ve been addicted to them, the atmosphere of those games back then are just something else… maybe it’s nostalgia but idk, it just feels like I’m in a fast and furious movie when I’m playing those
Dude, your take on nfs unbound is dead on. If they re-added pursuit breakers to the mix the cops would be totally fine, but they refuse to. And the driving physics are worse than most racing games on PS1. 0% consistency.
i think you mean 'pursuit breakers', not 'speed breakers', pursuit breakers were where you crashed in to something and it killed all police nearby, speed breaker is where the game went in to slow motion
@sssveden no no the physics trash real racing 3 has better but that's because I'm more of a sim racing player so I play assetto corsa, beamng, forza motorsport and horizon not the arcade physic style like nfs or the crew which I got all just got the unbound for the convertible mustang and the crew because it was almost cheap but they still don't get play time well unbound did till I was able to get the mustang after that I quit because I can't stands cops and the driving physics I won't even gone unlock the car but I told myself you paid 70 for it so yeah
The reason why some of ya'll think unbound's handling is because your a sim racer, an og nfs player, or just suck at driving. When i first played unbound i hated the handling, but that because i sucked. But later on i started to adapt to the handling.
Midnight club and nfs underground: here's a bunch of bumpers, skirts, hoods, roof scoops, rims, spoilers, wide body, neon, nitrous shooting out from your engine, do whatever Forza: here's a strip of carbon fiber for your front bumper and the same spoiler for 99% of the cars in our game so we can say you can customize over 500 cars
This video popped up on my feed right below FM4’s OST “Paris Rouen,” and just hearing the heart behind that track alone triggered a load of nostalgia making me long for the glory days of racing games. The algo works in mysterious ways.
Not tying to gatekeep but this is an arcade racing game problem, recently sims have probably been in the best period they’ve been in for a while, sims are usually just not made by these big companies because sim racing is pretty niche so sim devs are people passionate about cars and racing. Edit: seems like this guy doesn’t like gran turismo so this video definitely isn’t about the sim sub genre at all.
The biggest problem holding modern racing games back are the car companies themselves, racing games have become big advertisements for car companies. Every game story has to be about a character with no personality who want to be the best because ...they want to be the best... (I'm not saying NFS Carbon or Driver SF were Shakespearian in comparison but at least they tried to give us a story). On top of this it feels like modern racing games are just going through the motions, no real variety or unique events (Standard circuit race, sprint race, drift events where your the only person participating, maybe a drag race and some form of off road event.) What happened to things like canyon duel from Carbon. Heck why has need for speed never had an event type where to you loose if your car drops below a certain speed? Anyone else feel like since 2015 event open world racing game set in a city have had a pretty generic layout, all straight lines and 90' turns?
Yeah that is definitely a HUGE problem that I have no idea how to fix. Cause if a publisher represent a car in a game that isn’t the way a manufacturer wants them to, even something as simple as having an antagonist drive X brand of car, they could be in for a whole wealth of trouble, which seriously sucks and is probably why we don’t see developers pushing the boundaries anymore, it’s just not worth it when they can make a guaranteed profit with micro transactions and playing it safe. It’s just sad
@@Viseak It gets worse, Ubisoft have recently stated that there are Car Companies who now will not License to Games that have an Age Rating Higher than an ESRB E/PEGI 3, and it is Near impossible to have an Antagonist, and thus a Story, at a PEGI 3 Rating (as, being Government Controlled, it is often a lot Stricter than an ESRB E) as the slightest wrong bit of Dialogue that the Video Standards Council (A British Government Department that runs the PEGI in the UK and the EU) see as "Bullying" , "Smacktalk", or "Aggressive" and that Rating goes up to a 7 or a 12 in a Heartbeat! This is why they are having issues getting some Licenses for Motorfest, some of the Car Companies are Objecting to the T/12 Age Rating ... sadly, the annoying thing is, if Ivory Tower patched out the utterly Unnecessary Profanity and Blasphemy in the Music and Dialogue, they could easily get that Game down to 3/E! get those Licenses and get more Sales! (including one to Me, as I cannot abide Blasphemy nor Profanity, and thus their Presence has stopped me buying the Game, even when it was 75% off and deeply tempting!), as the Car Companies only want to License to Squeaky Clean, Family Friendly Games now! EA have also stated that there are Several Car Companies who will not License to "Street" Games, in fact, they have openly said it is becoming near Impossible to get Licenses for NFS now! as they are only willing to License to Festival Racers! Festival Racers are becoming so common now, because, basically, there are Car Companies who are Demanding that Games have to be Festival Racers or they will not License to them! The Car Companies are basically Responsible for this Ultra Squeaky Clean, Sterile, Corporate, Child Friendly, Approach, because they are so worried about their Public Relations Images being Damaged in the Middle East, which is becoming a Vital Market, but where Games, in many Cases, have only been Legal for Sale for less than 5 Years, are still Treated with Extreme Suspicion and Distrust, and the Slightest mistake that Breaks one of the Myriad Societal, Cultural, and Religious Taboo's in that Part of the World could cause them immense Pubic Relations Image Damage in a Vital Market, something they just cannot afford to happen, and the only way to avoid that is to ensure the Game is as Clean and Sterile as Possible by being a 3 Rated, Family Friendly, Festival Racer.
@@simeonyves5940 Even though I understand why licensing exist, it is pretty toxic overall. It's also the reason why past racing games are never remastered or remade and pretty sure also why the games gets removed from stores to be removed for purchasing forever. I never understood the car manufacturers logic or reasoning when it comes to video games and marketing tbh. It's just seem kinda random and illogical to me overall. Regardless, game companies could opt to go for fictional cars to circumvent the issue but from history it has shown that few takes those games seriously and they suffer heavily in sales numbers as a result so they don't really have much choice.
I’d say NFS comes the closest to getting it right, however these developers don’t have the right mindset. They tried their best but there’s a fundamental lack of understanding of what made older games good. Whether it’s from the fossils in corporate or the young developers with their silly ideas things are just kinda lame now.
That’s what gets under my skin the most, cause they ARE trying, but somehow they just keep missing the mark and it’s the most frustrating thing to witness from the background
It's clear that a lot of the devs left between NFS 2015 and Heat/unbound. Very clear. The story/characters/writing is just downright cringeworthy in heat and unbound. My buddy was playing unbound and it was near the start, I forget what was said But I was honestly baffled by how whack and childish the writing was. People hate on 2015 cutscenes but that shit was amazing, it made that whole game feel very real along with the insanely realistic city in Ventura bay. It truly is underground 3.
@@NewDesignVinylGraphics I agree hole heartedly “2015” was great. I’ll take the few moments of cringe over the constant cringe in the new stuff any day.
@@NewDesignVinylGraphicsmany hated on 2k15 cutscenes but imo they were goated, and it is quite ironic they got shit on for the actor's style cuz that's pretty much the same style of the MW05 that everyone jacks off to
@@briancastro313 Bro nah, 2015 and most wanted 05 don't have the same style of acting at all, not whatsoever, not in a million years, 05 is goofy but charming, unintentionally funny, and has that early 2000's "wannabe cool guy who's really lame" vibe, 2015 in comparison feels like what an average 2012 9gag user thinks cool is. And it's awful.
Halo and NFS are my childhood, to see them in the state they are now really hurts. I'm not joking when I day I wouldn't be the person I am today without those games.
@@Viseak I was 4 years old when my Dad didn't know what to do with me when my Mum had to go to appointments. So he taught me to play the PC port for Halo CE, look I was horrible and had many "skill issues" (I was 4 it was pretty much a Master Chief death montage) but even to this day Halo is still a massive bonding thing for me and my Dad
@@madnessarcade7447 if you watched the video you would hear the part in which he mentions older games games that have fallen off, in said list he includes non racing games, including... Halo, please understand what you are saying before you say it
NFS Unbound was the comeback title for Criterion Games as the NFS dev team. Prior to that, NFS Heat (2019) was the final installment Ghost Games worked on.
the issue isnt the games... its car culture, car culture has devolved so the media around it will too. are the games themselves bad? yeah totally, but thats because you dont need to put effort into a dying hobby. back in the 2000's it wasnt about the fastest cars it was all about tuning what you had. once that shifted to supercars, it got ruined because supercars companies are ANTI tuner and anti street racing, they dictate what goes in these games now.
Yeah I get what you mean, the supercar craze definitely hurts the genre The thing is you can still do cool stuff with certain Supercars/Exotics, but like you were saying, I doubt the companies behind them would ever allow that to happen because they’ve got an ‘image’ to uphold
Yep, car culture is dead. Cars themselves are as dull as ever. All cars look the same now, being made by algorithms/programs for optimization and cost minimization, while also needing to conform to the same strict regulation and safetey framework. EV and SUV's everywhere isn't exactly exciting to race in a video game. Supercars have no characters, they may be extremely fast but they are ugly and boring imo . The age of man and machine is over. The beauty of cars and motorsport was the innovation, creativity and unique identity that each manufacturer had. All gone now.
We need EA to make an All in One bundle of the games from Underground to Undercover. No DLC necessary, completely functional when offline and on top of it all with split screen support
Honestly you’re right, a Master Chief Collection style game with all the old racing titles would be insane They don’t even need to be remastered, I just wanna play them with quick loading times on a modern console (I’m aware this is possible on PC but we ain’t all PC enjoyers)
I don't trust them to do it. Plus do you really want to give EA more money? These big publishers need to fail or loose tons of money, they need to feel the consequences of their actions. EA ruined many studios and game engines over the years. Just get the old games. Straight up sail the high seas if you need to. I personally bought the Black pc versions of MW 2005 and Carbon and preserved them on my hard drive. And the btw @Viseak if you have Xbox game pass you like you mentioned are part of the problem. They want us to get the subscription, they make more money that way and it's not a good model for the consumer. Gamers need to protect their wallets a bit more and have higher standards. A videogame industry crash would be a good thing.
@@westonstaufenberg7278 hey man, don’t hate the player, hate the game As it stands, gamepass is probably the best value you can get as a consumer in the industry, especially when so many products just fall apart and you’d feel horrible paying full price for em (like Unbound lol) The problem is, is it the best thing for developers? Does the business model help them create great games? Maybe not, I don’t know the ins and outs of the industry because I’m not in the industry. However, as a consumer, that’s not my problem to figure out, what am I gonna do? Call the avengers? That’s Microsoft’s issue to sort, not some random bloke in Australia’s issue. With that being said, it’s not like I don’t buy games anymore. When something comes along that truly feels worth it, something like Elden Ring, Armored Core 6, Cyberpunk 2077 (at least now lmao) then I’ll buy it. I want to put my dollars towards supporting games I feel are genuinely worth it, and I’d say a lot of people fall into that category as well. And to be clear I don’t constantly hold a gamepass subscription, but when a game comes out I’m a little iffy on, like Persona 3 Reload for example, I’d rather cop the $18 month of gamepass and try it out rather than waste close to $100 on the full game and find out I don’t even enjoy it. That gap used to be filled by rental services like Blockbuster but we’re never going back to that, so it’s really the next best thing and idk how else you’d plan to fill that void.
Response on the morale of the video: The same goes to everything Today, the trend is fast content With the rise of TikTok, people loses their patient and attention span. Racing games, being the least interesting genre, has to throw everything they have at you to keep most players playing and I think it's logical for most game studios to do this as they are not charities. To be honest, I'm not really upset by this, I'm still able to find joy within these "soulless ganes" because a lot of the time, they aren't, they just changed to something else. Instead of locking content behind play time, they now lock content behind free updates (BeamNG, Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, etc). Response on your point on Forza Horizon: First, Forza Horizon hasn't really changed all that much(except for the storyline, that's a huge downgrade). It's always the festival simcade racer that priorities freedom. The reason why people is feeling fed up by this, it's because the competition started copying their formula. The new Forza Horizon doesn't have soul and the developers doesn't have passion on the game? This question alone is a disgrace to the developers whom is constantly updating the game, listening to feedback, and answering request from the community. Yes, when the game launched it wasn't near good, the map is the worst among all entries and the progression system is filled with flaws but why people keep on playing? That's because the game is constantly updating, filling up with something new by both the community and officials. Now, the players are even starting to appreciate the beauty of the game map. You can always find something new, something beautiful and make friends along the way. Isn't that what racing games were always trying to achieve? Something I want to say: Things needs to evolve and they always does. The first generation of super computer is nowhere near close to today's worst computer. Just like ChatGPT wasn't a thing before. We can admire the past but we cannot stay in the past or we'll be left with nothing but an abyss of shattered hopes.
I don't really play NFS, so I reckon I can't make any valid argument on the matter. I'm just trying to say as much as I can from my experience and thoughts growing up with mostly Simcade and Sim racers.(ie, GT, FM, FH, Dirt, etc)
The last racing game I fondly remember was Need for Speed Carbon. I loved that game honestly. Racked up quite the bounty in police pursuits with my 1970 Hemi Cuda. Mmm she was a beast. I think for me, the problem with racing games in general is that they lack any form of long-lasting engagement. Grand Turismo was fun, for like an hour. But it got boring racing laps with nothing else going on. The Burnout series was fun because trading paint was a key secondary element. At this point, the only racing games I would like to see now, would be a modern reboot of the Star Wars Pod Racer game.
Yeah that’s what’s wild to me, literally none of them can capture my interest for more than an hour or so max There’s no substance it’s all just so surface level and it really sucks
Carbon holds a special place in my heart, i remember playing it for first time on my bud's pc and getting blown away by the graphics and general aesthetic, not to mention the customization was top of the line with the inclusion of Autosculpt.
The only racing game I've been excited about since GT5 was Wreckfest. And somehow Wreckfest has some of the best arcade racing physics I've ever played. Its a bit of a different beast than things like NFSU2, NFSPS, GT4/5, FH3 and the like, but if you want a genuinely good modern racing game, I highly recommend it.
I was actually going to write a comment regarding wreckfest annd you went already ahead of me. It has an addictive gameplay loop, the driving feels awesome, the ost has this 2000 rock/heavy style attach to it. and hell, it's just plain fun to play it.
i've kinda lost interest in newer racing games that i resorted into buying a ps2 and a bunch of old racing games. the newer games just feels kinda stale IMO. the only "newer" racing game i play these days is wangan midnight maximum tune on the arcade. even that has a lot of recycled content in it. but hey at least for me racing games are a good way to spend time after work
I did the same thing years ago. Even bought NASCAR rumble, Star wars pod racer, juiced, automodlista, crash n burn, 187 ride or die, split second and blur because even the non main stream racing games focused more on fun and progression.
The reality is that it's not that racing games suck now, it's that _AAA_ games suck now. The big, high-visibility "sim" racers (sim in quotes because Forza and GT are lightweight sims compared to ones like Asseto Corsa) and open-world games with licensed vehicles and tons of marketing are all AAA games. There's a lot of indie racing games, passion projects, etc. out there that are really fun.
i have the same feeling with the starter car issue. Forza horizon 5 (and same for the 4th one, but less obvious) progression is pretty much absent, you can have access to end game races in like 5-10h of game, no incentive to use low class cars since you have hypercars given nearly directly when you start, while in the first one, you start with low class car, and then have to win to use higher tier cars. Damn, was happy when i've tried Hot wheels DLC when i've saw that they put this system of locking higher tiers cars behind a win wall
Right? Like it’s just natural progression why the hell get rid of that for instant gratification? Probably in part to sell micro transactions straight away (cause I guess it’d be kinda gamebreaking to lock ‘good’ cars behind a paywall when no comparable cars are unlockable at the start), and if there were actual progression they wouldn’t be able sell you the ‘good’ cars right away cause you wouldn’t be able to use them until the late game, and these corps aren’t gonna wait for you to maybe spend 10 hours playing until they can make their way into your wallet. I probably could’ve worded that better but I think I’ve made some sense lol
Honestly the progression system of the hot wheels dlc was really the only thing that kept me playing. It was fun to work upwards. After I finished it I put fh5 down and haven't touched it in months
I like cops in my racing games when cops are fun. Not when they’re impossible to escape like heat or practically nonexistent like in 2015. I loved running from the cops in most wanted and Carbon it was one of my favorite things to do. I’d hop on Carbon for the sole purpose of causing trouble. My gripe with unbound’s cops is the lack of pursuit breakers. The cops stick to you pretty hard and the only method you have of fighting back is ramming them or getting lucky with traffic. Adding pursuit breakers would make the cops much more fun in unbound. I agree the burst nos sucks and forces you to race in a way that’s not fun or interesting, but the ridiculously fast competition in single player is actually a feature in my opinion. One thing Unbound made clear is that you’re not expected to win every race. You’re supposed to work your way up to it and I like that. Every arcade racing game I play is almost always disappointingly easy even on the hardest difficulty I never feel like I spend much time fighting for 1st and when I have it it’s smooth sailing to the finish. Unbound made me fight for it and while on the higher speed tiers the rubber banding was bullshit and terrible, it was great in the beginning. I see why they gave a limited amount of restarts but come on, let perfectionists be perfectionists My BIGGEST gripe about modern nfs in general is the fact that classic muscle cars are ALWAYS cucked out of any sort of performance!
Oh man, I hated the cops in Heat! It's like they knew where you were at all times and it was almost impossible to hide. They were relentless to the point of it not being very fun. And not very realistic when you don't have to do much at all to get them on you. IMHO, I have the same problem with other NFS games developed by Criterion. I don't like how the way they code their cops. Now, mind you, if someone could figure out how to add a Nemesis-style system in a future NFS game, that'd be golden!
@@patrickdodson1713 I don't find the difficulty frustrating, but the lack of ability to fight back. Most wanted made your car and indestructible brick, hot pursuit gave you weapons to fight back, but heat made your car break after 3 hits
@@ileutur6863 Yes, the lack of being able to fight back was definitely annoying. In fact, in Heat, the cops were so relentless. They would be on you for the slightest things, and knew where you were at all times. And Past NFS games were not like this. Whatever happened to line of sight? The games should make the player feel like they can escape successfully, without being rammed by cops all the time.
@@patrickdodson1713the cops in heat were not that difficult, there was plenty of ways to lose them all over the map from jumps, to open fields, to tight corridors. The AI merely goes to your last suspected location and does a search, if you just stay out of their los you can easily lose them. However, in the same vein you shouldn't be expecting to run from a heat level 4 or 5 easily in a mid level car, there needs to be consequences.
The reason I think why it had all that stuff is because of value people wanna feel like they are getting their money’s worth so they think more content = better game even if it isn’t true
I think Project CARS 2 had that secret sauce that made it incredibly memorable and comforting to play. It introduced me to several cars I now have a ton of love for (the Ligier JSP2 being just one example), and even introduced me to Rallycross. On a related note, Indy Car is psychotic and all of the drivers clearly have a cocktail of Red Bull and 5 Hour Energy running through their veins instead of blood. No one can convince me otherwise.
Never played Project Cars 2 myself but it looks like a great sim racer, might have to check it out someday And yeah you could say the same for a lot of the peeps in motorsports, insanity but cool as all hell
@@Viseak Also, I saw another comment suggesting Gran Turismo 7, and to be honest, I think that game should be avoided. It's always online, and it's full of Modern Gaming pitfalls and baffling design choices that severely damage what would otherwise be a very solid game. Sure, it's been improved by updates, but it's still nowhere near as good as the classic GT games (i.e. all of the ones prior to GT Sport)
@@NineNovem very fair, and a shame I don’t own a PS5 anyhow so I doubt I’ll be delving into GT7 anytime soon hahaha Can always play GT5 if I get the itch
I completely disagree with your opinion on Unbound. Nobody is forcing you to use burst nitrous and it's absolutely not needed to win any singleplayer races, even on the hardest difficulty - well at least if your car is fast enough, and you're decently skilled at racing games. I often just don't use it at all and race like that while still racking win after win... I also don't get bashing on the driving physics, you can literally turn off brake to drift, stability control, and other crap like that to actually gain control over your car. You can finally go full grip without drifting on every corner, also grip racing is now actually FASTER than drifting - It's finally the way it should've been from the very start. No offence, but from the clips in this video I can clearly see you're not good at this - trying to drift a FWD car, not using racing lines, etc. So if the game's too hard for you; my brother in Christ, just choose a lower difficulty setting. It's there, and it even gives you more restarts for the night, without any negatives whatsoever - you still earn the same ammount of rep and cash. It's really not the game's fault, you can tweak your experience however you like, yet you actively choose to have it up the hill. The only point I agree with is the cops, as they really can be a huge pain in the ass at times. It's not the same feeling as in Most Wanted, where it was fun, challenging, and stressful at the same time, while in Unbound cop chases are just annoying.
I’m not gonna act like I’m some god at racing games, but I’m not THAT bad by any stretch The racing in Unbound just didn’t gel with me, no matter what I did I just couldn’t quite figure it out. The cars would never do what I wanted them to do, and I purposely put in footage of me struggling rather than cherry picking moments where I kinda got it to illustrate that point. To be clear, I’m not using brake to drift in a fwd car cause I think it’s supposed to work, I’m doing it cause it’s really the only option. The cars not fast enough to get any value out of grip turns, so at a bare minimum spamming brake to drift (which just works on a fwd car anyway cause arcade racer I guess) is the only thing that works to fill burst nos, which is the only real thing getting you ahead. I had the same issues in my S14 I started the game with, cars just seem to fuckin go everywhere in Unbound, you’ve got so little true control it feels like trying to hold a stick of butter. Make the tiniest nudge in your joystick and suddenly you’re fishtailing everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s some tuning I could’ve done to make it a little better but even then, no matter what I changed or how I tried to play, it all felt like I was being tunnelled down into burst nos, if I wasn’t spamming A I wasn’t getting anywhere, and that’s a fundamental flaw. Sure, I could’ve lowered the difficulty, and sure, I might’ve won more, but that doesn’t change the way the driving in the game feels which is my main problem. I don’t mind a challenge, I don’t need to win every time, hell I love games like Dark Soul, but with Unbound, when it feels impossible without using the games niche mechanics, it’s kinda annoying. (And I get it, it’s a new mechanic, it should be used, that’s the purpose of adding it in the first place, and I’m not against innovation, but I just don’t gel with the way it seems to change everything about driving which is a real thing that should feel a certain way). And yeah, the cops are honestly my biggest frustration even above burst nos I feel like I didn’t emphasise that enough. Even just then, I spent 10 minutes running away from the police trying to get back to my garage to check if I was on the lowest difficulty. Could I have googled it? Sure, but far out I didn’t expect to be bombarded like that. Even if we can’t agree man, I’m glad you had fun with the game, AND, I’m glad you shared your experience. Not everyone’s gonna agree with me and that’s cool
Its the lack of real suspension tuning, tire pressure etc. all the grip to drift bar does is open and lock your cars diff. (At best) It doesn’t soften up springs to soak up bumps better. You cant put more tire pressure in there rear than in the front to break into a slide easier. Softer front allows more direction. Alot of other components that were once customizable are now static. Unbound could literally add a handbrake strength bar and the game is already 10x better in the driving department. I think suspension tuning and dyno tuning is the easiest way to open a more competitive skill gap and allow diverse handling tuned to your style of driving.
@@dusterpl6093 bro it’s all love here I don’t care if we don’t share the same views, it’s cool, this channel never has been and shouldn’t ever be an echo chamber People are always gonna have different opinions it’s a fact of life so why get bent out of shape for it you know? You took the time to watch and leave a comment on my video that had substance even though you don’t like/agree with what I said, and I gotta respect that enough to at least give you the time of day. Different story if you just threw out a ‘you suck you’re wrong’ or something lmao
I agree with this comment. I think Unbound's handling is great - it's biggest issue is its not very clear on how to actually use brake-to-drift. Once you actually modulate the throttle and control the angle of the car, drifting is an absolute joy in this game, resembling something closer to Daytona USA. But the game doesn't tell you this - it just says how to initiate, and every drift feels like a slow, oversteering mess. The video shows a lot of oversteer which absolutely is frustrating. Grip driving has a similar approach - you need to modulate the throttle far more in this game than the Black Box or 7th gen Criterion NFS games. I think Unbound has a lot of issues, like as noted with the poor collision detection, and the cops are very aggressive. I like the style of the game even if it feels completely fabricated. I think the event structure is not given enough credit here - IIRC, lower tier races are typically on the east end of the map, and the higher tier events and safehouses in the west are available as the weeks go by - but it's not as explicit as the Black Box games. The same event structure and game design/ progression really does emphasize the relationship with your car - you're not going to come first, your going to be hard on money, and that's OK. It's a challenging game until you wrap your head around it. I get that it's different than past NFS games in many, many ways, but I don't think that makes it bad. Are there issues with the general direction of racing games? Absolutely, as this video generally hits on. While not perfectly addressing all the problems of modern racers, I do think Unbound gets closer to answering those qualms than most.
I remember sitting down at a demo at i wanna say it was a best buy where they had a gaming pc with dirt 3 and a force feedback wheel setup and it blew my mind out of the back of my head. It was never quite the same when I got my own setup at home, idk if it was the lower end wheel or how inconvenient it was to setup, or the fact that it had been several years since that demo but I just didn't enjoy it as much.
I personally am loving NFS Unbound, finding the driving, the burst NOS, the cops, even the story and dialogue a lot of fun so far. Though I do think you're right about how great NFSU2 is - unlocking certain parts of the map as you progress (meaning the map has more of a memorable set of distinct districts with their own flavour rather than a big blob of roads like heat and unbound have), the vast array of customization where they weren't scared to make each car have 40 hideous but charming bumpers and spoilers instead of just rocketbunny, and the slow reveal of cars!
I’m glad you enjoyed it seriously, more power to you I wish I could too but there’s just too much that irks me to look past. But that’ll never be a universal experience so again if you liked it it’s cool The vast customisation is something I really miss too, just random unofficial bits and bobs that kinda look cool for the sake of it. Now it’s mostly official brands and there are so few of them that’d allow themselves to be in an illegal street racing game. Like you can still get cool real life parts like Mugen, Toms, MINE’s etc but getting licensing to put them in games might be a challenge.
@@ViseakUnbound has a ton of fake parts All the Carbon, Chidori, Nextech, etc parts are fake 9/10 the speedhunter parts are fake too Personally I was impressed to see some lesser known kits/parts like the Vorsteiner kits, Voltex kits, Mansory kits, most Varis kits, etc
21:50 as someone with astigmatism... yes, yes it really does look like this for me, particularly in urban areas at night, I really try to avoid night driving when i can because of it.
Eh skill issue. I think there’s just something missing in the progression department for newer games. Making you actually work for the things you need. The new Forza Motorsport does that kind of but some of the races are long and I haven’t played it in a while.
Yeah I didn’t completely hate the Forza Motorsport system (although sure it probably could’ve been better); but the game didn’t really have much that’d keep me coming back anyway so I dropped it after a few hours
Forza Motorsport's new progression is a waste of time to put it at best. There's no other reason than just increase playtime for doing race after racer with the same car with less tracks with meaningless rewards. It's plain out boring compared to the early games which didn't gave a false sense of progression and so much passion to them. Now it's just so vapid and uninspiring.
Thing I hate about most modern racing games is that there's no actual attachment to your personal car. It's due to the fast pace, billion classes and upgrade limitations bullshit, and shit storytelling sometimes. Cars don't have character anymore like they did in underground 1/2 or most wanted or carbon. They are just toys... They used to have their own visual dialogue with the player and now they are nothing but empty shells. Let's talk about Need For Speed games: For example, just remember any boss/side character car from MW, Carbon or Underground. You can literally feel how powerful/tricky they are, you know their own individual personality and emotion they make you experience. In Underground 2 it was 350z, it was a legend, it's recognizable not only because of the livery, it was a side character on it's own, appearing in cutscenes or in the beginning of the game, it had a story that was about IT. Same with M3 GTR, you drove it, it was hurt(intentionally), taken from ya, then you had to take it back, it was a HUGE part of the story and almost entirely centered around that car(and other boss cars. Remember how they all had their individual cutscenes?). Unbound tried to do that, but failed miserably... They tried to replicate MW but they forgot to give the car personality. Yes, you get a bit attached, and then it gets taken from you, but here's the kicker. M3 didn't lose it's face, it fixed because it was broken. Silvia in unbound wasn't broken, it wasn't a part of you, it was simply a toy that you and your friend used. THEN, it gets stolen and altered. Like... I didn't even recognise the car at first. How am I supposed to feel anything when you just put a different car in front of me and say it's mine. No it isn't, I didn't drive this shit. They have completely butchered my boi. Like, you get what I mean? They used to have something that made em stand out... In Unbound they ripped the personality out of the car and made it into a human being. Cars just became tools of those "personalities". A cheap representation. Heck, EVEN ALL BOSSES ARE CHANGING CARS LIKE COME ON... Where's that feeling of "I worked on this monster my whole life to beat YOU!" Like for example bosses in MW or Carbon. Unbound is just kids with gazzilion dollars playing with cars because their parents are car manufacturers or something. I get that it's the "New era" of street racing but it doesn't mean you can't make a car that stands out. It doesn't mean you have to just make them empty and eliminate all the meaning in showing them off. Why should I even want to get that car back, if it doesn't even have anything resembling the car I drove. Papi's Camaro in Heat was great. It had a small bit of story that made it stand out, it should have been a hero car instead of that pointless show off Polestar... I have no Idea why they didn't just pursue that road. I guess batlepass is more important than captivating story. You can't make players make connections with your game, and want to return if you don't even put personality in your CARS you present, not to mention human characters lol... (Also when your car roaster consists almost entirely of hypercars but that's down to personal preference. SKILL ISSUE I guess)
I wish I could just say "skill issue" and that all the games are fun to play, you're just getting older and thus the games aren't entertaining any more. How ever, as you referenced, many other RUclips content creators have voiced many similar opinions on the state of racing games, not just in general, but also in specific. One who I feel has given a wonderful insight would be Roflwaffle who did a video titled "Nostalgia Bias in the Racing Game Community" which touches on many of the same points that you made. Anything from what many people considered to be peak racing games like the EA Black Box Need For Speed Games and Midnight Club 3 / Dub Edition, to even more simulation based games such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport. I personally feel the biggest problem that we have is a grand disconnected between what we as a consumer want versus what developers want, and subsequently producers expect. Referencing Roflwaffle, comments that are often made or "Why can't they just make Need For Speed like they used to?" or "Why can't they just remake (insert game title)?" At the same time, newer games are getting critically panned by fans with simplistic statements about "(insert game title) sucks, don't play it, it's not worth your time or money." This is terrible for both consumers and developers because what we (hopefully as a collective) want and don't want isn't being accurately articulated to the developer. At the same time, whether by developers choice or producers choice, new elements are introduced to new or existing game franchises, because if we just want more of the old stuff, we can just get the old game that already does what we want. Unfortunately, a large contributor to the problem is consumerism in general. What keeps developers employed is releasing product for consumers to purchase. Because of this, we've seen many series turn into a regularly iterated franchise. While this is most prominent in traditional sports games so as Madden and NBA 2K, we see similar problems with racing games as well. For instance, Need For Speed EA BlackBox games were released yearly starting from 2002 to 2008, with the highlight being Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted, and Carbon. In some ways, this allowed for iterative development, but it also meant for those who enjoyed the tuner scene, from the time we started Underground to the time we finished Undercover, the series became bland and stale. Couple this with people who complained that Hot Pursuit 2010 and and Most Wanted 2012 were bad and wished that EA would return to "Need for Speed's roots" ignored what EA did for the original Need for Speed games. With all of this said, it isn't explicitly we the consumers fault. As mentioned, triple a development, budgets, and profit margins lead to a large problem as well. Gone are the days of our fun on the fifth and sixth generation gaming where developers were allowed to try new and interesting things. In today's market, if a games profit isn't exceedingly shadowing the budget, it's viewed as a critical failure, doomed to at best go dormant, and at worst become extinct (Midnight Club is cancelled soz). The truth of it for me is that I can ignore aesthetics like film grain and rain, the analysis paralysis from too many choices and too large of map, I can even ignore a car roster being too big or too small. I cannot ignore that the games are just no longer fun. I do feel that you hit the nail on the head, that much of what we have been offered does need to be scaled back. We need a good story that gives a reason to continue playing, we need good objectives that give us a good reason to continue playing, and we need a sense of progression that makes us feel like we're reaching some form of conclusion. The greatest problem is to get a good consensus for the consumer on what they want, to be able to present it to a developer for consideration, and to have some form of liaison between consumer and developer to be able to make adjustments, instead of the track that we're on that certain groups of consumers are ignored indefinitely, or in the event of something like Forza Horizon where everything is thrown at a wall and we see what sticks and what doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I loved the EA Black Box Need for Speed games, I loved Midnight Club 2 and 3 / Dub Edition, I even enjoyed some slightly obscure titles like Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Genki titles, Juiced, Street Racing Syndicate / The Fast and The Furious (Tokyo Drift), but the truth is you can only revisit a street racing game so many times, the same way you can only revisit circuit track racing games so many times, before it feels like there isn't much of anything new that can be done. I feel as a consumer, instead of reboots, we need more of a reset. We need the ability to have a clean break of what racing games were and what racing games have become, and focus more on what racing games can be.
Ah, I love when my own community gives me more good video essays to watch Already chucked Roflwaffles one into my watch later hahaha And you’re right, it’s true we can just go back and play the old games for that thing we want, but at the end of the day you can only do that so many times until you want a new iteration of that same thing. A perfect example for me is Armored Core 6, people have been FEINDING for a new entry for years and when we finally got it, it was fucking phenomenal. Sure, there were some small things some of the more vocal old heads weren’t 100% happy about, and that’s always gonna happen with any game, but overall, it had an extremely positive reception. It retained what made Armored Core so special and just brought that into the modern day, no significant cut backs, just straight GAS. That is what I want from a modern racing game and now I feel kinda dumb I didn’t mention it in the video lmao But I get it, it’s hard for publishers especially when you’ve got so many people pulling you in different directions, and I can imagine it’s a decision from much higher up the chain that micro-transactions MUST be implemented in some capacity, which is like, the one thing everyone unanimously agrees is hurting these games. It is hard to predict what people will want though, and like you said when they can’t iterate year on year like they used to (not that they ever truly had to) it does get harder to experiment, and I get people being over all the tuner games in the early 2000’s, they definitely fatigued that style the same way festival racers are super fatigued now. But yeah, like you’re saying as well, a game that actually makes you care is instrumental. It’s why single player games have started making a resurgence, everyone is sick of live service, it’s so ironic that the games with the most longevity aren’t the ones with ‘10 year plans’ behind them. Your last statement sums it up pretty well, a reset would be amazing, starting from the ground up and just delivering a complete product that can leave an impact is what racing games need, but likely, will never get.
And well, the part I find most depressing is that the fifth and sixth generation of gaming is where my fondness lies (I know, I'm showing my age). Using a game like Armored Core 6 as an example, I have much love for the first through third generation of Armored Core. Not that 4 / For Answer, 5 / Verdict Day, or 6 have done anything explicitly wrong, FromSoftware put forth much effort to not only give us great stories but also to give varied game play. But 4th, 5th, and now 6th generation Armored Core isn't first through third generation of Armored Core, the same way that Most Wanted 2012 isn't Most Wanted 2005. When it comes to Armored Core, I'm not fond of energy shields, auto / quick boost, and fps style controls, I like my traditional tank controls, barely managing energy values, and using square and circle to attack. I feel that my opinion of earlier generation Armored Core (and Need for Speed) is applicable to the comment that you had made about Night Runners. As previously stated, I do enjoy the Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Shotokuo battle styles games that Genki produced, and I do believe that it is 100% applicable to your notion of "setting a game in a time era", but I also agree with what you said about it being an independently developed game. I hope that it reaches main stream status, gains more traction and following, but the grim reality is that more than likely, other than people like you and I who are actively pining for something of this style, few people truly care about it, and it makes it hard for developers and producers to care. It's just frustrating that there are many of us that can identify an era, or even specific qualities of gaming, and say "We just want that again" and it's being missed. And the secondary problem to that falls back to what I was saying with consumerism, the only way we can make our voice heard is by buying what we like and not buying what we don't like, but frequently with developers if something fails to sale properly, it's considered a failure, and instead of critically examining why customers aren't purchasing the game, they decide that customers just don't want it at all (RIP Midnight Club / Smugglers Run). I still really think that the best thing that could be done is the formation of some kind of advocacy group where consumers can discuss what they want from who, and then that advocacy group to be a liaison between customers and developer / publisher to petition (hopefully) in the best interest of consumers.
@@TheChikyChiky Yeah that’s perfectly fair enough man, everyone’s got their own preferences and you’re right, it is beyond frustrating that we can point out an era we like, voice that we just want something iterating on that, and still have developers miss the mark and say ‘what’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy? We tried, we did what you wanted?’ Brother NO YOU DID NOT you tried to appease EVERYONE and ended up making NOBODY happy. And it’s not like I’m stuck in the past and just want Underground 2 again for example, I want something BETTER. Rather than a failed attempt at trying to recapture what made that game so special. I think that’s what AC6 did so right, there’s lots of love out there for ACFA and rightfully so, it’s bloody good. But fromsoft didn’t just make ACFA again, or anything a hell of a lot like it, they took what worked, and improved upon it, and gave us something completely new that iterated on what everyone loved. That’s what we need for racing games imo. Btw, I watched the Roflwaffle video, and it was great, can’t say I have a problem with anything he brought up outside of maybe some minor disagreements in the importance of a games OST, thanks for the recommendation man
I really do appreciate this back and forth, I eagerly wait for the next video, and I really hope that an Underground 2 Like (if that is applicable?) is developed and released soon. I get the impression that you're the kind of person who would be happy to sit down at a table with a beverage of choice and discuss a given topic with passion for endless hours, and I enjoy that.
@@TheChikyChiky hey no worries man, replying to comments and havin an actual conversation is one of my favourite things about RUclips, it shouldn’t just be an echo chamber of what I think And you’re right, get me going and I can yap about shit for hours with just about anyone
7:22 people seriously need to stop saying "free" when it should be "included". By that logic my electricity is completely free for 30 days after i pay the monthly fee. On a different note yesterday i bought New Star GP, an amazing arcade game that is just perfect in every sense of the way and i am having a blast.
The driving in modern NFS games is what puts me off personally. It's the reason I shifted to games like Assetto Corsa and BeamNG. Those are games where hitting the racing line perfectly is always the fastest way around a track. While in modern NFS games with that drift to turn mechanic and the nitro burst thing, it just forces you to drive in a very inefficient way.
Problem is that the story mode works around the the Café, the most elitist and higienist idea ever. Otherwise, there's no racers with own personalities, no plot, no drama. It's all about complete a car menu, learn about cars, repeat.
@@Drift4Driftersthat’s always been what GT is and what I want from the games. There is no BS subscription or whatever. They keep adding content for free. The only paid thing you can do is buy credits but it’s such an obviously bad purchase that nobody bothers (and I’m fine with that). At its core it’s still a sim-y racing game for nerds, that has the best car personalization it’s ever had, and an incredible VR experience if you want it. 8/10 game.
There is one big huge giant problem: In the old days, better cars, or better tuning meant better chances for victory. That changes with NFS Ghetto Tuning 1 and 2 (which OP seems to love). Which went all in with cheating AI. While in previous NFS games your disability to break in time was your biggest enemy, the took that away with utterly unrealistic driving physics and introduced rubber band ai from hell. Fast forward to today: Enemy AI does not really matter, nothing matters. You get a faster car? Hell, enemies get a faster car, too. You get a bigger engine? No Problem, YOU get a bigger engine and YOU get a better engine and YOU get a bigger engine, EVERYBODY gets a bigger engine. There is no progression if enemies progress with you. There is no sense of archievement, if you can beat nearly all(single player) races with a stock starting car. It is great for Multiplayer, but dear lord it sucks for SP.
Nah I agree with ya, the rubber banding is absolutely insane Like sure, the opposing cars do have to scale a little with you as you progress, otherwise there’s 0 competition, but to your point, it is kinda weird they progress in line with you so much that it feels like you aren’t progressing. I don’t hate the idea of there being a final boss or something crazy like that in a racing game though, similar to how souls games do it, where they give you an impossible boss to start with, literally a race you cannot win, and by the end of the game you progress far enough to be able to beat that driver. For a minute I thought they were gonna go down that route with Unbound and your car getting stolen but eh, not quite
Sounds more like an issue with rubberbanding AI rather than progression because difficulty scaling in video games is literally part of game design 101. Player gets better, game gets harder to match the player's skill and experience or else the game becomes too easy and unfun like beating up a vegetable.
A "locked" car should only be locked because either you can't afford it or the dealer won't sell you their high spec asset without you managing to go through some sort of licensing/driving school to show you're worthy of such possession. There could also be some kind of grifter aspect where you could cheat the system to get a huge loan and/or "talk yourself in" but it would involve risking your access to certain brands (maybe even tiers) for good. But that would be too realistic and the car brands wouldn't probably want that sorta thing in the game Getting endless amount of "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU JUST UNLOCKED A NEW CAR!" notifications after finishing a race is a really numbing experience. Maybe it's fine for some arcade without any credit/money system... but still annoying. (I'm looking at you Hot Pursuit, IIRC) I rather want to get the first shitbox to near max spec and see how far I can stretch it. I still have very fond memories of totally maxed out Renault Clio V6 RS in Most Wanted. It shot out from tight spots like a rocket, but being so light it was a task to keep it from police blockades when a ton of them were running at you at the same moment. Also Golf GTI in ProStreet. It felt just awesome on a Thrustmaster T500RS, as the front tire slip made the steering super loose. A MazdaSpeed3 was also a blast. As was the Nissan Pulsar GTI-R in GranTurismo. I remember finding it on the used car list and looking at the specs I noticed that it could possibly be a weapon once upgraded to max. And it was. Too bad at that time I had already played the game so much that I couldn't achieve much if anything anymore with it.
THIS!!! it was the most fun racing game back then, including Motorstorm (Apocalypse being the best) because at that time... racing games were like alot different in settings but alot more arcade-y than before. The thing i hate seeing on today's Racing game is that i feel like EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS THE SAME!! Its like ALL OF RACING IS NOW A SIM RACER which really bugs me out cuz there is nothing different out of any of them. Hot Wheels Unleashed is an Arcade to me because it doesn't simulate real-world drive because its an arcade racer. Split Second and Motor Storm apocalypse are my favorite of all time because i want to see desturction in racing with not just cars, levolution, buildingd, and explosions makes u feel like a badass and especially in Apocalypse when u ride through the Apocalyptic Wasteland with some maps that have Crumbling Buildings, Tornados, and ALOT of cool Set Scenes that happens during racing... its the same with Split Second, i love those types of Racing games!
Skill issue. I do wish someone would go back and make an old school street racer. What drives me most insane is all these modern racers get crazy high scores when in Forza horizon case they're no different to the previous game
Honestly, after going through school for video game design and programming, I feel that the biggest issue with the industry are the publishers. They are the ones that front the money to develop games, but they get that money from shareholders. So, they are always working to get more returns for less money.
Titles like ug, mw, carbon, prostreet, & 2015 had the vision for a good racing title, I sometimes imagine what 2015 would have been if it only had more content as prior titles,slightly bigger map aggressive cops, tons of customization to mix and match, autosculpt.. customization feels dry lately, and theyve even removed the option to shift with the analog stick which has been in prior titles and made it so you shift claw with lb and rb(Xbox) instead of adding multiple options, they need to use their imagination when it comes to parts apart from the stuff they get from actual manufacturers, I'm surey ou snd the viewers here have already pictured some awesome parts for the cars they use, what happened to roofscoops?... Picture a NFS with 2015 graphics & lighting, in a map detailed like carbon itd be awesome
Well I can say this, it started around the late 2000s and early 2010s. Since then media and entertainment has drastically gone down in quality. There are many reasons like social media influencers, the internet being more available, social generational change, smart phones etc. The last good generation was the PS2 era. The 360 and so forth was more interested in being as ''serious and cool'' as possible. What I mean is, we got more titles like Far Cry, Battlefield, CoD, FIFA etc that caters to a ''normal'' audience making the media even more mainstream and accessible. Since then we've been getting yearly to bi-yearly slop from the same franchise with little to no passion for monetization gain. And now that social-politics + always online DRM is also being force-fed into the entertainment I don't see myself going back anytime soon..
last good game that still had passion in it was fh3. There hasn't been any other open world racing game since that has been good. It's sad when a crash physics game (BeamNG) is still king of open world fun these days that has really fun gameplay and drifting mechanics. I don't expect much from test drive 3
Onrush had a soul. And the community left it to fucking die. Because "ITS CHASIJG THE HERO TREND". Also because it was primarily a car combat game with objectives instead of traditional races.
The thing that missing in most newer arcade racing games is sense of speed, motion blur, sound design, fov, road size, camera effect, driveclub and TT isle of man game are the best example, it's scary to go flat out in those game, but when i survived the high speed, i feels so rewarding
I think the small indie games can really hit it out of the park now, I recently played a game that was still being finished called "Night Runners", it was honestly the first time in a long while since I got hooked onto racing games. It really takes racing and gives it stakes, thrill, and sense of speed so many games lack. Realism racing has its own audience which will always be there, but I think having a crazy dynamic with a wild take on reality of street racing or just racing in general is what is needed.
Need for Speed has the best chance at this with the whole illegal street racing thing. Previous titles have had individually good things, but were not comprehensively good. Having higher risks, and a more gritty and unforgiving environment would completely boost the games especially online. Story def needs improvement but honestly online makes or breaks games nowadays.
One gameplay tip for Unbound, is for every race but the Sunday eliminators, you can make more money by running a lower specced car and getting bigger bet payouts with slower racers. So you strategically bet against someone you know won't win the race, but makes big bets, so you might only have to place 2nd or 3rd and win more money than having a max spec car and coming in 1st. You can also win enough money to fully spec out your car to win the weekly challenges without hitting 5 police stars everyday, which meant I spent a lot less time being chased by police. I feel most people's problem is they feel the need to win every race available for max money, get 5 stars before the night begins and then wonder why they spend all night being chased by cops. I would regularly end nights at 4 or 4.5 stars until I unlocked the police scrambler so they take longer to recognize you. It's trying to get you to play a certain way and I feel a lot of people just ignore the signs.
Come on, you're telling me the best way to "win" is not to come first place. In a street racing game. That's asinine. Good on you for figuring it out, but most people race to win, not to optimize cash payouts based on whatever nonsense system the game wants you to run.
i haven’t watched the full vid but an amazing racing game that recently dropped that i’ve been keeping an eye on for a bit now is Night Runners, it’s a 1 man made game that’s been the most promising racing game imo for the last 2-3 years it’s been in development- i suggest everyone check out Night Runners if you enjoy a mix of nfs underground ideals and games of that era + Wangan Midnight
@@Viseak i’m pretty sure it’s slowly being fully released as of a month or two ago actually, but definitely worth grabbing! also, not 100% sure you’d need a VM, as it’s a steam game if im not mistaken :)
There's a lot in this video, but the part that stuck out to me was the huge attempts at player retention and engagement that are used in new games. That is something that is present in other genres, as well. I find that when a game is constantly throwing stuff at me, I become less engaged and less likely to keep playing the game. The game is basically playing itself when it gets to the point where 10 things are unlocked or given to you after every small thing you do, because I didn't really do anything, but I'm unlocking a crap ton of things. This is one of the slew of reasons why I get more enjoyment out of older games, like NFS Most Wanted, or Call of Duty 4, for example. There is less to do and utilize, yes, but you spend more time with each way to play and each item to use, and you actually get to fully experience everything the game has to offer. These new games have a billion things to use and do, but most of it goes completely unused by the large majority of players and you're left with a game that is loaded with nothing but filler that is disguised as more "content". It's a facad, and the time spent on creating all this pointless extra stuff to give people a dopamine hit every 5 minutes cause they unlocked something they will never use could have been better used making the actual game itself much more polished and focused, and flat out be so memorable 20+ years later.
Yeah I can’t knock them for that, and honestly I don’t mind the styling of Unbound either for example The biggest thing for me is the gameplay, which is just, rough
@@Viseak yea they’re gonna release a new handling physics system with the new update i also feel like they should have kept heats police system but fixed the issue with cops basically killing you in one hit
Yo, life long racing game enjoyer over here. I definitely have a bit of a wish list: 1. I miss having "my" car that I slowly invest in over time like in need for speed underground or Gran Turismo 3/4. To really get that back they should put license restrictions in place, you should have to pass technical challenges to drive higher class rating cars, and those licenses should be gated behind "final boss" race events that are the culmination of the previous racing class. This will give you more incentive to actually learn to drive instead of just downloading the "all horsepower just follow the race line" tune 1b. remove the racing line. It's great for teaching concepts but terrible for creating a real racing experience where you take chances and actually learn the track. 2. Some cars just ARE faster than others, and that's fine. They really need to cool it with some of the "performance upgrades". Like sure it's fun putting race springs and a supercharger on a car, but the level of "upgrades" you can do are nonsense and turn the whole thing bananas. But if you get more time in events that are appropriate for your car then you have more fun without needing 1000 hp 3. A big part of the fun is building up to and then buying your dream car. And anyone who loves cars will have a bunch of dream cars they'd like to spend time on. Giving us more limited races (ie "RWD japanese cars from the 90s" or "turbo charged hot hatch") with realistic upgrade limits (no engine swaps or AWD swaps for starters) would let you actually enjoy the car you want in real life instead of being basically forced to drive the exact same Audi TT rs as everyone else. 4. Another part of the fun of these games are finding out about strange cards you've never heard of from small manufacturers or other markets. Give us more oddball challenge races that force us to drive stuff outside our comfort zone. 5. Cars are expensive, supercars are more expensive than most of us will ever be able to afford in our lives. Dial back the cash payout in these races so that buying a new car is a thoughtful investment instead of just "yolo, I don't have one of these yet". At least until you get into the endgame. Make the cars something you work for again, not just a gacha game where million dollar machines fall out I want to really spend time with cars. I love cars. Give me that deep connection with my car and then when you put out the "1980s movie cars" DLC then I'll totally buy it. Give me more fun and I'll give you more of my dollars.
17:59 the reason there aren’t any 90s-2000s themed games is because some people like modern supercars and they might not be intrested in drifting or drag racing jdm cars
I feel like there’s a MASSIVE audience that does not care for Supercars in general, let alone modern ones. I think Supercars are cool and all, but in a more crafted/soulful racing game, I’d be happy with none at all, and it doesn’t just have to be JDM cars either, there are plenty of euro, American and even bloody Australian cars from back then that I’d love to see in games
@@Viseak I think one of the best examples of what you're speaking to is Gran Turismo 5 right? there's loads of really high end cars but just as much attention is paid to japanese econo-boxes, 90's euro wagons, hell it even had a falcon and a monaro. granted not every racer can be a GT5.
@@kosmokat111 yeah GT5 was iconic, it had an awesome campaign and great selection of cars But that’s more of a sim-cade game, I’m looking for something more arcadey, with an actual story to get me invested, and a smaller more curated selection of cars. I think Driver San Fransisco did this pretty well, but it did lack in variety of cars, like it had 15 different chevy’s but not a single Japanese car, sad!
About the burst nos, I felt like no matter what car I drove I was able to gain that gauge without engaging in “risky behavior”. Just do good grip turns or drift. That’s like it
I don't understand the notion that a game can't be great because "it doesn't have AAA funding" behind it. That couldnt be more false. The backing is to have a bigger team to get more done faster and please investers, and has nothing to do with how good a game is. The most inventive, satisfying games are indies with a small team, or in some cases, just 1 person making them lol. Money doesn't create good ideas, it just helps get them completed quicker.
For the most part I don't disagree with you. I think what he was trying to get at with the statement is that real life cars cost a lot of money to license into the games, so the street racing sim part of the games can't exist in the same way without that budget.
All 4 PS1 RIDGE RACER games including the bonus Hi Spec Demo, GTC AFRICA, WRC 4 PS2, and Juiced Eliminator PSP are all my childhood favourite racing games.
Thank you for not ragging on Gran Turismo 7. I know it doesn't have the cleanest hands in terms of monetization, but its far, FAR better than the games you mentioned here.
Yeah to be honest I’ve got no quarrels with GT7 To be fair, I’ve only played a couple hours of it at a mates house, but gameplay wise it felt pretty good
@Viseak It's a pretty good game, all things considered. A lot of the backlash began when they developers lowered the prize money for certain grinding events, which caused everyone to dispise the game for being greedy. It's gotten way better since then though, with circuit experiences giving you six figures for completing all of them, daily rewards, and more high paying events. Even so, the game is still viewed very negatively from what I've seen. If you ask me, I don't think it deserves much of that hate nowadays.
I want another 1nsane. Very simplistic offroad racing game with the biggest selling point being the very realistic suspension and damage model (at the time) that could completely deform and change how your truck handles. Do you spend a few seconds to repair after a crash or do you keep driving with a twisted chassi to hopefully grab another checkpoint before your opponent does?
I might need to give heat a second shot I tried it and passed on it quick cause I’m just not a fan of the police, but I hear some good things so maybe if I grin and bear it I might enjoy it after playing it for a little longer Do you rate it?
@@87agomes yeah I’m inclined to agree, but then I hear how good the driving can feel and it makes me a little envious It’s a shame I just can’t get past the cops feeling like a chore rather than a feature, but it is what it is
48:34 "Imagine going back 20 years and telling a younger version of yourself 'hey bud, this is the best it's gonna get'." - I would have believed me. I already thought there's no way a better driving game than Underground 2 was never going to be made when I played that game for the first time. That's not to say I didn't enjoy later games in the genre - Dirt 2 & 3 come to mind. And even before you mentioned Cyberpunk I was thinking of GTA V, where I spent more time driving and racing than doing anything else (I mean, that's pretty much true for any GTA game, V is just the latest entry, as it only came out more than a decade ago, which isn't enough time for Rockstar...).
They’re bad because they either don’t have a good story like the OG NFS Most Wanted or Forza Horizion 1, but also it has issues like the games of service where they recycle cars that have no reason to do so example FH4 and FH5 and the new Motorsport. And the poor quality of how they run as well as content that’s been lost or removed for no reason
@@Viseak I get it it’s an awesome concept to continue a game life by adding content but if its recycled or been removed to add later to extend a life of a game that pisses ppl off like older cars that were part of the previous game and tracks only to be added later that’s I think very thievery tactics
I'm a big fan of TXR games not only for what they are, but also for what it could be as a car RPG. Even with so many games with RPG elements, other games never gave me the same immersion than Kaido Racer 2. You can play ignoring the plot, the character personalities and background, and even other self made rules like not travel between 2 far regions and race at the same night with the same car (unless you decide to keep one car on each region and hypothetically travel with a fast train), but as long as I did, every touge have stories happening, grudges happening, friendships and rivalryes. It gets much more interesting than already is if you wear your role play costume and try this different approach. Thats what the market needs: a car RPG where the RPG element comes before the racing.
fully agree, it had to be said. i did enjoy unbound and the handling of heat was the worst of the newest era of these games but for me nfs carbon will always be the top, the best balance of everything. nfsu2 is legendary too close second perhaps. good video
@@Viseak idk. their kickstarter is doing good and their goals were huge and were setback , i dont have too high hopes for nightrunners but its still a good demo though not the best game that'd reshape the industry imo
Don't let people gaslight you into thinking you're the problem. There is not a single modern arcade style racing game like NFS that's actually good. Every game now is just feeling like tik tok speedrun simulator where you are constantly thrown cringey one liners and dropped into a sea of 4 morbillion cars. All with uninspiring physics, gameplay, damage models, visuals, music, and stories. I can't fuckin take this shit anymore. I had more fun playing the demo for nightrunners for 20 minutes than I did playing the entirety of fh4 and fh5 combined. It's not just a racing game issue, it's everywhere. It doesn't even stop at games. TV shows movies music, they're all the exact same.
Yeah it’s wild man, it all just feels like the entertainment version of fast food, and all I want is a nice restaurant dinner Doesn’t even need to be Michelin Star just something 😭
It has come to my attention, that some of my claims aren’t accurate.
Aussie yapping man made some shit the fuck up, so let’s fix that!
1: Fast travelling in NFS 2015
One of my nitpicks with 2015 came from how much sheer commuting you needed to do, and how tedious it ended up feeling because of how big the map is/spread out the races are. Turns out; there’s fast travelling! Something I didn’t realise even after playing through the game twice. Granted, after this was pointed out to me I did a quick google search to confirm it and found multiple Reddit threads of others also not realising fast travel was a thing, AND, it DID take over 600 comments and 24,000 of y’all to watch before anyone finally pointed that out.
Regardless, I’ll take the L on that one, it’s a pretty silly thing to not realise.
HOWEVER, I will say; the loading times in 2015 are so slow it’s probably faster to just drive to the next race than fast travel anyway.
2: EA play cars in Unbound
I made a point of being annoyed that cars are just given to you in modern racing games, with Unbound being an example. Little did I realise, this was only happening in my game because I played it on game pass.
Now, I’ll take this as a half L 🤭, cause let’s be real, a LOT of people would be trying this game on game pass and going through the same experience, so while it’s not universal, I’d imagine it’s pretty damn common across Xbox/PC. And I guess anyone on PS5 with EA play but I dunno how popular that is? It’s cheap as chips though so it wouldn’t surprise me if plenty of people signed up to try before they buy.
What I WILL take the complete L on is a sub section of this take about the wraps, they CAN in fact be removed, I dunno what I was waffling on about.
Thanks to the couple of peeps who brought these to my attention, I’ve replied to y’all individually anyway 🫶🏼
In the future, I’ll take a little extra time and care to be a bigger, better, and most importantly, more accurate hater 🫡
SSX games, Burnout titles, and Dirt racing spoke to me to completion. Pure (ATV offroading) was sweet and satisfying.
Look them up 😎
Developers sit around all day chief. "Crunch" is called overtime to us normal people. They aren't special because they make video games. I watched my mom work 65 hours a week for almost 40 years. These babies can do it for a few months at the end of a multi million dollar project. Not to mention they all get paid for that overtime and they are paid incredibly well. I bet you're one of those guys that says making games is hard and it's magic that we even get to play them. That is also a load of garbage right there as well
I am one of those guys that says making games is hard. To be precise making a good gameTEMPLATE is hard. If you have 5 star developers building on that template it's like a workingday in the office I agree. What baffles me is when a developerteam made a solid gametemplate with a game on top of it with a smooth menu and a bugfree game that runs smooth and sells well because of that.. "pause to breathe in" .. this developers team gets to deal with a (hostile) takeover by some a-hole company that doesn't allow them to work on that game template anymore. They only want to make money so pimp the menu a bit, take out some cars that will be DLC now and so on. What makes me very angry that most of the time they throw away a proven good working template and force developers to build a new one. Then throw it out to the public and actually tell them so if you find any bugs just tell us and we will patch them. This way they avoid the cost of beta-testing the game and let the gamesheeple that will buy anything work for free to test the game. Very good templates have gone to waste and others are still running with cracked codes and modds amateur developers make at home. Some of these modded/remastered games are the best you can play today. Why can't the big name game industry build us these games? Because they are greedy bastards that's why. And all the mistakes you made while making this video are forgiven. You are just another gamer with passion that doesn't want to see games suck and get destroyed. We talked about it all and some things we can agree or disagree about but the only thing stopping the killing of games are our wallets. Stop buying their crap!!!!! As always thank you for reading my rant. 😘👍🏻
@@johndodo2062 how does the boot leather taste?
@@johndodo2062 nobody should be slaving away for a company that looks at them as a disposable object
It's getting very dangerous this Gen for a publisher to openly say "buying isn't owning"
oh i guess you haven't been paying attention, ubisoft literally said recently "gamers need to get used to not owning their games" lmao those crooks are trying to remove our ownership of *everything*
then the consumers reply should be "Then Piracy isn't Stealing"
even if so far i bought everything in the last 10 years.
@@cheater00 not only that, they literally stole back the keys, I bought a key, they could have removed multiplayer, hell they could have still shut the game down and i would have shrugged, but they stole my god damn key.
My 3ds says otherwise
@@cheater00Ubisoft needs to get used to going bankrupt 💀
My childhood was Burnout 3, NFS Most Wanted, Midnight Club 3. They were complete, content dense, and fun. Burnout has crash mode, most wanted had a cool story concept and the best police AI, and midnight club 3 had a unique atmosphere and used a fleshed out power system. Nowadays it just feels like copy paste.
A combo of complete, content dense and fun is hard to come across nowadays
It exists, but it sucks that it’s so rare
My 6 year old loves playing burnout now but Forza is not as fun.
*cough cough
Forza Horizon/ Motorsport infinity
Add also GT5 and 6 in this list.
Try Wreckfest. It’s like Burnout/ Flatout BUT it’s also one of the best true racing games( if you choose to race instead of wreck)
At around 35 minutes...
NFS Unbound doesn't have cops because they wanted to pad out the game. It was specifically in response to most other NFS fans wanting cops to be more prominent and more difficult to get away from
I know they weren’t actually there to pad out the game, it’s just when playing, considering how much of a nuisance they are compared to other entries, it just FEELS that way 😅
@@Viseak I feel you lol (kinda pun intended now that I think about it)
@@Viseakits the fact that the game doesnt give you any incentive to engage in cop chases other than a small cash reward when you go back to your safehous
its really strange considering heat literally did implement a risk vs reward system by making the heat level serve as reward multipliers when you go back to your garage and honestly it wouldve suited unbound much more because of the time sensitive structure of the game
@@abslzero It's kinda strange though because even Carbon fumbled the cops horribly and it's literally just MW's cops again, but they're so disconnected from story progression that they're essentially meaningless and do nothing more than get in your way. The map also sucks which doesn't really help.
Newest NfS I got on sale was NfS Heat, but even with UNITE mod I just cant get over the fact that there are not meaninful ways to get rid of the cops. The world has so many opportunitys for pursuit- breakers but they just arent in the game. The only way to get rid of cops is to jump of stuff like the big mall which gets boring...
In Underground 2, there was a RPG-like feeling of progression involved with starting out with your unmodified, slow crapcan and winning races, building up enough money to afford nitrous, playing the next races with nitrous, buying engine upgrades, playing the next races with nitrous and engine upgrades, etc. The map unlocked as you completed parts of the campaign and finding the performance parts shops in the new area would allow you to purchase previously locked parts. New cars were scarce and it cost money you didn't have to build up too many of them. This made your car feel unique to you and incentivized you to upgrade and tweak a particular model to its limits. Ironically, being deprived of choices made the game more fun. When you have all the choices in the world, you don't need to upgrade a 350z. You can just buy a Corvette and it would really make more sense to do exactly that.
A good progression system goes a long way in a racing game. After almost every race in UG2, you unlock one more set of things, so you keep wanting to finish races to see what you might unlock next.
My Suuuped up 106 Peugeot was da dogs nutz
what I think is missing (as far as I'm concerned) is vision. the old arcade racing games didn't pretend to resemble reality, but were actually the fruit of a vision, an imaginary version of reality, and this was what gave them character. Today I don't think we can say that arcade racing games exist anymore, because both from a graphic and physical point of view they try in every way to be as realistic as possible. When I play a game I want to perceive it as such, I don't want it to be a bad copy of reality because video games, like many other things, for many, have been and are an escape from reality, different worlds that can titillate our curiosity. another thing that's missing is a well-organized system that encourages in-game competition (I'm not necessarily talking about tournaments). And yes, the sense of progression is non existent.
Couldn’t agree more
And that’s why I was kinda saying I prefer good art direction to graphical fidelity, and why I think the style of Unbound was a pretty good direction to go
The same thing happened with Halo where they’re trying to make it so much more realistic, when it was always a little campy and fun in early on, but shag been forgotten over the years
The biggest complaint for me is the reward system. That dopamine reward when you work hard to achieve a goal. Feeling satisfied and having something to look back on. Now they literally just hand it to you. No surprises, no consequences, no challenge, nothing to be proud of your accomplishments. Its like being spoon fed.
This hits the nail on the head. I can't remember the last time I struggled to win a race in Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport. The rewards don't matter because the races are easy to win. There's no restrictions, so you can just turn the difficulty down, pick a stupidly fast car, and ram your way to first without even trying.
Fanboys and soul-less publishers be like:
"Nope, you're are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye bye." *proceeds to kill a studio*
Seriously it’s wild
They ve already won. As long as consumers are consuming anything they throw at them, we willnot receive anything better.
For the last couple of years i played new and old games at the same time. I grow bored of new games, with some exceptions,but the old games man.... I uninstalled heat after 10 hours, but Porsche, Underground, Most wanted, finished all 3 , had a blast.
Horizon, 4 yea, it was nice as it was the first game i played from the series. But eventually i grew bored and neve returned. The gameplay did not evolve naturaly. Of course i haven t played any other Horizon, because they are more the same.
But i finished TDU 10 times, without breathing.
Gaming is dead.
@@andipajeroking yeah I get the same feeling, I’ll play a new racing game in particular for an hour or so maybe? And never pick it up again
But I can easily stay gripped into an older game the whole way through
One game I’ve never played is MW 2005 funnily enough, and I reckon that’d be a good limit test cause it’s one I’ve got no nostalgia for and so many people regard it as the best game in the franchise
@@Viseak well you ever tried Blur 2010? Check it out.
@@Viseak No my my friend... games now sucks in general.. and the first reason why the games sucks today is because you don't own them.. and in 10 or 15 years most probably you will not be able to show it to your kids.. like with The Crew today and so many others...... meanwhile If I still have a working compatible computer.. electricity.. and the disks.. I will be able to show my great-grandchildren Half-Life and Half-Life 2.... This was the standard you see »» ruclips.net/video/tUAX0gnZ3Nw/видео.html .. Now the standard is that they take your money and scam you ..........+......... The other reason.. Is that today the games are stupid.... look Stellar Blade.. soooo popular because they put a pretty teenage face in a body with the fat ass of my grandmother.. ¿¿and what is the game about??.. running around.. then fighting a tree story height monster that sounds like a horse while she jiggle her fat ass.. until the monster health bar gets to zero.. same mechanic of Mortal Kombat 35 years ago.. with the difference that Sonya Blade had an awesome ass and Mortal Kombat has really cool characters training to save the world and humanity.. instead of already being everything fuc^%&ked up and with everybody dead which is typical stuff of the current losers generation.. Anyway Stellar Blade then runs around some more.. sit down for a while.. and repeat with the next monster that also sounds like a horse.........+........... meanwhile 20 damn years ago!!.. it was also another game with a tree story height monster.... but when you heard just one of his sounds... you jump off running because half of the building was going to blow up around you »» ruclips.net/video/vRqN56XZOlo/видео.html .... then you hide from him in the building.. in the sewers.. under bridges.. (well actually that's not very effective).. »» ruclips.net/video/62XlsBn1o0g/видео.html ...... but you keep distance.. because otherwise it will crash you obviously.... now if one of the enemies that fight alongside that thing throw you a grenade.. you can pick it up and throw it back at them... or use it for destroyed the tree story height monster.. »» ruclips.net/video/62XlsBn1o0g/видео.html ..... and well even if they make a PC game.. they can not do any of this anymore.. they have to make it lame.... so the idiots that play with the stupid console controllers are not in disadvantage....
The annoying thing about the cops in heat is that you have a health bar. So cops can endlessly spawn and ram you like they have a respawn button but you gotta watch your health? Bruh
Nfs heat cops were bullshit. They rarely took any damage back and the only way to slow them down were the jumps over water
And you can have only 3 repairs per night. I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t make them so op and do more damage to me when I try to pit maneuver them and cut down the health by a third with just one hit to me but takes about 10 hits for me to deal the same amount of damage. I love that they brought back the ability to beat the game with your starter car with engine swaps, but the cops made me loathe nighttime racing.
We went from smashing on all the police cruisers we want to stepping on eggshells making sure our car doesn’t break into a million pieces.
The situation on racing games is so sad right now, especially with the passionate devs involved crashing against soul-less companies forcing crunch.
I hope that some indie dev studio strikes gold in making the perfect NFS Underground 2 era throwback game...
Early 2.5D racing games like NFS2 already have this in Horizon Chase, we just need one for the NFSU era.
Let’s be honest, NFS Moost Wanted was a blessing and a curse. Every shitty story in modern racing games can trace their roots to that game.
It did it's job tho to convey the basic plot and set up the antagonist I always thought it was a deliberate choice to dumb down the story to make it more akin to the films that inspired it .
Game was perfect bro come on lol
@@Baddman3000 trust me, I LOVE the game, I still bust out my PS2 to play it sometimes, I’d say it’s one day/night cycle away from being perfect.
But it’s masterpiece status is why it’s format was copied, badly.
Tbh, I absolutely LOVE the Most Wanted story. Not because it's good, but because it's just so freaking bad. The over the top acting, cheesy early-mid 2000's edgy characters, absurd story, it's just fun. Paired with the soundtrack, it's like a snapshot of teen focused media as a whole around that time. I think the game is better for it.
For sure, I can see why people hate it, but man I love it so freaking much. Also, unironically, the guy who played Sergeant Cross was genuinely good, and his scenes are super fun to watch.
@@PloopChute This^^^^^^ A lot of people act like "bad" and cheesy writing is bad, when it's almost good... It can even be a overall good thing, because it can make it less forgetable and more impactful... MW story is great because of that, it's terrible, but the blacklist model works great gameplay and story wise (gives a good story arch and great gameplay progression, by default)... The fact that it's so cheesy and 2000's makes it more impactful, specially between the ones that were lucky to play this as teens.
NFS & underground was perfection.
What happened is gaming became corporate and is just a line item for some wealthy dude who doesn’t care. The main motivation for making a game shifted from "how can we make this fun" to "how can we make the most money". All the big studios just produce trash now. I have no motivation to go next gen because all the AAA games are terrible and overly monetized. Thankfully I have decades of seasons in old NBA 2ks to play and a ton 2016-2021 racing games and RPGs for PS4. I have been accidentally boycotting this generation of gaming and I think I'll just turn it into a purposeful one. Its pretty easy when they don't make anything I want to buy. I pity anyone who sunk large amounts of money into this generation and has to convince themselves that it was worth it.
Oh 100%
When a few micro-transaction sales eclipse the profit of entire games (Halo RUclipsr Mint Blitz just made a video about this too lol) of course developers aren’t going to put effort into the much riskier route of making a great game.
Why tell good stories and create lasting experiences? That requires dedicated staff with varying talents that’ll see the project through to the end and create something they’re actually proud of. Much more profitable to just outsource some designers and sell skins!
Sigh
It's also because the industry now is largely run by women and targeted towards women. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that men are better developers than women or vice versa, that's not the case. What I'm saying is that women don't care about racing, that's why the genre is dead and the few arcade racers left are trying to be everything but racers.
PS. There's still good stuff around though, like the Hot Wheels games made by Milestone (an old school arcade racer developer), also Wreckfest.
@DioBrando-qr6ye Uhhh...I don't think women are responsible for microtransactions and greedy publishing companies. I'm sure there are women as well as men, but I'm not sure which games you are referring to that are targeted toward women and ruining the industry.
@jamesmitchellmusic_official You clearly have not played games or are to young to notice all the looooong boring and useless girly conversations.
@xchalibur77 What games are you playing? And what would be considered and manly vs girly conversation?
I understand that mid 00s edgyness is gone for good, but I hate how every racing game makes you the wholesome hero. In street racing games, it was understood that you're morally grey at best and a straight up domestic terrorist at worst.
I would love to see the day/night dynamic from NFS explored to its full potential, where day is the wholesome festival racer and night is the illegal edgy underworld, but with actual consequences. For example, day could give you sponsorships and if you're spotted using your day race car to run from cops, you'd lose that sponsor and their bonuses.
Forza Horizon 3 kinda touched into that idea with its head-to-head system, street race events and midnight battles (it's actually how you unlocked certain vehicles, by "racing for pinks"), but then they turned a full 180 in FH4 and made it so that the underground events were just sanctioned simulations of illegal street racing as part of the Horizon festival.
Hearing that Wangan Midnight OST makes this video even better
The rock OST definitely suits the early 2000’s games so well
Just finished watching it too and i was like "OOOHH OHHH I KNOW THIS MELODY"
I still need to catch-up from some of the stories for my cars in that game. I only got my 240sx (180sx) all the way to the max but I didn't unlocked the classic OST yet because of the BS requirements to do so.
Looking for this comment, love this ost
yess, i was sooo suprised🤩🤩🤩
Racing games have been going downhill since the 2010s. The late 90s and 2000s were peak racing games and while sure current games are a lot more realistic and modern they don't have the charm or satisfaction that the old games did like the midnight club games
The focus on realism over pure fun and quality of life in games these days is definitely frustrating to say the least
I feel like the reason racing games are dying is because they are not splitscreen like before, a lot of us used to play NFS underground with our siblings, NFS Used to be simple and chill super arcade game that barely punished you for not braking around corners NFS is still an arcade game but not as much as before. Racing games are becoming more realistic/sim so the people playing racing games are people that actually love cars IRL the racing games that are thriving today are sim racing games and you need a wheel if u want to have the most fun.
Yeah not having split screen is definitely a con, but I don’t think it’s a make or break for these games
Couch co-op isn’t quite what it once was, but regardless, I still think it should be a standard in most games that could support it; cause like, why the hell not?
@@Viseak Exactly
that and The Crew style always online games like NFS 2015, TDU Solar Crown, The Crew Motorfest, and Forza Motorsport 8 could basically kill the genre as a whole, as in no way you'll ever enjoy these games in any shape or form whenever your internet gets cut off or EA/Ubisoft/Microsoft/Nacon decides to put an end to the online services for these games for good
What? Lack of split screen is the smallest of the problems, also NFS had more realistic physics in the past! Now the physics are bad!
@@adlibbed2138 definitely a HUGE problem we’re only just starting to see the effects of
I wish games were just on the disk man, it’s not too much to ask for
I feel like a big problem is that indie developers can’t really break into this market effectively. Indie devs are responsible for every major success I can think of for the past 5 years but racing games hasn’t seen much love.
I think it’s because they can’t afford licences for the cars. We expect to know what cars we’re driving, some of us prefer to drive specific brands. But each car comes with (I assume) a massive price tag. If a developer wanted to make a game like NFSMW 05, they would need to have about 20 or so cars in the game for the player to use and customise (to maintain that rags to riches style progression). If each car cost $1000 to license (which is a significant low ball estimate) then the development cost for the game starts at $20,000.
The only way around this would be to do what Rockstar did with GTA (make off brand versions) or use models that certainly look like the real thing but has a few off details to make difficult to prove. The more successful a game, the more likely someone will lawyer up.
Great observation. I was thinking to myself while reading other comments why indie developers haven’t pushed into this space. I hadn’t t considered the licensing issues which would seem like a massive barrier to anyone starting out
Night Runners needs way more praise in this aspect. It's almost exactly what you're saying (though at a smaller scale). It avoids liscencing by using copycat cars with changed names (might have licensing issues at release) though due to small team, at launch it will have only 10 cars, though even with only one car currently playable, it feels very diverse, especially due to crazy amounts of visual customization and engine modifications.
Highly highly suggest giving it a try since it's free on steam. Unfortunately it won't come to consoles as he actually mentions half way through the video meaning it won't catch mass success but is a phenomenal game nonetheless.
Gemini with their Tokyo Xtreme Racing 1 and 2, didnt have licensed cars, they just use the chassie code (which anyone can use) and took out the decals or just removed a part of the decals and they got away with it.
BeamNG
I dunno, the license thing is stupid excuse. You can perfectly fine make your own car designs based on real ones, and make your own lore.
beamNG does this, just as GTA as you mention.
No need to shill real brands to make an awesome racing game.
The main reason I think is, too few Indie designers care about racing games. They all want to make a Zelda clone or a shooter, can barely find tutorials or devlogs on indie devs making properly fun racing physics for example.
And most people who can create cars rather spend their effort making mods for existing games (like I'm doing) than going through all th effort of making an entire game.
Also the publicly available game engines like unreal and unity, are not greatly suited for racing. You have to do a lot of custom code to to make it a proper racing game. While a 3th person action adventure or an FPS game like game is easy to start there.
It shouldn't be too hard today to make an indie game with similar quality to fun old racing games. If you don't want to expect current gen graphics.
The one racing game I was looking forward to was Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown but then I found out that the actual racing will be essentially multiplayer-only. I'm not a competitive racer, I never will be a competitive racer, I just want to have fun in single-player mode as was possible in the previous Test Drive Unlimited games. I know the Jedi Mind Trick I've seen tried on those of us who are complaining is that "Test Drive Unlimited was always an MMO", which isn't really true. Test Drive Unlimited was always a (sub-)series that had the option to play as an MMO if you wanted to play that way but the first two games also had full-fledged single player career modes for those of us who are simply uninterested in multiplayer.
There are faint rumblings that Nacon may be considering adding single-player racing, which I hope is true because I won't be buying it otherwise.
aww man, well, stick to Wreckfest then despite it has no livery editor. Probably the last great offline racer i played from the last 5 years.
@@meyers0781 Never played Wreckfest. I've mostly been playing PS2 racing games lately since I finally have a PC capable of PS2 emulation.
@@SteveBrandon for me that's the last good non-mandatory-online racing game. It has that PS2 feel and in fact the one that lead me into playing PS2 racing games after i ran out of it.
Aw man really
I haven’t been keeping up with it but TDU Solar Crown was the most promising racing game I’d seen in a while
If it’s all just straight up multiplayer that’s such a damn shame.
But hey, like I said in the video, I’m done getting my hopes up anyway.
@@SteveBrandon If you're into PS2 era racing games, you owe it to yourself to try out Wreckfest. It's basically a spiritual successor to the Flatout series. It's the only racing game I've played in a very long time where you could see that the developers main goal when making the games, was for it to be fun.
I recently played through Underground 2 again, and it really stuck out to me how deliberate the design of every part of the map is, even to the point that the COLOURS let you tell which part of the city you're in. The atmosphere is just perfect. I was also attached to my 240SX from start to finish, and it's awesome how much every performance upgrade changes the driving feel, like it's so noticeable going from a rickety clutch that stops your acceleration for a good second every shift to a sporty transmission that lets you zip through gears.
ive been playing racing games since as a kid, and man games certainly changed a lot after the 2010s rolled out. that decade was truly memorable to be as i could get to experience most of the games during that time, (nfs hp 2010, blur, mw12, split second, tdu2) and most of the games something had in common, they were just simply fun. whether they financially did great or not, they simply were better than the modern games we have nowadays.
There were some absolute gems in that era too
Micro-transactions really warped a whole industry, it’s crazy
The early Dirt games were fuckin goated.
I gotta say NFS: Heat was a breath of fresh air when it first dropped man…I didn’t bother with Unbound because I don’t like all the graffiti effects and it turns out it wasn’t all that anyway…I went to a retro gaming store and saw NFSU2 and Most Wanted 2005 for sale and I’ve been addicted to them, the atmosphere of those games back then are just something else… maybe it’s nostalgia but idk, it just feels like I’m in a fast and furious movie when I’m playing those
The vibes are just not there anymore
Dude, your take on nfs unbound is dead on. If they re-added pursuit breakers to the mix the cops would be totally fine, but they refuse to. And the driving physics are worse than most racing games on PS1. 0% consistency.
i think you mean 'pursuit breakers', not 'speed breakers', pursuit breakers were where you crashed in to something and it killed all police nearby, speed breaker is where the game went in to slow motion
If you complain about Unbound's physics being inconsistent then you either suck or never played it
@@GymmyRhys yup I had it wrong.
@sssveden no no the physics trash real racing 3 has better but that's because I'm more of a sim racing player so I play assetto corsa, beamng, forza motorsport and horizon not the arcade physic style like nfs or the crew which I got all just got the unbound for the convertible mustang and the crew because it was almost cheap but they still don't get play time well unbound did till I was able to get the mustang after that I quit because I can't stands cops and the driving physics I won't even gone unlock the car but I told myself you paid 70 for it so yeah
The reason why some of ya'll think unbound's handling is because your a sim racer, an og nfs player, or just suck at driving.
When i first played unbound i hated the handling, but that because i sucked. But later on i started to adapt to the handling.
we need another midnight club
We do but Rockstar doesn't care.
we will have another... inside GTA 6
I'm glad I'm not the only one that preferred that Underground 2 didn't have cops
Midnight club and nfs underground: here's a bunch of bumpers, skirts, hoods, roof scoops, rims, spoilers, wide body, neon, nitrous shooting out from your engine, do whatever
Forza: here's a strip of carbon fiber for your front bumper and the same spoiler for 99% of the cars in our game so we can say you can customize over 500 cars
This video popped up on my feed right below FM4’s OST “Paris Rouen,” and just hearing the heart behind that track alone triggered a load of nostalgia making me long for the glory days of racing games. The algo works in mysterious ways.
Sure does, good to see ya here 🫡
Not tying to gatekeep but this is an arcade racing game problem, recently sims have probably been in the best period they’ve been in for a while, sims are usually just not made by these big companies because sim racing is pretty niche so sim devs are people passionate about cars and racing.
Edit: seems like this guy doesn’t like gran turismo so this video definitely isn’t about the sim sub genre at all.
The biggest problem holding modern racing games back are the car companies themselves, racing games have become big advertisements for car companies.
Every game story has to be about a character with no personality who want to be the best because ...they want to be the best... (I'm not saying NFS Carbon or Driver SF were Shakespearian in comparison but at least they tried to give us a story).
On top of this it feels like modern racing games are just going through the motions, no real variety or unique events (Standard circuit race, sprint race, drift events where your the only person participating, maybe a drag race and some form of off road event.) What happened to things like canyon duel from Carbon. Heck why has need for speed never had an event type where to you loose if your car drops below a certain speed?
Anyone else feel like since 2015 event open world racing game set in a city have had a pretty generic layout, all straight lines and 90' turns?
Yeah that is definitely a HUGE problem that I have no idea how to fix.
Cause if a publisher represent a car in a game that isn’t the way a manufacturer wants them to, even something as simple as having an antagonist drive X brand of car, they could be in for a whole wealth of trouble, which seriously sucks and is probably why we don’t see developers pushing the boundaries anymore, it’s just not worth it when they can make a guaranteed profit with micro transactions and playing it safe.
It’s just sad
@@Viseak It gets worse, Ubisoft have recently stated that there are Car Companies who now will not License to Games that have an Age Rating Higher than an ESRB E/PEGI 3, and it is Near impossible to have an Antagonist, and thus a Story, at a PEGI 3 Rating (as, being Government Controlled, it is often a lot Stricter than an ESRB E) as the slightest wrong bit of Dialogue that the Video Standards Council (A British Government Department that runs the PEGI in the UK and the EU) see as "Bullying" , "Smacktalk", or "Aggressive" and that Rating goes up to a 7 or a 12 in a Heartbeat!
This is why they are having issues getting some Licenses for Motorfest, some of the Car Companies are Objecting to the T/12 Age Rating ... sadly, the annoying thing is, if Ivory Tower patched out the utterly Unnecessary Profanity and Blasphemy in the Music and Dialogue, they could easily get that Game down to 3/E! get those Licenses and get more Sales! (including one to Me, as I cannot abide Blasphemy nor Profanity, and thus their Presence has stopped me buying the Game, even when it was 75% off and deeply tempting!), as the Car Companies only want to License to Squeaky Clean, Family Friendly Games now!
EA have also stated that there are Several Car Companies who will not License to "Street" Games, in fact, they have openly said it is becoming near Impossible to get Licenses for NFS now! as they are only willing to License to Festival Racers! Festival Racers are becoming so common now, because, basically, there are Car Companies who are Demanding that Games have to be Festival Racers or they will not License to them!
The Car Companies are basically Responsible for this Ultra Squeaky Clean, Sterile, Corporate, Child Friendly, Approach, because they are so worried about their Public Relations Images being Damaged in the Middle East, which is becoming a Vital Market, but where Games, in many Cases, have only been Legal for Sale for less than 5 Years, are still Treated with Extreme Suspicion and Distrust, and the Slightest mistake that Breaks one of the Myriad Societal, Cultural, and Religious Taboo's in that Part of the World could cause them immense Pubic Relations Image Damage in a Vital Market, something they just cannot afford to happen, and the only way to avoid that is to ensure the Game is as Clean and Sterile as Possible by being a 3 Rated, Family Friendly, Festival Racer.
@@simeonyves5940 Very interesting, didn't know about this.
@@Skumtomten1 Always worth Watching Developer Diaries! they often reveal just how much of a Pain in the Neck that Licensing can be!
@@simeonyves5940 Even though I understand why licensing exist, it is pretty toxic overall. It's also the reason why past racing games are never remastered or remade and pretty sure also why the games gets removed from stores to be removed for purchasing forever.
I never understood the car manufacturers logic or reasoning when it comes to video games and marketing tbh. It's just seem kinda random and illogical to me overall. Regardless, game companies could opt to go for fictional cars to circumvent the issue but from history it has shown that few takes those games seriously and they suffer heavily in sales numbers as a result so they don't really have much choice.
I’d say NFS comes the closest to getting it right, however these developers don’t have the right mindset. They tried their best but there’s a fundamental lack of understanding of what made older games good. Whether it’s from the fossils in corporate or the young developers with their silly ideas things are just kinda lame now.
That’s what gets under my skin the most, cause they ARE trying, but somehow they just keep missing the mark and it’s the most frustrating thing to witness from the background
It's clear that a lot of the devs left between NFS 2015 and Heat/unbound. Very clear. The story/characters/writing is just downright cringeworthy in heat and unbound. My buddy was playing unbound and it was near the start, I forget what was said But I was honestly baffled by how whack and childish the writing was. People hate on 2015 cutscenes but that shit was amazing, it made that whole game feel very real along with the insanely realistic city in Ventura bay. It truly is underground 3.
@@NewDesignVinylGraphics I agree hole heartedly “2015” was great. I’ll take the few moments of cringe over the constant cringe in the new stuff any day.
@@NewDesignVinylGraphicsmany hated on 2k15 cutscenes but imo they were goated, and it is quite ironic they got shit on for the actor's style cuz that's pretty much the same style of the MW05 that everyone jacks off to
@@briancastro313 Bro nah, 2015 and most wanted 05 don't have the same style of acting at all, not whatsoever, not in a million years, 05 is goofy but charming, unintentionally funny, and has that early 2000's "wannabe cool guy who's really lame" vibe, 2015 in comparison feels like what an average 2012 9gag user thinks cool is. And it's awful.
*Midnight Club 3 Dub edition remix was the peak of racing games*
Ah someone with a based take
Early 90's to early 2010's was the peak of racing games.
FTFY.
@@haaxxx9for real yeah
Halo and NFS are my childhood, to see them in the state they are now really hurts. I'm not joking when I day I wouldn't be the person I am today without those games.
Same here man, Halo CE is one of the first games I ever remember playing
It’s so depressing to see where it’s at right now
@@Viseak I was 4 years old when my Dad didn't know what to do with me when my Mum had to go to appointments. So he taught me to play the PC port for Halo CE, look I was horrible and had many "skill issues" (I was 4 it was pretty much a Master Chief death montage) but even to this day Halo is still a massive bonding thing for me and my Dad
Halo isn’t a racing game but ok
@@madnessarcade7447 if you watched the video you would hear the part in which he mentions older games games that have fallen off, in said list he includes non racing games, including... Halo, please understand what you are saying before you say it
Agree those games were my shit back in 2005 I still played NFS U2 on my og Xbox until it broke in 2012.
Developers come and go the ones making NFS now probably aren’t the ones who worked on it back then
NFS Unbound was the comeback title for Criterion Games as the NFS dev team. Prior to that, NFS Heat (2019) was the final installment Ghost Games worked on.
@@TypeVertigo New criterion is basically mostly ghost
the issue isnt the games... its car culture, car culture has devolved so the media around it will too. are the games themselves bad? yeah totally, but thats because you dont need to put effort into a dying hobby. back in the 2000's it wasnt about the fastest cars it was all about tuning what you had. once that shifted to supercars, it got ruined because supercars companies are ANTI tuner and anti street racing, they dictate what goes in these games now.
Yeah I get what you mean, the supercar craze definitely hurts the genre
The thing is you can still do cool stuff with certain Supercars/Exotics, but like you were saying, I doubt the companies behind them would ever allow that to happen because they’ve got an ‘image’ to uphold
Yep, car culture is dead. Cars themselves are as dull as ever. All cars look the same now, being made by algorithms/programs for optimization and cost minimization, while also needing to conform to the same strict regulation and safetey framework. EV and SUV's everywhere isn't exactly exciting to race in a video game. Supercars have no characters, they may be extremely fast but they are ugly and boring imo .
The age of man and machine is over. The beauty of cars and motorsport was the innovation, creativity and unique identity that each manufacturer had. All gone now.
Specifically speaking, Midnight Club 2 will always be one of my top favorites.
We need EA to make an All in One bundle of the games from Underground to Undercover. No DLC necessary, completely functional when offline and on top of it all with split screen support
Honestly you’re right, a Master Chief Collection style game with all the old racing titles would be insane
They don’t even need to be remastered, I just wanna play them with quick loading times on a modern console (I’m aware this is possible on PC but we ain’t all PC enjoyers)
Black Box Bundle
@@fujieight now that’s got a ring to it
I don't trust them to do it. Plus do you really want to give EA more money? These big publishers need to fail or loose tons of money, they need to feel the consequences of their actions. EA ruined many studios and game engines over the years. Just get the old games. Straight up sail the high seas if you need to. I personally bought the Black pc versions of MW 2005 and Carbon and preserved them on my hard drive. And the btw @Viseak if you have Xbox game pass you like you mentioned are part of the problem. They want us to get the subscription, they make more money that way and it's not a good model for the consumer. Gamers need to protect their wallets a bit more and have higher standards. A videogame industry crash would be a good thing.
@@westonstaufenberg7278 hey man, don’t hate the player, hate the game
As it stands, gamepass is probably the best value you can get as a consumer in the industry, especially when so many products just fall apart and you’d feel horrible paying full price for em (like Unbound lol)
The problem is, is it the best thing for developers? Does the business model help them create great games? Maybe not, I don’t know the ins and outs of the industry because I’m not in the industry. However, as a consumer, that’s not my problem to figure out, what am I gonna do? Call the avengers? That’s Microsoft’s issue to sort, not some random bloke in Australia’s issue.
With that being said, it’s not like I don’t buy games anymore. When something comes along that truly feels worth it, something like Elden Ring, Armored Core 6, Cyberpunk 2077 (at least now lmao) then I’ll buy it. I want to put my dollars towards supporting games I feel are genuinely worth it, and I’d say a lot of people fall into that category as well.
And to be clear I don’t constantly hold a gamepass subscription, but when a game comes out I’m a little iffy on, like Persona 3 Reload for example, I’d rather cop the $18 month of gamepass and try it out rather than waste close to $100 on the full game and find out I don’t even enjoy it. That gap used to be filled by rental services like Blockbuster but we’re never going back to that, so it’s really the next best thing and idk how else you’d plan to fill that void.
Response on the morale of the video:
The same goes to everything
Today, the trend is fast content
With the rise of TikTok, people loses their patient and attention span. Racing games, being the least interesting genre, has to throw everything they have at you to keep most players playing and I think it's logical for most game studios to do this as they are not charities. To be honest, I'm not really upset by this, I'm still able to find joy within these "soulless ganes" because a lot of the time, they aren't, they just changed to something else. Instead of locking content behind play time, they now lock content behind free updates (BeamNG, Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, etc).
Response on your point on Forza Horizon:
First, Forza Horizon hasn't really changed all that much(except for the storyline, that's a huge downgrade). It's always the festival simcade racer that priorities freedom. The reason why people is feeling fed up by this, it's because the competition started copying their formula. The new Forza Horizon doesn't have soul and the developers doesn't have passion on the game? This question alone is a disgrace to the developers whom is constantly updating the game, listening to feedback, and answering request from the community.
Yes, when the game launched it wasn't near good, the map is the worst among all entries and the progression system is filled with flaws but why people keep on playing? That's because the game is constantly updating, filling up with something new by both the community and officials. Now, the players are even starting to appreciate the beauty of the game map.
You can always find something new, something beautiful and make friends along the way. Isn't that what racing games were always trying to achieve?
Something I want to say:
Things needs to evolve and they always does. The first generation of super computer is nowhere near close to today's worst computer. Just like ChatGPT wasn't a thing before. We can admire the past but we cannot stay in the past or we'll be left with nothing but an abyss of shattered hopes.
I don't really play NFS, so I reckon I can't make any valid argument on the matter. I'm just trying to say as much as I can from my experience and thoughts growing up with mostly Simcade and Sim racers.(ie, GT, FM, FH, Dirt, etc)
The last racing game I fondly remember was Need for Speed Carbon. I loved that game honestly. Racked up quite the bounty in police pursuits with my 1970 Hemi Cuda. Mmm she was a beast.
I think for me, the problem with racing games in general is that they lack any form of long-lasting engagement. Grand Turismo was fun, for like an hour. But it got boring racing laps with nothing else going on.
The Burnout series was fun because trading paint was a key secondary element.
At this point, the only racing games I would like to see now, would be a modern reboot of the Star Wars Pod Racer game.
Yeah that’s what’s wild to me, literally none of them can capture my interest for more than an hour or so max
There’s no substance it’s all just so surface level and it really sucks
Carbon holds a special place in my heart, i remember playing it for first time on my bud's pc and getting blown away by the graphics and general aesthetic, not to mention the customization was top of the line with the inclusion of Autosculpt.
I want Ridge racer and wipeout to come back
NFS carbon and undercover just hit different for me
I cannot tell you how many times I have revisited Carbon in the last couple years
It is my absolute favorite NFS of all time 🔥
arcade racer but tried hard to feel realistic... first thought that came to mind when i played one of the more recent NFS at a friends house...
The only racing game I've been excited about since GT5 was Wreckfest.
And somehow Wreckfest has some of the best arcade racing physics I've ever played. Its a bit of a different beast than things like NFSU2, NFSPS, GT4/5, FH3 and the like, but if you want a genuinely good modern racing game, I highly recommend it.
It’s not usually the type of racing game I’d go for but I might have to give it a try, especially if it happens to be in game pass
I was actually going to write a comment regarding wreckfest annd you went already ahead of me. It has an addictive gameplay loop, the driving feels awesome, the ost has this 2000 rock/heavy style attach to it. and hell, it's just plain fun to play it.
Have to agree, this game is so much fun to play, and sadly one rarely talked about.
Hey if Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Jimmy Broadbent can play Wreckfest, how bad could it be?
"Braking to slow into a corner will make you drift now for no reason by the way! Get used to it."
Yes, that's a dig at modern Need for Speed titles
i've kinda lost interest in newer racing games that i resorted into buying a ps2 and a bunch of old racing games. the newer games just feels kinda stale IMO.
the only "newer" racing game i play these days is wangan midnight maximum tune on the arcade. even that has a lot of recycled content in it.
but hey at least for me racing games are a good way to spend time after work
Yeah that’s it man and that’s exactly how it should be, a good way to spend a bit of time
Not an ongoing subscription draining your bank account
this is me for all modern games, is till play the division 2 with a buddy but thats b/c im playing with a buddy and dont play it solo that often
@@0Heeroyuy01 playing with mates definitely enhances the experience
I just bought a ps3 to play the old games, tried motostorm pacific rift and omg, don't make games like these any more.
I did the same thing years ago. Even bought NASCAR rumble, Star wars pod racer, juiced, automodlista, crash n burn, 187 ride or die, split second and blur because even the non main stream racing games focused more on fun and progression.
The reality is that it's not that racing games suck now, it's that _AAA_ games suck now. The big, high-visibility "sim" racers (sim in quotes because Forza and GT are lightweight sims compared to ones like Asseto Corsa) and open-world games with licensed vehicles and tons of marketing are all AAA games. There's a lot of indie racing games, passion projects, etc. out there that are really fun.
i have the same feeling with the starter car issue.
Forza horizon 5 (and same for the 4th one, but less obvious) progression is pretty much absent, you can have access to end game races in like 5-10h of game, no incentive to use low class cars since you have hypercars given nearly directly when you start, while in the first one, you start with low class car, and then have to win to use higher tier cars.
Damn, was happy when i've tried Hot wheels DLC when i've saw that they put this system of locking higher tiers cars behind a win wall
Right? Like it’s just natural progression why the hell get rid of that for instant gratification?
Probably in part to sell micro transactions straight away (cause I guess it’d be kinda gamebreaking to lock ‘good’ cars behind a paywall when no comparable cars are unlockable at the start), and if there were actual progression they wouldn’t be able sell you the ‘good’ cars right away cause you wouldn’t be able to use them until the late game, and these corps aren’t gonna wait for you to maybe spend 10 hours playing until they can make their way into your wallet.
I probably could’ve worded that better but I think I’ve made some sense lol
Honestly the progression system of the hot wheels dlc was really the only thing that kept me playing. It was fun to work upwards. After I finished it I put fh5 down and haven't touched it in months
Surely it is not that modern racing games are all glitter-filled hairy donkey balls. Must be a "skill issue".
I like cops in my racing games when cops are fun. Not when they’re impossible to escape like heat or practically nonexistent like in 2015. I loved running from the cops in most wanted and Carbon it was one of my favorite things to do. I’d hop on Carbon for the sole purpose of causing trouble. My gripe with unbound’s cops is the lack of pursuit breakers. The cops stick to you pretty hard and the only method you have of fighting back is ramming them or getting lucky with traffic. Adding pursuit breakers would make the cops much more fun in unbound.
I agree the burst nos sucks and forces you to race in a way that’s not fun or interesting, but the ridiculously fast competition in single player is actually a feature in my opinion. One thing Unbound made clear is that you’re not expected to win every race. You’re supposed to work your way up to it and I like that. Every arcade racing game I play is almost always disappointingly easy even on the hardest difficulty I never feel like I spend much time fighting for 1st and when I have it it’s smooth sailing to the finish. Unbound made me fight for it and while on the higher speed tiers the rubber banding was bullshit and terrible, it was great in the beginning. I see why they gave a limited amount of restarts but come on, let perfectionists be perfectionists
My BIGGEST gripe about modern nfs in general is the fact that classic muscle cars are ALWAYS cucked out of any sort of performance!
Oh man, I hated the cops in Heat! It's like they knew where you were at all times and it was almost impossible to hide. They were relentless to the point of it not being very fun. And not very realistic when you don't have to do much at all to get them on you. IMHO, I have the same problem with other NFS games developed by Criterion. I don't like how the way they code their cops. Now, mind you, if someone could figure out how to add a Nemesis-style system in a future NFS game, that'd be golden!
@@patrickdodson1713 agreed
@@patrickdodson1713 I don't find the difficulty frustrating, but the lack of ability to fight back. Most wanted made your car and indestructible brick, hot pursuit gave you weapons to fight back, but heat made your car break after 3 hits
@@ileutur6863 Yes, the lack of being able to fight back was definitely annoying. In fact, in Heat, the cops were so relentless. They would be on you for the slightest things, and knew where you were at all times. And Past NFS games were not like this. Whatever happened to line of sight? The games should make the player feel like they can escape successfully, without being rammed by cops all the time.
@@patrickdodson1713the cops in heat were not that difficult, there was plenty of ways to lose them all over the map from jumps, to open fields, to tight corridors. The AI merely goes to your last suspected location and does a search, if you just stay out of their los you can easily lose them. However, in the same vein you shouldn't be expecting to run from a heat level 4 or 5 easily in a mid level car, there needs to be consequences.
The reason I think why it had all that stuff is because of value people wanna feel like they are getting their money’s worth so they think more content = better game even if it isn’t true
I think Project CARS 2 had that secret sauce that made it incredibly memorable and comforting to play. It introduced me to several cars I now have a ton of love for (the Ligier JSP2 being just one example), and even introduced me to Rallycross. On a related note, Indy Car is psychotic and all of the drivers clearly have a cocktail of Red Bull and 5 Hour Energy running through their veins instead of blood. No one can convince me otherwise.
Never played Project Cars 2 myself but it looks like a great sim racer, might have to check it out someday
And yeah you could say the same for a lot of the peeps in motorsports, insanity but cool as all hell
@@Viseak Also, I saw another comment suggesting Gran Turismo 7, and to be honest, I think that game should be avoided. It's always online, and it's full of Modern Gaming pitfalls and baffling design choices that severely damage what would otherwise be a very solid game. Sure, it's been improved by updates, but it's still nowhere near as good as the classic GT games (i.e. all of the ones prior to GT Sport)
@@NineNovem very fair, and a shame
I don’t own a PS5 anyhow so I doubt I’ll be delving into GT7 anytime soon hahaha
Can always play GT5 if I get the itch
Meanwhile I've never been more excited about a new racing game/sim with Assetto Corsa Evo coming up.
I completely disagree with your opinion on Unbound. Nobody is forcing you to use burst nitrous and it's absolutely not needed to win any singleplayer races, even on the hardest difficulty - well at least if your car is fast enough, and you're decently skilled at racing games. I often just don't use it at all and race like that while still racking win after win... I also don't get bashing on the driving physics, you can literally turn off brake to drift, stability control, and other crap like that to actually gain control over your car. You can finally go full grip without drifting on every corner, also grip racing is now actually FASTER than drifting - It's finally the way it should've been from the very start. No offence, but from the clips in this video I can clearly see you're not good at this - trying to drift a FWD car, not using racing lines, etc. So if the game's too hard for you; my brother in Christ, just choose a lower difficulty setting. It's there, and it even gives you more restarts for the night, without any negatives whatsoever - you still earn the same ammount of rep and cash. It's really not the game's fault, you can tweak your experience however you like, yet you actively choose to have it up the hill.
The only point I agree with is the cops, as they really can be a huge pain in the ass at times. It's not the same feeling as in Most Wanted, where it was fun, challenging, and stressful at the same time, while in Unbound cop chases are just annoying.
I’m not gonna act like I’m some god at racing games, but I’m not THAT bad by any stretch
The racing in Unbound just didn’t gel with me, no matter what I did I just couldn’t quite figure it out. The cars would never do what I wanted them to do, and I purposely put in footage of me struggling rather than cherry picking moments where I kinda got it to illustrate that point.
To be clear, I’m not using brake to drift in a fwd car cause I think it’s supposed to work, I’m doing it cause it’s really the only option.
The cars not fast enough to get any value out of grip turns, so at a bare minimum spamming brake to drift (which just works on a fwd car anyway cause arcade racer I guess) is the only thing that works to fill burst nos, which is the only real thing getting you ahead.
I had the same issues in my S14 I started the game with, cars just seem to fuckin go everywhere in Unbound, you’ve got so little true control it feels like trying to hold a stick of butter. Make the tiniest nudge in your joystick and suddenly you’re fishtailing everywhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s some tuning I could’ve done to make it a little better but even then, no matter what I changed or how I tried to play, it all felt like I was being tunnelled down into burst nos, if I wasn’t spamming A I wasn’t getting anywhere, and that’s a fundamental flaw.
Sure, I could’ve lowered the difficulty, and sure, I might’ve won more, but that doesn’t change the way the driving in the game feels which is my main problem. I don’t mind a challenge, I don’t need to win every time, hell I love games like Dark Soul, but with Unbound, when it feels impossible without using the games niche mechanics, it’s kinda annoying. (And I get it, it’s a new mechanic, it should be used, that’s the purpose of adding it in the first place, and I’m not against innovation, but I just don’t gel with the way it seems to change everything about driving which is a real thing that should feel a certain way).
And yeah, the cops are honestly my biggest frustration even above burst nos I feel like I didn’t emphasise that enough. Even just then, I spent 10 minutes running away from the police trying to get back to my garage to check if I was on the lowest difficulty. Could I have googled it? Sure, but far out I didn’t expect to be bombarded like that.
Even if we can’t agree man, I’m glad you had fun with the game, AND, I’m glad you shared your experience. Not everyone’s gonna agree with me and that’s cool
Its the lack of real suspension tuning, tire pressure etc. all the grip to drift bar does is open and lock your cars diff. (At best) It doesn’t soften up springs to soak up bumps better. You cant put more tire pressure in there rear than in the front to break into a slide easier. Softer front allows more direction.
Alot of other components that were once customizable are now static. Unbound could literally add a handbrake strength bar and the game is already 10x better in the driving department. I think suspension tuning and dyno tuning is the easiest way to open a more competitive skill gap and allow diverse handling tuned to your style of driving.
@@Viseak big respect for not brushing off my comment as hate, as some people would
@@dusterpl6093 bro it’s all love here I don’t care if we don’t share the same views, it’s cool, this channel never has been and shouldn’t ever be an echo chamber
People are always gonna have different opinions it’s a fact of life so why get bent out of shape for it you know?
You took the time to watch and leave a comment on my video that had substance even though you don’t like/agree with what I said, and I gotta respect that enough to at least give you the time of day. Different story if you just threw out a ‘you suck you’re wrong’ or something lmao
I agree with this comment. I think Unbound's handling is great - it's biggest issue is its not very clear on how to actually use brake-to-drift. Once you actually modulate the throttle and control the angle of the car, drifting is an absolute joy in this game, resembling something closer to Daytona USA. But the game doesn't tell you this - it just says how to initiate, and every drift feels like a slow, oversteering mess. The video shows a lot of oversteer which absolutely is frustrating. Grip driving has a similar approach - you need to modulate the throttle far more in this game than the Black Box or 7th gen Criterion NFS games.
I think Unbound has a lot of issues, like as noted with the poor collision detection, and the cops are very aggressive. I like the style of the game even if it feels completely fabricated. I think the event structure is not given enough credit here - IIRC, lower tier races are typically on the east end of the map, and the higher tier events and safehouses in the west are available as the weeks go by - but it's not as explicit as the Black Box games. The same event structure and game design/ progression really does emphasize the relationship with your car - you're not going to come first, your going to be hard on money, and that's OK. It's a challenging game until you wrap your head around it. I get that it's different than past NFS games in many, many ways, but I don't think that makes it bad.
Are there issues with the general direction of racing games? Absolutely, as this video generally hits on. While not perfectly addressing all the problems of modern racers, I do think Unbound gets closer to answering those qualms than most.
I remember sitting down at a demo at i wanna say it was a best buy where they had a gaming pc with dirt 3 and a force feedback wheel setup and it blew my mind out of the back of my head. It was never quite the same when I got my own setup at home, idk if it was the lower end wheel or how inconvenient it was to setup, or the fact that it had been several years since that demo but I just didn't enjoy it as much.
I personally am loving NFS Unbound, finding the driving, the burst NOS, the cops, even the story and dialogue a lot of fun so far.
Though I do think you're right about how great NFSU2 is - unlocking certain parts of the map as you progress (meaning the map has more of a memorable set of distinct districts with their own flavour rather than a big blob of roads like heat and unbound have), the vast array of customization where they weren't scared to make each car have 40 hideous but charming bumpers and spoilers instead of just rocketbunny, and the slow reveal of cars!
I’m glad you enjoyed it seriously, more power to you
I wish I could too but there’s just too much that irks me to look past. But that’ll never be a universal experience so again if you liked it it’s cool
The vast customisation is something I really miss too, just random unofficial bits and bobs that kinda look cool for the sake of it. Now it’s mostly official brands and there are so few of them that’d allow themselves to be in an illegal street racing game.
Like you can still get cool real life parts like Mugen, Toms, MINE’s etc but getting licensing to put them in games might be a challenge.
@@ViseakUnbound has a ton of fake parts
All the Carbon, Chidori, Nextech, etc parts are fake
9/10 the speedhunter parts are fake too
Personally I was impressed to see some lesser known kits/parts like the Vorsteiner kits, Voltex kits, Mansory kits, most Varis kits, etc
Of course YOU find the story and dialogue fun.
>profile pic
21:50 as someone with astigmatism... yes, yes it really does look like this for me, particularly in urban areas at night, I really try to avoid night driving when i can because of it.
Eh skill issue. I think there’s just something missing in the progression department for newer games. Making you actually work for the things you need. The new Forza Motorsport does that kind of but some of the races are long and I haven’t played it in a while.
Its the most broken forza game ever made
Yeah I didn’t completely hate the Forza Motorsport system (although sure it probably could’ve been better); but the game didn’t really have much that’d keep me coming back anyway so I dropped it after a few hours
Forza Motorsport's new progression is a waste of time to put it at best. There's no other reason than just increase playtime for doing race after racer with the same car with less tracks with meaningless rewards. It's plain out boring compared to the early games which didn't gave a false sense of progression and so much passion to them. Now it's just so vapid and uninspiring.
Thing I hate about most modern racing games is that there's no actual attachment to your personal car. It's due to the fast pace, billion classes and upgrade limitations bullshit, and shit storytelling sometimes. Cars don't have character anymore like they did in underground 1/2 or most wanted or carbon. They are just toys... They used to have their own visual dialogue with the player and now they are nothing but empty shells.
Let's talk about Need For Speed games:
For example, just remember any boss/side character car from MW, Carbon or Underground. You can literally feel how powerful/tricky they are, you know their own individual personality and emotion they make you experience.
In Underground 2 it was 350z, it was a legend, it's recognizable not only because of the livery, it was a side character on it's own, appearing in cutscenes or in the beginning of the game, it had a story that was about IT.
Same with M3 GTR, you drove it, it was hurt(intentionally), taken from ya, then you had to take it back, it was a HUGE part of the story and almost entirely centered around that car(and other boss cars. Remember how they all had their individual cutscenes?).
Unbound tried to do that, but failed miserably... They tried to replicate MW but they forgot to give the car personality. Yes, you get a bit attached, and then it gets taken from you, but here's the kicker. M3 didn't lose it's face, it fixed because it was broken. Silvia in unbound wasn't broken, it wasn't a part of you, it was simply a toy that you and your friend used. THEN, it gets stolen and altered. Like... I didn't even recognise the car at first. How am I supposed to feel anything when you just put a different car in front of me and say it's mine. No it isn't, I didn't drive this shit. They have completely butchered my boi.
Like, you get what I mean? They used to have something that made em stand out... In Unbound they ripped the personality out of the car and made it into a human being. Cars just became tools of those "personalities". A cheap representation. Heck, EVEN ALL BOSSES ARE CHANGING CARS LIKE COME ON... Where's that feeling of "I worked on this monster my whole life to beat YOU!" Like for example bosses in MW or Carbon. Unbound is just kids with gazzilion dollars playing with cars because their parents are car manufacturers or something.
I get that it's the "New era" of street racing but it doesn't mean you can't make a car that stands out. It doesn't mean you have to just make them empty and eliminate all the meaning in showing them off. Why should I even want to get that car back, if it doesn't even have anything resembling the car I drove.
Papi's Camaro in Heat was great. It had a small bit of story that made it stand out, it should have been a hero car instead of that pointless show off Polestar... I have no Idea why they didn't just pursue that road. I guess batlepass is more important than captivating story.
You can't make players make connections with your game, and want to return if you don't even put personality in your CARS you present, not to mention human characters lol...
(Also when your car roaster consists almost entirely of hypercars but that's down to personal preference. SKILL ISSUE I guess)
I wish I could just say "skill issue" and that all the games are fun to play, you're just getting older and thus the games aren't entertaining any more. How ever, as you referenced, many other RUclips content creators have voiced many similar opinions on the state of racing games, not just in general, but also in specific. One who I feel has given a wonderful insight would be Roflwaffle who did a video titled "Nostalgia Bias in the Racing Game Community" which touches on many of the same points that you made. Anything from what many people considered to be peak racing games like the EA Black Box Need For Speed Games and Midnight Club 3 / Dub Edition, to even more simulation based games such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport.
I personally feel the biggest problem that we have is a grand disconnected between what we as a consumer want versus what developers want, and subsequently producers expect. Referencing Roflwaffle, comments that are often made or "Why can't they just make Need For Speed like they used to?" or "Why can't they just remake (insert game title)?" At the same time, newer games are getting critically panned by fans with simplistic statements about "(insert game title) sucks, don't play it, it's not worth your time or money." This is terrible for both consumers and developers because what we (hopefully as a collective) want and don't want isn't being accurately articulated to the developer. At the same time, whether by developers choice or producers choice, new elements are introduced to new or existing game franchises, because if we just want more of the old stuff, we can just get the old game that already does what we want.
Unfortunately, a large contributor to the problem is consumerism in general. What keeps developers employed is releasing product for consumers to purchase. Because of this, we've seen many series turn into a regularly iterated franchise. While this is most prominent in traditional sports games so as Madden and NBA 2K, we see similar problems with racing games as well. For instance, Need For Speed EA BlackBox games were released yearly starting from 2002 to 2008, with the highlight being Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted, and Carbon. In some ways, this allowed for iterative development, but it also meant for those who enjoyed the tuner scene, from the time we started Underground to the time we finished Undercover, the series became bland and stale. Couple this with people who complained that Hot Pursuit 2010 and and Most Wanted 2012 were bad and wished that EA would return to "Need for Speed's roots" ignored what EA did for the original Need for Speed games.
With all of this said, it isn't explicitly we the consumers fault. As mentioned, triple a development, budgets, and profit margins lead to a large problem as well. Gone are the days of our fun on the fifth and sixth generation gaming where developers were allowed to try new and interesting things. In today's market, if a games profit isn't exceedingly shadowing the budget, it's viewed as a critical failure, doomed to at best go dormant, and at worst become extinct (Midnight Club is cancelled soz).
The truth of it for me is that I can ignore aesthetics like film grain and rain, the analysis paralysis from too many choices and too large of map, I can even ignore a car roster being too big or too small. I cannot ignore that the games are just no longer fun. I do feel that you hit the nail on the head, that much of what we have been offered does need to be scaled back. We need a good story that gives a reason to continue playing, we need good objectives that give us a good reason to continue playing, and we need a sense of progression that makes us feel like we're reaching some form of conclusion. The greatest problem is to get a good consensus for the consumer on what they want, to be able to present it to a developer for consideration, and to have some form of liaison between consumer and developer to be able to make adjustments, instead of the track that we're on that certain groups of consumers are ignored indefinitely, or in the event of something like Forza Horizon where everything is thrown at a wall and we see what sticks and what doesn't.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the EA Black Box Need for Speed games, I loved Midnight Club 2 and 3 / Dub Edition, I even enjoyed some slightly obscure titles like Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Genki titles, Juiced, Street Racing Syndicate / The Fast and The Furious (Tokyo Drift), but the truth is you can only revisit a street racing game so many times, the same way you can only revisit circuit track racing games so many times, before it feels like there isn't much of anything new that can be done. I feel as a consumer, instead of reboots, we need more of a reset. We need the ability to have a clean break of what racing games were and what racing games have become, and focus more on what racing games can be.
Ah, I love when my own community gives me more good video essays to watch
Already chucked Roflwaffles one into my watch later hahaha
And you’re right, it’s true we can just go back and play the old games for that thing we want, but at the end of the day you can only do that so many times until you want a new iteration of that same thing.
A perfect example for me is Armored Core 6, people have been FEINDING for a new entry for years and when we finally got it, it was fucking phenomenal. Sure, there were some small things some of the more vocal old heads weren’t 100% happy about, and that’s always gonna happen with any game, but overall, it had an extremely positive reception.
It retained what made Armored Core so special and just brought that into the modern day, no significant cut backs, just straight GAS.
That is what I want from a modern racing game and now I feel kinda dumb I didn’t mention it in the video lmao
But I get it, it’s hard for publishers especially when you’ve got so many people pulling you in different directions, and I can imagine it’s a decision from much higher up the chain that micro-transactions MUST be implemented in some capacity, which is like, the one thing everyone unanimously agrees is hurting these games.
It is hard to predict what people will want though, and like you said when they can’t iterate year on year like they used to (not that they ever truly had to) it does get harder to experiment, and I get people being over all the tuner games in the early 2000’s, they definitely fatigued that style the same way festival racers are super fatigued now.
But yeah, like you’re saying as well, a game that actually makes you care is instrumental. It’s why single player games have started making a resurgence, everyone is sick of live service, it’s so ironic that the games with the most longevity aren’t the ones with ‘10 year plans’ behind them.
Your last statement sums it up pretty well, a reset would be amazing, starting from the ground up and just delivering a complete product that can leave an impact is what racing games need, but likely, will never get.
And well, the part I find most depressing is that the fifth and sixth generation of gaming is where my fondness lies (I know, I'm showing my age). Using a game like Armored Core 6 as an example, I have much love for the first through third generation of Armored Core. Not that 4 / For Answer, 5 / Verdict Day, or 6 have done anything explicitly wrong, FromSoftware put forth much effort to not only give us great stories but also to give varied game play. But 4th, 5th, and now 6th generation Armored Core isn't first through third generation of Armored Core, the same way that Most Wanted 2012 isn't Most Wanted 2005. When it comes to Armored Core, I'm not fond of energy shields, auto / quick boost, and fps style controls, I like my traditional tank controls, barely managing energy values, and using square and circle to attack.
I feel that my opinion of earlier generation Armored Core (and Need for Speed) is applicable to the comment that you had made about Night Runners. As previously stated, I do enjoy the Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Shotokuo battle styles games that Genki produced, and I do believe that it is 100% applicable to your notion of "setting a game in a time era", but I also agree with what you said about it being an independently developed game. I hope that it reaches main stream status, gains more traction and following, but the grim reality is that more than likely, other than people like you and I who are actively pining for something of this style, few people truly care about it, and it makes it hard for developers and producers to care.
It's just frustrating that there are many of us that can identify an era, or even specific qualities of gaming, and say "We just want that again" and it's being missed. And the secondary problem to that falls back to what I was saying with consumerism, the only way we can make our voice heard is by buying what we like and not buying what we don't like, but frequently with developers if something fails to sale properly, it's considered a failure, and instead of critically examining why customers aren't purchasing the game, they decide that customers just don't want it at all (RIP Midnight Club / Smugglers Run).
I still really think that the best thing that could be done is the formation of some kind of advocacy group where consumers can discuss what they want from who, and then that advocacy group to be a liaison between customers and developer / publisher to petition (hopefully) in the best interest of consumers.
@@TheChikyChiky Yeah that’s perfectly fair enough man, everyone’s got their own preferences and you’re right, it is beyond frustrating that we can point out an era we like, voice that we just want something iterating on that, and still have developers miss the mark and say ‘what’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy? We tried, we did what you wanted?’ Brother NO YOU DID NOT you tried to appease EVERYONE and ended up making NOBODY happy.
And it’s not like I’m stuck in the past and just want Underground 2 again for example, I want something BETTER. Rather than a failed attempt at trying to recapture what made that game so special.
I think that’s what AC6 did so right, there’s lots of love out there for ACFA and rightfully so, it’s bloody good. But fromsoft didn’t just make ACFA again, or anything a hell of a lot like it, they took what worked, and improved upon it, and gave us something completely new that iterated on what everyone loved.
That’s what we need for racing games imo.
Btw, I watched the Roflwaffle video, and it was great, can’t say I have a problem with anything he brought up outside of maybe some minor disagreements in the importance of a games OST, thanks for the recommendation man
I really do appreciate this back and forth, I eagerly wait for the next video, and I really hope that an Underground 2 Like (if that is applicable?) is developed and released soon.
I get the impression that you're the kind of person who would be happy to sit down at a table with a beverage of choice and discuss a given topic with passion for endless hours, and I enjoy that.
@@TheChikyChiky hey no worries man, replying to comments and havin an actual conversation is one of my favourite things about RUclips, it shouldn’t just be an echo chamber of what I think
And you’re right, get me going and I can yap about shit for hours with just about anyone
7:22 people seriously need to stop saying "free" when it should be "included". By that logic my electricity is completely free for 30 days after i pay the monthly fee.
On a different note yesterday i bought New Star GP, an amazing arcade game that is just perfect in every sense of the way and i am having a blast.
Certainly NOT a skill issue. I disagree with some of your points but overall a pretty solid essay about modern racing arcade games.
Cheers man appreciate you hearing me out and watching till the end none the less
The driving in modern NFS games is what puts me off personally. It's the reason I shifted to games like Assetto Corsa and BeamNG. Those are games where hitting the racing line perfectly is always the fastest way around a track. While in modern NFS games with that drift to turn mechanic and the nitro burst thing, it just forces you to drive in a very inefficient way.
More like another episode of niche topic that I want everyone talking about cause this shit means something to me
Damn straight that’s how we do things round here 🫶🏼
Gran Turismo 7 in VR is amazing, i cant even imagine having that as an option as a kid.
Problem is that the story mode works around the the Café, the most elitist and higienist idea ever.
Otherwise, there's no racers with own personalities, no plot, no drama. It's all about complete a car menu, learn about cars, repeat.
@@Drift4Driftersthat’s essentially gran turismo, the previous games didnt have stories.
@@Drift4DriftersThats essentially gran turismo, the previous games didnt have a story.
@@Drift4Driftersthat’s always been what GT is and what I want from the games. There is no BS subscription or whatever. They keep adding content for free. The only paid thing you can do is buy credits but it’s such an obviously bad purchase that nobody bothers (and I’m fine with that).
At its core it’s still a sim-y racing game for nerds, that has the best car personalization it’s ever had, and an incredible VR experience if you want it. 8/10 game.
As a kid you had no money for the cash grab feature, with the unique cars blablabla pay up sucker.
There is one big huge giant problem: In the old days, better cars, or better tuning meant better chances for victory. That changes with NFS Ghetto Tuning 1 and 2 (which OP seems to love). Which went all in with cheating AI. While in previous NFS games your disability to break in time was your biggest enemy, the took that away with utterly unrealistic driving physics and introduced rubber band ai from hell. Fast forward to today: Enemy AI does not really matter, nothing matters. You get a faster car? Hell, enemies get a faster car, too. You get a bigger engine? No Problem, YOU get a bigger engine and YOU get a better engine and YOU get a bigger engine, EVERYBODY gets a bigger engine. There is no progression if enemies progress with you. There is no sense of archievement, if you can beat nearly all(single player) races with a stock starting car. It is great for Multiplayer, but dear lord it sucks for SP.
Nah I agree with ya, the rubber banding is absolutely insane
Like sure, the opposing cars do have to scale a little with you as you progress, otherwise there’s 0 competition, but to your point, it is kinda weird they progress in line with you so much that it feels like you aren’t progressing.
I don’t hate the idea of there being a final boss or something crazy like that in a racing game though, similar to how souls games do it, where they give you an impossible boss to start with, literally a race you cannot win, and by the end of the game you progress far enough to be able to beat that driver.
For a minute I thought they were gonna go down that route with Unbound and your car getting stolen but eh, not quite
Sounds more like an issue with rubberbanding AI rather than progression because difficulty scaling in video games is literally part of game design 101. Player gets better, game gets harder to match the player's skill and experience or else the game becomes too easy and unfun like beating up a vegetable.
A "locked" car should only be locked because either you can't afford it or the dealer won't sell you their high spec asset without you managing to go through some sort of licensing/driving school to show you're worthy of such possession.
There could also be some kind of grifter aspect where you could cheat the system to get a huge loan and/or "talk yourself in" but it would involve risking your access to certain brands (maybe even tiers) for good. But that would be too realistic and the car brands wouldn't probably want that sorta thing in the game
Getting endless amount of "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU JUST UNLOCKED A NEW CAR!" notifications after finishing a race is a really numbing experience. Maybe it's fine for some arcade without any credit/money system... but still annoying. (I'm looking at you Hot Pursuit, IIRC)
I rather want to get the first shitbox to near max spec and see how far I can stretch it.
I still have very fond memories of totally maxed out Renault Clio V6 RS in Most Wanted. It shot out from tight spots like a rocket, but being so light it was a task to keep it from police blockades when a ton of them were running at you at the same moment.
Also Golf GTI in ProStreet. It felt just awesome on a Thrustmaster T500RS, as the front tire slip made the steering super loose. A MazdaSpeed3 was also a blast.
As was the Nissan Pulsar GTI-R in GranTurismo. I remember finding it on the used car list and looking at the specs I noticed that it could possibly be a weapon once upgraded to max. And it was. Too bad at that time I had already played the game so much that I couldn't achieve much if anything anymore with it.
Split second is still my favorite racing game of all time.
THIS!!! it was the most fun racing game back then, including Motorstorm (Apocalypse being the best) because at that time... racing games were like alot different in settings but alot more arcade-y than before. The thing i hate seeing on today's Racing game is that i feel like EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS THE SAME!! Its like ALL OF RACING IS NOW A SIM RACER which really bugs me out cuz there is nothing different out of any of them. Hot Wheels Unleashed is an Arcade to me because it doesn't simulate real-world drive because its an arcade racer. Split Second and Motor Storm apocalypse are my favorite of all time because i want to see desturction in racing with not just cars, levolution, buildingd, and explosions makes u feel like a badass and especially in Apocalypse when u ride through the Apocalyptic Wasteland with some maps that have Crumbling Buildings, Tornados, and ALOT of cool Set Scenes that happens during racing... its the same with Split Second, i love those types of Racing games!
Right of the bat I think you nailed it. Progression is broken in most modern racing titles, so that is why they feel so empty and fail to captivate.
Im confused, unbound never gave me any free cars, only the prize cars for completing the qualifiers
Technically you can get dlc cars for irl money and there are pass cars but yeah
Unbound only gives you free cars if you have Xbox Game pass ultimate or EA Play
Skill issue. I do wish someone would go back and make an old school street racer. What drives me most insane is all these modern racers get crazy high scores when in Forza horizon case they're no different to the previous game
Honestly, after going through school for video game design and programming, I feel that the biggest issue with the industry are the publishers. They are the ones that front the money to develop games, but they get that money from shareholders. So, they are always working to get more returns for less money.
Titles like ug, mw, carbon, prostreet, & 2015 had the vision for a good racing title, I sometimes imagine what 2015 would have been if it only had more content as prior titles,slightly bigger map aggressive cops, tons of customization to mix and match, autosculpt.. customization feels dry lately, and theyve even removed the option to shift with the analog stick which has been in prior titles and made it so you shift claw with lb and rb(Xbox) instead of adding multiple options, they need to use their imagination when it comes to parts apart from the stuff they get from actual manufacturers, I'm surey ou snd the viewers here have already pictured some awesome parts for the cars they use, what happened to roofscoops?... Picture a NFS with 2015 graphics & lighting, in a map detailed like carbon itd be awesome
Well I can say this, it started around the late 2000s and early 2010s. Since then media and entertainment has drastically gone down in quality. There are many reasons like social media influencers, the internet being more available, social generational change, smart phones etc.
The last good generation was the PS2 era. The 360 and so forth was more interested in being as ''serious and cool'' as possible. What I mean is, we got more titles like Far Cry, Battlefield, CoD, FIFA etc that caters to a ''normal'' audience making the media even more mainstream and accessible. Since then we've been getting yearly to bi-yearly slop from the same franchise with little to no passion for monetization gain.
And now that social-politics + always online DRM is also being force-fed into the entertainment I don't see myself going back anytime soon..
last good game that still had passion in it was fh3. There hasn't been any other open world racing game since that has been good. It's sad when a crash physics game (BeamNG) is still king of open world fun these days that has really fun gameplay and drifting mechanics. I don't expect much from test drive 3
Onrush had a soul. And the community left it to fucking die. Because "ITS CHASIJG THE HERO TREND".
Also because it was primarily a car combat game with objectives instead of traditional races.
@@zynet_eselednot trying to hate but I love that you hide the actual reason it didn’t really pop off with a another paragraph
BeamNG deserves way more respect than just being called a crashing game imo
The thing that missing in most newer arcade racing games is sense of speed, motion blur, sound design, fov, road size, camera effect, driveclub and TT isle of man game are the best example, it's scary to go flat out in those game, but when i survived the high speed, i feels so rewarding
Elden ring’s focus was being Uber hard and maybe they thought pausing was too easy
I think the small indie games can really hit it out of the park now, I recently played a game that was still being finished called "Night Runners", it was honestly the first time in a long while since I got hooked onto racing games. It really takes racing and gives it stakes, thrill, and sense of speed so many games lack. Realism racing has its own audience which will always be there, but I think having a crazy dynamic with a wild take on reality of street racing or just racing in general is what is needed.
Need for Speed has the best chance at this with the whole illegal street racing thing. Previous titles have had individually good things, but were not comprehensively good. Having higher risks, and a more gritty and unforgiving environment would completely boost the games especially online. Story def needs improvement but honestly online makes or breaks games nowadays.
if we consider sim racing, right now its at its peak popularity imo
One gameplay tip for Unbound, is for every race but the Sunday eliminators, you can make more money by running a lower specced car and getting bigger bet payouts with slower racers. So you strategically bet against someone you know won't win the race, but makes big bets, so you might only have to place 2nd or 3rd and win more money than having a max spec car and coming in 1st.
You can also win enough money to fully spec out your car to win the weekly challenges without hitting 5 police stars everyday, which meant I spent a lot less time being chased by police. I feel most people's problem is they feel the need to win every race available for max money, get 5 stars before the night begins and then wonder why they spend all night being chased by cops. I would regularly end nights at 4 or 4.5 stars until I unlocked the police scrambler so they take longer to recognize you.
It's trying to get you to play a certain way and I feel a lot of people just ignore the signs.
Come on, you're telling me the best way to "win" is not to come first place. In a street racing game. That's asinine. Good on you for figuring it out, but most people race to win, not to optimize cash payouts based on whatever nonsense system the game wants you to run.
i haven’t watched the full vid but an amazing racing game that recently dropped that i’ve been keeping an eye on for a bit now is Night Runners, it’s a 1 man made game that’s been the most promising racing game imo for the last 2-3 years it’s been in development- i suggest everyone check out Night Runners if you enjoy a mix of nfs underground ideals and games of that era + Wangan Midnight
Yeah man I really need to install a virtual machine on my Mac and play night runners
I’m sure I’d enjoy the fuck out of it even if it’s just a demo
@@Viseak i’m pretty sure it’s slowly being fully released as of a month or two ago actually, but definitely worth grabbing!
also, not 100% sure you’d need a VM, as it’s a steam game if im not mistaken :)
@@sleezyzzzI’ll have to have a look, didn’t think it’d be compatible with Mac but you never know!
@@Viseak sounds good man, would be a great vid opportunity 👀
@@sleezyzzz or even a good stream at some point 🤔
There's a lot in this video, but the part that stuck out to me was the huge attempts at player retention and engagement that are used in new games. That is something that is present in other genres, as well. I find that when a game is constantly throwing stuff at me, I become less engaged and less likely to keep playing the game. The game is basically playing itself when it gets to the point where 10 things are unlocked or given to you after every small thing you do, because I didn't really do anything, but I'm unlocking a crap ton of things. This is one of the slew of reasons why I get more enjoyment out of older games, like NFS Most Wanted, or Call of Duty 4, for example. There is less to do and utilize, yes, but you spend more time with each way to play and each item to use, and you actually get to fully experience everything the game has to offer. These new games have a billion things to use and do, but most of it goes completely unused by the large majority of players and you're left with a game that is loaded with nothing but filler that is disguised as more "content". It's a facad, and the time spent on creating all this pointless extra stuff to give people a dopamine hit every 5 minutes cause they unlocked something they will never use could have been better used making the actual game itself much more polished and focused, and flat out be so memorable 20+ years later.
atleast nfs is one of the few trying to innovate in different styles
Yeah I can’t knock them for that, and honestly I don’t mind the styling of Unbound either for example
The biggest thing for me is the gameplay, which is just, rough
@@Viseak yea they’re gonna release a new handling physics system with the new update i also feel like they should have kept heats police system but fixed the issue with cops basically killing you in one hit
Yo, life long racing game enjoyer over here. I definitely have a bit of a wish list:
1. I miss having "my" car that I slowly invest in over time like in need for speed underground or Gran Turismo 3/4. To really get that back they should put license restrictions in place, you should have to pass technical challenges to drive higher class rating cars, and those licenses should be gated behind "final boss" race events that are the culmination of the previous racing class. This will give you more incentive to actually learn to drive instead of just downloading the "all horsepower just follow the race line" tune
1b. remove the racing line. It's great for teaching concepts but terrible for creating a real racing experience where you take chances and actually learn the track.
2. Some cars just ARE faster than others, and that's fine. They really need to cool it with some of the "performance upgrades". Like sure it's fun putting race springs and a supercharger on a car, but the level of "upgrades" you can do are nonsense and turn the whole thing bananas. But if you get more time in events that are appropriate for your car then you have more fun without needing 1000 hp
3. A big part of the fun is building up to and then buying your dream car. And anyone who loves cars will have a bunch of dream cars they'd like to spend time on. Giving us more limited races (ie "RWD japanese cars from the 90s" or "turbo charged hot hatch") with realistic upgrade limits (no engine swaps or AWD swaps for starters) would let you actually enjoy the car you want in real life instead of being basically forced to drive the exact same Audi TT rs as everyone else.
4. Another part of the fun of these games are finding out about strange cards you've never heard of from small manufacturers or other markets. Give us more oddball challenge races that force us to drive stuff outside our comfort zone.
5. Cars are expensive, supercars are more expensive than most of us will ever be able to afford in our lives. Dial back the cash payout in these races so that buying a new car is a thoughtful investment instead of just "yolo, I don't have one of these yet". At least until you get into the endgame. Make the cars something you work for again, not just a gacha game where million dollar machines fall out
I want to really spend time with cars. I love cars. Give me that deep connection with my car and then when you put out the "1980s movie cars" DLC then I'll totally buy it. Give me more fun and I'll give you more of my dollars.
17:59 the reason there aren’t any 90s-2000s themed games is because some people like modern supercars and they might not be intrested in drifting or drag racing jdm cars
I feel like there’s a MASSIVE audience that does not care for Supercars in general, let alone modern ones.
I think Supercars are cool and all, but in a more crafted/soulful racing game, I’d be happy with none at all, and it doesn’t just have to be JDM cars either, there are plenty of euro, American and even bloody Australian cars from back then that I’d love to see in games
@@Viseak yes but there is still a big market for supercars which is enough potential customers to make a game studio add them in
@@caledonianrailway1233 for sure, but those games already exist in abundance
So it seems odd not to make something different
@@Viseak I think one of the best examples of what you're speaking to is Gran Turismo 5 right? there's loads of really high end cars but just as much attention is paid to japanese econo-boxes, 90's euro wagons, hell it even had a falcon and a monaro.
granted not every racer can be a GT5.
@@kosmokat111 yeah GT5 was iconic, it had an awesome campaign and great selection of cars
But that’s more of a sim-cade game, I’m looking for something more arcadey, with an actual story to get me invested, and a smaller more curated selection of cars.
I think Driver San Fransisco did this pretty well, but it did lack in variety of cars, like it had 15 different chevy’s but not a single Japanese car, sad!
About the burst nos, I felt like no matter what car I drove I was able to gain that gauge without engaging in “risky behavior”. Just do good grip turns or drift. That’s like it
I don't understand the notion that a game can't be great because "it doesn't have AAA funding" behind it. That couldnt be more false. The backing is to have a bigger team to get more done faster and please investers, and has nothing to do with how good a game is. The most inventive, satisfying games are indies with a small team, or in some cases, just 1 person making them lol. Money doesn't create good ideas, it just helps get them completed quicker.
For the most part I don't disagree with you. I think what he was trying to get at with the statement is that real life cars cost a lot of money to license into the games, so the street racing sim part of the games can't exist in the same way without that budget.
All 4 PS1 RIDGE RACER games including the bonus Hi Spec Demo, GTC AFRICA, WRC 4 PS2, and Juiced Eliminator PSP are all my childhood favourite racing games.
Thank you for not ragging on Gran Turismo 7. I know it doesn't have the cleanest hands in terms of monetization, but its far, FAR better than the games you mentioned here.
Yeah to be honest I’ve got no quarrels with GT7
To be fair, I’ve only played a couple hours of it at a mates house, but gameplay wise it felt pretty good
@Viseak It's a pretty good game, all things considered. A lot of the backlash began when they developers lowered the prize money for certain grinding events, which caused everyone to dispise the game for being greedy. It's gotten way better since then though, with circuit experiences giving you six figures for completing all of them, daily rewards, and more high paying events. Even so, the game is still viewed very negatively from what I've seen. If you ask me, I don't think it deserves much of that hate nowadays.
I want another 1nsane. Very simplistic offroad racing game with the biggest selling point being the very realistic suspension and damage model (at the time) that could completely deform and change how your truck handles. Do you spend a few seconds to repair after a crash or do you keep driving with a twisted chassi to hopefully grab another checkpoint before your opponent does?
NFS Heat night racing was close... they should focus their next NFS on that and expand on it
I might need to give heat a second shot
I tried it and passed on it quick cause I’m just not a fan of the police, but I hear some good things so maybe if I grin and bear it I might enjoy it after playing it for a little longer
Do you rate it?
@@Viseak if you dont like the police maybe isnt for you... but the cop chases in heat can become really intense. Just brutal at higher heat levels
@@87agomes yeah I’m inclined to agree, but then I hear how good the driving can feel and it makes me a little envious
It’s a shame I just can’t get past the cops feeling like a chore rather than a feature, but it is what it is
I’m so excited for night runners it makes me excited for the future of racing
Skill Issue
Here's 13 awesome racers:
F-Zero GX
Ridge Racer 7
Flatout Ultimate Carnage
SSX 3
Rallisport Challenge 2
Race Driver Grid
N-Gen Racing
Dirt 2
Jet Moto 3
Trackmania Turbo
Redout 2
Burnout 3 - Takedown
Inertial Drift
ATV 4 Offroad Fury
Great list... But no WipEout?!?
It might not be street racing game and it's driving dynamics are rather grounded I'm really looking forward to wreckfest 2
NIGHT-RUNNERS™ looks pretty cool
Quite the hidden gem, this is the small studios/developers era
48:34 "Imagine going back 20 years and telling a younger version of yourself 'hey bud, this is the best it's gonna get'." - I would have believed me. I already thought there's no way a better driving game than Underground 2 was never going to be made when I played that game for the first time.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy later games in the genre - Dirt 2 & 3 come to mind. And even before you mentioned Cyberpunk I was thinking of GTA V, where I spent more time driving and racing than doing anything else (I mean, that's pretty much true for any GTA game, V is just the latest entry, as it only came out more than a decade ago, which isn't enough time for Rockstar...).
They’re bad because they either don’t have a good story like the OG NFS Most Wanted or Forza Horizion 1, but also it has issues like the games of service where they recycle cars that have no reason to do so example FH4 and FH5 and the new Motorsport. And the poor quality of how they run as well as content that’s been lost or removed for no reason
Yeah the whole ‘games as a service’ thing has really left a stain on the industry I don’t think we’ll ever fully get rid of
@@Viseak I get it it’s an awesome concept to continue a game life by adding content but if its recycled or been removed to add later to extend a life of a game that pisses ppl off like older cars that were part of the previous game and tracks only to be added later that’s I think very thievery tactics
I'm a big fan of TXR games not only for what they are, but also for what it could be as a car RPG. Even with so many games with RPG elements, other games never gave me the same immersion than Kaido Racer 2.
You can play ignoring the plot, the character personalities and background, and even other self made rules like not travel between 2 far regions and race at the same night with the same car (unless you decide to keep one car on each region and hypothetically travel with a fast train), but as long as I did, every touge have stories happening, grudges happening, friendships and rivalryes. It gets much more interesting than already is if you wear your role play costume and try this different approach.
Thats what the market needs: a car RPG where the RPG element comes before the racing.
Any Burnout chads in the comments?
We are the lazy generation 🤙🏽
Rival GT, Expo video enjoyer here
As the Tables Turn,
It's the First day Of The Rest Of Your Life.
Revenge is still GOAT'D
02:37 - Racing game situation in a nutshell: Intro game scenes switches from MW 2005 to Payback
fully agree, it had to be said. i did enjoy unbound and the handling of heat was the worst of the newest era of these games but for me nfs carbon will always be the top, the best balance of everything. nfsu2 is legendary too close second perhaps. good video
Thanks man really appreciate it
It’s crazy how black box really captured lighting in a bottle and nobodies been able to really do it again since
@@Viseak one day it might be made, all itll take is funding the right director and studio
@@Ricys if the night runners team had the funding they might be able to pull it off, but that’s about it right now
@@Viseak idk. their kickstarter is doing good and their goals were huge and were setback , i dont have too high hopes for nightrunners but its still a good demo though not the best game that'd reshape the industry imo
If anyones looking for 2 old racing games that are still fighting, blur and split second! Theres videos you can find on in 2024!
Don't let people gaslight you into thinking you're the problem. There is not a single modern arcade style racing game like NFS that's actually good. Every game now is just feeling like tik tok speedrun simulator where you are constantly thrown cringey one liners and dropped into a sea of 4 morbillion cars. All with uninspiring physics, gameplay, damage models, visuals, music, and stories. I can't fuckin take this shit anymore. I had more fun playing the demo for nightrunners for 20 minutes than I did playing the entirety of fh4 and fh5 combined. It's not just a racing game issue, it's everywhere. It doesn't even stop at games. TV shows movies music, they're all the exact same.
Yeah it’s wild man, it all just feels like the entertainment version of fast food, and all I want is a nice restaurant dinner
Doesn’t even need to be Michelin Star just something 😭
@@Viseak I recommend beamNG drive, devs will treat you so well that you'll feel bad for not giving them more money.
I just finished u2 again after...shoot. 20 years. Felt great. So much it got right.
Here's what I did: download pcsx2, ripped my GT4 disc, got the retexture mod, set resolution to 4k. Bliss.
Sounds like a plan. Have you tried Burnout 3 and Revenge? And Midnight Club 3? I wonder if PlayStation or Xbox emu is better.