People always ask me "Why do you only cover old racing games?" This. This is why. Now I can simply link this video instead of giving a lengthy answer each time. Thank you! A little foot note from my side in regards to the lack of creativity. I've received so many comments from people saying they look more forward to the Pepega Mod my team and I are building for ProStreet than the other upcoming racing games. For a while I pondered as to why a silly mod for a 15 year old game gets people more excited. I think it's because the genre is so drained of any creative, let alone daring ideas, that even a meme mod is a breath of fresh air for people. It's something I'm very grateful for and I hope it delivers when we are finally done.
If this video of overeacting and constant exaggeration of issues that barely happen (isolated issues or opinionated even) is your reason why you cover only old racing games, that's sad as hell.
I've worked on one racing game, and I'd imagine the root of the problem lies in the licensing. Players want real cars, tracks and sponsors, but every one of those comes with a company's laundry list of requirements. In the game we worked on, for example, we included a real world person, and were contractually obliged to make sure it was impossible to get ahead of them in the tutorials, because they're supposed to be a pro driver. The list of cars also had to be approved by the naming sponsor, and certain tracks had to be used for certain things. And that wasn't dealing with any notoriously picky brands like Ferrari, Porsche (or Toyota, which went through a period of not allowing their cars to be modified in games). You have to sell your soul to the devil to get real cars in games, and as a developer, you do the best you can to make a fun game between the cracks of the legal contracts, but it's not always possible. Honestly, the success of a racing game is arguably more determined by the quality of your lawyers than the quality of your dev team.
I think a lot of the best games were made in a period when car makers were less savvy about games. The manufacturers didn't realise how important games would be to their brand, so they gave developers a lot more leeway. After they started seeing people making purchasing decisions based on what they saw in a game they grew up with, they got a lot more picky, and now we have these very sterile experiences that keep the brands happy rather than the players.
I could imagine having a game with a lot of classes of unlicensed vehicles and tracks with mod tools be an alternative, though there is always the risk of getting called lazy on the licensing front. Then again AC has a crap ton of mods, and most people playing MX Bikes seem to be content with using mods (especially since the base game is as barebones as a plump skeleton but people keep playing due to physics).
One of the driving games that has given me the most amount of fun the last 5 years avoids that problem all together. I still play Wreckfest 4-5 times a week with my friends and there are still quite a few people playing. It's arcade style, of course. But it has been fun as hell with friends. And it is not buggy as hell.
i don't think that what players really want, its more a 'nice to have' than a necessity. It's just like how AAA publishers keep pushing better and more "photorealistic" games these things look great in promo material but does nothing for the quality of the game and looking at the most popular games over the past few years most gamers couldn't give a damn about graphics just like most wouldn't care if you are driving a Bugatti TM or Baguetti. The misconseption is pushed by suits cause its easier to push out flashy derivative brandname TM shovelwear than it is for them to wait around for good and possibly risky games to be made.
you've given me (somebody who doesn't really follow racing games) a comprehensive overview of the _entire genre_ while explaining why i don't care about them, where the issues with each subgenre are and how we could take from the videogame industry at large to fix them. you reviewed a good dozen specific titles and only mentioned what was absolutely necessary for your script on top of this. this video is 36 minutes long and yet it feels as if it's half that length; not a single second of it is padded out or wasted and you kept my attention perfectly throughout. i've been a viewer of yours for a good few years now and i firmly believe this is your magnum opus, i'm seriously impressed. it feels criminal to watch this for free.
I certainly feel the same. Specially the creative bankruptcy bit. He hit it right in the mark why I give absolute 0 shits about racing as a genre on the whole. There's a daily-game website called Guess the Game, and whenever a modern racing game comes up, I have no way of identifying what game I'm looking at until the hint about the platform comes up, at which point I say the one that sold the most on that console. And I'm right with my guess then. Nothing visual about the game is a hint, and doesn't need to be. Because I see them as interchangeable, boring "realism" pieces made tailored for a motorsport crowd I'm not and will never be a part of; and that perception is sufficient and serviceable enough to clear through any and all discussions or challenges centered around them, that I may encounter with other people whose main hobby is gaming. Effectively, you could even say Racing has distanced itself, isolated away from Gaming and is no longer fun to think or talk about for anyone other than Racing fans. I have no such problem guessing older games tho, and I have swiftly identified Need for Speed and Burnout games. I saw a bit of a car drifting on-screen here, as well of shots of a low poly woman, and I knew that was ridge racer. I knew Blur at a glance - I never even played Blur. It was a neon-y arcade racer with square power ups, and that's all it takes. Because those games have an actual identity. I didn't need to play them to be aware of their differences, because they had plenty. And I have put thought - is it because this is a genre I have no interest for anymore that I no longer have this recognition ability, and I'm being unfair to the genre on the whole? No. I also have relatively very little interest in shooters or battle royales, but I can identify all modern ones too. I can tell an Apex reference when one is made, because that game is relevant to widespread gaming and because it looks noticeably different from its competitors. If anything, I have more often failed to identify PS3/360 era shooters because they all just looked "brown", and, well, all racers now just look "shiny" in the same derogative way that "brown" used to be. This is your PS3-shooter era, racing games. It'll be utterly forgettable as soon as the next better era starts.
Honestly, Need for speed: Most wanted is the only racing game you should play. There are a few other good ones, like nfs underground 2 and carbon, but most driving games are just not fun anymore.
@@hegitheone370this is just nostalgia goggles speaking, there are still good racing games now, Lego Y2K, Hot Wheels Unleashed, Wreckfest, Redout, just to mention a few, and the new NFS games aren't even bad, it's just the fandom that is mentally incapacitated.
Forza Motorsport 1 literally had a cool detail where crashing into a wall and sliding on it a bit causes your car's paint to rub on the walls. The later games downgraded the crash and details
"Why would anybody but the hardcore pay attention to spring dampeners or tire pressure" Couldn't have said it better myself. I enjoy quite a few racing games, but I always pick the simplest control scheme because I really don't care about spending hours fine tuning the way the car takes a turn. i just want car go fast and go more fast than other car. me win get cash get more car or hat for me.
NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona comes to mind. For every track, there were two default tuning sets: normal and advanced. If you just stuck to normal, you'd be fine. As I got better and got better parts, I did start fiddling with gear ratios and tape. In the Featherlite series, I started using Advanced default. On one road track in Cup series I fiddled with the camber. That's all the more tweaking I did. The default tuning and default aids were that well-designed.
I disagree with this tho. I barely play games but care about these systems deeply because I love cars irl. And thats the purpose of these systems - to appeal to car guys
There's nothing more beautiful than listening to someone else talk about their passion and its problems. This was masterfully presented, and you had my full attention up to the finish line. And I don't even play OR like racing games.
This. I don't listen to Country music at all really, but I was very willing to listen to someone explain the appeal and the current issues in the industry. ...for anyone curious, the tl;dr was "lyrical content" and "increasing homogeneity in the industry"
Raycevick is the only dude that could get me to watch a half-hour video about a video game genre I don't care about( I did actually use to love racing games growing up though)
I've just shared and recommended this video to "anyone who has played even just ONE racing game ever, even if it was Enduro, Top Gear or PS1-era NFS". Which, at least to my understanding, is pretty much every gamer, and even some non-gamers, who were around at the time. That's how good this video is, for sure. Not to mention it's an exercise in empathy. This video made me wish I could offer a hug to all racing game fans out there. Seriously.
Two days ago, coach told me and a teammate to give each other a 100% strength punch to the chest. Guy had 50 pounds over me and that hit felt like it was gonna shoot my soul out. "The last F-Zero game is 20 years old" Ah yeah, there's the soul damage.
People are so accustomed to mediocrity that big/medium game developers don't even care anymore about delivering a good, fun and stable product. It has become somewhat a market standard to underdeliver
It's because there's little competition. Compare now to 15 or so years ago. Back then, everyone was making racing games, bringing their own ideas and specialities to the table. Now, we're lucky to get 2 in a year
This can be said about all things culture. We have reached a point where things are forgotten as quickly as they launch, there's no more timelessness to things.
Years ago i warned people not to buy mediocre games and support predatory tactics. Some said "well its the norm now so shut up" At this point i knew we are going downhill from there.
The idea of a racing game set in night city is so tantalizing. One of my favorite parts of that game are the cars and driving them. There is so much potential out there for racing games, just waiting to be capitalized on.
Those concept art photos gave me a mini heart attack. For a second, I thought you were going to say "its in development". I legit got so sad when I learned they were just concept arts. That would be incredible to play, it would be such a new, refreshing take on the genre. But these days, publishers and devs only try the "safest" option. Thats why I don't think we'll see any change in this genre any time soon, maybe at all.
If you haven't heard this yet you should check out Pacific Drive, It's not a racing game at it's core but seems to be a fresh combination of roguelite and rally game. It's about an "olympic" driving sport set in futuristic post-apocalyptic world
As an indie dev that whole section looks so inspiring, I’d love to make something that combine’s cyberpunk or rainworld or the art of simon stalenhag with dirt rally. I’ve wanted to make a racing game for a while now but I’ve had no idea where to start. This might be it. I can’t let some idea this cool, with this much depth and potential get squandered by a bunch of money-obsessed triple A suits. Stay tuned ig
@@EASPORTSWRC Good luck getting those licenses :P Because part of it for me is seeing those precious cars in that kind of environment and knowing that they are what's real.
See, now I want an official 24 Hours of Lemons racing game. Build a race car out of something inappropriate and try to keep it running within a few laps of the leader or at the very least try to finish a race weekend without throwing oil all over the racetrack.
@@Raycevick I should also mention that while the above alone probably applies to the present ChampCar Endurance Series as well, 24 Hours of Lemons is also known for both its hilarious and unusual penalties for drivers who get shown the black flag and the ability to bribe the judges for fewer penalty laps after tech inspection if your team's car maybe has one too many performance upgrades in it. So I imagine a 24h of Lemons game would be in the simcade subgenre if you can race what's effectively a 90s minivan with a rollcage but if you don't drive clean you're subjected to an RNG punishment minigame involving something like being driven around the infield paddock while cling-wrapped to the roof and button presses are timed to apologize to passerby for your poor on-track skills. I have actually seen that punishment in action once. A Pontiac Fiero was involved.
The Arcade Racing genre has been practically dead for a decade and I'm _still_ in mourning. Raycevik, this video resonated with me hard, thank you for saying what I've been mulling over for years. Someday Racing games will be a force to be reckoned with Someday soon I hope
I don't understand how it happened. Every other genre went to dumbing down while all of racing went to boring simulation that nerds keep pretending are arcade racers even though they aren't.
Burnout. We bring back the x360 and duke controllers with military grade components, and some of the most speaker blasting sound design we can to blast eardrums while space laces, CKY, chime, sevenfold, KOMPANY, BARELY ALIVE, Timecop1984, ALEX & TOKYO ROSE, Bizo, Dr Ushuu, and more just give the power shot to unlock something more
The ``Casual gamers can't tell the difference between racing games´´ is so true and sad that it makes me angry to even think about it. You have so much variety on every other genre but this one, fuck, no wonder I barely play racing games anymore
When I was little during the ps3 era, I bought GT 5&6 and assumed they'd be like Burnout and was amazed at how many cars they had so it was an instant buy. Then I realized what sim racers were and was so disappointed. I was so put off by the genre that I was scared to play NFS Heat and I was so glad when I found out it was an arcade racer and was actually fun. But honestly? I'm STILL very apprehensive buying racing games in 2024 because I'm just scared of getting bored again because they all feel the same. I just want a crazy fun arcade racer that does something like Burnout did.
@@selfloathingweekly If you have been away from the emulation scene (Or haven't tinkered much within it) nowdays projects like pcsx2 and rpcs3 are so advanced that games in franchises like Burnout run so perfectly they may as well be remasters after an internal resolution bump and a couple community patches you can enable directly on the emulator interface. Games like Need for Speed Most Wanted/Carbon have broken pc releases that look pristine after a couple patches you can find in pcgamingwiki. I've been scratching my racing game itch that way since no newer releases seem woth anything.
Holy shit, I would kill for a game like 24:29. That was some of the coolest concept and idea I’ve ever seen. God damn, every time I think there couldn’t possibly be a genuinely new idea, something like that blows me away. When you said drag race on an aircraft carrier I imagined a game mode basically like shuffle board but with cars, try and get as close to the end without falling off, you're allowed to accelerate only until you start braking.
sadly its the studio behind dead by daylight, you just have to tune in rn, and find out why ot will never happen. Cause Cyberpunk on launch did be the the Queen of games then. We are talking about a game so broken you can play it yourself and find 6-7 bugs per round.
So would I, friend! Sadly, beHaviour seem to wrapped up in DBD to have time for it. :/ Ah well. Maybe Namco could do it for a new Ridge Racer, or something...
I think you'd probably enjoy the movie Redline if you like that concept art. The animated movie is about intergalactic races, and it's eye poppingly beautiful!
yeah i wish racing games aren't restricted to real world locations. game devs could play around with so many things if they merge racer with other genres. Imagine a racing game with alien car technology, with its own artstyle. That would be so dope.
The concept art you showed towards the end from Gregory Fromenteau made me almost tear up, companies are so caught up in realism, player retention and making an extra few bucks anywhere possible that they've yet to even TRY making a truly new racing game... I really loved my time with Unbound because it felt like the closest thing to a racing game with a beating heart I've played in years.
I feel like it's a big waste to spend all this time going for portraying these real cars and courses as correct as possible. Cars might be a niche interest but I think most people can get behind going fast. You don't have to make it cartoony and I don't necessarily think you gotta go scifi, but you do gotta try to make something unique to stand out from these tons of regular-ass racers.
I feel like a realistic simulator but in those fantasy/scifi settings would be really sick. I've never really been a fan of the arcade racers but the same courses do get really old in normal sims.
I remember someone explaining how a sci-fi racing game would work, without redesigning cars to 'fit' the theme, it's literally just as simple as the universe having self driving cars that can't be controlled, and the only way to race again is to restore ancient classics, and exploration will be a major part of the game, because you have to hunt down parts or cars. Man i would love to play that game.
This video is the racing game manifesto. My whole life I've been playing this genre, and all I had for the last 6 years was depression. I can only look to the future for some hope, because right now we are at rock bottom. Thank you for saying all of this out loud raycevick. You also helped me realize why I just don't enjoy new games everyone loves.
imagine racing around in a Lambo diablo that looks like its been retrofitted with some sort of future tech, racing on a occupied cliff side outpost thats currently being attacked. having to dart through hanger-bays, court yards all while missiles pummel the outside walls, which can affect the tracks layout. drifting around a tight turn as a half-life style ship blows up in the background, raining debris on the track, making you have to dodge it, trying your damndest to hold the 1st place position as a sci-fi 911 tries to run you off the road, . it would be so cool!
This video actually came out at a perfect time for me because I've been thinking a lot about just how stagnant the racing genre has become over the past decade. I went back and played Most Wanted 2005 again after the new year, and it's insane that no game in 18 years has managed to surpass the intensity of the police chases and authenticity of the radio chatter since. Like, the blueprint for it is right there, and there's still so much room for improvement. And somehow everything that came after completely misses the mark. Similarly, I played Grid 2008 again last year, and somehow I find myself having more fun racing in that compared to any other modern simcade game I've tried, from its own successors to other attempts at the genre. Sure they look prettier and feel more authentic, but in terms of sheer fun they just can't match a 15 year old game. It just feels like the genre has moved nowhere in the past decade and a half because somewhere along the line making a fun, compelling game got lost in favor of really annoying progression gating or a hyperfocus on trying to be as authentic as possible at the cost of everything else. It's a genre I want to love so much because I love racing, but with all the issues with online stability, bugs, lack of compelling singleplayer offerings, lack of creativity, etc. it's just getting harder and harder to justify my love for it.
And to add to your point about the complete lack of style in modern racing games, even if we look solely at Codemasters' output; Back in the original Grid, or in Dirt 2, or in F1 2010/2011, the first thing that greeted you after the developer logos was... an intro cinematic, oozing with style, set to music that sticks in my head over a decade later. The vocals of No One Knows slowly building up as an Aston Martin in the iconic Ravenwest livery does a donut in the streets of Madrid, or a Williams pit crew rolling the tyres out in slow-mo as the music calms down. And when you got to the menu, it wasn't just boxes and lists. It was a world you could get engrossed in. Your garage, your RV, the paddock, with all the menus being floating 3D text and assets over the environment. It looked GOOD. It had STYLE. It got you immersed and pumped to go racing. When I start up Grid Legends or F1 22, all I get after the Codemasters logo is... nothing. And once you get to the menu, it's completely sterile and uninteresting with some fairly anonymous music playing over it. It's all just boxes, everything is boxes. Gone is the feeling of inhabiting a 3D space. It's all just big rectangular or square boxes. The same as every other game out there.
@@Razor921 I still fondly remember the awesome soundtrack that played while 3D models of cars were spinning on screen in NFS III: Hot Pursuit. Compared to that today's games are super sterile. No style, no substance.
@@Raivo_K Man Hot Pursuit was my childhood. I have vague memories of playing a demo for the original Need for Speed, but Hot Pursuit was one of the first racing games I actually owned and played extensively when I was young. It always makes me sad that it feels like the series just goes past me nowadays. It just doesn't have the spark that I used to love about it anymore.
As half-baked of a game as it was, I really liked Undercover's police chatter and personally found it way more realistic than even Most Wanted's. Officers would be conversing with Dispatch as well as each other while idle and patrol around in response to crimes or incidents unrelated to your vehicular rampage.
Fighting game fans feel your pain, too. Almost every every issue you brought up exists in them, too. Expensive hobby with niche equipment, bad UI, underwhelming single player modes, etc. The worst one of all, poor online play, is thankfully being tackled pretty much across the board from all devs though. They're about 10 years late to the party, but it's something. Maybe one day fighting and racing game fans can share a drink over how we got through our dark times.
@@Leispada that's an outlier that everyone clowns on, no? Character DLCs are the real annoyance imo, especially when they're done incredibly unfairly like *cough* Tekken 7 *cough*
Appreciate you using my Pink Vitz memepost @ 11:14, lol. Completely agree with your points on racing games right now as a whole. It feels like there's been a sort of identity crisis since the 2010s, that's been slowly chewing away at what made many of us fall in love with such games in the first place. Its incredibly painful to see stuff like arcade racers completely fading away, as they were a vital part of my childhood. I can name on one hand the arcade racers that released since the 2010s that I would consider amongst some of the greatest I've ever played, and ONE of them is the racing mode in GTA Online, which just feels like cheating. All that's left are making incredibly head-scratching choices, to such a degree that most of the games really feel like a "one-and-done" playthrough to me nowadays. As for sim racers, THANK YOU for being someone who's willing to speak up about all the 'catches' that I don't feel enough are speaking up on. I want sim racers to properly succeed just as much as I want arcade racers to succeed, but its time for the focus to be put away from solely focusing on *realism* and instead focusing on building a foundation with what they can offer, and some actual POLISHING, whilst also not feeling like you have to put down TONS of money just to get a 'proper' experience. Racing games as a whole needs a jolt in the arm, and needs it *sooner* rather than later.
@@johncarl5505nobody gives 2 fucks about isle of man or motorcycle racing in general, its such a niche motorsport that theres not big enough interest for them to put maximum effort into it especially since most people dont care for motorcycles in general, theres a reason dirt 2.0 is so highly recommended so yeah id say a group b game would do extremely well
There's a journalistic quality to your videos that make them a cut above anything comparable on RUclips. The way you approach things from such a well-honed angle, and articulate it all in such a punchy manner is always fantastic.
This is one of the best videos I've seen on the racing game genre in a long time. It covered a lot of the genre's issues so well. You never disappoint with your videos.
This is why I love Motorstorm so much. The fact that I could drive a giant hunk of metal and see motorbikes jumping ahead of me, meanwhile trying not to go off the big turn In Raingod Messa was amazing. Another factor was the way the vehicles would evolve during the race from pristine to muddy and crumpled. I’m still hoping for a re-make of the original.
What always surprises me about these videos is how many friends Raycevick has to reliably play games with. I haven't been able to get more than 2 of my friends to game with me at any one time since I turned 25...Don't get me wrong, I hang out with friends...mostly we drink and bullshit...but the idea of gaming with half-a-dozen friends and having a great time is something I can only remember from back in the day. Pure jealousy.
@@Eddyoshi Honestly, I play pretty much every genre. When I hang out with friends (whether in-person or virtually) it's mostly sports/racing or party games. What about you?
@@Silvertip_M Into all kinds too. My big favs are RPG's like Skyrim and Mass Effect, but from the subject of this vid, love my racing games too. Underground, Most Wanted, Burnout 3...all classics.
@@Eddyoshi Sounds like we have similar tastes in gaming. Have you given the Yakuza/Like a dragon series a try? They're really excellent games with solid RPG mechanics.
This video is so much pent up frustration we all felt but couldn't put into words, I'm glad someone as awesome as Ray is preaching for us. Something has to change, this genre I love so much has become a joke.
@@MydasAU This video is 100% Raycevick devaluing these racing games for not being the games he wants and preaching about how Sim Racing fans are those horrible nerd steryotypes and deserve to have ruin sent their way. Am I literally supposed to just sit on my hands and knees while he devalues these video games?
I was a huge fan of the Motorstorm series as a kid, offroad racing with multipile vehicle classes in tracks set in the Desert, Jungle, Arctic and Apocalypse were all chaotic and fun, and they actually played really well too.
Yeah, when I got my PS3 Christmas 2007, Motorstorm came with it, Idk what to expect but it became my favorite racing game series ever, I was so sad when Evolution Studios went bankrupt.
Motorstorm was extremely fun. Modnation racers, Need for Speed (Underground and most wanted) Holy PS3 days were so fun, just remembered a PS2 Game, Speed Kings (I put so many hours into that)
It's always been such a mystery why the gaming industry is so obsessed with making "realistic" racing games geared toward cars lovers. What about a racing game in the world of Mad Max ? Or in the world of Star Wars ? What about a futuristic driving game with fun characters, a proper story, RPG elements and cool races ? What about a secret racing society competing every years in dangerous races all around the world, with experimental cars, interesting rivalries, the possibility of sabotaging rivals with mini games before races, RPG choices...? There are tons of possibilities for fun racing games.
It's broadly the result of end-stage capitalism, but more specifically than that it's the fact so many of the beloved arcade racers of old were financial failures even at the time. Blur, Slit/Second, Motorstorm Apocalypse, Dirt Showdown, Driveclub, ModNation Racers, Ridge Racer Unbounded, Twisted Metal 2012 and Onrush were pretty much all well-reviewed by critics and the players who bought them, but all of them failed to meet sales expectations. The death of the genre is the direct result of these consistent failures and there's been no real indicator of it turning around.
@@wordenroger6188yeah capitalism is the problem, you should check out the awesome games that Cuba and Venezuela produce ! They're awesome, of course no rival to the classics from the USSR nobody makes games like the old and mighty Soviets ... Yeah right
The same reason why so many Sports game aim for realism instead of something like NBA Jam or Supershot Soccer: The audiences isnt big enough to justify making that kind of game
@@johnf.r6658 Speaking of the soviets I got into flight sims because of the well known Russian light sim War Thunder, which also led into me playing the in depth flight sim series IL 2...
I remember a few years ago when I thought ProStreet, Shift, DriveClub, and GT3 were unique for having legal racing. Now I see Heat and Unbound as unique for having illegal racing.
@gnonlinegaming project gotham, assetto corsa, forza (regular and horizon), nfs shift series, project cars had this in spades. actual illegal street racing games are much rarer, like nfs most wanted was arguably the peak of that subgenre and it came out almost 20 years ago
26:10 "sustaining injuries during crashes" Funny that you mention that, the Xpand Rally games from Techland had that as a feature. While you can repair the car, the injuries had to heal over time, so if you ended up with a leg injury the driver might not be able to apply full brake force or a arm injury could result in longer gear changes.
Wait it did? Oh god then what was I doing as a kid were kinda messed up cause I love the impressive crash physics so much I kept on driving off a cliff on every chance that I got
@@dustojnikhummer Yes, that Techland. They made a few Racing games in fact. The 2 Xpand Rally games (still available on Steam) are probably their most interesting ones. For the time they a pretty advanced crash model, Tracks where set within larger maps that featured a connected road network, a career mode where you buy and upgrade cars (still pretty unique for a Rally game) and like mentioned above a driver injury system. GTI Racing was a VW licensed game that was somewhat similar in gameplay to XPand Rally, but it was much more Arcadey and dropped the driver injuries. This one is delisted now because they lost the VW license. Their last racing game was 2010´s Nail´d, a completely over the top ATV racer.
@@Soonjai They actually made one more after Nail'd - Mad Riders. While it's no longer available to get through legal means (except on PS3 for some reason?), it was basically a much more refined and focused version of Nail'd at a far cheaper price, and it was great!
I've been a modder and dabbled on game design. Between 2013 and 2017 i tested a lot of concepts from making my own podracer, creating my own physics for cars using "scifi magnetohover tires" (converting tire model to use.. other areas of physics, getting rid of some of the most annoying and "game breaking" things about real tires.edit: i think i have some videos about some early builds on my channel...), rfactor1 and 2 with arcade tracks and arcade style car/tire models that are based in "real" physics, cellshaded open world racer.. and i can tell you that i had more fun testing those that i have had driving a sim since 2012. I ran out of resources and talent but there is a LOT one can do about racing games. We can make it really fun but retaining that feeling you get from a sim; it can be unforgiving AND fun at the same time. Just track design alone; imagine driving a rollercoaster on the sky without guardrails. You run out of the road, you die. Varying grips, jumps, 70 degree camber corners, splitting roads and cars that have serious speed and grip.. That is just what you can do with track design in CURRENT sims. Lately i've been driving on the few "open world" tracks in AC and is sooo much more fun than going round and round. I made one of my own for rF2, it has 400km of road and you can drive there for hours (i need someone to help with the textures, which is why it is not released, based on real world height data and existing roads that are modified for racing). It is just sad that the base game is SO strict that you can't really do much more than that.. I mean, how hard would it be to add "tag" mode or "cat and mouse"...
So glad wreckfest was mentioned. The game is so much fun and the racing itself is actually fun even if there was less destruction. The driving is also very simple, I was able to compete in online lobbies just using a keyboard which makes it very accessible.
The Mad Max video game kind of laid a good foundation for the concept of an original racing game. It gets repetitive and definitely would need a lot of work to change it into a driving game, but it already has a pretty solid base. Racing across the desert trying in your ramshackle muscle car to take out the spike-armoured enemy cars with grappling hooks trying to pull you apart, as a sandstorm swallows up the back of the pack and you if you can’t keep it together… it was pretty great.
@darcgibson5099 Spot on! 👍 As a driving-games impaired player (i just can't manage to drive very well in VGs, as opposed to reality 😔) i can at least appreciate the pros of the genre (two of my closest friends are racing-games' afictionados), but simple-racing and simulations just aren't fun to me. 🤷♂️ Well, the only two games with driving i managed to play successfully in forever (since the ps1 days with Destruction Derby or Twisted Metal, where proper driving mattered less) are Wipeout (collection, because i stopped after Wip3out) and MAD MAX. I say we need more love and originality put into games, as it was years ago...
Recently replayed mad max and got to say the first like 3 or so hours are brilliant, it's just ashame it's content as you go on is very repetitive. The core gameplay loops of driving and fighting are brilliant and satisfying but get old when nothing changes it up as you progress.
The segment at 24:35 really opened my eyes to how much creative potential racing games actually have. I guess I never thought about what they could be and just embraced their current state as the norm. Really craving a good racing game now
Fucking yes, finally somebody called out the asinine complaints about NFS Unbound's aesthetics. Older racing games were gorgeous, and not necessarily because they were "realistic". Some were, but a lot of the most beloved franchises had their own aesthetic. It's bizarre that racing games aren't allowed to have one now.
@@QF_Dan72 You do understand that it gives the game more character for adding them, right? Not many racing games nowadays have those. Unless, you can prove they do?
@@theceoofbasedandlitswagger2456 I think the problem is they don't fit. They feel like last minute additions meant to cover up another generic rendering layout. If the entire game had stuff like the Initial D "speed lines" on the cars, cel shading on *all* of the 3D models instead of just the wildly out of place humans, and had gone for a more sharp and integrated particle effect system rather than the "ripped from an eight year old's math notebook" look, it would've worked. Congratulating Unbound for those effects feels like rewarding a last minute panic decision meant to cover up laziness.
I hate it because it's jarring. You have ultra realistic and then super cartoony in the same image, it's like watching Roger Rabbit but less well realized and integrated. Automodellista looks great, Enthusia and GT4 look great. Burnout 3 on an emulator looks great.
Burnout Revenge, NFSU2, Gran Turismo 4, all were my favorite racing games back on the PS2. I sometimes wish we live in a timeline where games including racing ones become better and better overtime, rather than be like this mess. We need more racing games that are actually good.
That part on creative bankruptcy hit a chord in me. I was so pissed that so many of my friends dissed on Unbound because of the style. It genuinely makes me angry that we no longer get graphically fun games anymore and it all has to adhere to realism ESPECIALLY for the racing genre. It's as if people forget that the fun thing about racing games are how fun it is to drive a speed machine around a dangerous yet fun track that pushes the limits.
Just my own personal take, the biggest reason that game was a turn off to me wasn't the style, infact I quite like it, but the NFS' series' habbit of having the most god awful, cringey, "How do you do fellow kids" bullshit storylines possible. That alone made me just not want to even touch it.
Burnout & Midnight Club > Any of those lame basic simracing. Imagine playing GTA but instead of doing the usual GTA stuff, you go to work, get stuck in a traffic jams. Sim Racing are the blight of racing genre. Fight me.
@@JennyWakemanSimp Yeah, it's this. The visual aesthetics are appealing. But the character dialogue is part of that aesthetic too, and is extremely off-putting. Illogical rebelliousness and desire to stick it to 'the man' while driving around half a million dollar supercars and committing massive property damage + almost running people over without consequences? You ARE 'the man' that needs to be brought down. And while there could be a self-aware tongue in cheek way to do that which would work, Unbound doesn't attempt that.
@@sirtophattingson8946 interesting that we know barely shit about the MCs of most wanted 1, carbon etc but I connected with them more than any newer games. The villain of MW1 sabotaged my car, red guy frm carbon threw me off a cliff. Fair enough let's race!
There are a few other issues that come to mind in my eyes. 1. Live service Self explanatory. Live services, and to a lesser extent yearly/frequent releases destroy creativity and basically just run the developers through an endless grind to create content for a game long after they want to take a break, leading to uncreative ideas and lackluster content releases. Additionally, live services heavily rely on multiplayer for content, as it dramatically extends the amount of time that a piece of content is used for. However, this leads to a drought of really good experiences, as things like campaigns get pushed off to the side in favor of adding a new car or track for the live service. This results in these games being unmemorable, as there is no story or anything to "experience", only the same multiplayer that's been around for years. 2. The pokemon problem. As the roster of pokemon kept increasing, it became harder and harder for game freak to keep up and remodel the pokemon (or rip them from the 3ds games) for each new release, leading to dex gate. The same issue applies to the racing game genre. People expect certain cars and brands to be in the game, they'll beg for their favorites to be added all the time, and this creates an ever escalating issue of modelling and recording dozens and dozens of cars while dealing with the eternal hassle of licensing agreements.
Another problem that a lot of racing games share with Pokémon imo is that they're trying to cater to online culture by referencing and recreating current memes, trends and online culture itself, rather than focusing on building a unique and believeable in-game world that's special and different from the real world. I'm so tired of video game characters running around with their smartphones, doing silly memes, talking about their followers and chasing online fame, rather than being enthusiastic about and invested in the main point of the game (be it Pokémon, tuning or race driving). It makes the characters feel so annoying and stupid and it never fits into the setting of the game, unless the setting is itself just one giant boomer parody of online culture, but who would want to play that? I guess the publishers think that putting in those online culture references will trigger tons of social media posts and free marketing, but it really hurts the authenticity of and immersion into the game world.
Not that I'm saying that the story and setting were all that important, but having to put up with cringey story elements (eg. Need for Speed 2015, Heat and Unbound) and/or stupid emotes and branded accessories for your driver instead of meaningful rewards (Forza Horizon 4 and 5), is rather demotivating when the core gameplay is nothing special. My point is, an intriguing story in an immersive and authentic game world can save a mediocre racing game and make it enjoyable (eg Need for Speed Undercover), whereas a story full of cringey online culture caricatures that draw your attention back to the real world is the final nail in the coffin.
@@LRM12o8 the bit about authenticity and immersion is interesting, since a lot of people would argue the opposite (that phones and social media are prominent enough that depicting a modern youth culture without them is unrealistic and immersion breaking) I agree that more games should omit that stuff to focus more on the actual racing, and that’s immersive in a different way, but I don’t think its inclusion is entirely cynical marketing
The segment where you showed concept art and discussed ideas WAS MIND BLOWING So cool and literally exactly what I would've played even if I am not a racing game enthusiast at all
@@Sergeeeek no? That sci-fi world with old cars concept allows you to combine familiar, desirable classic cars (giving car enthusiasts something to latch onto) with sci-fi mechanics like teleporters and portals (ala Half-life/Halo). It's not just set-dressing, it's providing the context for certain mechanics' existence, that we don't get to interact with in most other racing games.
@@Sergeeeek I've fallen deeply in love with vehicles I've used in open world games before! I'm definitely not the only one. Integrating good driving can make a world of difference, ex: GTA Online.
@@rickygforce4217 I just watched a let's play a car based JRPG, where there are cars instead of people and all tropes of the genre are present. I changed my mind now lol
Okay, now imagine a shooter, produced by either Activision or EA… …with IRacing’s content model. Wanna play a map? That’s gonna be 10$. Wanna unlock this gun? That’s another 5$. Oh and to access the game you have to be signed up to our subscription.
Okay, but Activision and EA are not trying to accurately replicate the physics of the guns, bullets, magazines, and apply that to your controller. Imagine the next Call of Duty trying to accurately create a damage model for each gun and bullet and its interactions with the environment and armor types? They would also need to replicate gun jams.
God, hearing him describe the concept art as a game gave me chills. It's a game not only I need, but the industry needs. I miss the old days, in that way.
Strange that there wasn't a mention of Trackmania. I've liked racing games here and there, Burnout 3, revenge, paradise; wipeout, flatout, forza, grid, etc, but the one that has gotten the most play out of me has been Trackmania. The whole grind of shaving fractions of a second on a fun track is something that kept me in and going. While Turbo wasn't the that good according to the snobbier veterans, something like the magnetic tracks of rollercoaster lagoon were a lot of fun for someone coming from regular car racing games.
I love trackmania but it feels like it isn’t even a racing game, despite being about racing. At its core it is a speed running game to me. Weird distinction, I know
Trackmania is great but it's not really a racing game I geuss. As you don't really race against people in a traditional sense. In reality you really just race against yourself.
@@saintscrib380 I dont know if that should discard it from the conversation, since most of the racing games mentioned do have time attack modes where you just try to get the fastest run through the route.
And I thought fighting games were struggling. Stay strong, racers, hope there will be something good in the future. Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying that fighting games are bad right now. I really like a lot of them. The problem is that they can't retain their audience unless it's a superfranchise like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Not to mention a lot of games lately in the genre were relatively "safe" with their gameplay approach. But games themselves are great and most of the time have no real technical issues and with the push towards rollback netcode and cross-platform support it's looking better than ever. But player retention and lack of mainstream audience really holds the genre back from true greatness. But this video, holy hell we eating good boys. Racing fans are served literal garbage on a plate and expected to pay hundreds for it. Where is variety of content? Where is fun customisation? Why the hell those games are released in such a poor state and who approves this garbage? As consumers, as players, and especially as fans, deserve way better than this.
Fighting games do have their weird L's(strive, and mk11 gameplay "regressions") and lower player counts but nothing egregious that hurts the genre outside of SFV launch(and capcom has learned their lesson from what they've shown for SF6) or worth saying it's a genre in a bad spot. Granblue, kof, melty, skullgirls expansion, tekken 7, soulcal6. All have been perfectly fine as far as big titles go. Even with more niche titles brawlhalla, nick all stars, lethal league, and samsho are fun and fairly good.
My issue with the racing genre is that it's gone almost entirely sim. I miss arcade racing games like Burnout and Midnight Club. The only one we have left is NFS and the quality of those is hit or miss, usually coming down on the side of miss. What used to be one of my favorite genres is something I never play now. Edit: This was addressed in the video. Nice! I really need to start watching the whole video before I comment. lol
I miss the days when it was just fun and awesome physics that didn't try to mimic real life, because apparently the racing organizations like NASCAR and F1, much like NFL and NHL think that people are going to get into fights or fly off the track because they played a video game. To be honest, video games aren't real and never will be as close to what real life is.
@@__-ni1kz The physics are about the same, but the maps got worse. Roads got wider, straighter, and longer so it's entirely focused around hypercars and anything else is boring beyond all reason. This alone is the reason Horizon 1 is my favorite. Roads were designed to be fun to drive and semi-realistic. You had to be good to take hypercars around. In Horizon 4 you just go flat out in the Mclaren Senna around the entire map because the concept of curves is basically non-existant. They've made a racing game that's basically just a series of drag races.
A big complicating fact I can't imagine *not* being part of the problem is probably the sheer cost of royalties. Racing games that license the right to use real cars, tracks, etc. have to be heavily profitable so the developers can cut even on the licensing fees at minimum, if not make a solid profit too. This is why only the newest two or three Forza Horizon games stay listed for sale if I remember correctly - Team 10 eventually just lets go of the older games so they aren't constantly paying for the fees still.
It'd be nice if they just take the Burnout route of Totally Not a GTR guys, and let people do wacky stuff with their cars instead of having Ferrari breathe down their necks for daring to scratch the bumper.
@@marcfyre Currently ferrari scope out who you are, your history with ferarri, cant sell it in the first year of "owning" it, cant sell the car without notifying ferarri, dont fuck with the engine, dont make to many big cosmetic changes. If you so much as utter something negative of ferarri you are not allowed to buy any new ones. All in all, good fun club :)
Here’s my question, why do we need real cars in all our driving games? Isn’t it boring as hell to see the same cars in 10 different games play very similar to each other? I’d rather have 10 different looking games with different looking and feeling cars instead.
It's most agonizing being a lover of fighters, racers, and Ace fuckin Combat. I literally live to play games or try to do good academically so my life is basically miserable looking at the current state of affairs. Thanks for the vid Raycevick, it was probably my favourite one to date.
I’m a War Thunder addict, but I played halfway through AC7 before getting distracted and have recently started dipping my toes into DCS. I _really_ dislike the elitism some people have when it comes to the different air combat titles. Each of those three is enjoyable for what they are, and they have their own flaws and strengths, and are difficult to learn in their own right. For some reason there’s a lot of shit talk between the fan bases of each title. I find WT players to be the worst for this, usually directed towards AC, since even within the WT fan base some will trash people that prefer to play arcade mode to realistic mode. I’ve seen DCS players talk down about War Thunder and Ace Combat for being ‘arcade titles,’ which supposedly makes them worse than DCS because DCS is a ‘realistic air combat simulator,’ but a decent amount of their player base is pretty mature. I can’t honestly say I’ve seen Ace Combat players trash talk other games, but I also don’t spend a lot of time interacting with that community so I don’t really know. I’m not sure what I’m trying to build up to with all that, I guess I’d just prefer if there was a more cohesive genre identity everyone could gather around instead of just sitting in a corner and pointing fingers. Maybe it’s time I try AC7 again..
@@OtterMusician Haha I totally get the War Thunder thing, I put way too much time in it than I'm willing to admit. As an Ace Combat man, I know that the community is just busy jamming to the amazing soundtracks and not really caring about what others have to say, so it's pretty based.
This is everything we need at this moment, constructive criticism about the major issues the modern racing game industry has, having a spotlight about how the public/industry reacts to these concerns, and how it can be solved. This was a great video, I loved every part of it, this definitely deserves some more recognition and notoriety
Exactly. The same thing can be said about single player third person shooters. This genre has suffered so much over the last few years. The attempts to recreate one always hinges on what shitty, live service game they were emulating. Max Payne, Gears of War, Dead to Rights. Whatever we get that’s close is either open world or lack any innovation. A Dead to Rights game would be nice. I know Max Payne is being remade. But what else? Wanted: Dead had promise but the open-world Watch Dogs games ended up making games that are mechanically similar while being polished. My saying is that every game comes with at least one deal-breaker, which is odd because games that have relied on structure as well as accessibility and player-choice, have already been released. Max Payne 3 is, maybe, the perfect game in terms of player choice. I love Smash Bros and even Ultimate was released without trophies - a deal-breaker.
I agree with you so much that it hurts 😭 What a golden age it was in the late 90s to mid/late 00s. What a wealth of innovation and creativity we had only to now have constant commercialised stuff. It's all about car and racing licensing and monetising as much as possible with as little effort as possible. I've recently been buying more and more PS2 games to just relive the glory days.
In all reality, I still play my PS3 just because of this(and to play PS1 games). If you remember back in the day, one of the complaints of GT was the car sounds, but if you looked at NFS from the time, their sounds weren't realistic. And tbh, I liked it, civics had a really punchy Honda sound, Supra had a nice unique sounds, not necessarily realistic.
i've found myself playing more and more games from the 2000's recently (abandonware = freeware babyyyyy), games like colin mcrae: dirt 2, race driver grid, nfs prostreet, etc. and so far i've all found them far more enjoyable than most of the games i usually play on my ps4
When I was a kid, I played Burnout 3, Crash n Burn, and GT4 a ton. I miss the the time racing game was either a quick messy fun (Wreckfest kinda replicated Crash n Burn), crashing with style, or dying on a Nurburgring endurance race
That one questline in Cyberpunk about racing makes your point nicely. A NFS/Fast and Furious style street racing game set in the Cyberpunk universe would be amazing. Cyberpunk even works thematically for a game about outlaw racers trying to thrive in a dystopia.
I've been dreaming about a need for speed with cyberpunk or space colony setting before 2077 was even a concept. And Khyzyl Saleems concept art has made that dream boner even harder
Slamming someone in Flatout that's stuck to your bumper with boost into a wall is the most cathardic feeling i had in any video game. Wreckfest doesn't even come close to that.
As much as I love the item-play and unique dynamics of kart racers, I miss the days where they weren't the only option I had for a meaningful racing experience.
they're not. track mania is pretty good. but the way it solves these problems is by having races be time trials with no collision instead of regular races. it's a workaround, but it works.
item play ruins all the appeal I have for most arcade racers. I just dont like the idea of having your fate decided by a diceroll no matter how good you are at the game. Personally, I would like to have more arcade racers that are more meaningful racing experiences on a base level with something like Juiced, or NFS Underground. And even if a game had items, it'd be something that could be predictably controlled (i.e: 2008 Death Race, where picking up a sword activates your offensive weapons, and picking up a shield activates your defensive ones)
@@wotwott2319 its a mechanic that definitely doesn't sit well with everyone and it does fundamentally mean that a race with no mistakes can be ruined by factors outside of your control. That said, any inconsistency you get from an individual race has a different level of scrutiny over the course of many others and while the most skilled racer doesn't always win, they will still be able to find some degree of consistency. Itemplay may be rooted in RNG, but its a skillset of its own with quite a degree of depth. I understand why its not for everyone tho and again, I wouldn't be here if I thought it was objectively better
I think itemplay is just fine in a kart racer, where the stakes generally are much lower in terms of hit due to low speeds. And in most games it also adds an element of strategizing, if you can use an item to also block incoming attacks. But outside of kart racers, I don't think it works all that well, due to aforementioned speed. Sure would be nicer if there were some racing games outside kart racers...
so glad you covered wreckfest, one of my favorite games in recent memory. every day I miss motorstorm and wreckfest delivers something so close while becoming it's own thing
That NFSII Menu music brought back some serious childhood memories! I remember my family computer was way too weak/slow to run the game and even the menus loaded at a crawl frame by frame while the music still played fine, so i have that song burned into my memory. Such a cool track
Honestly, I'm shocked the genre doesn't have a flourishing competitive scene considering the rise of esports and the obvious fit that it is for it. Or, well, it would be a fit if all of these problems didn't exist. I've never been one for racing games, but you've really made a gripping piece of work here. Great job with it.
I think the reason there are no flourishing competitive scenes for racing games is simple, there are no exciting racing games being made that are competitively viable. Not allot of people are interested in seeing formula one or gt cars racing on real circuits in a video game, there's already real life for that, so that's where people get their fix, that's why there's no flourishing esports scenes for games that emulate real life sports, what we want from esports is things we don't already have in real life, like counter-strike, league of legends, starcraft, age of empires, etc... and not games like fifa, madden or any other "simulator". If I was tasked to create a racing game that would be viable for esports, I would make a game like trackmania where you drive on crazy circuits at 700mph but with actual races where people can crash into each other and do burnout like takedowns while drifting trough turns and loops with an incredibly high skill ceiling where the difference between a casual player and a a pro is so high that they could never realistically compete with one another without the casual getting absolutely crushed. That's what makes esports exciting, completely unrealistic scenarios that are exciting to watch because it can't be done in real life and the determining factor for who wins the game is pure skill.
Even if you fix the games problems there's still a problem with esprts sim racing (and this is coming from a sim racer) no one wants to watch and if they do thare gonna watch there favorite streamer that's racing not the event stream. Also le ma virtual is doomed to happen again the race series that gave Motorsports games There rights are idiots though most didn't know how shit that company was.
The only racing games I have ever put time in are Motorstorm and NFS Most Wanted. That idea of racing in sci-fi/post apocalyptic landscapes absolutley grabs the imagination again and makes me want to play a racing game.
I tried getting into Motorstorm, but the first game kicked my ass so hard, I don't really wanna get back to it, that and maybe I should try something more beginner-friendly first.
The futuristic tracks in Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart brought that vibe hard when I was a kid. I'd kill for a game that took that vibe and bumped up the graphics, toned down to cartoonishness about 20%, and added even just some minor management.
Try Driver San Francisco. Its actually a story/character driven game, and you play as a detective Tanner in his iconic Dodge Challenger R/T who is chasing criminal mastermind Jericho who escaped and is about to blow up the whole city. He often appears driving Dodge Ram pickup. As you progress through the story you will collect information about his mafia and what are his true intentions. You will also battle his henchmen in 1v1 road fights. The city itself feels alive, and using the "shift" mechanic you can go into any car on the road using telekenesis. Game offers +150 licenced vehicles ranging from ordinary cars like Dodge Neon up to muscle car classics, british legends like Aston Martin DB5, to exotic legends like McLaren F1, Mercedes SLR, Pagani Zonda and such.
@@CallumsArmyWhile I won’t deny that GMod gives players the ability to basically anything that can be distilled into code (people *have* been making race tracks in GMod for years now), at the same time…it comes back to what Raycevick said when talking about BeamNG, Assetto Corsa, etc.: It would be nice to play a racing game that isn’t just a self-maintained playset. In other words, custom GMod scenarios can only do so much to satiate players who’ve been starved of unique - or at the very least, not boring - gameplay. Especially since most people who play GMod, BeamNG, etc. are regular people who can really only set up those scenarios in their spare time, and don’t necessarily have the resources needed to go and build the whole thing from scratch. Also, not to be rude, but saying things like: “clearly you haven’t played GMod” just comes off as putting the blame on everyone else to fix the problems themselves, which is (to me at least) more than a little unfair, and just tacitly absolves the professional devs in the AAA scene of any responsibility regarding the lack of creativity or progress in both long running franchises and one-off titles.
Again, Video games, much like entertainment, are interpretations of things that occur in real life. But it goes to show that at some point we hit that limit to where we have to go back to fantasy and other wordly like scenarios or even hybrids. Again, I'd like to see ideas that were presented in the 1990s and early 2000s come back again to breathe new life to these dying genres.
I just wanna say, to anyone that feels like their favorite genre has gotten worse, no matter what it is: your feelings and thougts are valid. Don't let anyone gaslight you into thinking you're getting old and it's actually you that is the problem. Don't take that from anyone.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that over the last few years: Move on, the game is just not for you anymore. Don't spoil the fun for us new players...
Thank you so much for this video Raycevick. So many videos critique todays racing games but none have come even close to putting how I feel into perspective. When you mentioned Wreckfest being the ONLY living fun creative and unique arcade racer I literally screamed "YES!" in agreement. So many forget about Motorstorm too and that is still my favourite racing game of all time. Seriously, what a passionate and well presented video.
It's amazing how often devs, particularly in the racing genre, manage to forget that games have to be fun, at some level, in order to be successful and keep sustained interest. #Wreckfest, and to a degree, #Descenders, though the approach is radically different, are the only two that come to mind for probably the last couple decades...which is kind of wild, as it always seemed to me back then that racing games would be the genre that would be more likely to develop progressively along the lines it had established back in the 80s/90s...anyway, great video. 👍
@@mathewhosier9739 Some people prefers the adrenalin over the chaos that can occur when the boys are involved. A race on GTA Online; especially GTA IV, sounds so much more tempting than racing on the Nurburgring if anything.
I really really love that a super skilled “mainstream” gaming channel like yours has gotten into sim racing this hard and is making such accurate takes about the state of the genre as it pertains to gaming as a whole I’ve been a fan since I was recommended your F1 2019 video back when it was the newest game and I’ve been hooked since! Anyway tl;dr great videos raycevick, hope to see you on track at some point 💜
It's been a year since I first watched this video, and there's still no racing game set in a dystopian future or on other planets like the concept art shown here. Even on a rewatch, I lit up when I saw the concept art, and it breaks my heart knowing we most likely won't get anything like that.
You've said all the things that racing game fans should be saying more loudly but aren't. iRacing is the only racing sim I haven't played, but from all the rest, they're definitely not close to a refined game experience. They're fun to jump into for about 20 minutes, but events like the 24 Hour races show the engines aren't capable of racing for that long. I'm mostly playing BallisticNG and GRIP nowadays, it's a more likely guarantee for fun rather than having to setup my wheel and pedals for a racing sim. They also have gameplay outside of the barebones too, which helps.
There was a Japanese Racing game I played a long time ago that had an RPG-like system where you built up your reputation by winning races and more and more people would talk about you as you won. That one aspect made it so much more fun.
Closest game I can think of is Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2/Kaido Battle 3. There's an entire BBS board in-game for cars, courses, and misc. information.
Of all of the misfortunes, I think one specific sub-genre of racing games have suffered more than anything: combat racing (Twisted Metal, Vigilante 8, Interstate '76, Burnout 3: Takedown onwards, Destruction Derby and so on). Back in the late 90s to mid 2000s, even up until end of 2010, you had options to choose from: besides the titular Twisted Metal, you had copycats of it and variations where racing was important as was using means to combat against the opponents, you had the typical kart racers with power-ups as well as Blur to give a different twist to the genre, you had the spectacles that Motorstorm series and Split/Second had, one where changes occur and one where YOU could cause them, as well as multitudes of destruction derby -like racing games such as Destruction Derby, Demolition Racer and so on. Nowdays? You go find one good combat racing game on Steam and it's either piss-poor attempt from a fan of the genre to rekindle the corpse that Twisted Metal left behind or a genuine game with little to no offering, replay value or people to play and have fun with; with kart racers, you only have Mario Kart series, Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled which had it's support stopped after 1-2 years or the meme that is Garfield Kart racing game; and then there's something like Crossout which allows you to build your own personal, weaponized vehicle and battle against others in a War Thunder/World of Tanks like gameplay style, but is held back by ridiculous amounts of grind you have to do to level up and get anywhere to get most out of it.... or whip out the cash. As a person who mostly prefers arcade racing games due to the fact how absolutely crazy, fantastic or out of this world experiences and gameplay mechanics you could do, seeing only simulation racers getting advertised up the ass and witnessing how they're getting stagnated as a result of this endless pursue of realism, marketing and money is truly disheartening.
@@GamerAlexVideos I have tried that game and even finished it. Perhaps it's just me, but after I finished the singler player mode, it felt like the game had nothing new or any catch left in it for me to continue playing it.
I’m so glad you mentioned art of rally. I tried it thinking it would be fun for 15 minutes because of the look but the handling is so good and it really grabs you in with the lighting and environments.
I've never been a racing fan, but I absolutely LOVED Split Second and was so sad when they never made a sequel. With that said, the concept art that you showed immediately made me want a Split Second: Infinite. Like, imagine racing in modern cars in a hyper-futuristic world, complete with the crazy spectacle of the Split Second games. My mind went straight to racing on a massive derelict military ship on the edge of a raging black hole. The amount of crazy set pieces that could be set up gets me so hyped. Anyway, fantastic video as always!
As a hardcore Sim racer loving iracing, but who secretly just wants to play that classic gran turismo career experience again, with a modern twist that's something else than micro transactions. This was a great take on the situation we are currently in.
Around the halfway point of this video, it began to sound EXACTLY like fighting game discourse from the past three-to-five years. Our genre's doing better now, so hopefully yours can pick up too before developers and publishers decide it's just too expensive to invest in and drop it entirely.
the one thing that concerns me the most is if motorsport itself will end up being hurt by the lack of decent games that portray it gaming is one of those things that racing depends on to obtain new fans, that's how you get f1 fans, engineers, or even drivers that started by playing gran turismo, forza, ridge racer, daytona usa, etc. it's not something exclusive to racing, btw, just about a year ago someone in the usaf was interviewed regarding a program that used ai for training pilots, the ai itself was using an ace combat model, which could mean that whoever made that simulator for the USAF was an ace combat fan years ago which eventually resulted in them joining the air force, and tony hawk's pro skater is often credited for being the single thing that saved skating as a whole by exposing it to a new generation aviation nowadays has war thunder, ace combat 7 and top maverick to inspire the next generation skating has the olympics, youtube videos and thps 1+2 racing has f1... the odd motorsport movie here and there, and ok niche games with compromises.
Honestly one of the most amazing videos I've seen on the genre. As a casual fan of Forza but someone who grew up on the burnout franchise, I loved the concept of a Half life-Forza hybrid, it actually made me realize how awesome a game like that could be. Keep up the videos man.
I don't know why it would be sobering, Nintendo is literally one of the biggest gaming companies with years of quality history behind them. It would be sobering if some no name company was making the highest quality racing game
@@Griffith74 pokemon isn't made by nintendo and also scarlet and violet are pretty great games and it seems as if they're actually trying to make something new, unlike the entire racing game industry
One other detail: Games from 20 years ago also didn't have as much influence from "online-only" priorities. Therefore a lot of the creativity went into making a decent career mode with good replayability. With simples games that didn't take that long to produce (since technology was simpler back then), enabling the fruition of a conceptual vision was easier for game companies.
I think for the racing games in particular real world cars have killed so much creativity. Every game is competing for the most licensed cars and as such have to bend over backwards to the companies. The most immediate way this is seen is in crash damage being phased out more and more because companies don't want their car to be shown damaged.
100% agree. Between online competitive gameplay taking care of the “narrative element” and modding taking care of the bug fixing; why would a developer put in any additional resources? Especially on beloved IPs (looking at you Elder Scrolls) or desperate, well heeled fan bases like racing nerds and WarHammer 40k fans who will shell out money regardless of quality. And this doesn’t touch on the ability for the developer to now change the game at anytime after release. It’s almost to a point where it financially makes more sense to ship a half finished game, since the fan complaints will tell a developer exactly what needs fixed and they don’t have to do anything beyond that minimum.
23:53 This is so funny because after the ABYSMAL release of Forza Motorsport that puts the bug compilation in your intro to shame, they are now hyping up the Nurburgring *a g a i n*.
Those pieces of concept art you showed of various rally cars in unrecognizable/otherworldly locations is the kind of shit that I’ve been wanting from modern racing games for years now. (Seriously, what’s the point in having all this fancy new technology if we’re not even gonna bother using it to its full potential?!)
When you started speaking about a "racing game with lots of different places and teleporters and unique scenarios" my mind went apeshit thinking about the HotWheels Acceleracers cartoon and how I desperately want a game just like the show since I was a kid and how the industry simply sleeps on such an infinite amount of content that could be created around this simple idea
There's some acceleracer custom made maps in Distance. Don't buy Distance for them, of course, but you can probably enjoy them if you remember that stuff well.
You've really touched upon something Ive been feeling for years. It's really baffling that racing, something that conjures so many visceral emotions has in gaming essentially become a race to make the blandest oatmeal possible.
By 2030 , most games won't be worth playing. Half-finished manipulative crap is the standard, and despite how utterly stupid the average person is even they won't put up with it forever. They grey up eating garbage, but eventually the garbage will be so unpalatable not even the raccoons will touch it.
You mentioning rFactor 2 being broken online makes a lot of sense. I remember Jimmy Broadbent talked about similar issues with the game durin his last VEC Le Mans 24 Hours race back in 2018, and that the game not being truly improved and worked on made him leave the series as a result.
Some people don’t realize how important having an identity is for any game. I’ve recently sunk hundreds of hours into Art of Rally, it’s art style, music and just overall vibe is unmatched by any game currently on the market.
I tried it but had to refund that game, it just didn’t feel finished enough after having some crashes and controller issues I think. It seems like a great game but it made a bad first impression and also wasn’t very fun at the start when I just wanted things unlocked so I could try out races and have fun.
I adore the shit out of Art of Rally and I should play it more. It manages to have its own identity as well as be a really nice love letter to the history of rally racing. And it's just fun, much as I'm bad at dealing with the isometric camera lol (and am currently not too willing to put in that chase cam mod).
26:20 Interestingly, there is a game that has a driver damage system - Xpand Rally. Quite unjustly forgotten rally game, which has a lot of interesting mechanics (it's probably the only rally game in which we can tune spoilers or hoods like in NFS) and the aforementioned damage system allowed our driver to break his legs in accidents on the routes or, most interestingly, lead to his death.
I feel like a lot of this can be said about the gaming industry as a whole. I really wish everyone would just stop and take a step back for a moment and remember why we all fell in love with gaming 20-30 years ago in the first place. So many games that release now just feel completely soulless.
Agree, I've been a casual gamer since SNES. Enjoyed every gen of consoles until PS4. That's when gaming took a turn to soulless boring games. It used to feel that there was an artistic vision the creator of a game had and that's how a game would come about. Now it's just "we gotta pump out cash grabs that kids will buy and get addicted to". Bought a PVM and took my consoles out of storage 4 years ago and have been having a blast playing all those old games I missed out on Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast and even PS3. Best decision I made, every time I come back to a new game on my PC they all just feel artistically bankrupt and so convoluted to navigate.
@@awill891skill issue. you just got bad games, dont complain about the ENTIRE industry when its a you issue my guy, there've been plenty of great games, just because you dont play em dont mean they dont exist.
@@awill891 look closely at the indie scene, there’s tons of interesting games by small teams in most genres You can probably even find spiritual successors inspired by all the older games you like
@@TheCapitalWanderer Cringe "my guy" "skill issue". Plenty of "great games" that all have the modern trash of constantly being forced to open and navigate menus over and over again. The only menus I want in a game are the start/pause menu period. Just cuz you like modern games of every genre that FORCE you to into nonstop leveling up/tracking stats of every item until the game becomes playable, you're supposed to magically know out of 4,000 useless weapons/car parts which ones are good, crafting (I want the developer to create 100% of the game, I don't want to be the creator/designer of anything, that's why I pay someone else to make the game for me), low level indie graphics and rougelikes doesn't mean it's a skill issue if people don't prefer those games. MY DUDE, MY GUY and I already see the "ohhh u mad bro?" type of reply you'll respond with.
@@awill891 let's see, ULTRAKILL, Dead Rising Remaster, RE4 : Remake, almost all Visual Novels have no complicated menuing, want me to continue? because all NewBlood titles doesn't have that bloat. YOU chose to play the games with a lot of shit menus, That's a you issue. i play Class of '09 and there is barely any menu. just save, load, and close app. so please, don't blame the gaming industry for your incompetence.
Excuse me for saying this again but I must reiterate that: I can wait 5 or even 10 years for a Raycevick upload because once it drops, it's sheer quality over quantity. Thanks, always much appreciate what you do.
I have been feeling unfulfilled by racing games since NFS went off the rails (in my opinion anyway) and I never quite put my finger on why, Raycevick just nailed it. I hope this video makes the rounds accross various gaming devs that take it to heart. Great content, simply amazing.
24:38 this entire segment just screams out redline anime (movie) pretty much this idea but with cars that's equipped with missles, and instead of rally, you got supercars otherworldly
People always ask me "Why do you only cover old racing games?" This. This is why. Now I can simply link this video instead of giving a lengthy answer each time. Thank you!
A little foot note from my side in regards to the lack of creativity. I've received so many comments from people saying they look more forward to the Pepega Mod my team and I are building for ProStreet than the other upcoming racing games. For a while I pondered as to why a silly mod for a 15 year old game gets people more excited. I think it's because the genre is so drained of any creative, let alone daring ideas, that even a meme mod is a breath of fresh air for people. It's something I'm very grateful for and I hope it delivers when we are finally done.
Remember me
The absolute state of modern racing games, this is why the ps2 remains the best console and 1996-2005 the pc golden age
Keep making mods. It’s way more entertaining than AAA modern racing games.
If this video of overeacting and constant exaggeration of issues that barely happen (isolated issues or opinionated even) is your reason why you cover only old racing games, that's sad as hell.
this video became gold plated gold xD
I've worked on one racing game, and I'd imagine the root of the problem lies in the licensing. Players want real cars, tracks and sponsors, but every one of those comes with a company's laundry list of requirements.
In the game we worked on, for example, we included a real world person, and were contractually obliged to make sure it was impossible to get ahead of them in the tutorials, because they're supposed to be a pro driver. The list of cars also had to be approved by the naming sponsor, and certain tracks had to be used for certain things.
And that wasn't dealing with any notoriously picky brands like Ferrari, Porsche (or Toyota, which went through a period of not allowing their cars to be modified in games). You have to sell your soul to the devil to get real cars in games, and as a developer, you do the best you can to make a fun game between the cracks of the legal contracts, but it's not always possible. Honestly, the success of a racing game is arguably more determined by the quality of your lawyers than the quality of your dev team.
I think a lot of the best games were made in a period when car makers were less savvy about games. The manufacturers didn't realise how important games would be to their brand, so they gave developers a lot more leeway. After they started seeing people making purchasing decisions based on what they saw in a game they grew up with, they got a lot more picky, and now we have these very sterile experiences that keep the brands happy rather than the players.
Yep this is probably it right here, the suits weren't taking vidya games seriously back then.
I could imagine having a game with a lot of classes of unlicensed vehicles and tracks with mod tools be an alternative, though there is always the risk of getting called lazy on the licensing front. Then again AC has a crap ton of mods, and most people playing MX Bikes seem to be content with using mods (especially since the base game is as barebones as a plump skeleton but people keep playing due to physics).
One of the driving games that has given me the most amount of fun the last 5 years avoids that problem all together. I still play Wreckfest 4-5 times a week with my friends and there are still quite a few people playing. It's arcade style, of course. But it has been fun as hell with friends. And it is not buggy as hell.
i don't think that what players really want, its more a 'nice to have' than a necessity. It's just like how AAA publishers keep pushing better and more "photorealistic" games these things look great in promo material but does nothing for the quality of the game and looking at the most popular games over the past few years most gamers couldn't give a damn about graphics just like most wouldn't care if you are driving a Bugatti TM or Baguetti.
The misconseption is pushed by suits cause its easier to push out flashy derivative brandname TM shovelwear than it is for them to wait around for good and possibly risky games to be made.
I'm reminded of something a friend of mine said once:
"these days, a 10/10 racing game is a 7/10 in any other genre"
Exactly
5.8/10*
Honestly a 10/10 racing game today is a 6/10 racing game 15 years ago
7/10 is way too generous, it gets lower by the year.
Dunno, Gran Turismo is worse than 7/10 as an FPS
"Did you know it's been 20 years sinc-" YES I'M EXTREMELY AWARE OF THIS
you've given me (somebody who doesn't really follow racing games) a comprehensive overview of the _entire genre_ while explaining why i don't care about them, where the issues with each subgenre are and how we could take from the videogame industry at large to fix them. you reviewed a good dozen specific titles and only mentioned what was absolutely necessary for your script on top of this.
this video is 36 minutes long and yet it feels as if it's half that length; not a single second of it is padded out or wasted and you kept my attention perfectly throughout.
i've been a viewer of yours for a good few years now and i firmly believe this is your magnum opus, i'm seriously impressed. it feels criminal to watch this for free.
certainly one of Lucas' best videos
I certainly feel the same.
Specially the creative bankruptcy bit. He hit it right in the mark why I give absolute 0 shits about racing as a genre on the whole. There's a daily-game website called Guess the Game, and whenever a modern racing game comes up, I have no way of identifying what game I'm looking at until the hint about the platform comes up, at which point I say the one that sold the most on that console. And I'm right with my guess then. Nothing visual about the game is a hint, and doesn't need to be. Because I see them as interchangeable, boring "realism" pieces made tailored for a motorsport crowd I'm not and will never be a part of; and that perception is sufficient and serviceable enough to clear through any and all discussions or challenges centered around them, that I may encounter with other people whose main hobby is gaming. Effectively, you could even say Racing has distanced itself, isolated away from Gaming and is no longer fun to think or talk about for anyone other than Racing fans.
I have no such problem guessing older games tho, and I have swiftly identified Need for Speed and Burnout games. I saw a bit of a car drifting on-screen here, as well of shots of a low poly woman, and I knew that was ridge racer. I knew Blur at a glance - I never even played Blur. It was a neon-y arcade racer with square power ups, and that's all it takes. Because those games have an actual identity. I didn't need to play them to be aware of their differences, because they had plenty. And I have put thought - is it because this is a genre I have no interest for anymore that I no longer have this recognition ability, and I'm being unfair to the genre on the whole? No. I also have relatively very little interest in shooters or battle royales, but I can identify all modern ones too. I can tell an Apex reference when one is made, because that game is relevant to widespread gaming and because it looks noticeably different from its competitors. If anything, I have more often failed to identify PS3/360 era shooters because they all just looked "brown", and, well, all racers now just look "shiny" in the same derogative way that "brown" used to be.
This is your PS3-shooter era, racing games. It'll be utterly forgettable as soon as the next better era starts.
play driver san francisco
Honestly, Need for speed: Most wanted is the only racing game you should play. There are a few other good ones, like nfs underground 2 and carbon, but most driving games are just not fun anymore.
@@hegitheone370this is just nostalgia goggles speaking, there are still good racing games now, Lego Y2K, Hot Wheels Unleashed, Wreckfest, Redout, just to mention a few, and the new NFS games aren't even bad, it's just the fandom that is mentally incapacitated.
on old racing games we say: "Wow, this game is decades ahead of its time!"
on new racing games we say: "This game is decades behind of its time."
Wtf, why is this so true on that old racing games part?
Forza Motorsport 1 literally had a cool detail where crashing into a wall and sliding on it a bit causes your car's paint to rub on the walls. The later games downgraded the crash and details
ill stick to anything before 2010
@ching Chong Intellectual honesty must be a miss for people like yourself. It was simply a joke, no one can stop you from enjoying new ones.
@user-yx4pc9oz5t Just don't complain when the new games don't sell well.
In RF2's defense, I've watched a Formula E race and the cars all piling into each other is very realistic.
ah yes, an overglorified Tamiya toy car race
I was thinking the same things LOL
"Why would anybody but the hardcore pay attention to spring dampeners or tire pressure" Couldn't have said it better myself. I enjoy quite a few racing games, but I always pick the simplest control scheme because I really don't care about spending hours fine tuning the way the car takes a turn. i just want car go fast and go more fast than other car. me win get cash get more car or hat for me.
NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona comes to mind. For every track, there were two default tuning sets: normal and advanced. If you just stuck to normal, you'd be fine. As I got better and got better parts, I did start fiddling with gear ratios and tape. In the Featherlite series, I started using Advanced default. On one road track in Cup series I fiddled with the camber. That's all the more tweaking I did. The default tuning and default aids were that well-designed.
Cars are such a normie interest I actually think the casuals like to (pretend to) care
I disagree with this tho. I barely play games but care about these systems deeply because I love cars irl. And thats the purpose of these systems - to appeal to car guys
Flatout 2 or Flatout Ultimate Carnage is for you
There's nothing more beautiful than listening to someone else talk about their passion and its problems. This was masterfully presented, and you had my full attention up to the finish line. And I don't even play OR like racing games.
This. I don't listen to Country music at all really, but I was very willing to listen to someone explain the appeal and the current issues in the industry.
...for anyone curious, the tl;dr was "lyrical content" and "increasing homogeneity in the industry"
Raycevick is the only dude that could get me to watch a half-hour video about a video game genre I don't care about( I did actually use to love racing games growing up though)
I've just shared and recommended this video to "anyone who has played even just ONE racing game ever, even if it was Enduro, Top Gear or PS1-era NFS". Which, at least to my understanding, is pretty much every gamer, and even some non-gamers, who were around at the time.
That's how good this video is, for sure.
Not to mention it's an exercise in empathy. This video made me wish I could offer a hug to all racing game fans out there. Seriously.
Two days ago, coach told me and a teammate to give each other a 100% strength punch to the chest. Guy had 50 pounds over me and that hit felt like it was gonna shoot my soul out.
"The last F-Zero game is 20 years old"
Ah yeah, there's the soul damage.
People are so accustomed to mediocrity that big/medium game developers don't even care anymore about delivering a good, fun and stable product. It has become somewhat a market standard to underdeliver
It's because there's little competition. Compare now to 15 or so years ago. Back then, everyone was making racing games, bringing their own ideas and specialities to the table. Now, we're lucky to get 2 in a year
This can be said about all things culture. We have reached a point where things are forgotten as quickly as they launch, there's no more timelessness to things.
@Brian Boulter TBF to GTA I feel like mario kart has had a bigger impact in sucking up the casual audiences than gta
Years ago i warned people not to buy mediocre games and support predatory tactics.
Some said "well its the norm now so shut up"
At this point i knew we are going downhill from there.
If people eat trash all their lives that all they will ever know.
The idea of a racing game set in night city is so tantalizing. One of my favorite parts of that game are the cars and driving them. There is so much potential out there for racing games, just waiting to be capitalized on.
Just play need for speed smh
@@caetano1998nah man, assetto corsa with the shutoku revival project map with a traffic mod
Hoo boy, you should check out Night Runners Prologue lol
Omg no, not another mediocre open world racing game with no real race cars, no real world locations, no pit stops, no rhanks
@@RallyAddict555That’s just highways.
Those concept art photos gave me a mini heart attack. For a second, I thought you were going to say "its in development". I legit got so sad when I learned they were just concept arts. That would be incredible to play, it would be such a new, refreshing take on the genre. But these days, publishers and devs only try the "safest" option. Thats why I don't think we'll see any change in this genre any time soon, maybe at all.
If you haven't heard this yet you should check out Pacific Drive, It's not a racing game at it's core but seems to be a fresh combination of roguelite and rally game. It's about an "olympic" driving sport set in futuristic post-apocalyptic world
As an indie dev that whole section looks so inspiring, I’d love to make something that combine’s cyberpunk or rainworld or the art of simon stalenhag with dirt rally. I’ve wanted to make a racing game for a while now but I’ve had no idea where to start. This might be it.
I can’t let some idea this cool, with this much depth and potential get squandered by a bunch of money-obsessed triple A suits.
Stay tuned ig
Would totally play it
We'd totally play that "DiRT Rally in space" game by the way, who doesn't want to yeet a quattro off the nearest aircraft carrier.
@@EASPORTSWRC Good luck getting those licenses :P
Because part of it for me is seeing those precious cars in that kind of environment and knowing that they are what's real.
See, now I want an official 24 Hours of Lemons racing game. Build a race car out of something inappropriate and try to keep it running within a few laps of the leader or at the very least try to finish a race weekend without throwing oil all over the racetrack.
That would be sick!
@@Raycevick I should also mention that while the above alone probably applies to the present ChampCar Endurance Series as well, 24 Hours of Lemons is also known for both its hilarious and unusual penalties for drivers who get shown the black flag and the ability to bribe the judges for fewer penalty laps after tech inspection if your team's car maybe has one too many performance upgrades in it. So I imagine a 24h of Lemons game would be in the simcade subgenre if you can race what's effectively a 90s minivan with a rollcage but if you don't drive clean you're subjected to an RNG punishment minigame involving something like being driven around the infield paddock while cling-wrapped to the roof and button presses are timed to apologize to passerby for your poor on-track skills. I have actually seen that punishment in action once. A Pontiac Fiero was involved.
@@Skidracer21 It's always a Fiero.
this is an incredible idea!!!!
@@Skidracer21 FYI, it's spelled "Le Mans" and not "Lemons". I understand your mistake though, french is a confusing language.
The Arcade Racing genre has been practically dead for a decade and I'm _still_ in mourning.
Raycevik, this video resonated with me hard, thank you for saying what I've been mulling over for years.
Someday Racing games will be a force to be reckoned with
Someday soon I hope
I don't understand how it happened. Every other genre went to dumbing down while all of racing went to boring simulation that nerds keep pretending are arcade racers even though they aren't.
Need For Speed is still trying to be arcade racer, the rest i can think of seem to be in mobile games or karting games.
Burnout. We bring back the x360 and duke controllers with military grade components, and some of the most speaker blasting sound design we can to blast eardrums while space laces, CKY, chime, sevenfold, KOMPANY, BARELY ALIVE, Timecop1984, ALEX & TOKYO ROSE, Bizo, Dr Ushuu, and more just give the power shot to unlock something more
Trackmania still has new games
@@Appletank8 trackmania
The ``Casual gamers can't tell the difference between racing games´´ is so true and sad that it makes me angry to even think about it. You have so much variety on every other genre but this one, fuck, no wonder I barely play racing games anymore
When I was little during the ps3 era, I bought GT 5&6 and assumed they'd be like Burnout and was amazed at how many cars they had so it was an instant buy.
Then I realized what sim racers were and was so disappointed.
I was so put off by the genre that I was scared to play NFS Heat and I was so glad when I found out it was an arcade racer and was actually fun.
But honestly? I'm STILL very apprehensive buying racing games in 2024 because I'm just scared of getting bored again because they all feel the same.
I just want a crazy fun arcade racer that does something like Burnout did.
@@selfloathingweekly If you have been away from the emulation scene (Or haven't tinkered much within it) nowdays projects like pcsx2 and rpcs3 are so advanced that games in franchises like Burnout run so perfectly they may as well be remasters after an internal resolution bump and a couple community patches you can enable directly on the emulator interface. Games like Need for Speed Most Wanted/Carbon have broken pc releases that look pristine after a couple patches you can find in pcgamingwiki. I've been scratching my racing game itch that way since no newer releases seem woth anything.
Holy shit, I would kill for a game like 24:29. That was some of the coolest concept and idea I’ve ever seen. God damn, every time I think there couldn’t possibly be a genuinely new idea, something like that blows me away.
When you said drag race on an aircraft carrier I imagined a game mode basically like shuffle board but with cars, try and get as close to the end without falling off, you're allowed to accelerate only until you start braking.
sadly its the studio behind dead by daylight, you just have to tune in rn, and find out why ot will never happen. Cause Cyberpunk on launch did be the the Queen of games then. We are talking about a game so broken you can play it yourself and find 6-7 bugs per round.
Combine that with the art style of cars that ash Thorpe has and it would be beautiful
So would I, friend! Sadly, beHaviour seem to wrapped up in DBD to have time for it. :/
Ah well. Maybe Namco could do it for a new Ridge Racer, or something...
I think you'd probably enjoy the movie Redline if you like that concept art. The animated movie is about intergalactic races, and it's eye poppingly beautiful!
yeah i wish racing games aren't restricted to real world locations. game devs could play around with so many things if they merge racer with other genres. Imagine a racing game with alien car technology, with its own artstyle. That would be so dope.
The concept art you showed towards the end from Gregory Fromenteau made me almost tear up, companies are so caught up in realism, player retention and making an extra few bucks anywhere possible that they've yet to even TRY making a truly new racing game... I really loved my time with Unbound because it felt like the closest thing to a racing game with a beating heart I've played in years.
Crew 3 is more of the same
I feel like it's a big waste to spend all this time going for portraying these real cars and courses as correct as possible. Cars might be a niche interest but I think most people can get behind going fast. You don't have to make it cartoony and I don't necessarily think you gotta go scifi, but you do gotta try to make something unique to stand out from these tons of regular-ass racers.
I feel like a realistic simulator but in those fantasy/scifi settings would be really sick. I've never really been a fan of the arcade racers but the same courses do get really old in normal sims.
You would love nothing more but for Iracing, RaceRoom, Rennsport, Assetto Corsa Competizone, RFactor, etc. and all of its devs and fans to die.
I remember someone explaining how a sci-fi racing game would work, without redesigning cars to 'fit' the theme, it's literally just as simple as the universe having self driving cars that can't be controlled, and the only way to race again is to restore ancient classics, and exploration will be a major part of the game, because you have to hunt down parts or cars. Man i would love to play that game.
This video is the racing game manifesto. My whole life I've been playing this genre, and all I had for the last 6 years was depression. I can only look to the future for some hope, because right now we are at rock bottom. Thank you for saying all of this out loud raycevick. You also helped me realize why I just don't enjoy new games everyone loves.
I want to play that sci-fi-but-with-real-cars racing game so bad
I think about it sometimes, fuck this industry.
I saw that for the first time today and my soul wished for it to be real.
imagine racing around in a Lambo diablo that looks like its been retrofitted with some sort of future tech, racing on a occupied cliff side outpost thats currently being attacked. having to dart through hanger-bays, court yards all while missiles pummel the outside walls, which can affect the tracks layout. drifting around a tight turn as a half-life style ship blows up in the background, raining debris on the track, making you have to dodge it, trying your damndest to hold the 1st place position as a sci-fi 911 tries to run you off the road, . it would be so cool!
The closest we got was Wipeout or XGRA during the ps2 era :(
Blur on the PS3 is probably closest.
This video actually came out at a perfect time for me because I've been thinking a lot about just how stagnant the racing genre has become over the past decade.
I went back and played Most Wanted 2005 again after the new year, and it's insane that no game in 18 years has managed to surpass the intensity of the police chases and authenticity of the radio chatter since. Like, the blueprint for it is right there, and there's still so much room for improvement. And somehow everything that came after completely misses the mark.
Similarly, I played Grid 2008 again last year, and somehow I find myself having more fun racing in that compared to any other modern simcade game I've tried, from its own successors to other attempts at the genre. Sure they look prettier and feel more authentic, but in terms of sheer fun they just can't match a 15 year old game.
It just feels like the genre has moved nowhere in the past decade and a half because somewhere along the line making a fun, compelling game got lost in favor of really annoying progression gating or a hyperfocus on trying to be as authentic as possible at the cost of everything else. It's a genre I want to love so much because I love racing, but with all the issues with online stability, bugs, lack of compelling singleplayer offerings, lack of creativity, etc. it's just getting harder and harder to justify my love for it.
And to add to your point about the complete lack of style in modern racing games, even if we look solely at Codemasters' output; Back in the original Grid, or in Dirt 2, or in F1 2010/2011, the first thing that greeted you after the developer logos was... an intro cinematic, oozing with style, set to music that sticks in my head over a decade later.
The vocals of No One Knows slowly building up as an Aston Martin in the iconic Ravenwest livery does a donut in the streets of Madrid, or a Williams pit crew rolling the tyres out in slow-mo as the music calms down. And when you got to the menu, it wasn't just boxes and lists. It was a world you could get engrossed in. Your garage, your RV, the paddock, with all the menus being floating 3D text and assets over the environment. It looked GOOD. It had STYLE. It got you immersed and pumped to go racing.
When I start up Grid Legends or F1 22, all I get after the Codemasters logo is... nothing. And once you get to the menu, it's completely sterile and uninteresting with some fairly anonymous music playing over it. It's all just boxes, everything is boxes. Gone is the feeling of inhabiting a 3D space. It's all just big rectangular or square boxes. The same as every other game out there.
@@Razor921 I still fondly remember the awesome soundtrack that played while 3D models of cars were spinning on screen in NFS III: Hot Pursuit.
Compared to that today's games are super sterile. No style, no substance.
I've been thinking about it for a while too, so it makes me glad someone is at least speaking up against the issues that racing games as genre face.
@@Raivo_K Man Hot Pursuit was my childhood. I have vague memories of playing a demo for the original Need for Speed, but Hot Pursuit was one of the first racing games I actually owned and played extensively when I was young.
It always makes me sad that it feels like the series just goes past me nowadays. It just doesn't have the spark that I used to love about it anymore.
As half-baked of a game as it was, I really liked Undercover's police chatter and personally found it way more realistic than even Most Wanted's. Officers would be conversing with Dispatch as well as each other while idle and patrol around in response to crimes or incidents unrelated to your vehicular rampage.
Fighting game fans feel your pain, too. Almost every every issue you brought up exists in them, too. Expensive hobby with niche equipment, bad UI, underwhelming single player modes, etc. The worst one of all, poor online play, is thankfully being tackled pretty much across the board from all devs though. They're about 10 years late to the party, but it's something.
Maybe one day fighting and racing game fans can share a drink over how we got through our dark times.
And we can both pour one out for Ace Combat fans.
Wait how is fighting expensive? You can build an arcade stick for like $30 if you can cut and seal a thin piece of plywood.
@@SianaGearz look up costume prices for the latest DOA
@@Leispada why? They don't change the fighting gameplay at all. And if you want one or a few, then how many do you need really?
@@Leispada that's an outlier that everyone clowns on, no? Character DLCs are the real annoyance imo, especially when they're done incredibly unfairly like *cough* Tekken 7 *cough*
Appreciate you using my Pink Vitz memepost @ 11:14, lol.
Completely agree with your points on racing games right now as a whole. It feels like there's been a sort of identity crisis since the 2010s, that's been slowly chewing away at what made many of us fall in love with such games in the first place. Its incredibly painful to see stuff like arcade racers completely fading away, as they were a vital part of my childhood. I can name on one hand the arcade racers that released since the 2010s that I would consider amongst some of the greatest I've ever played, and ONE of them is the racing mode in GTA Online, which just feels like cheating. All that's left are making incredibly head-scratching choices, to such a degree that most of the games really feel like a "one-and-done" playthrough to me nowadays.
As for sim racers, THANK YOU for being someone who's willing to speak up about all the 'catches' that I don't feel enough are speaking up on. I want sim racers to properly succeed just as much as I want arcade racers to succeed, but its time for the focus to be put away from solely focusing on *realism* and instead focusing on building a foundation with what they can offer, and some actual POLISHING, whilst also not feeling like you have to put down TONS of money just to get a 'proper' experience.
Racing games as a whole needs a jolt in the arm, and needs it *sooner* rather than later.
Give me onrush back and I will single handedly try and make MV's of dubstep music syncs of matches to try and hype people the duck up.
After watching The Game Award, I had no idea how tf Forza Motorsport could win The Best Racing game
genre's already dead, a mediocre game will always win against literally nothing.
that's what happens when you start to give annual awards in an industry that could never put out yearly content really
@@leo1funthey do release yearly content. It’s just in a form of DLC.
@@TheOfficialRandomGuy well you don't give awards to DLCs, so
@@leo1fun so your still wrong
In a parallel universe where Group B Rally is still legal we'd have the wildest racing games
You do know the Isle of Man TT exists and is wilder than Group B, yet its official video game sucks ass.
Ok hear me out
750hp gt category in 3 different eras
Fictiona circuits
3 different eras
Big focus on teammates and teamwork
Etc
@@johncarl5505nobody gives 2 fucks about isle of man or motorcycle racing in general, its such a niche motorsport that theres not big enough interest for them to put maximum effort into it especially since most people dont care for motorcycles in general, theres a reason dirt 2.0 is so highly recommended so yeah id say a group b game would do extremely well
Hard disagree, the exciting cars wouldn't make the games any less shit.
There's a journalistic quality to your videos that make them a cut above anything comparable on RUclips. The way you approach things from such a well-honed angle, and articulate it all in such a punchy manner is always fantastic.
This is the best way to explain racing games at the moment. Thank you for your awesome work
This is one of the best videos I've seen on the racing game genre in a long time. It covered a lot of the genre's issues so well. You never disappoint with your videos.
Did you mean to tell him he never disappoints? Lmao
@@Skycux7 Oops, you are right. Let me fix that!
Nice to see one of the best arcade racing game channels in the comments! :)
This is why I love Motorstorm so much. The fact that I could drive a giant hunk of metal and see motorbikes jumping ahead of me, meanwhile trying not to go off the big turn In Raingod Messa was amazing. Another factor was the way the vehicles would evolve during the race from pristine to muddy and crumpled. I’m still hoping for a re-make of the original.
It's possible, but there's no chance the soundtrack will be the same due to licensing.
@@gamerinatrance3618 yeah, tho honestly if they just kept it to like edm/house music, that would be a good compromise.
@@RoboToast03 Nope. No compromise. Same soundtrack, no exceptions.
@@gamerinatrance3618 Nope. Same soundtrack. No compromises, no exceptions.
@@spankyjeffro5320 yeah but the only problem is licensing, otherwise yeah of soundtrack.
What always surprises me about these videos is how many friends Raycevick has to reliably play games with. I haven't been able to get more than 2 of my friends to game with me at any one time since I turned 25...Don't get me wrong, I hang out with friends...mostly we drink and bullshit...but the idea of gaming with half-a-dozen friends and having a great time is something I can only remember from back in the day. Pure jealousy.
Agreed. What kind of games are you into?
@@Eddyoshi Honestly, I play pretty much every genre. When I hang out with friends (whether in-person or virtually) it's mostly sports/racing or party games.
What about you?
@@Silvertip_M Into all kinds too. My big favs are RPG's like Skyrim and Mass Effect, but from the subject of this vid, love my racing games too. Underground, Most Wanted, Burnout 3...all classics.
@@Eddyoshi Sounds like we have similar tastes in gaming. Have you given the Yakuza/Like a dragon series a try? They're really excellent games with solid RPG mechanics.
I wish I had more friends who raced as well. It’s hard to find a good consistent group of people to play with.
This video is so much pent up frustration we all felt but couldn't put into words, I'm glad someone as awesome as Ray is preaching for us. Something has to change, this genre I love so much has become a joke.
You would love nothing more but for Iracing, RaceRoom, Rennsport, Assetto Corsa Competizone, RFactor, etc. and all of its devs and fans to die.
@@Ben-jq6by dramatic much?
@@MydasAU This video is 100% Raycevick devaluing these racing games for not being the games he wants and preaching about how Sim Racing fans are those horrible nerd steryotypes and deserve to have ruin sent their way. Am I literally supposed to just sit on my hands and knees while he devalues these video games?
@@Ben-jq6by "YES THEY DESERVE TO DIE AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL" (joking obviously)
@@Ben-jq6by Stay mad
I was a huge fan of the Motorstorm series as a kid, offroad racing with multipile vehicle classes in tracks set in the Desert, Jungle, Arctic and Apocalypse were all chaotic and fun, and they actually played really well too.
Yeah, when I got my PS3 Christmas 2007, Motorstorm came with it, Idk what to expect but it became my favorite racing game series ever, I was so sad when Evolution Studios went bankrupt.
Motorstorm was extremely fun. Modnation racers, Need for Speed (Underground and most wanted)
Holy PS3 days were so fun, just remembered a PS2 Game, Speed Kings (I put so many hours into that)
It's always been such a mystery why the gaming industry is so obsessed with making "realistic" racing games geared toward cars lovers. What about a racing game in the world of Mad Max ? Or in the world of Star Wars ? What about a futuristic driving game with fun characters, a proper story, RPG elements and cool races ? What about a secret racing society competing every years in dangerous races all around the world, with experimental cars, interesting rivalries, the possibility of sabotaging rivals with mini games before races, RPG choices...? There are tons of possibilities for fun racing games.
It's broadly the result of end-stage capitalism, but more specifically than that it's the fact so many of the beloved arcade racers of old were financial failures even at the time. Blur, Slit/Second, Motorstorm Apocalypse, Dirt Showdown, Driveclub, ModNation Racers, Ridge Racer Unbounded, Twisted Metal 2012 and Onrush were pretty much all well-reviewed by critics and the players who bought them, but all of them failed to meet sales expectations. The death of the genre is the direct result of these consistent failures and there's been no real indicator of it turning around.
@@wordenroger6188yeah capitalism is the problem, you should check out the awesome games that Cuba and Venezuela produce ! They're awesome, of course no rival to the classics from the USSR nobody makes games like the old and mighty Soviets ... Yeah right
Learn a little bit about geopolitics and imperialism friend @@johnf.r6658
The same reason why so many Sports game aim for realism instead of something like NBA Jam or Supershot Soccer: The audiences isnt big enough to justify making that kind of game
@@johnf.r6658 Speaking of the soviets I got into flight sims because of the well known Russian light sim War Thunder, which also led into me playing the in depth flight sim series IL 2...
I remember a few years ago when I thought ProStreet, Shift, DriveClub, and GT3 were unique for having legal racing. Now I see Heat and Unbound as unique for having illegal racing.
Pro street is probably my favorite racing game ever
@@saltierdongs7760same
@@saltierdongs7760 No game since made me so afraid to go fast
@@saniel2748 bro beating ryo on the speed level was so hard, you just had to get rng to make him crash 🤣
@gnonlinegaming project gotham, assetto corsa, forza (regular and horizon), nfs shift series, project cars had this in spades. actual illegal street racing games are much rarer, like nfs most wanted was arguably the peak of that subgenre and it came out almost 20 years ago
26:10 "sustaining injuries during crashes"
Funny that you mention that, the Xpand Rally games from Techland had that as a feature. While you can repair the car, the injuries had to heal over time, so if you ended up with a leg injury the driver might not be able to apply full brake force or a arm injury could result in longer gear changes.
Wait it did? Oh god then what was I doing as a kid were kinda messed up cause I love the impressive crash physics so much I kept on driving off a cliff on every chance that I got
Wait Techland? Dead Island and Dying Light Techland? They made a rally game?
@@dustojnikhummer Yes, that Techland. They made a few Racing games in fact. The 2 Xpand Rally games (still available on Steam) are probably their most interesting ones. For the time they a pretty advanced crash model, Tracks where set within larger maps that featured a connected road network, a career mode where you buy and upgrade cars (still pretty unique for a Rally game) and like mentioned above a driver injury system.
GTI Racing was a VW licensed game that was somewhat similar in gameplay to XPand Rally, but it was much more Arcadey and dropped the driver injuries. This one is delisted now because they lost the VW license.
Their last racing game was 2010´s Nail´d, a completely over the top ATV racer.
And from what I read, you can even die in a race
@@Soonjai They actually made one more after Nail'd - Mad Riders. While it's no longer available to get through legal means (except on PS3 for some reason?), it was basically a much more refined and focused version of Nail'd at a far cheaper price, and it was great!
I've been a modder and dabbled on game design. Between 2013 and 2017 i tested a lot of concepts from making my own podracer, creating my own physics for cars using "scifi magnetohover tires" (converting tire model to use.. other areas of physics, getting rid of some of the most annoying and "game breaking" things about real tires.edit: i think i have some videos about some early builds on my channel...), rfactor1 and 2 with arcade tracks and arcade style car/tire models that are based in "real" physics, cellshaded open world racer.. and i can tell you that i had more fun testing those that i have had driving a sim since 2012. I ran out of resources and talent but there is a LOT one can do about racing games.
We can make it really fun but retaining that feeling you get from a sim; it can be unforgiving AND fun at the same time. Just track design alone; imagine driving a rollercoaster on the sky without guardrails. You run out of the road, you die. Varying grips, jumps, 70 degree camber corners, splitting roads and cars that have serious speed and grip.. That is just what you can do with track design in CURRENT sims. Lately i've been driving on the few "open world" tracks in AC and is sooo much more fun than going round and round. I made one of my own for rF2, it has 400km of road and you can drive there for hours (i need someone to help with the textures, which is why it is not released, based on real world height data and existing roads that are modified for racing). It is just sad that the base game is SO strict that you can't really do much more than that.. I mean, how hard would it be to add "tag" mode or "cat and mouse"...
Curious, what are bad things about real tires being simulated in games?
Could you elaborate on your magnet tire model? I am trying to implement my own tire model in my game.
So glad wreckfest was mentioned. The game is so much fun and the racing itself is actually fun even if there was less destruction. The driving is also very simple, I was able to compete in online lobbies just using a keyboard which makes it very accessible.
7:09 that viper SENT ME LOL
Oh hey, Drewski, fancy seeing you here.
I'd argue that Viper sent itself.
@@polkadi Send it.
That Viper thought it was TF2’s Viper lmao
“The skies belong to me pilot, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide”
The Mad Max video game kind of laid a good foundation for the concept of an original racing game. It gets repetitive and definitely would need a lot of work to change it into a driving game, but it already has a pretty solid base. Racing across the desert trying in your ramshackle muscle car to take out the spike-armoured enemy cars with grappling hooks trying to pull you apart, as a sandstorm swallows up the back of the pack and you if you can’t keep it together… it was pretty great.
@darcgibson5099
Spot on! 👍
As a driving-games impaired player (i just can't manage to drive very well in VGs, as opposed to reality 😔) i can at least appreciate the pros of the genre (two of my closest friends are racing-games' afictionados), but simple-racing and simulations just aren't fun to me. 🤷♂️
Well, the only two games with driving i managed to play successfully in forever (since the ps1 days with Destruction Derby or Twisted Metal, where proper driving mattered less) are Wipeout (collection, because i stopped after Wip3out) and MAD MAX.
I say we need more love and originality put into games, as it was years ago...
I loved the game
Recently replayed mad max and got to say the first like 3 or so hours are brilliant, it's just ashame it's content as you go on is very repetitive. The core gameplay loops of driving and fighting are brilliant and satisfying but get old when nothing changes it up as you progress.
Raycevick doing that incredibly snobby voice at 1:31 is simultaneously hilarious and unsettling at the same time.
I was tempted to just put Mr. Elegant from Spy Family on-screen.
@@Raycevick I almost expect a "Royceton, Royceton!" head canoning another reference
The segment at 24:35 really opened my eyes to how much creative potential racing games actually have. I guess I never thought about what they could be and just embraced their current state as the norm. Really craving a good racing game now
Fucking yes, finally somebody called out the asinine complaints about NFS Unbound's aesthetics. Older racing games were gorgeous, and not necessarily because they were "realistic". Some were, but a lot of the most beloved franchises had their own aesthetic. It's bizarre that racing games aren't allowed to have one now.
the anime graphics on Unbound should not be added at all
@@QF_Dan72 You do understand that it gives the game more character for adding them, right? Not many racing games nowadays have those. Unless, you can prove they do?
@@theceoofbasedandlitswagger2456 I think the problem is they don't fit. They feel like last minute additions meant to cover up another generic rendering layout. If the entire game had stuff like the Initial D "speed lines" on the cars, cel shading on *all* of the 3D models instead of just the wildly out of place humans, and had gone for a more sharp and integrated particle effect system rather than the "ripped from an eight year old's math notebook" look, it would've worked.
Congratulating Unbound for those effects feels like rewarding a last minute panic decision meant to cover up laziness.
@@VulpesHilarianus That's a fair point. Unbound, while stylish, does feel like it's art design wasn't fully visualized in the final product.
I hate it because it's jarring. You have ultra realistic and then super cartoony in the same image, it's like watching Roger Rabbit but less well realized and integrated. Automodellista looks great, Enthusia and GT4 look great. Burnout 3 on an emulator looks great.
Racing games always used to be so exciting as a kid. Thank you for so clearly explaining why I have not felt drawn to this genre in so many years.
Motorstorm pacific rift and Blur were so fun.
@@TheHeadincharge don't forget split second!
@TheHeadincharge i still play them on my ps3 to this very day
Burnout Revenge, NFSU2, Gran Turismo 4, all were my favorite racing games back on the PS2. I sometimes wish we live in a timeline where games including racing ones become better and better overtime, rather than be like this mess. We need more racing games that are actually good.
That part on creative bankruptcy hit a chord in me. I was so pissed that so many of my friends dissed on Unbound because of the style. It genuinely makes me angry that we no longer get graphically fun games anymore and it all has to adhere to realism ESPECIALLY for the racing genre. It's as if people forget that the fun thing about racing games are how fun it is to drive a speed machine around a dangerous yet fun track that pushes the limits.
Just my own personal take, the biggest reason that game was a turn off to me wasn't the style, infact I quite like it, but the NFS' series' habbit of having the most god awful, cringey, "How do you do fellow kids" bullshit storylines possible. That alone made me just not want to even touch it.
Burnout & Midnight Club > Any of those lame basic simracing.
Imagine playing GTA but instead of doing the usual GTA stuff, you go to work, get stuck in a traffic jams. Sim Racing are the blight of racing genre.
Fight me.
@@JennyWakemanSimp Yeah, it's this. The visual aesthetics are appealing. But the character dialogue is part of that aesthetic too, and is extremely off-putting. Illogical rebelliousness and desire to stick it to 'the man' while driving around half a million dollar supercars and committing massive property damage + almost running people over without consequences? You ARE 'the man' that needs to be brought down. And while there could be a self-aware tongue in cheek way to do that which would work, Unbound doesn't attempt that.
@@sirtophattingson8946 interesting that we know barely shit about the MCs of most wanted 1, carbon etc but I connected with them more than any newer games. The villain of MW1 sabotaged my car, red guy frm carbon threw me off a cliff. Fair enough let's race!
I'm just glad NFS doesn't do the cringey live-action scenes anymore.
There are a few other issues that come to mind in my eyes.
1. Live service
Self explanatory. Live services, and to a lesser extent yearly/frequent releases destroy creativity and basically just run the developers through an endless grind to create content for a game long after they want to take a break, leading to uncreative ideas and lackluster content releases. Additionally, live services heavily rely on multiplayer for content, as it dramatically extends the amount of time that a piece of content is used for. However, this leads to a drought of really good experiences, as things like campaigns get pushed off to the side in favor of adding a new car or track for the live service. This results in these games being unmemorable, as there is no story or anything to "experience", only the same multiplayer that's been around for years.
2. The pokemon problem.
As the roster of pokemon kept increasing, it became harder and harder for game freak to keep up and remodel the pokemon (or rip them from the 3ds games) for each new release, leading to dex gate. The same issue applies to the racing game genre. People expect certain cars and brands to be in the game, they'll beg for their favorites to be added all the time, and this creates an ever escalating issue of modelling and recording dozens and dozens of cars while dealing with the eternal hassle of licensing agreements.
burnout was so lucky to have never had those problems
@@angel_of_rust something about not having licensing for real life cars means you don't have to model and program real life cars...
Another problem that a lot of racing games share with Pokémon imo is that they're trying to cater to online culture by referencing and recreating current memes, trends and online culture itself, rather than focusing on building a unique and believeable in-game world that's special and different from the real world. I'm so tired of video game characters running around with their smartphones, doing silly memes, talking about their followers and chasing online fame, rather than being enthusiastic about and invested in the main point of the game (be it Pokémon, tuning or race driving).
It makes the characters feel so annoying and stupid and it never fits into the setting of the game, unless the setting is itself just one giant boomer parody of online culture, but who would want to play that?
I guess the publishers think that putting in those online culture references will trigger tons of social media posts and free marketing, but it really hurts the authenticity of and immersion into the game world.
Not that I'm saying that the story and setting were all that important, but having to put up with cringey story elements (eg. Need for Speed 2015, Heat and Unbound) and/or stupid emotes and branded accessories for your driver instead of meaningful rewards (Forza Horizon 4 and 5), is rather demotivating when the core gameplay is nothing special.
My point is, an intriguing story in an immersive and authentic game world can save a mediocre racing game and make it enjoyable (eg Need for Speed Undercover), whereas a story full of cringey online culture caricatures that draw your attention back to the real world is the final nail in the coffin.
@@LRM12o8 the bit about authenticity and immersion is interesting, since a lot of people would argue the opposite (that phones and social media are prominent enough that depicting a modern youth culture without them is unrealistic and immersion breaking)
I agree that more games should omit that stuff to focus more on the actual racing, and that’s immersive in a different way, but I don’t think its inclusion is entirely cynical marketing
The segment where you showed concept art and discussed ideas WAS MIND BLOWING
So cool and literally exactly what I would've played even if I am not a racing game enthusiast at all
Oh yeah. Now every racing game feels dull
It looked cool, but I'm struggling to see how it can improve racing games. It's more like replacing the scenery.
@@Sergeeeek no? That sci-fi world with old cars concept allows you to combine familiar, desirable classic cars (giving car enthusiasts something to latch onto) with sci-fi mechanics like teleporters and portals (ala Half-life/Halo). It's not just set-dressing, it's providing the context for certain mechanics' existence, that we don't get to interact with in most other racing games.
@@Sergeeeek I've fallen deeply in love with vehicles I've used in open world games before! I'm definitely not the only one. Integrating good driving can make a world of difference, ex: GTA Online.
@@rickygforce4217 I just watched a let's play a car based JRPG, where there are cars instead of people and all tropes of the genre are present. I changed my mind now lol
Okay, now imagine a shooter, produced by either Activision or EA…
…with IRacing’s content model.
Wanna play a map? That’s gonna be 10$. Wanna unlock this gun? That’s another 5$. Oh and to access the game you have to be signed up to our subscription.
No refunds either.
Give it 5 years
If its as realistic including scanned models and maps and perfectly realistic gunplay and physics you can just take my money
Okay, but Activision and EA are not trying to accurately replicate the physics of the guns, bullets, magazines, and apply that to your controller. Imagine the next Call of Duty trying to accurately create a damage model for each gun and bullet and its interactions with the environment and armor types? They would also need to replicate gun jams.
@@HerskalleLuottoo it probably won’t be, unfortunately.
God, hearing him describe the concept art as a game gave me chills. It's a game not only I need, but the industry needs. I miss the old days, in that way.
This might be my favorite video of yours, and damn, I really wish I had a group of friends to play racing games with.
Same, what do you play on? I was looking for buddies to play racing games with too but none of my close friends care for those types of games. Lmk!
Strange that there wasn't a mention of Trackmania. I've liked racing games here and there, Burnout 3, revenge, paradise; wipeout, flatout, forza, grid, etc, but the one that has gotten the most play out of me has been Trackmania.
The whole grind of shaving fractions of a second on a fun track is something that kept me in and going. While Turbo wasn't the that good according to the snobbier veterans, something like the magnetic tracks of rollercoaster lagoon were a lot of fun for someone coming from regular car racing games.
I love trackmania but it feels like it isn’t even a racing game, despite being about racing. At its core it is a speed running game to me. Weird distinction, I know
@@VegasA3 yup
Of all the mentioned games, Trackmania would have been the only one where there's no collision between cars online
Trackmania is great but it's not really a racing game I geuss. As you don't really race against people in a traditional sense. In reality you really just race against yourself.
@@saintscrib380 I dont know if that should discard it from the conversation, since most of the racing games mentioned do have time attack modes where you just try to get the fastest run through the route.
And I thought fighting games were struggling. Stay strong, racers, hope there will be something good in the future.
Edit: to clarify, I'm not saying that fighting games are bad right now. I really like a lot of them. The problem is that they can't retain their audience unless it's a superfranchise like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Not to mention a lot of games lately in the genre were relatively "safe" with their gameplay approach. But games themselves are great and most of the time have no real technical issues and with the push towards rollback netcode and cross-platform support it's looking better than ever. But player retention and lack of mainstream audience really holds the genre back from true greatness.
But this video, holy hell we eating good boys. Racing fans are served literal garbage on a plate and expected to pay hundreds for it. Where is variety of content? Where is fun customisation? Why the hell those games are released in such a poor state and who approves this garbage? As consumers, as players, and especially as fans, deserve way better than this.
Yeah, we niche genre fans need to stick together
Fighting games had one of the best years in a very long time last year, and the next 2 years are looking even better.
We need an SF6 moment in the racing game genre soon
Race war time
Fighting games do have their weird L's(strive, and mk11 gameplay "regressions") and lower player counts but nothing egregious that hurts the genre outside of SFV launch(and capcom has learned their lesson from what they've shown for SF6) or worth saying it's a genre in a bad spot. Granblue, kof, melty, skullgirls expansion, tekken 7, soulcal6. All have been perfectly fine as far as big titles go. Even with more niche titles brawlhalla, nick all stars, lethal league, and samsho are fun and fairly good.
My issue with the racing genre is that it's gone almost entirely sim. I miss arcade racing games like Burnout and Midnight Club. The only one we have left is NFS and the quality of those is hit or miss, usually coming down on the side of miss. What used to be one of my favorite genres is something I never play now.
Edit: This was addressed in the video. Nice! I really need to start watching the whole video before I comment. lol
Hey I mean you saw where it was going at least, that's impressive
grip: combat racing.
FH2 had great driving physics, idk about any of the newer ones.
I miss the days when it was just fun and awesome physics that didn't try to mimic real life, because apparently the racing organizations like NASCAR and F1, much like NFL and NHL think that people are going to get into fights or fly off the track because they played a video game. To be honest, video games aren't real and never will be as close to what real life is.
@@__-ni1kz The physics are about the same, but the maps got worse. Roads got wider, straighter, and longer so it's entirely focused around hypercars and anything else is boring beyond all reason. This alone is the reason Horizon 1 is my favorite. Roads were designed to be fun to drive and semi-realistic. You had to be good to take hypercars around. In Horizon 4 you just go flat out in the Mclaren Senna around the entire map because the concept of curves is basically non-existant. They've made a racing game that's basically just a series of drag races.
I hate how almost every single one of those proposed concepts sounds like a wet dream. Guarantee we aren't gonna see that crap until our death beds.
A big complicating fact I can't imagine *not* being part of the problem is probably the sheer cost of royalties. Racing games that license the right to use real cars, tracks, etc. have to be heavily profitable so the developers can cut even on the licensing fees at minimum, if not make a solid profit too. This is why only the newest two or three Forza Horizon games stay listed for sale if I remember correctly - Team 10 eventually just lets go of the older games so they aren't constantly paying for the fees still.
It'd be nice if they just take the Burnout route of Totally Not a GTR guys, and let people do wacky stuff with their cars instead of having Ferrari breathe down their necks for daring to scratch the bumper.
@@Appletank8 God I hate Ferrari. Don't they sue people who try to work on their cars without their permission or something?
@@marcfyre Currently ferrari scope out who you are, your history with ferarri, cant sell it in the first year of "owning" it, cant sell the car without notifying ferarri, dont fuck with the engine, dont make to many big cosmetic changes. If you so much as utter something negative of ferarri you are not allowed to buy any new ones. All in all, good fun club :)
@@TheSupersilver12 And that's why you get a beetle and mod the crap out of it instead.
Here’s my question, why do we need real cars in all our driving games? Isn’t it boring as hell to see the same cars in 10 different games play very similar to each other? I’d rather have 10 different looking games with different looking and feeling cars instead.
It's most agonizing being a lover of fighters, racers, and Ace fuckin Combat. I literally live to play games or try to do good academically so my life is basically miserable looking at the current state of affairs. Thanks for the vid Raycevick, it was probably my favourite one to date.
don't forget we lost ACI MP to AC7 MP, a crime
As a massive AC fan, this hurt.
Honestly, the last enjoyable AC game was Ace Combat X on the PSP
I’m a War Thunder addict, but I played halfway through AC7 before getting distracted and have recently started dipping my toes into DCS. I _really_ dislike the elitism some people have when it comes to the different air combat titles. Each of those three is enjoyable for what they are, and they have their own flaws and strengths, and are difficult to learn in their own right.
For some reason there’s a lot of shit talk between the fan bases of each title. I find WT players to be the worst for this, usually directed towards AC, since even within the WT fan base some will trash people that prefer to play arcade mode to realistic mode. I’ve seen DCS players talk down about War Thunder and Ace Combat for being ‘arcade titles,’ which supposedly makes them worse than DCS because DCS is a ‘realistic air combat simulator,’ but a decent amount of their player base is pretty mature. I can’t honestly say I’ve seen Ace Combat players trash talk other games, but I also don’t spend a lot of time interacting with that community so I don’t really know.
I’m not sure what I’m trying to build up to with all that, I guess I’d just prefer if there was a more cohesive genre identity everyone could gather around instead of just sitting in a corner and pointing fingers. Maybe it’s time I try AC7 again..
literally me man, we will make it tho, and AC is always there
@@OtterMusician Haha I totally get the War Thunder thing, I put way too much time in it than I'm willing to admit. As an Ace Combat man, I know that the community is just busy jamming to the amazing soundtracks and not really caring about what others have to say, so it's pretty based.
This is everything we need at this moment, constructive criticism about the major issues the modern racing game industry has, having a spotlight about how the public/industry reacts to these concerns, and how it can be solved.
This was a great video, I loved every part of it, this definitely deserves some more recognition and notoriety
Exactly. The same thing can be said about single player third person shooters. This genre has suffered so much over the last few years. The attempts to recreate one always hinges on what shitty, live service game they were emulating.
Max Payne, Gears of War, Dead to Rights. Whatever we get that’s close is either open world or lack any innovation.
A Dead to Rights game would be nice. I know Max Payne is being remade. But what else? Wanted: Dead had promise but the open-world Watch Dogs games ended up making games that are mechanically similar while being polished.
My saying is that every game comes with at least one deal-breaker, which is odd because games that have relied on structure as well as accessibility and player-choice, have already been released. Max Payne 3 is, maybe, the perfect game in terms of player choice. I love Smash Bros and even Ultimate was released without trophies - a deal-breaker.
Found myself religiously watching this video once a month. This is an amazingly rich overview of the situation this genre has put itself in.
I agree with you so much that it hurts 😭
What a golden age it was in the late 90s to mid/late 00s.
What a wealth of innovation and creativity we had only to now have constant commercialised stuff. It's all about car and racing licensing and monetising as much as possible with as little effort as possible.
I've recently been buying more and more PS2 games to just relive the glory days.
In all reality, I still play my PS3 just because of this(and to play PS1 games). If you remember back in the day, one of the complaints of GT was the car sounds, but if you looked at NFS from the time, their sounds weren't realistic. And tbh, I liked it, civics had a really punchy Honda sound, Supra had a nice unique sounds, not necessarily realistic.
Unfortunately the golden age of games is well past. Just be glad we got to experience that 97-07 period
i've found myself playing more and more games from the 2000's recently (abandonware = freeware babyyyyy), games like colin mcrae: dirt 2, race driver grid, nfs prostreet, etc. and so far i've all found them far more enjoyable than most of the games i usually play on my ps4
Ridge racer is fantastic
We had it so good back then
When I was a kid, I played Burnout 3, Crash n Burn, and GT4 a ton. I miss the the time racing game was either a quick messy fun (Wreckfest kinda replicated Crash n Burn), crashing with style, or dying on a Nurburgring endurance race
The xtreme/obstacle versions of crash n burn added so much difficulty to the layouts. One of the best use of a limited track list I have played.
you forgot about Mario Kart racing sims are boring imo
@@MalikATL nah I played PS2, Nintendo aren't marketing anything besides gameboy at that time in my place. Xbox doesn't exist till 360
I just want a GT4 with updated graphics and even more cars.
Burnout 3 is still my favorite racing game ever. Give me arcadey racing, boosting, takedowns, and Crash mode.
That one questline in Cyberpunk about racing makes your point nicely. A NFS/Fast and Furious style street racing game set in the Cyberpunk universe would be amazing. Cyberpunk even works thematically for a game about outlaw racers trying to thrive in a dystopia.
I've been dreaming about a need for speed with cyberpunk or space colony setting before 2077 was even a concept. And Khyzyl Saleems concept art has made that dream boner even harder
@@TK-_-421 i wished those games went harder with kyza's aesthetics, especially on the setting.
Even Wreckfest is just a glimpse how Flat Out was actually fun.
Slamming someone in Flatout that's stuck to your bumper with boost into a wall is the most cathardic feeling i had in any video game. Wreckfest doesn't even come close to that.
As much as I love the item-play and unique dynamics of kart racers, I miss the days where they weren't the only option I had for a meaningful racing experience.
they're not. track mania is pretty good. but the way it solves these problems is by having races be time trials with no collision instead of regular races. it's a workaround, but it works.
holy shit it's tj / henry yoshi
item play ruins all the appeal I have for most arcade racers. I just dont like the idea of having your fate decided by a diceroll no matter how good you are at the game. Personally, I would like to have more arcade racers that are more meaningful racing experiences on a base level with something like Juiced, or NFS Underground. And even if a game had items, it'd be something that could be predictably controlled (i.e: 2008 Death Race, where picking up a sword activates your offensive weapons, and picking up a shield activates your defensive ones)
@@wotwott2319 its a mechanic that definitely doesn't sit well with everyone and it does fundamentally mean that a race with no mistakes can be ruined by factors outside of your control.
That said, any inconsistency you get from an individual race has a different level of scrutiny over the course of many others and while the most skilled racer doesn't always win, they will still be able to find some degree of consistency.
Itemplay may be rooted in RNG, but its a skillset of its own with quite a degree of depth. I understand why its not for everyone tho and again, I wouldn't be here if I thought it was objectively better
I think itemplay is just fine in a kart racer, where the stakes generally are much lower in terms of hit due to low speeds. And in most games it also adds an element of strategizing, if you can use an item to also block incoming attacks.
But outside of kart racers, I don't think it works all that well, due to aforementioned speed. Sure would be nicer if there were some racing games outside kart racers...
so glad you covered wreckfest, one of my favorite games in recent memory. every day I miss motorstorm and wreckfest delivers something so close while becoming it's own thing
gregs art goes hard id kill for a game like that
That NFSII Menu music brought back some serious childhood memories! I remember my family computer was way too weak/slow to run the game and even the menus loaded at a crawl frame by frame while the music still played fine, so i have that song burned into my memory. Such a cool track
Honestly, I'm shocked the genre doesn't have a flourishing competitive scene considering the rise of esports and the obvious fit that it is for it. Or, well, it would be a fit if all of these problems didn't exist.
I've never been one for racing games, but you've really made a gripping piece of work here. Great job with it.
I think the reason there are no flourishing competitive scenes for racing games is simple, there are no exciting racing games being made that are competitively viable.
Not allot of people are interested in seeing formula one or gt cars racing on real circuits in a video game, there's already real life for that, so that's where people get their fix, that's why there's no flourishing esports scenes for games that emulate real life sports, what we want from esports is things we don't already have in real life, like counter-strike, league of legends, starcraft, age of empires, etc... and not games like fifa, madden or any other "simulator".
If I was tasked to create a racing game that would be viable for esports, I would make a game like trackmania where you drive on crazy circuits at 700mph but with actual races where people can crash into each other and do burnout like takedowns while drifting trough turns and loops with an incredibly high skill ceiling where the difference between a casual player and a a pro is so high that they could never realistically compete with one another without the casual getting absolutely crushed. That's what makes esports exciting, completely unrealistic scenarios that are exciting to watch because it can't be done in real life and the determining factor for who wins the game is pure skill.
Trackmania esports is really big
Because nobody wants to see a virtual GT or F1 race when they can just watch the real deal.
It doesn't have one because the people who are good at the e version get a shot at actual driving after that, no joke.
Even if you fix the games problems there's still a problem with esprts sim racing (and this is coming from a sim racer) no one wants to watch and if they do thare gonna watch there favorite streamer that's racing not the event stream. Also le ma virtual is doomed to happen again the race series that gave Motorsports games There rights are idiots though most didn't know how shit that company was.
Man I miss Motorstorm. Imagine what modern computers could do to this franchise.
It's pretty cool looking at the games on a stable emulator at least. Motor storm Apocalypse is still such an incredible spectacle!
run it at 30 fps in a ps3 emulator that crashed every 15-30 mins
The only racing games I have ever put time in are Motorstorm and NFS Most Wanted.
That idea of racing in sci-fi/post apocalyptic landscapes absolutley grabs the imagination again and makes me want to play a racing game.
I tried getting into Motorstorm, but the first game kicked my ass so hard, I don't really wanna get back to it, that and maybe I should try something more beginner-friendly first.
The futuristic tracks in Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart brought that vibe hard when I was a kid. I'd kill for a game that took that vibe and bumped up the graphics, toned down to cartoonishness about 20%, and added even just some minor management.
Try Driver San Francisco. Its actually a story/character driven game, and you play as a detective Tanner in his iconic Dodge Challenger R/T who is chasing criminal mastermind Jericho who escaped and is about to blow up the whole city. He often appears driving Dodge Ram pickup. As you progress through the story you will collect information about his mafia and what are his true intentions. You will also battle his henchmen in 1v1 road fights. The city itself feels alive, and using the "shift" mechanic you can go into any car on the road using telekenesis. Game offers +150 licenced vehicles ranging from ordinary cars like Dodge Neon up to muscle car classics, british legends like Aston Martin DB5, to exotic legends like McLaren F1, Mercedes SLR, Pagani Zonda and such.
Motorstorm is the best fucking series ever
OMG, It's like some took the words out of my brain and put in a video, thanks for making this!!, I hope the racing segment improves
That part where you described Racing in a half life setting got me RILED UP. I hear you so much. You said it like nobody else. Great video.
clearly someone has not played gmod
@@CallumsArmyWhile I won’t deny that GMod gives players the ability to basically anything that can be distilled into code (people *have* been making race tracks in GMod for years now), at the same time…it comes back to what Raycevick said when talking about BeamNG, Assetto Corsa, etc.:
It would be nice to play a racing game that isn’t just a self-maintained playset.
In other words, custom GMod scenarios can only do so much to satiate players who’ve been starved of unique - or at the very least, not boring - gameplay. Especially since most people who play GMod, BeamNG, etc. are regular people who can really only set up those scenarios in their spare time, and don’t necessarily have the resources needed to go and build the whole thing from scratch.
Also, not to be rude, but saying things like: “clearly you haven’t played GMod” just comes off as putting the blame on everyone else to fix the problems themselves, which is (to me at least) more than a little unfair, and just tacitly absolves the professional devs in the AAA scene of any responsibility regarding the lack of creativity or progress in both long running franchises and one-off titles.
Again, Video games, much like entertainment, are interpretations of things that occur in real life. But it goes to show that at some point we hit that limit to where we have to go back to fantasy and other wordly like scenarios or even hybrids. Again, I'd like to see ideas that were presented in the 1990s and early 2000s come back again to breathe new life to these dying genres.
@@SuperFlashDriver the games exist, you just need to look harder than you used to
@@CallumsArmy True. But I just prefer to watch videos rather than play games. That's what I feel currently. But yes they do exist.
I just wanna say, to anyone that feels like their favorite genre has gotten worse, no matter what it is: your feelings and thougts are valid. Don't let anyone gaslight you into thinking you're getting old and it's actually you that is the problem. Don't take that from anyone.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that over the last few years: Move on, the game is just not for you anymore. Don't spoil the fun for us new players...
True I've been playing Dirt 2 2008 recently and that game has so much soul.
Thank you so much for this video Raycevick. So many videos critique todays racing games but none have come even close to putting how I feel into perspective. When you mentioned Wreckfest being the ONLY living fun creative and unique arcade racer I literally screamed "YES!" in agreement. So many forget about Motorstorm too and that is still my favourite racing game of all time.
Seriously, what a passionate and well presented video.
I too literally screamed YES in agreement
It's amazing how often devs, particularly in the racing genre, manage to forget that games have to be fun, at some level, in order to be successful and keep sustained interest. #Wreckfest, and to a degree, #Descenders, though the approach is radically different, are the only two that come to mind for probably the last couple decades...which is kind of wild, as it always seemed to me back then that racing games would be the genre that would be more likely to develop progressively along the lines it had established back in the 80s/90s...anyway, great video. 👍
And it’s not a 3 hour one at that. Although I do enjoy those.
Rolfwaffle is good to says everything needed about gt7
it's so stupid that GTA Online offers a better racing experience at times than actual racing games, and I fucking hate GTA Online.
Except GTA online feels more like the crew, no real world locations, no real race cars, no pit stops, that's not racing
@@mathewhosier9739 well as much as I agree with you it is racing its just not the racing we are looking for
@@mathewhosier9739 Some people prefers the adrenalin over the chaos that can occur when the boys are involved.
A race on GTA Online; especially GTA IV, sounds so much more tempting than racing on the Nurburgring if anything.
I mean i like gta online but gt7 was better.
I really really love that a super skilled “mainstream” gaming channel like yours has gotten into sim racing this hard and is making such accurate takes about the state of the genre as it pertains to gaming as a whole
I’ve been a fan since I was recommended your F1 2019 video back when it was the newest game and I’ve been hooked since!
Anyway tl;dr great videos raycevick, hope to see you on track at some point 💜
This video touched my soul, Rayce. Thank you.
You're very welcome!
@@Raycevick That was the most fascist thing I have ever heard in my life.
The concept art section literally gave me chills. Such cool ideas!
Outstanding video
I Wanna see that GT-meets-half-life style of game come to fruition,that’s a gem waiting to be unearthed right there
It's been a year since I first watched this video, and there's still no racing game set in a dystopian future or on other planets like the concept art shown here. Even on a rewatch, I lit up when I saw the concept art, and it breaks my heart knowing we most likely won't get anything like that.
Resistor is doing the dystopian future part, tho it’s not out yet and has a story focus and cel shaded art style that might be offputting
@@Arakus99 Resistor feels more like Borderlands than anything.
You've said all the things that racing game fans should be saying more loudly but aren't. iRacing is the only racing sim I haven't played, but from all the rest, they're definitely not close to a refined game experience. They're fun to jump into for about 20 minutes, but events like the 24 Hour races show the engines aren't capable of racing for that long. I'm mostly playing BallisticNG and GRIP nowadays, it's a more likely guarantee for fun rather than having to setup my wheel and pedals for a racing sim. They also have gameplay outside of the barebones too, which helps.
There was a Japanese Racing game I played a long time ago that had an RPG-like system where you built up your reputation by winning races and more and more people would talk about you as you won.
That one aspect made it so much more fun.
Sounds like a Genki Project Racing game. Does Kaido or Tokyo Xtreme ring a bell? Or racing lagoon?
Closest game I can think of is Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2/Kaido Battle 3. There's an entire BBS board in-game for cars, courses, and misc. information.
Racing Lagoon had that concept if I remember correctly
Sounds like Racing Lagoon!
Racing Lagoon.
Of all of the misfortunes, I think one specific sub-genre of racing games have suffered more than anything: combat racing (Twisted Metal, Vigilante 8, Interstate '76, Burnout 3: Takedown onwards, Destruction Derby and so on).
Back in the late 90s to mid 2000s, even up until end of 2010, you had options to choose from: besides the titular Twisted Metal, you had copycats of it and variations where racing was important as was using means to combat against the opponents, you had the typical kart racers with power-ups as well as Blur to give a different twist to the genre, you had the spectacles that Motorstorm series and Split/Second had, one where changes occur and one where YOU could cause them, as well as multitudes of destruction derby -like racing games such as Destruction Derby, Demolition Racer and so on.
Nowdays? You go find one good combat racing game on Steam and it's either piss-poor attempt from a fan of the genre to rekindle the corpse that Twisted Metal left behind or a genuine game with little to no offering, replay value or people to play and have fun with; with kart racers, you only have Mario Kart series, Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled which had it's support stopped after 1-2 years or the meme that is Garfield Kart racing game; and then there's something like Crossout which allows you to build your own personal, weaponized vehicle and battle against others in a War Thunder/World of Tanks like gameplay style, but is held back by ridiculous amounts of grind you have to do to level up and get anywhere to get most out of it.... or whip out the cash.
As a person who mostly prefers arcade racing games due to the fact how absolutely crazy, fantastic or out of this world experiences and gameplay mechanics you could do, seeing only simulation racers getting advertised up the ass and witnessing how they're getting stagnated as a result of this endless pursue of realism, marketing and money is truly disheartening.
Shout out to “Full Auto”, a racing game where cars have machine guns strapped to their hoods, which uh, apparently everyone forgot about.
Best combat racing you're gonna get today is to find a discord for jak x.
I hope you've tried Gas Guzzlers Extreme because that is a really fun one.
@@GamerAlexVideos I have tried that game and even finished it. Perhaps it's just me, but after I finished the singler player mode, it felt like the game had nothing new or any catch left in it for me to continue playing it.
@@Appletank8 I recall having that game on my PSP at one point. Came to learn a little too late how there was a PS3 version of it available as well.
I’m so glad you mentioned art of rally. I tried it thinking it would be fun for 15 minutes because of the look but the handling is so good and it really grabs you in with the lighting and environments.
I've never been a racing fan, but I absolutely LOVED Split Second and was so sad when they never made a sequel.
With that said, the concept art that you showed immediately made me want a Split Second: Infinite. Like, imagine racing in modern cars in a hyper-futuristic world, complete with the crazy spectacle of the Split Second games. My mind went straight to racing on a massive derelict military ship on the edge of a raging black hole. The amount of crazy set pieces that could be set up gets me so hyped.
Anyway, fantastic video as always!
As a hardcore Sim racer loving iracing, but who secretly just wants to play that classic gran turismo career experience again, with a modern twist that's something else than micro transactions. This was a great take on the situation we are currently in.
Around the halfway point of this video, it began to sound EXACTLY like fighting game discourse from the past three-to-five years. Our genre's doing better now, so hopefully yours can pick up too before developers and publishers decide it's just too expensive to invest in and drop it entirely.
It's also the same with FPS, or just gaming in general.
Get them listening to 2017 era dubstep. Then say, "make a game that fits this sound. Good luck". Youd have so many badass prototype coming.
I thought the exact same thing
the one thing that concerns me the most is if motorsport itself will end up being hurt by the lack of decent games that portray it
gaming is one of those things that racing depends on to obtain new fans, that's how you get f1 fans, engineers, or even drivers that started by playing gran turismo, forza, ridge racer, daytona usa, etc.
it's not something exclusive to racing, btw, just about a year ago someone in the usaf was interviewed regarding a program that used ai for training pilots, the ai itself was using an ace combat model, which could mean that whoever made that simulator for the USAF was an ace combat fan years ago which eventually resulted in them joining the air force, and tony hawk's pro skater is often credited for being the single thing that saved skating as a whole by exposing it to a new generation
aviation nowadays has war thunder, ace combat 7 and top maverick to inspire the next generation
skating has the olympics, youtube videos and thps 1+2
racing has f1... the odd motorsport movie here and there, and ok niche games with compromises.
Honestly one of the most amazing videos I've seen on the genre. As a casual fan of Forza but someone who grew up on the burnout franchise, I loved the concept of a Half life-Forza hybrid, it actually made me realize how awesome a game like that could be. Keep up the videos man.
That sobering moment when Mario Kart is definitely the highest quality racing game on the market.
And it’s not even close.
I don't know why it would be sobering, Nintendo is literally one of the biggest gaming companies with years of quality history behind them. It would be sobering if some no name company was making the highest quality racing game
@@Kirisapostle12 yeah you say that but pokemon is a thing
@@Griffith74 it's not made by nintendo
Amen
@@Griffith74 pokemon isn't made by nintendo and also scarlet and violet are pretty great games and it seems as if they're actually trying to make something new, unlike the entire racing game industry
One other detail: Games from 20 years ago also didn't have as much influence from "online-only" priorities. Therefore a lot of the creativity went into making a decent career mode with good replayability. With simples games that didn't take that long to produce (since technology was simpler back then), enabling the fruition of a conceptual vision was easier for game companies.
I think for the racing games in particular real world cars have killed so much creativity.
Every game is competing for the most licensed cars and as such have to bend over backwards to the companies.
The most immediate way this is seen is in crash damage being phased out more and more because companies don't want their car to be shown damaged.
100% agree. Between online competitive gameplay taking care of the “narrative element” and modding taking care of the bug fixing; why would a developer put in any additional resources? Especially on beloved IPs (looking at you Elder Scrolls) or desperate, well heeled fan bases like racing nerds and WarHammer 40k fans who will shell out money regardless of quality.
And this doesn’t touch on the ability for the developer to now change the game at anytime after release. It’s almost to a point where it financially makes more sense to ship a half finished game, since the fan complaints will tell a developer exactly what needs fixed and they don’t have to do anything beyond that minimum.
23:53 This is so funny because after the ABYSMAL release of Forza Motorsport that puts the bug compilation in your intro to shame, they are now hyping up the Nurburgring *a g a i n*.
Those pieces of concept art you showed of various rally cars in unrecognizable/otherworldly locations is the kind of shit that I’ve been wanting from modern racing games for years now.
(Seriously, what’s the point in having all this fancy new technology if we’re not even gonna bother using it to its full potential?!)
When you started speaking about a "racing game with lots of different places and teleporters and unique scenarios" my mind went apeshit thinking about the HotWheels Acceleracers cartoon and how I desperately want a game just like the show since I was a kid and how the industry simply sleeps on such an infinite amount of content that could be created around this simple idea
Still to this day I wish we got a proper conclusion to that series
Might I suggest Project Acceleracers? It might not be fully fleshed out, but it's a whole new game instead of a recreation as Velocity Redux is.
There's some acceleracer custom made maps in Distance. Don't buy Distance for them, of course, but you can probably enjoy them if you remember that stuff well.
You've really touched upon something Ive been feeling for years.
It's really baffling that racing, something that conjures so many visceral emotions has in gaming essentially become a race to make the blandest oatmeal possible.
By 2030 , most games won't be worth playing.
Half-finished manipulative crap is the standard, and despite how utterly stupid the average person is even they won't put up with it forever.
They grey up eating garbage, but eventually the garbage will be so unpalatable not even the raccoons will touch it.
If people think this is not true . Gaming will be a laughing stock and especially with racing games .
You mentioning rFactor 2 being broken online makes a lot of sense. I remember Jimmy Broadbent talked about similar issues with the game durin his last VEC Le Mans 24 Hours race back in 2018, and that the game not being truly improved and worked on made him leave the series as a result.
Some people don’t realize how important having an identity is for any game. I’ve recently sunk hundreds of hours into Art of Rally, it’s art style, music and just overall vibe is unmatched by any game currently on the market.
I tried it but had to refund that game, it just didn’t feel finished enough after having some crashes and controller issues I think.
It seems like a great game but it made a bad first impression and also wasn’t very fun at the start when I just wanted things unlocked so I could try out races and have fun.
You would love nothing more but for Iracing, RaceRoom, Rennsport, Assetto Corsa Competizone, RFactor, etc. and all of its devs and fans to die.
I adore the shit out of Art of Rally and I should play it more. It manages to have its own identity as well as be a really nice love letter to the history of rally racing.
And it's just fun, much as I'm bad at dealing with the isometric camera lol (and am currently not too willing to put in that chase cam mod).
@@Ben-jq6by What the hell man?
@@Ben-jq6by You need to *chill* man.
26:20 Interestingly, there is a game that has a driver damage system - Xpand Rally. Quite unjustly forgotten rally game, which has a lot of interesting mechanics (it's probably the only rally game in which we can tune spoilers or hoods like in NFS) and the aforementioned damage system allowed our driver to break his legs in accidents on the routes or, most interestingly, lead to his death.
What happens with injury? Arm injury makes handling worse? Leg injury results in no throttle?
I feel like a lot of this can be said about the gaming industry as a whole. I really wish everyone would just stop and take a step back for a moment and remember why we all fell in love with gaming 20-30 years ago in the first place. So many games that release now just feel completely soulless.
Agree, I've been a casual gamer since SNES. Enjoyed every gen of consoles until PS4. That's when gaming took a turn to soulless boring games. It used to feel that there was an artistic vision the creator of a game had and that's how a game would come about. Now it's just "we gotta pump out cash grabs that kids will buy and get addicted to". Bought a PVM and took my consoles out of storage 4 years ago and have been having a blast playing all those old games I missed out on Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast and even PS3. Best decision I made, every time I come back to a new game on my PC they all just feel artistically bankrupt and so convoluted to navigate.
@@awill891skill issue. you just got bad games, dont complain about the ENTIRE industry when its a you issue my guy, there've been plenty of great games, just because you dont play em dont mean they dont exist.
@@awill891 look closely at the indie scene, there’s tons of interesting games by small teams in most genres
You can probably even find spiritual successors inspired by all the older games you like
@@TheCapitalWanderer Cringe "my guy" "skill issue". Plenty of "great games" that all have the modern trash of constantly being forced to open and navigate menus over and over again. The only menus I want in a game are the start/pause menu period. Just cuz you like modern games of every genre that FORCE you to into nonstop leveling up/tracking stats of every item until the game becomes playable, you're supposed to magically know out of 4,000 useless weapons/car parts which ones are good, crafting (I want the developer to create 100% of the game, I don't want to be the creator/designer of anything, that's why I pay someone else to make the game for me), low level indie graphics and rougelikes doesn't mean it's a skill issue if people don't prefer those games. MY DUDE, MY GUY and I already see the "ohhh u mad bro?" type of reply you'll respond with.
@@awill891 let's see, ULTRAKILL, Dead Rising Remaster, RE4 : Remake, almost all Visual Novels have no complicated menuing, want me to continue? because all NewBlood titles doesn't have that bloat. YOU chose to play the games with a lot of shit menus, That's a you issue. i play Class of '09 and there is barely any menu. just save, load, and close app. so please, don't blame the gaming industry for your incompetence.
Always fear a rolling start, for you never know when a Jacob Bartels will take the lead before it starts.
Or forget to brake literally in the first turn he has control in, letting everyone else through.
Excuse me for saying this again but I must reiterate that:
I can wait 5 or even 10 years for a Raycevick upload because once it drops, it's sheer quality over quantity. Thanks, always much appreciate what you do.
I have been feeling unfulfilled by racing games since NFS went off the rails (in my opinion anyway) and I never quite put my finger on why, Raycevick just nailed it. I hope this video makes the rounds accross various gaming devs that take it to heart.
Great content, simply amazing.
So true. NfS Most Wanted (2006) and Split/Secondwere were such a blast, but somehow most racing games nowadays are not really tempting. ^^
24:38 this entire segment just screams out redline anime (movie) pretty much this idea but with cars that's equipped with missles, and instead of rally, you got supercars otherworldly
Bro, a redline game would be so fucking cool dude, sad it's never going to happen