Totally agree. NFSMW 2005 has never been bettered as an illegal street racing console game. By either EA or Black Box. And until or unless Most Wanted is remade for current consoles or the gaming community gets a Remaster as Mass Effect ( another never bettered first 3 games ) did, MW2005 will not ever be surpassed.
there are less good games per year, but there are more amazing games per year. Whether you want 5 amazing games per year or 10 decent games per year is up to you. Games used to take less than a year to make 20 years ago. Now they take up 10. Also nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Most wanted isn't that special. It's no better than Heat apart from having better music (and maybe "Story"(?)) Dirt rally 2.0 exists. And it knocks any arcade or simulator racing game ever made since the 1970's till 2023 january 20th straight to the garbage can. It's racing gaming perfection down the last minute details.
@@user-ly2ll5od1r your comment doesn’t address the issues here. When gamers are forking out £70 for a base game & over £100 for ‘Deluxe’ which never offers more than the absolute minimum extras, gamers want value for money. Not unfinished glitchy lack of content games. Then to be kicked in the teeth with 40% of the base game removed & added as dlc 3 month later that incurs additional cost. It’s a racket dreamt up by greedy & lazy game developers & should not be allowed according to Trading Standards Law.
@@user-ly2ll5od1r Nah, RBR is much better than Dirt Rally 2.0 imo. I also hate the graphics in that game, and the fog everywhere. You also have WRC Rally Evolved on ps2 from around 2005 which is amazing game, much more fun that Dirt Rally. The problem is that the focus shifted from being single player focused to multiplayer, so the advancements in AI, career mode structures and the likes have been pretty much non-existent or to an extent even become worse. Longer development cycles might be true, though no doubt do they lie about it for marketing purposes, but that doesn't seem to transfer to more fun and good games. Longer development cycles can actually be harmful, because focus and priorities might change over time and the games run a higher risk of becoming a mess essentially.
Micro transactions is what's ruining the gaming industry, not just racing games, all games. The focus is now on money instead of quality games. The whole structure of each game now is based on how companies can further extract more money from the customers after the game is released. So, we end up with mediocre games with no soul.
This is the focus of the world in general. Chasing higher profit margins by churning out low-cost, low-quality and low-passion methods because they know people will still buy what they produce. It's a sad state of affairs that the passion to produce something of high quality is not highly regarded any more...
I really miss Test Drive Unlimited 2, there is something about this game that no other racing games have. The feeling of actually spending the racing money on houses and cars + being able to walk in them, inspect every car "in person" was a huge immersion-wise. Every car felt "special" and not just like a toy given to you.
another example is GTA San Andreas where I could spend hours exploring the map during my school holidays. It was terrafic. I think the simpler the game is, the more fun it actually delivers.
You know age dord make you have different experiences of space, if you go to a big university as a kid youll think its a little city and could get lost, but once you go when you are 20 and know it more it doesn’t seem too unknown and big.
San andres was the peak of gta but gta 5 was great when it came out.. a decade ago. I gave up waiting for the gta game. I’m bout done with gaming in general
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
ps assetto corsa for example has many giant city maps to explore, but that shit is lame and boring, just like it was in gta. I think you all might be idiots.
I'm 39 and haven't liked gaming much in 10 years. I thought I was just getting old but I go back and play these classics and love them. I'm glad you made this.
Not a racing game, but I've been playing Planetside 2 again. A game that came out in 2012 is still a better FPS game than anything released since. And there are hundreds of players fighting in the same battle on the same map. Impossible to find anything like that in today's market.
Forza Horizon 4 and 5 focused so much on making a bigger world rather than focusing on progression system. It is so easy to get new cars that the sense of progression gets lost very early in the game
At the start of the game you can get a Zonda and a Divo as a "gift car". That's just ruins everything, also that the car prices in fh5 auction house is completely broken, you can buy a Bugatti Divo for 400-500k but a Toyota ae86 is 8 million, like wtf
true that, i remember RR8 being speculated for the switch which was just left in the dust... although the Ridge Racer series for me is a timeless classic. i keep coming back to R4, RRV, RR2 (PSP) and RR7.
I personally feel like the Pixar Cars games deserve an honorable mention. The THQ Cars games weren’t very arcade-like and they weren’t full blown simulations. They were more so in the middle. And for just being movie tie-ins, they do a fantastic job at standing out. The first Cars game is still my favorite video game of all time because of that. As for Cars 2 and Cars 3: Driven to Win, they fall into the basic arcade style racing game. Not to say they’re bad. Cars 2 is a pretty solid video game. And as for Cars 3…you’ve basically played Cars 2. Just by that alone should give you an idea of the drop in quality of the Cars games.
Could not have summed up the last two decades of racing games better myself. Despite the dip in quality for a lot of long-running franchises, it's nice to see the classics still being kept alive on RUclips, Twitch and all over the internet pretty much. In addition to your mentions, I can also strongly recommend digging through some older "one and done" titles, such as Auto Modellista and Enthusia. The amount of great racers out there who never got a sequel is almost criminal. Great video, liked and subbed! Also thanks for the Pepega Mod shoutout 💚
Holy shit Eden! Glad to see you liked the video! Yeah preserving the classics is always important, especially for people my age who were born when these games were coming out. I'll have to check out Auto Modellista and Enthusia more, and I should have mentioned Enthusia since I'd been watching your recent videos on it, But I just didnt know much about it myself. Thanks for dropping by! Can't wait for the Prostreet Pepega!
The biggest issue with present games is they just too focused on online-based with DLC and MTX everywhere which ruined the enjoyment of playing game. Ever since X360, PS3 and Wii era released, many games lost the passion, fun and simplicity to play. The more feature added to game, the more player get bored really fast because we dont need such complicated game to play it, even simplest one is much more enjoyable. I think what they should make right now is back to basics once again to remind us what is the origin of game itself. I found that playing GT3 and 4 is much more fun than playing 5, 6 and 7 because you dont need genius to play, even 3 year old kid can play it easily. Same thing with Midnight Club, NFS Underground, NFS MW where you just buy and run game while offline, simple as that. I prefer buying a COMPLETE game with Offline feature where you dont need to pay extra for DLC, MTX and support features that should not need in 1st place.
If someone was able to combine the open-world quest-finding mechanism of Burnout: Paradise with the best game modes of DiRT: Showdown, put them into a Midnight Club progression and aesthetic, with a dash of Driver and Gran Turismo car physics, we'd have ourselves the perfect title.
my last hope is TDU: Solar Crown. I'm glad they had a delay and I really want them to take their time, blood sweat and tears making this as a passion project.
THIS!!! I was waiting for him to bring that up as well! They had a golden formula, and if they can iterate it and implement the better driving physics they appear to be working with, it's going to be a homerun TDU2 fucking rocked!!
There is no gameplay, no footage and even no screenshots. How can you believe in the game from a new (not just for the franchise) company who didn’t show any progress except cgi trailers, both of them which are the same?
Honestly Driver San Francisco was way ahead of its time not only having incredible gameplay mechanics but also a damn good story which is pretty rare in racing games.
truly amazing game, the sense of speed and music, same goes for nfs hot pursuit 2011 with banger music that started my taste in drum n bass genre, and all the trackmania games and it's creativity.
For me its: Gran Turismo 4, NFS Underground2, Forza Horizon, Burnout 3, Midnight DUB, and NFS MW. Worst experiences: Gran Turismo 6, NFS Payback, Forza Horizon 4, Driver San Fran, Blur Racing, and NFS Undercover. Underrated Games: Motorstorm Pacific Rift. Nuff said. Auto Modellista. It just looks cool. TheCrew was fun. First time playing a Racing Game, while having a huge open-world map with diverse areas. ...these are a decent experience, not as bad as the User Score and Critic Score would indicate. Definitely underrated !!
@@ekinteko oh yeah you reminded me of blur, i loved it so much, bought it at the same time as split second was releasing, best year for racing games xD
Until today, I still yearned that one day EA realized they have Burnout in their inventory and decided to give it one more whirl. My childhood was defined by Burnout 3 and Revenge, and it influenced the music I listened to today.
Keep an eye on Three Fields Entertainment. They're former Burnout developers who got tired of no longer making Burnout games. They're having to restart from the ground up again, but so far they've released two Dangerous Driving games (more in line with the OLD Burnout games) and they're currently developing Wreckreation, which is shaping up to be promising.
@@FurryWrecker911 From what I've seen of Dangerous Driving, it captures the style of Burnout 3 quite well, but car list, damage modeling, track design, and most importantly: physics, are all pretty lacking. They seem like a team with really good ideas, but kinda drop the ball in the execution department. Hoping Wreckreation is good, but not holding my breath for it.
Test Drive unlimited was something else. It was really fun to drive around the map in a normal way without making a single scratch as if you actually owned that car. The map was huge and the island tour was a full one hour long race where you really had to concentrate.
Maaan that game was ahead of its time hindered by hardware😥 Best part bout the game was upgrades actually did stuff....and the sense of speed was on point...and engine upfrades gave a better sound
TDU was a stellar game. Sadly I never could complete that full island race. It would crash for me every time towards the end, about 5 attempts before I gave up. But the rest of the game was gripping, so much to explore and fun with every car.
Always thought it was the blandest racing game ever made. Physics were absolute dogshit. Not realistic, but not fun simcade or arcade either. I think people were really just charmed by 'wow this game has a lot of cars' and the big (bland) world to drive in. For me it also meant that it marked the death of the franchise - it was nothing like the previous Test Drive games. Test Drive 5, now that game had character. Everything from menus to music to unique tracks to interesting car choices. TDU was like Zuckerburg's metaverse by comparison.
Watching this made me feel so lucky that I grew up in the golden era of racing games in the early 2000s. I don’t really play video games much anymore, once in a while I’ll hop on Forza Horizon or whatever but it feels so boring now. It’s sad that we don’t have many options out there for great racing games now. I will say racing games motivated me towards my career as an auto technician and to get my own project car. And that’s something my inner child who stayed up all night playing Gran Turismo 4, is very proud of!
Games have simply stopped being creative and instead focused on looking like movies with pretty graphics. The gameplay has more or less stayed the same.
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
Forza Motorsport 2, you had the option to not only change tire compounds, but also the manufacturer for each tire. And even if you chose a racing compound each one had their own handling characteristics. A small but noticeable detail. One I wished stayed in the series.🗿
@@redbullsauberpetronas Snowrunner has pretty good attention to detail (mostly). Every individual log on the trailer moves and jiggles, each having their own lumber stamps. The pneumatic hoses spring and bounce like a coiled hose should, and mudflaps fold and flap exactly like you'd expect them to (which is a bigger thing than you might expect). Though, it does miss a few details, like brake lights not working for some reason - Which causes a lot of collisions in multiplayer sessions.
@@redbullsauberpetronas It has a lot of DLC, but it's hard to say if it's that bad. As a gamer, I want as much content for as cheaply as possible. And I also don't want to pay over $100 for content that I'll never use or don't even want to begin with (cough, FH5, cough). With Snowrunner, there's a decent amount of content in the base game, but some of the DLC trucks are much better than the default trucks, and help out lots with starting out. The game should definitely be easier, with more trucks by default. It sucks how greedy games have gotten.
From my understanding, that went away due to licensing issues with the tire manufacturers...but yes, this was a critical feature of the game that could absolutely make or break your car's handling characteristics when trying to max it out for a specific class.
While not "exactly" a sim game, I find Trackmania might at least be a honorable mention in the racing game genre. It was released around that time and offered some unique experiences. - Trackmania (2003) - Trackmania Sunrise (2005) - Trackmania Nations (2006) - Trackmania United (2006) - Trackmania Nations Forever & Trackmania United Forever (2008) For the ones who don't know, the selling features were these things: - You can build your own tracks in the track editor - You can race and compete on these tracks - All single player tracks made by the creators can be completely rebuild from scratch in the track editor, the editor is that powerful - No race car customization, so your car is equally as powerful and handles equally as well as any other car. Cosmetic car skins do exist, and some people modded their car to be a different model altogether. But even these models use the exact same car-to-wall collision, so it's purely visual. - All races, even multiplayer ones, are glorified time trials. There is no collision between cars. Every car starts at the exact same starting point. Physics are determined. If you're in second place, it's not because of bad luck or because another player drove against you. If you're in second place, it's purely because of your skill. Now restart the race and do better!
I'd also reccomend Dirt 5 as when my xbox used to work I played that game nonstop along with Nascar Heat 5. Heat 5's online servers are still up and are mainly active throughout the week mainly due to the casatrofuck known as Nascar 21 Ignition Also most of the early 2000's EA Nascar games which have a lot of playabilty and funny moments
One of the major factors that made this "golden era" of racing games so memorable was the strong aesthetic and unique visuals the different devs really emphasis in their designs. Nowadays most of these game focused way too much on graphic fidelities, which only basically replicated what real life looks like but represented nothing from deep inside the emotions of the creator's eyes in an artistic perspective like the old days, they just all felt emotionless now. The only game where they still managed to captured both the aesthetic and graphics is Gran Turismo, they still stayed true to create things from their unique perspective that we fans all loved.
Agree alot on this take. Everyone talks about how good graphics are in games now, and I disagree. As you said, graphical fidelity and geometric rendering/terrain is much more advanced today, and games look much sharper. But most modern games look dull, boring to the eye imo, older games with their unique artstyles were much more visually interesting and charming than new ones. If you see a video from an old game, you can often instantly tell what game it was, see a video from a new game and they all blend in together for me. I also hate the white filter or post processing effect many modern games have, just not a fan how it looks and its too bright.
@@shakyor875 It has very interesting and unique aesthetic indeed, however I do think it was a little too artificial...like it was an after thought, something of an addon instead of being designed organically from the concept phase. Though I still heard a lot of people liked it, did I remember it wrong?
Idk about this. Everyone and their moms want realistic looking graphics, and devs are doing just that. Yes it makes them *look* visually less differentiated, but as you know games aren’t dependent solely on graphical fidelity to separate each other apart. Also what do you mean by “soulless”? Everyone throws that word around but does anyone even understand it?
@@fifteen8850 "It makes them look visually less differentiated." I'm not trying to offend you or anything in that regard, but you've already explain one major factors yourself. One really fantastic thing about game design is that, we get to see what artists imagine through their own lenses in a animated, living platform. Experiencing what they saw and feel about certain things first-handed, down to the personal level. If the directions of aesthetic are all about replicating what real life looks like (which it that alone is not always a bad thing, it depends on contexts), it will all just ends up with the same mundane imagery that everyone already could see with our own physical eyes, especially in this age where any real life imagery could be search with a flick of a finger, it's just not very interesting anymore. There is this lack of "emotion" that wasn't yours for you to "experience". It's like...instead of seeing an artist's painting (be it in realistic style or not), we get a random photo, taken with a cellphone and that's about it. Even for imageries that we're all familiar with, it could still look very different in someone's imaginary mind, and I think it's why things got stale when majority of the industry only now approach creative projects with the mind of "creating the most realistic A or B", the eventual AI take over in the near future will likely amplifies that problem. Ah...when it comes to topics like these I'm sure there'll be millions different perspective to look at it, there's no definite right or wrong.
The first Gran Turismo was a game changer. It brought licensed cars and the pursuit of realism into racing games (and environmental mapping). That alone makes it in my opinion the most influential, if not the best, racing game ever. Technology never stops improving but we wouldn't be playing modern racing simulators hadn't GT (and Geoff Crammond's F1GP, to a lesser degree) been there.
Not only did racing games of the 2000s get me into working on cars and various motorsports, those games are the reason i became a musician. Hearing Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, Kyuss, and Bullet for my Valentine changed my 8 year old world
right? they also had a great soundtrack to back up the game, creating a great atmosphere all around. now i have to suffer through listening to rico nasty and a whole barrage of foreign songs, that for some reason takes up literally 90% of the goddamn soundtrack. not even trying to be racist or anything, but im trying to listen to a song on which i can understand the lyrics, as well as it actually sounding good for once lmao
These games also had such a huge influence on my music taste. NFS Underground 2 and the Midnight Clubs had the BEST soundtracks with such a mix of music. When I was 7 years old, I heard Riders on the Storm for the first time and introduced me to the Doors and Snoop Dogg. Every time it comes up on my Spotify playlist it takes me back.
There was a Squaresoft racing game that had RPG elements in 1999. It was called Racing Lagoon. The story, tuning, and its style of gameplay puts many modern main stream Racing games to shame.
The fact a random video I stumbled upon from a 5k subscriber count channel is this high quality just goes to show how passionate the arcade racing community is. This video is amazing. Thank you.
I thought this video was by someone with over 400k subs, not someone with just barely over 3k! The quality, editing, and music in this video is astounding! Keep up the good work!
I'm surprised it's not often mentioned because for me Midnight Club was the only real open world racing game (where you could find different routes between checkpoints or take a wrong turn at any point) and made NFS and other games unenjoyable because of how "linear" the races were, to this day I still want racing games to give me freedom and not a lot of them give you the same freedom you had in Midnight Club...
I'm surprised that people forget that Burnout Paradise is also a real open world racing game (where you could find different routes or take a wrong turn at any point without worrying about checkpoints)
@@supreme_xenon it's super sad for real. Burnout Paradise and Midnight Club LA are probably the most underrated in their franchises but are actually the peak as well. In a world full of linear "open world" racing games Midnight Club gave us a gorgeous and super fun to drive Los Angeles while Burnout Paradise probably gave us the best open world in any racing game ever. Every corner, every sharp turn, every single drivable mile is used to create the most fun chaotic experience
NFS was built on circuit racing originally meaning laps around a track, even in open world they were doing track style racing.....the open world was you having to get to the next race lol midnight club while good ran into issues cus the freedom could also sink you cus you could miss 1 fukkin checkpoint and have to go back and lose the race....those unordered races were a bitch and a half, then the AI loves to slam your ass al day so you could end up taking too much damage and lose...MC was kinda BS like that...but of course if you were some racing god you'd never ever fall into these traps right?? i like the MC series but it was also a ton of horse shit at times....especially the LA game....gods i hated that one...fukkin rich kid elite assholes as racers, get stuck in shit cars then on;y if you're a expert driver will the motorcycles be worth it but even then the rubberbanding AI was horse shit! all 4 games used rubberband AI catch up mechanics....
Great video and a sad insight on not only racing games, but games as a whole nowadays. We need publishers to give devs proper development time, and allow them to listen to their fans.
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
Two of my absolute favorite racers were in the arcade. Initial D and maximum tune. Nothing better than lining up to defend your seat against like 30 ppl who had fully tuned cars on their card. Nothing can touch that atmosphere
This is how I felt about forza 1-2-3-4. Nothing beats community engagement and people having whole social scenes centered around a game. I miss calling people out and for a battle and having like 4 others volunteer to be judges etc. I wouldn’t trade a day of it back.
Oh man this reminds me of creating a Maximum Tune team with my buddies and having 2v2s vs other squads in my city. I will never feel that same level of anticipation walking into an arcade ever again.
Fun Fact: I played Burnout Paradise for over a year before I found the crash mode on accident! Talk about mind blown!! Like imagine if that happened playing gran turismo and how crazy that would be. That’s how it felt 😂
Burnout Paradise had a lot of fun little features that the game really didn't explain how to find. It took me months to figure out what a "power park" was and how to do it.
@@jackalope8017 yeah man. hold left and right trigger buttons at the same time and your car will immediately spin out into a barrel rolling ball of senseless destruction
15:48 "mishmanagement" love that great video tho man, watched a lot of your vids, and gotta say, good on you for bringing us this history with your own opinion in a style and format that's understandable and easy to follow whilst sleep deprived eating nacho's while drunk
I was literally talking to my best friend about this around the time you launched this video. Games when we were younger just had something exciting about them, they transported you to another world and now especially with racing games. You feel like an uber driver getting from A to B. Grinding your heart out to earn a wage to then purchase vehicles. No more unlocking stuff. No storyline. No competition.
@@LordLootus no, it's not the same. I still feel good whenever I change my car in flatout2 for something heavier and more powerful. Or when getting something new in burnout, and buffing up dumb cars in gt4. I boot up FH4/5, do a lap, and get 17 cars with cero impact on my psyche and then I uninstall the game till the next month. I don't want to see GT7 even in videos with how hard they went to make ALL the money. We are getting old, that's true, but that doesn't means that "it was the same", it's not even close. Indies and emulation for the win.
Being able to play a game with hundreds of cars and lots of tracks coming out of a console and onto your TV screen was a fast-evolving thing between the 90s and the 2000s, and it was a very exciting evolution to see in person. The fad continued into the 2010s until it got to the point where we started taking it for granted and it was no longer as impressive or fascinating as it was in the 90s or the 2000s.
You really hit the nail on the head with this video. It's such a shame seeing all the games I grew up with, relegate to such lower quality over time. I miss seeing games trying to be ambitious, and actually taking risks. Now everything is just... Lacking. You definitely gained a sub from me, and you've got a good taste in music might I add!
16:12 anybody who hates on nfs mw 2012 is just an infant who's still stuck in 2000s comparing every other project to his old favorite racing game, nfs 2012 wasn't even trying to be like the old one, the name was simply holding an idea of progressing trough the black list to the top, it's an arcade, the game was meant to be exactly the way it is. Hell, they've even made need for speed most wanted for the old phones with keys once, are you going to compare that one to the original aswell? The nfs 2012 was great, I loved the difference in feeling of each car when you drive, loved the game's looks, the music and an atmosphere as a whole was great, yeah maybe the map was kinda small, but overall it's a fairly good game and I honestly still love it.
Oh thank god i was looking for that comment I thought this video was gonna be a well analyzed thing Turns out it's just another OG Underground/MW2005 fanboy complaining Im just sad people just always says "MW2005 BETTER, REST TRASH" He didnt even mentioned Rivals who was one of the best games made by Ghost
NFS 2012 is a great game. It's a bit short and all the cars play like they're made out of paper, but it plays really well as an arcadey-racer. i do not see the 'poor physics' argument.
also, its funny how the FH series is glazed, yet forza 5 is so unimaginably boring. the map is huge and empty, it's atrocious. controls dont even work half the time for me either lmao
That was a wonderfull visit into the gems we still love to this day , I've was amazed how smoothly you presented each series, wonderfull video man and I'm looking forward to more videos from here! ❤
Wow didn't expect a video of this length. Thank you for the effort in getting it out and loving your style of content. The music in particular is absolutely amazing. Pls keep it up
@@hagestad Nah dont agree with that. GT4 was amazing with a wheel for its time, FIA GT definitely did not outbetter GT4. GT4 overall was superior, comparatively FIA GT was a cheap game.
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
@@hansolo631 shut up dork, 99% of people watching this video play Assetto Corsa/iRacing/AM2.. we all know how good modern sims are. They still don’t replace nostalgia and how damn good GT3 is from a holistic point of view. No one gives two shits about your lame ass setup.. You came out here to boast like this and you aren’t even running a 4090 gtfoh LOL.
To this day Test Drive Unlimited remains my favorite racing game, and one of my favorite games ever. Such an amazing combination of an open world, amazing physics, great car selection and a huge cult following and mod developer community. To me it's one of the most realistic driving games ever created.
Download it couple of weeks ago and the handling is garbage what are you talking about? The only game with worse handling is tdu2 that game has the worst handling in the world
NFS2010 is my favorite modern nfs by far, the brake to drift handling wasnt even a problem because there was no compromise between grip and drift, it just knew what its was, just a fun arcade racing game with great atmosphere and soundtrack.
As a gamedev student who's graduating literally next month and aspires to make quality racing games, I have to say that during my time albeit rather short in the game industry; I've come to realise that our higher ups are always people who know jack shit about making games and only care about money coming in so they can feed their materialism / hedonism while not really giving a damn about what their content quality is; most of the time they rely on marketing and pre-orders. Because of this, we keep getting insanely unrealistic deadlines with the expectations of a product worthy of selling (regardless of quality) and that causes developers to rush and slop the whole development process that leads to mediocre at best quality of product and I can guarantee you that if developers were actually given time with less pressure; the games you get today would be far better. Especially nowadays when technology is constantly advancing and people like us have to adapt to it just so we know how to put out a better product and that in itself takes a decent amount of time. My biggest wish is that game companies and publishers were actually passionate about the product they put out, cared about the needs and wants of the people they're putting the product out to and didn't only just care about stupid cash. The whole gaming industry is absolutely shit right now and so is the automotive industry. While I wish for good things to happen, I do not have hope or expectations that they will
You're just starting, I've been in it for 20 years. Everything you wrote is dead on accurate, and as you say at the end: it's not getting better, it's getting *worse* This is all a symptom of execs/shareholders/publishers/MONEY being the primary focus and the "game" part being a disposable part of get the money. These people do not understand that quality is typically how you get money, and quality takes time. Unfortunately, there are a long, long list of games that didn't care about quality and made billions anyway, so they point to that as justification. They have no interest in actually doing a good job for the players. Us DEVS do, but we can't. It absolutely sucks. As a lover of Arcade racers especially (barely even touched on in this video, yet also very dead), this era of gaming has been far less fun for me. No one will make them except indies because no one is okay with having a decent success. it all has to be mega hits. Sad state of everything. Good luck out there. Hope you can make something you'll be proud of.
I was just thinking about a lot of those old NASCAR games, like NR2003, made right during the golden age of NASCAR and Racing sims. That game was a absolute bop to play, highly moddable, and a great modding community like many of the racing games of that time. Now the code base for that game is now used in iRacing.
Ridge Racer is absolutely G.O.A.T.E.D. Nothing quite like drifting around hairpin corners at breakneck speed, all while having the most hardcore soundwaves blast into your ears.
The first Forza horizon was probably the first game I put just endless time into, undoubtedly the best one, trying to earn the next wristband and beat the aforementioned characters. Definitely shaped my music taste and any time I listen to song from it now the nostalgia comes rushing back
Glad you didn't forget Driver San Francisco!I miss the Driver series so much! Driver:San Francisco did amazed me and i fell in love with it. Sadly the dev team doesn't want to work on a new driver game anymore. Amazing video btw
I was planning on doing a video like this, but man have you done so much better than I could have ever imagined doing. Really looking forward to more videos like this one
Yooooooooooooo MuYe! Thank you, and I'll try not to disappoint. Also, thinking about it know, I probably should have talked more about BeamNG and AC + their mods as examples of great modern games.
Honeslty Midnight Club LA had one of the best soundtracks and game play. I think what made it really great was the community. Having 24 player spots in an online free roam lobby was awesome. It was a great game to just relax and chill and show off and talk about cars. Most of my friends list was from that game and black ops 2. Rate my Ride was an awesome addition as well. No other racing game has quite caught that same feel as Midnight Club LA
This is so true. I only had the fortune of playing the psp versions but even those we’re great and I still play. Can’t wait to get around to playing the ps2/ps3 versions
My brother plays MC LA and even though I never played it (or don’t play it too often) it has some bangers like Red Mist, Day n Nite, Switchin Lanes, etc. There are obviously more but I forgot most of the names. Rockstar has some really good taste in music
I think the biggest problem with the newest Forza Horizon games is the fact that acquiring cars is waaay too easy. You could have millions of $ and hundreds of cars over a weekend of gameplay. They just gift you cars constantly. With such an overwhelming pool of cars you receive, you lose any sense of progression because there's nothing to grind for aside from the few exclusive cars you win in weekly championships.
Unfortunately, many Forza Horizon players seem to like getting cars for free these days. And that's why the developers are doing it. I would also prefer a proper progression. But unfortunately we seem to be talking to a brick wall as far as that is concerned...
I think it started in the late 90's with with NFS 2 and Gran Turismo. The games felt like they had a soul, games that the devs were pouring their heart in to. The custom music for NFS2 - 4 was insanely good. I think that is something that is really missing from the games today, as the corporate greed drains the soul out of every game.
This is something I had felt for a decade and I wasn't able to put to words. I'm glad that I'm not alone, but also sad that timeless experiences like GT4 and GRID are not coming back.
Also to add to the sim racing category, beamng is probably one of the most impressive games to exist ever. The realism is unparalleled, and is constantly receiving quality updates. Once things like proper tyre thermals are implemented, and systems for seemless racing are implement, it will undoubtedly be the best sim racer out there.
I am a little older, so perhaps I got to experience a bit more obscure 90s racing games such as San Francisco Rush, Cruis'n USA, Daytona USA, Motorhead and Top Gear 3000 (amongst others), but there was plenty of variety from the mid 90s until late 2000s, there was such a diversity of racing games and you just don't see that creativity from them anymore. It's a shame that the fun got sucked out from mainstream racing games. Amazing video by the way, brought back some great memories with NFS Underground, Driver and Burnout. Keep up the great work!
You just unlocked a core memory for me when you mentioned rush. I was obsessed with San Francisco Rush 2049 on sega Dreamcast as a kid. I remember the weird unique gameplay, an almost proto mario kart type game but less cartoonish. There was also a demolition derby game I cannot remember the name of on the Dreamcast, that I was equally as obsessed with. Both are super creative takes on the racing genre that don't really exist today. After I moved on from the Dreamcast, I played Midtown Madness 3 on original Xbox obsessively as well. The open world and option to choose whatever car you wanted was so fun, I would just drive around virtual France and New York for hours and hours changing cars and experiencing the difference driving mechanics. Man I miss those days
Nah Rush and Daytona are older but some of the most popular arcade racers ever. Still a lot of fun to this day, don't get me wrong, but they have a pretty decent reputation. It's a shame that neither have modern ports with basic QOL features like full lobby racing!
MY DUDE!!! Those games are my childhood! Don't forget Top Gear and Street Racer on the SNES, Diddy Kong Racing & Top Gear Rally & Waverace on the N64 and Destruction Derby 1 & 2 / Demolition Racer on the PS1 either. What kills me is seeing how soulless and recycled shit has become. You've got great taste man!
I LOVED the original Midnight Club. I remember as a 6 year old asking my dad what the word "pedestrian" meant, and when he said it meant more people on the pavements, I was like "COOL, MORE PEOPLE TO RUN OVER" 😅 Burnout Paradise was another one I loved, spent hours and hours on it because the map was so expansive at the time. I recently tried to play a Need for Speed (don't know which one), but I much prefer the F1 games these days...
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
@hansolo631 maybe you should watch it instead of complaining about stuff that's not in the video, because I actually have a section saying that despite the total decline in racing game quality, Sims are for the most part, better than they've ever been.
@@hansolo631 You must have a simple brain, or be 10 years old bro. Theres no chance any sim rig, not even the ones that F1 teams have can make you remotely feel like you’re in a car.
There's one important thing about NFS and its EA studios: only Black Box was consistently the same studio throughout. When Criterion was assigned to NFS the first time around, it already wasn't the same Criterion, as people started leaving the studio after Burnout Paradise. When the franchise was given to Ghost Games, most of the Criterion staff left moved to Ghost Games themselves, with Criterion being reduced to less than 20 people. At this stage, most (if not all) of the main Criterion devs from the Burnout days had already left, either to start their own studios - I believe the one that did On Rush is one of those - or to join other racing game studios such as Codemasters. Criterion then became a small support studio for series like Battlefield and Star Wars, probably helping with vehicles in those games. Then EA bought Codemasters, gave NFS to their Chesire studio with Criterion as co-developers, and ended up merging both studios into the Criterion of today. In short... Essentially and effectively, Criterion ceased to exist after Paradise; Ghost Games is the rotting corpse of original Criterion; and current "Criterion" actually is Codemasters Chesire. When you realise this, it's no wonder that the Hot Pursuit reimagining was somewhat of a safe entry, the Most Wanted reimagining was an attempt to mimick Paradise, every NFS from Ghost Games went nowhere, and Unbound was the closest we had to a return to form.
Spot on. This is why I always tell my friends be skeptical when a company says "this studio is back", "from the people who made x game" or , "i hope this team can recover from this flop so they can make a game lile the last one". The studio name will be the same unless it's shuttered, but the actual skill and talent gets shuffled and if you loose the key figures, the entire studio is going to change
Even though I didn't agree with everything on here, I really appreciate the work you put into this video and the trip down memory lane. I played a bunch of the games you listed on my PS2 back in the day and they were truly great. I think part of the reason we really haven't seen games like that lately is because game development has gotten waaaay more expensive and time consuming in the current HD era. I remember reading that creating a car for GT7 takes months at a time, and it really shows in the car models. You can zoom into cars in that game and see incredibly fine details up close with no noticeable pixellation. Do they have to work to that extent? No, but Gran Turismo has always been about a love of cars over everything else and it's in character for the series for them to do that. Overall I came away from this video that some games may have gotten better, some worse, and some are just different and have gone in a different direction than maybe some people wanted. And by the way, if you haven't played the new Gran Turismo on a controller, it's a revelation. Probably the best vibration and feedback on any PS5 game I've ever played.
Excellent video. I've been going back and playing all the stuff from the early 2000s. Nfsu2, txr0,gt3. I think it's so funny that with a 20 plus year old ps2 I can turn it on and actually be playing a game in less than a minute compared to a newer Xbox that takes 5 minutes just to start up. The internet has killed everything.
I'd give a special mention to MotorStorm games. With the release of the PS3, the first motor storm really had that wow factor and managed to give me a mixed vibe of flatout and Colin McRae. Had a lot of fun playing it and still remember how shocked I was at the graphics the multi level tracks and mud physics haha Had a lot of good ideas and a lot of love poured in
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights was my favourite racing game. The pink label races where you risk losing your car were great, and the customisation options were the perfect blend of simplicity & variety
I personally liked MW: 2012. Did it have the issues you mentioned? Yes. But I still liked playing it, the map was nice, the physics were unrealistic but kind of fun, and the fact you could just find a car and hop in it was also kind of cool, you would turn a corner and be like "what car is around this corner, or the next?"
I don't like the idea of hop any cars. I want to buy it and modify it using my money. The game is for people who don't want to spend time to playing it by just hop into a lambo and drive around.
Lol look at 2005 most wanted boss races, story cops ,slowmo, you'll get chased by helicopter ,you can drive under big trucks,modifications damn so many things
People who hate MW2012 are still butthurt over the fact it isn't exactly like MW2005. Overly edgy, boring characters that only say one line or two, awful AI and physics and just the same races over and over again.
The music choice for this video is amongst the best I ever heard. You truly captured everything that made that era the pinnacle of racing games. The approach you took as well as the rhythm hooked me up instantly. I'm happy to see that all is not lost yet, the crowd demands a comeback of the true racing experience. Midnight Club, Burnout, Need for speed, those names deserve so much more. Thanks for that nostalgic ride and keep up the good work!
This is such a well done beautiful video essay depicting the goods, the bad and downwright terrible of racing games now as well as the history behind these games. That was really good. You deserve more views
Two of my favourite franchises are here; Burnout and Midnight Club. The moment you mentioned Burnout having a screw loose, I couldn't help but get a big dumb grin as I remembered making chaos in Paradise. As for MC, I played Los Angeles so much I burned the disc in my 360. Wish I could play MC:LA again, but those memories will likely never fade.
Rockstar Games would rather get in trouble with the Government's National Vulnerability Database for not having an effective anti-cheat engine in GTA Online (Currently ongoing as of 3 days ago. Case number CVE-2023-24059 on the NVD website. *They really screwed the pooch on this one* ) than put a dime in developing another racing game. This is the reality we live in and it upsets me.
For anyone who hasn't played Test Drive Unlimited 2, I can't recommend it enough. TDU2 was so enjoyable! I was so invested in it, even though I played it 9 years after its release (in 2020). That game was like the SIMS franchise, but with the spirit of solid racing. I remember it being so immersive, the solid gameplay, the thrilling races, the Hawaiian island location, and the music! It was just pure fun. Also, the music was hands down the finest in that game. It attracted me more to Punk/Alt Rock music. I highly recommend this game to anyone who reads this.
TDU2's main complaint was that it was initially more glitchy too, & some cars have unrealistic engine sounds e.g. the One-77 had an overly-refined sound, while 1 of the software updates made the Aston Martin DBS sounds like a V8 instead of a V12
@@lzh4950for me the main complaints of TDU2 beside the bugs, server problem (when it still alive), and car physics is a "Single Player Aspect" Which is damn TOO SHORT I mean this game has 2 island but the single player event is lesser then TDU1, this game is heavily relying themselves on Online aspect, I know TDU1 is also the same case but at least TDU1 still giving a good spot on Single player aspect (even better in PS2 and PSP version) Also the game has lesser vehicle then TDU1 even with DLC (TDU Megapack has more then 140 Vehicle while TDU2 with DLC is barely reach 140) and some brands are missing and scrapped like BMW, Maserati, and Lambo
Man, great video. Honestly, I just wanted a racing game that gives me a purpose, a goal, an end, etc. My favorite racing game is Most Wanted, I know that the story is not exactly a masterpiece, but It was still believable enough to really have me invested, It was a mixture of revenge and being the best.
Yeah, if I were to call any racing game my favorite, it would either be that or underground 2, and I really hope they bring that kinda stuff back into newer games.
Project Gotham actually started off on the Dreamcast as Metropolis Street Racer. The idea was you would get points based on how much of a show off you were with your driving, and it was a terrific game. The team then made the Project Gotham games which had the same gameplay. Tokyo Extreme Racer will always be a personal favorite of mine. It started off on the Super Famicom in Japan as a drifting game and then the Sega Saturn before coming to the US as Tokyo Extreme Racer on Dreamcast. TXR 2 was ported to the PS2 as Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero, a game I played a LOT back in the 2000s. I still remember managing to achieve pearlescent effects in my paint job on a MK3 Supra with 700HP, a car that took on the Vipers and the Speed King with a bit of dirty tricks and cock-blocking. I loved that game so, so much.
Test drive unlimited was my jam! I loved how you buy houses with garages to store your cars if you have too many cars you need to get a new house and the customization on cars from factory was amazing.
What an amazing piece you´ve done here. You covered pretty much all the classics from 2000´s. I´d say 2000´s racing games had a soul, some vibe that games from now lack. I don´t know if it´s because of great graphics or because we´ve seen everything before so it´s harder to show something really new now. The process that happened to games is similar to music. It´s sad but true.
Ive been playing Forza 6 lately and while the racing itself and the physics are really good, the whole rest of the game just feels like a soulless husk. The soundtrack is this random orchestral theme played over and over. I definitely miss the older edgier, more upbeat soundtracks of older racers
@@robertt9342 it could also be a decline though. It's easy to make things look good these days, but still just as hard as ever to make a fun and rewarding feeling game. Developers and players often focus too much on shiny shiny and don't realise what they're missing out on. The same happened in the 2000s btw, I remember buying a shooter game or two based on graphics alone and being heavily disappointed. But these days there is much more shit to wade through to find the diamonds. Dirt and Dirt 2.0 have easily been my favourite racing games in the last decade, they are fairly realistic and challenging, with good progression from low power FWD cars up to Group B monsters
Need for speed rivals is actually pretty fun and I don't think you even mentioned it here. I was given most wanted 2012 shortly after it came out and hadn't really touched a racing game since the PS1. I fell in love with that game. I know it's not a good game but I have so many memories with it. Finding cars almost everywhere, doing insane jumps at the airport and resetting 50 times to get that final most wanted car. That game will always have a place in my heart even if I no longer find it fun to play. All that to say, rivals just takes everything from hot pursuit and makes it better. I played with friends online and even today I still go back to as the last good NFS game. Heat is great but it feels like something is missing.
I always messed around with demos and on GTA but rivals is the racing game that truly got me into genre. I had so much fun being the police and chasing my friends down and vice versa
I'm surprised you didn't mention Motorstorm. Its a completely different concept from anything I've seen before, it's completely insane all the time and it was great. No story though, very arcade indie feel and they made a few games before Sony shut it down. A little nugget of childhood for me. The game is from 2006!!!! It's insane how good it still looks, from basically a one-off company that nobody remembers
@@Fastminer07 the man himself! Well, it would be hard to find it, but they last a long time. I've had a copy for 12 years on an old first gen PS3 and it all runs fine. Controls a little jank so be prepared
Motorstorm will always have a place in my heart. My first console was a PS2, and I remember just when the PS3 had come out, they had a demo station for it in Target. One of the games you could play was Motorstorm, and I will never forget how much the graphics blew me away at the time. I couldn't believe the level of detail, and the fact that you could even see the 3D-modeled tire tread spinning around on the wheel. I saved up and bought a PS3 the next year. If only another game could blow me away in the same way that one did... Control came close.
Ah yes NFS hot pursuit 2. The game that started it all for me! I'll never forget that line from the cop over the radio. Something like: "10-4, calling all units, a red opel speedster just flew by me". Thankful for my dad renting that from blockbuster when I was a kiddo
I remember games like nfs underground and midnight club had storylines where it was centered around you being the best street racer being thrown under the bus by some master manipulater and have you start from scratch and work your way up, it was fun because in terms of what it had to offer at the time it felt like it was something you had to achieve on your own compared to nowadays where the story is short and it holds your hand the entire story
And back then it was never seen before, and with graphics through the roof, tuning was just brought into light by fast and furious, and BAM you could do the same on your computer ...
It holds your hands the entire game Pick fh5 for example you start with lots of money lots of wheelspins and you can have the rarest and fastest car in the game in one play.
@@roger6010 Yeah it was another world, right before the "infinity" came into our lives in everything we do ... FH5 I played 1h and dropped it for that exact reason, when the fun of driving the mclaren Senna around was gone ...
@@roger6010 They do this because nowadays, companies want more money than anything. They know more and more people are playing it casually for fun and they don't want to grind for these supercars they want, especially kids who only want fast cars. This is why there are better games back then than now. It's kind of like in real life where in the US, people buy more SUVs than sedans or other types of cars. Also especially with manual transmissions. Manual transmissions are a dying breed in the US because Americans don't want to learn it and buy them. It's come to a point where mostly only car enthusiasts are buying manual transmission cars. This has in turn made it so manual transmissions are costing more, rather than less like it would back then.
Dude, you really killed it with this entire video. I was a late adopter of Forza, Horizon 4 being my first, and while I had fun, it had no personality at all. What music festival? Indies have been a saving grace in the recent years for sure. The only "modern" racing game I play these days is one you didn't mention, DiRT Rally 2.0. Super cheap on sale and just plain fun, even with a controller. Loved hearing Tobacco randomly in the background as well, respect.
My introduction to Midnight Club was with the second game, which is still one of my favourite games. No customization other than colours but it was so good.
Man. When u brought up burnout I got taken back to my childhood where my mother and sister didn't like gaming. But when I turned on burnout, we would sit for hours just tryna crash each other's cars while keeping a scoreboard of who won the most races.
I remember I was planning to get a PS4 when they're releasing GT7 and immediately cancel that plan entirely after finding out the kind of shutshow was going on. My friend who was working to get it and get it day 1 was actually crying in disappointment and I honestly feel bad for him. No developer or publisher should be allowed to getaway from making their customer cry like that.
@@ShikayHawken Sorry to hear about your friend. Hope they are ok now. I was excited for GT7 on PS4 but as it's more or less always online I decided not to purchase
If you don't care about single player I suppose it's an alright game. Some cars are really expensive, even more than Sport, and the moneymaking isn't great. I got involved with liveries, scapes and online racing and I have my fun.
Need For Speed is probably the biggest example of how EA evolved. it used to be a very simple progression: do races, get cash, unlock more cars/performance parts by doing races/beating major racers (for every car, not just for a single car), unlock more visual customisation the same way, buy new cars if needed, rinse and repeat. now, some need for speed games have de-evolved in that, with upgrading not having that same feeling.
oh, i forgot to mention that post 2012, you could have talked about The Crew series, because in all honesty, the original The Crew had some of, if not, the best looking visual customisation, with the car being dismantled in multiple pieces, and those pieces switching with different pieces when switching between the customisation options. the story is rather lacklustre, and performance upgrades are somehow worse than payback, with parts being unlocked by doing races and open world challenges (which is somehow more boring than paybacks slots), the story (from what i've experienced) being pretty meh, and quite a few parts of the game being DLC (such as the standard dlc that you can buy from the game store you have the game on, or being literal in-game purchases of card), it might be something to have a look at on youtube videos. as for The Crew 2, i have not played it myself, but with the addition of planes and boats, the game is sounds like it's 3 times as large, being able to dominate races in every element (land, sea, and sky)
Great points I really wish the studios would listen. There is something in Forza horizon I wish you would've mentioned and many people don't mention which is it feels really fluffy and pink! really like the festival and the colors and the story, I don't know, it don't have the vibes of the old games especially when it comes to street racing and events. crowds just dancing for no reason, characters you don't relate to, and it just feels like it''s commercialized.
agreed, while I still enjoy Horizon 5 quite a bit (the fantastic car selection is fun with the arcade-y driving model) the progression feels kind of aimless, and feels like style over substance.
I feel the biggest issue is more the nature of development of these games. Like, Black Box didn't release 6 NFS games in 6 years because those games happened to be finished in 1 year each (you can see they have a lot of jank and a ton of cut content that would have really improved the games significantly), but because that was the deadlines they were set. The standards of consoles were lower on the 6th gen of consoles compared to now. You can see this in action with the Gran Turismo titles that often had 5+ years of development per game. GT5 had many "legacy cars". Cars whose models were taken from the PS2 and PSP games. These cars were far less detailed, lacked interiors and looked worse compared to the premium cars made specifically for GT5. We know that in terms of development, it took more resources and development and time to create 1 premium car than several legacy cars. So you want a GT game with only premium cars, it's both going to take a longer time and result in a smaller car roster. All this adds up to the demands of making a racing game no longer being as sustainable and quick as it once was. If in 2002, it took 1-3 years max to make a decent racing game (even if it resulted in a lot of cut content and jank), in 2023, 1-3 years is barely even half the time a racing game needs to even be decent. Making everything from cars, to tracks to gameplay is more demanding because the standards of now are much higher. In addition, while people like to complain that NFS Heat or Payback aren't as good as the older games. But if these games released back then, people would love them way more. Nostalgia and rose tinted glasses also play a factor in people refusing to give many games a fair shake. So a new racing game now has to work even harder to compete with people's nostalgic perceptions of an older game. This expense also makes it riskier for a game to do well. Midnight Club LA sold better than its predecessors, but Rockstar still considered it a disappointment in terms of sales. NFS Heat is a better racing game than Carbon or UG1 and I'd even argue UG2 but it sold a fraction of those games despite costing more to make. So there's not really an easy answer. Publishers aren't exactly excited with giving racing games more time since they aren't guaranteed to sell 10+ million copies anymore so any additional development time will eat into the profits. Companies can't go back to lower quality graphics and models to save time and resources since players will complain and refuse to accept lower quality assets.
I'm surprised you never mentioned NFS rivals. It's said to be a much better version of HP2010 by having free roam, a story plotline, extra pursuit gadgets and extra visual customization. Though the game is also notoriously known for its bugs and glitches.
I love the game to bits, but I can't even play the game anymore because of the sign-in glitch. I hope one day they fix it, but I don't see it happening anytime soon
@@minignoux4566 How grindy it is to unlock new cars and upgrade pursuit tech. Cops don't have it as bad since you don't have to spend speed points to get new cars, but you still have to buy and upgrade new pursuit tech, every single time. The grind is especially bad early game as racers because of how easy it is to get to heat level 10 and get fucked over by cops driving end game cars. Speaking of pursuit tech, how blantanly overpowered and spammy they were. Hot pursuit pursuit tech required more thought and strategy, and you practically had unlimited uses since repair shops were everywhere The pathetic downgraded car roster, it's especially bad on the racers side Not being able to pause even if you're playing offline This is my personal opinion, but racers were severely underpowered in rivals and felt like trash to play. Hot pursuit racers and cops felt even and fair. End game, cops have access to cars like the Veyron, F1, Agera, Hennessey Venom, all of which of insanely faster than the end game racer cars, even fully upgraded. Those cars can all hit up to 250+mph, keep in mind the pagani, that has the highest racer top speed, goes like 230-240mph. Yeah, good luck escaping cops late game. Especially with how ungodly rubberbandy they are. There's no "hiding" or losing sight strategy. Cops are programmed to always know your location at every moment. I know because I've tested it. Oh and did I mention cops have significantly more health than racers? Racers have barely any health, specifically late game cars, while end game cop cars still have a ton of health. You crash once as a racer and lose a solid chunk of your health. The only thing racers beat cops at is acceleration and that's literally it. Cops have higher speed, health, and better nitrous. Hot pursuit was more balanced because both sides had access to the same same cars, and some pursuit tech. And the "side exclusive" tech has plenty of counterplay which goes back to my point about pursuit tech in hot persuit requiring more strategy A lot of people who would also the Frame rate lock, but I think that's a dumb complaint personally. 30fps is perfectly playable and fine. I don't hate the game, I actually love it. It just irritates me when people say Rivals is a better hot pursuit.
this video was like a personal live letter, thank you bro, this was so true to the soul of how the racing space feels and looks like every year to me, here’s hoping the street racing scene grows and gets its new need for speed champion again one day
Another series left in the dust is Ridge Racer. You had track racing like in Gran Turismo but arcade style driving. That's a series that really needs a comeback.
Driving games on consoles died for me when I played Forza 4 and noticed cars blanked out because I didnt have the DLC. That was on 360 and shows how deep in I was playing Racing Games. When you can just buying car ingame with IRL money it misses the point of playing a progress based racing game.
NFS 2010 was one of the best nfs experiences I've had. The addition of playing your own music and how it implemented the music within the game's User interface really amped up the already great experience. Coming from someone who has started on the original need for speed.
Almost everyone I know grew up with Forza because they had Xbox. I had Playstation, and therefore I grew up with Gran Turismo. GT3 A-spec is a legendary game - you mentioned the soundtrack to Forza, but only mentioned the sweet jazz theme of GT, when it had Muse - Sober, Dead Man Leaving - Grand Theft Audio, Buck Rogers, Seven Days in the Sun and Just A Day - Feeder. But it truly was a great game, easy enough for a child to play, tough enough to require a bit of practice and commitment. What you miss about the direction this franchise went and why it failed is this. GT Sport (and GT7 I believe) is a multiplayer only game. It has a single player campaign, that you cannot save unless you have online mode, which if you have no interest in playing any console game online, why would you pay for the privilege. Without saving, it should be obvious, the game is unplayable. Its a clear abandonment of a core player type, simply because offline players don't buy MTX content. To be a console gamer is becoming expensive as hell, and the quality of the games are not keeping up. Gran Turismo is just one franchise that has died at the sacrificial altar, but all of gaming is feeling it and I don't see it being saved any time soon.
I really miss Midnight Club series, really enjoyed those games growing up. And the Yellow Mazda MX6 being from the Mischief Series and making it on the cover is a great story for that too. I would argue that Test Drive is not quite dead as the new TD Unlimited Solar Crown is expected this year. Good video I enjoyed it.
What killed the games for me is how they took away split-screen racing and making all the titles 1 player. They no longer became games you would bring out when hanging out with friends. Which was a big part of my childhood since Need for Speed II where we would share the keyboard to race split-screen on PC. Even now if I'm browsing at a games store and see a new racing game, first thing i do is pick it up, turn it around and check how many players. When i see 1 Player I'll 95% of the time put it back on the shelf without reading any further.
Ha, I was wondering why that Hot Pursuit footage looked familiar 😉 You perfectly summarized how most of us feel about the genre these days. Loved the video! Most racing games of that era had such a unique take on the genre. I sorely miss standout titles like Driver San Francisco, TDU, MC, or certain NFS titles that dared to innovate. Not to mention the amazing and memorable soundtracks most of these 2000s racing games had! Man do I miss some good tunes in recent games! The few remaining giants (Forza, NFS) all feel extremely samey and lackluster with their recent entries. Driveclub and The Crew (1) were the only exceptions that really fulfilled my desires in this past decade. And indeed some indie titles like Wreckfest. TDU: Solar Crown is the one upcoming racing game that might be able to revitalise the (arcade) racing scene a bit. Unfortunately it seems to be having development issues... Once again, loved the video. Earned a sub from me!
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
Loved both videos so far! keep it up!
Glad you like them!
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@@copiuum think for a second. Would an npc say that it loved “both” videos so far? Implying that the bot has a sense of continuity?
@@BongioviRocks lolol, roasted
This video doesn't necessarily just apply to the racing game scene, but moreso the gaming industry as a whole
Totally agree. NFSMW 2005 has never been bettered as an illegal street racing console game. By either EA or Black Box. And until or unless Most Wanted is remade for current consoles or the gaming community gets a Remaster as Mass Effect ( another never bettered first 3 games ) did, MW2005 will not ever be surpassed.
Society as a whole
there are less good games per year, but there are more amazing games per year. Whether you want 5 amazing games per year or 10 decent games per year is up to you.
Games used to take less than a year to make 20 years ago. Now they take up 10.
Also nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Most wanted isn't that special. It's no better than Heat apart from having better music (and maybe "Story"(?))
Dirt rally 2.0 exists. And it knocks any arcade or simulator racing game ever made since the 1970's till 2023 january 20th straight to the garbage can. It's racing gaming perfection down the last minute details.
@@user-ly2ll5od1r your comment doesn’t address the issues here. When gamers are forking out £70 for a base game & over £100 for ‘Deluxe’ which never offers more than the absolute minimum extras, gamers want value for money.
Not unfinished glitchy lack of content games. Then to be kicked in the teeth with 40% of the base game removed & added as dlc 3 month later that incurs additional cost.
It’s a racket dreamt up by greedy & lazy game developers & should not be allowed according to Trading Standards Law.
@@user-ly2ll5od1r Nah, RBR is much better than Dirt Rally 2.0 imo. I also hate the graphics in that game, and the fog everywhere. You also have WRC Rally Evolved on ps2 from around 2005 which is amazing game, much more fun that Dirt Rally.
The problem is that the focus shifted from being single player focused to multiplayer, so the advancements in AI, career mode structures and the likes have been pretty much non-existent or to an extent even become worse. Longer development cycles might be true, though no doubt do they lie about it for marketing purposes, but that doesn't seem to transfer to more fun and good games. Longer development cycles can actually be harmful, because focus and priorities might change over time and the games run a higher risk of becoming a mess essentially.
Micro transactions is what's ruining the gaming industry, not just racing games, all games. The focus is now on money instead of quality games. The whole structure of each game now is based on how companies can further extract more money from the customers after the game is released. So, we end up with mediocre games with no soul.
That's why indie games is a better way to go
@@icylow2893 *are
Probably also how developers/studios are able to release some smartphone games e.g. Real Racing for free, by recouping the cost via microtransactions
This is the focus of the world in general. Chasing higher profit margins by churning out low-cost, low-quality and low-passion methods because they know people will still buy what they produce. It's a sad state of affairs that the passion to produce something of high quality is not highly regarded any more...
@@icylow2893 what indie racing game is out?
I really miss Test Drive Unlimited 2, there is something about this game that no other racing games have. The feeling of actually spending the racing money on houses and cars + being able to walk in them, inspect every car "in person" was a huge immersion-wise. Every car felt "special" and not just like a toy given to you.
dudeee i forgot that shi existed and i spent many hours as a kid playing... games will never be tha same
lets wish that test drive unlimited: solar crown will be the same if not better
Yea, like someone mentioned. Test drive is comming baack.
Too bad it runs like crap on the computer. You can get steam keys for it. For like 20 bucks
Fun fact they are working on a new one
another example is GTA San Andreas where I could spend hours exploring the map during my school holidays. It was terrafic.
I think the simpler the game is, the more fun it actually delivers.
You know age dord make you have different experiences of space, if you go to a big university as a kid youll think its a little city and could get lost, but once you go when you are 20 and know it more it doesn’t seem too unknown and big.
San andres was the peak of gta but gta 5 was great when it came out.. a decade ago. I gave up waiting for the gta game. I’m bout done with gaming in general
san adreas was not a simple game in 2005
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
ps assetto corsa for example has many giant city maps to explore, but that shit is lame and boring, just like it was in gta. I think you all might be idiots.
I'm 39 and haven't liked gaming much in 10 years. I thought I was just getting old but I go back and play these classics and love them. I'm glad you made this.
Im 39, ive been playing Road Rash 3 again 🥰🥰🥰
Same here. Used to think it was me. Then I played some old shit again.
Not a racing game, but I've been playing Planetside 2 again. A game that came out in 2012 is still a better FPS game than anything released since. And there are hundreds of players fighting in the same battle on the same map. Impossible to find anything like that in today's market.
Same
shouldnt underestimate nostalgia lol
Forza Horizon 4 and 5 focused so much on making a bigger world rather than focusing on progression system. It is so easy to get new cars that the sense of progression gets lost very early in the game
That's my main gripe with the game,
I feel like there is no sense of progression in it
FH5 bored me after 2 hours of play. Such a letdown.
At the start of the game you can get a Zonda and a Divo as a "gift car". That's just ruins everything, also that the car prices in fh5 auction house is completely broken, you can buy a Bugatti Divo for 400-500k but a Toyota ae86 is 8 million, like wtf
any recommendations? it seems like no games do the combination of good singleplayer, good open world, and good destruction
@@jipehgo for need for speed heat bro
One series I miss dearly is Ridge Racer, which sadly was left behind due to shift in genre focus
true that, i remember RR8 being speculated for the switch which was just left in the dust... although the Ridge Racer series for me is a timeless classic. i keep coming back to R4, RRV, RR2 (PSP) and RR7.
Some of the best OSTs in all of gaming, I still listen to them often
An RR track was recently made for asseto Corsa, and a Daytona USA track exists also
Ridge racer kinda had its time, but the handling was always a bit fucking mental in my opinion
There is a new ridge racer out! I have to played it but it seems alright
I personally feel like the Pixar Cars games deserve an honorable mention. The THQ Cars games weren’t very arcade-like and they weren’t full blown simulations. They were more so in the middle. And for just being movie tie-ins, they do a fantastic job at standing out. The first Cars game is still my favorite video game of all time because of that.
As for Cars 2 and Cars 3: Driven to Win, they fall into the basic arcade style racing game. Not to say they’re bad. Cars 2 is a pretty solid video game. And as for Cars 3…you’ve basically played Cars 2. Just by that alone should give you an idea of the drop in quality of the Cars games.
Race-O-Rama was better than it had any right to be too for being a movie tie-in spin-off game
@@justthatoneguy64man Race o Rama was peak Cars.
Cars the video game is great but that game is very very deep into the arcade racer category
Could not have summed up the last two decades of racing games better myself. Despite the dip in quality for a lot of long-running franchises, it's nice to see the classics still being kept alive on RUclips, Twitch and all over the internet pretty much. In addition to your mentions, I can also strongly recommend digging through some older "one and done" titles, such as Auto Modellista and Enthusia. The amount of great racers out there who never got a sequel is almost criminal.
Great video, liked and subbed! Also thanks for the Pepega Mod shoutout 💚
Holy shit Eden! Glad to see you liked the video! Yeah preserving the classics is always important, especially for people my age who were born when these games were coming out. I'll have to check out Auto Modellista and Enthusia more, and I should have mentioned Enthusia since I'd been watching your recent videos on it, But I just didnt know much about it myself. Thanks for dropping by! Can't wait for the Prostreet Pepega!
Hello Dustin!
Dude Auto Modellista is my jam, such an under appreciated gem
Auto Modellista I recomend the PAL version, cos' the NTSC one has the worst physics of them.
The biggest issue with present games is they just too focused on online-based with DLC and MTX everywhere which ruined the enjoyment of playing game.
Ever since X360, PS3 and Wii era released, many games lost the passion, fun and simplicity to play. The more feature added to game, the more player get bored really fast because we dont need such complicated game to play it, even simplest one is much more enjoyable.
I think what they should make right now is back to basics once again to remind us what is the origin of game itself.
I found that playing GT3 and 4 is much more fun than playing 5, 6 and 7 because you dont need genius to play, even 3 year old kid can play it easily. Same thing with Midnight Club, NFS Underground, NFS MW where you just buy and run game while offline, simple as that.
I prefer buying a COMPLETE game with Offline feature where you dont need to pay extra for DLC, MTX and support features that should not need in 1st place.
Midnight Club is the main thing I would love to see a modern iteration of.
Yes same I've been ready for a new midnight you know Rockstar could do it
And it had some of the most challenging racing
If someone was able to combine the open-world quest-finding mechanism of Burnout: Paradise with the best game modes of DiRT: Showdown, put them into a Midnight Club progression and aesthetic, with a dash of Driver and Gran Turismo car physics, we'd have ourselves the perfect title.
Me too. Me too!
Yass!!
my last hope is TDU: Solar Crown. I'm glad they had a delay and I really want them to take their time, blood sweat and tears making this as a passion project.
THIS!!!
I was waiting for him to bring that up as well! They had a golden formula, and if they can iterate it and implement the better driving physics they appear to be working with, it's going to be a homerun
TDU2 fucking rocked!!
TDU2 man you have no idea how amazing that game was lets hope this one wont disappoint us!!!
There is no gameplay, no footage and even no screenshots. How can you believe in the game from a new (not just for the franchise) company who didn’t show any progress except cgi trailers, both of them which are the same?
If it only has the feel, TDU was the king of these festival racing games.
Nothing better than playing online with friends and doin police chases lol
YES
Honestly Driver San Francisco was way ahead of its time not only having incredible gameplay mechanics but also a damn good story which is pretty rare in racing games.
Burnout Paradise was way too ahead of his time, absolutely loved that game
truly amazing game, the sense of speed and music, same goes for nfs hot pursuit 2011 with banger music that started my taste in drum n bass genre, and all the trackmania games and it's creativity.
For me its:
Gran Turismo 4, NFS Underground2, Forza Horizon, Burnout 3, Midnight DUB, and NFS MW.
Worst experiences:
Gran Turismo 6, NFS Payback, Forza Horizon 4, Driver San Fran, Blur Racing, and NFS Undercover.
Underrated Games:
Motorstorm Pacific Rift. Nuff said.
Auto Modellista. It just looks cool.
TheCrew was fun. First time playing a Racing Game, while having a huge open-world map with diverse areas.
...these are a decent experience, not as bad as the User Score and Critic Score would indicate. Definitely underrated !!
@@ekinteko oh yeah you reminded me of blur, i loved it so much, bought it at the same time as split second was releasing, best year for racing games xD
I love Wreckfest, the Burnout games, Midnight Club, and the Colin McRae/Dirt games.
Pacific rift is the best
Until today, I still yearned that one day EA realized they have Burnout in their inventory and decided to give it one more whirl. My childhood was defined by Burnout 3 and Revenge, and it influenced the music I listened to today.
Burnout Paradise will always have it's place in my heart though. ❤️
Keep an eye on Three Fields Entertainment. They're former Burnout developers who got tired of no longer making Burnout games. They're having to restart from the ground up again, but so far they've released two Dangerous Driving games (more in line with the OLD Burnout games) and they're currently developing Wreckreation, which is shaping up to be promising.
Burnout was just good clean fun. I played it most right around the same time as slipknot's vol 3. It has left a monumental impact on me.
@@FurryWrecker911 From what I've seen of Dangerous Driving, it captures the style of Burnout 3 quite well, but car list, damage modeling, track design, and most importantly: physics, are all pretty lacking. They seem like a team with really good ideas, but kinda drop the ball in the execution department. Hoping Wreckreation is good, but not holding my breath for it.
I rediscovered Burnout 3 on pcsx2. Looks very crisp in 1080p and still so much fun to play. Always preferred the tracks over Paradises open world.
Test Drive unlimited was something else. It was really fun to drive around the map in a normal way without making a single scratch as if you actually owned that car. The map was huge and the island tour was a full one hour long race where you really had to concentrate.
I enjoyed TDU2 exept for the online server fail... My friends and I could never connect lol
I'm planning on getting the new one when it releases.
Maaan that game was ahead of its time hindered by hardware😥
Best part bout the game was upgrades actually did stuff....and the sense of speed was on point...and engine upfrades gave a better sound
TDU was a stellar game. Sadly I never could complete that full island race. It would crash for me every time towards the end, about 5 attempts before I gave up. But the rest of the game was gripping, so much to explore and fun with every car.
Always thought it was the blandest racing game ever made. Physics were absolute dogshit. Not realistic, but not fun simcade or arcade either. I think people were really just charmed by 'wow this game has a lot of cars' and the big (bland) world to drive in.
For me it also meant that it marked the death of the franchise - it was nothing like the previous Test Drive games. Test Drive 5, now that game had character. Everything from menus to music to unique tracks to interesting car choices. TDU was like Zuckerburg's metaverse by comparison.
Loved TDU I wish TDU2 just stayed in Hawaii and used the other islands
Watching this made me feel so lucky that I grew up in the golden era of racing games in the early 2000s. I don’t really play video games much anymore, once in a while I’ll hop on Forza Horizon or whatever but it feels so boring now. It’s sad that we don’t have many options out there for great racing games now. I will say racing games motivated me towards my career as an auto technician and to get my own project car. And that’s something my inner child who stayed up all night playing Gran Turismo 4, is very proud of!
Games have simply stopped being creative and instead focused on looking like movies with pretty graphics. The gameplay has more or less stayed the same.
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
@@hansolo631This loser copy pasting the same comment multiple times 😂
Forza Motorsport 2, you had the option to not only change tire compounds, but also the manufacturer for each tire. And even if you chose a racing compound each one had their own handling characteristics. A small but noticeable detail. One I wished stayed in the series.🗿
Games in general today have absolutely zero attention to detail
@@redbullsauberpetronas Snowrunner has pretty good attention to detail (mostly). Every individual log on the trailer moves and jiggles, each having their own lumber stamps. The pneumatic hoses spring and bounce like a coiled hose should, and mudflaps fold and flap exactly like you'd expect them to (which is a bigger thing than you might expect). Though, it does miss a few details, like brake lights not working for some reason - Which causes a lot of collisions in multiplayer sessions.
@@joshjlmgproductions3313 wasn't that the game full of micortransactions?
@@redbullsauberpetronas It has a lot of DLC, but it's hard to say if it's that bad.
As a gamer, I want as much content for as cheaply as possible. And I also don't want to pay over $100 for content that I'll never use or don't even want to begin with (cough, FH5, cough).
With Snowrunner, there's a decent amount of content in the base game, but some of the DLC trucks are much better than the default trucks, and help out lots with starting out. The game should definitely be easier, with more trucks by default. It sucks how greedy games have gotten.
From my understanding, that went away due to licensing issues with the tire manufacturers...but yes, this was a critical feature of the game that could absolutely make or break your car's handling characteristics when trying to max it out for a specific class.
While not "exactly" a sim game, I find Trackmania might at least be a honorable mention in the racing game genre. It was released around that time and offered some unique experiences.
- Trackmania (2003)
- Trackmania Sunrise (2005)
- Trackmania Nations (2006)
- Trackmania United (2006)
- Trackmania Nations Forever & Trackmania United Forever (2008)
For the ones who don't know, the selling features were these things:
- You can build your own tracks in the track editor
- You can race and compete on these tracks
- All single player tracks made by the creators can be completely rebuild from scratch in the track editor, the editor is that powerful
- No race car customization, so your car is equally as powerful and handles equally as well as any other car. Cosmetic car skins do exist, and some people modded their car to be a different model altogether. But even these models use the exact same car-to-wall collision, so it's purely visual.
- All races, even multiplayer ones, are glorified time trials. There is no collision between cars. Every car starts at the exact same starting point. Physics are determined. If you're in second place, it's not because of bad luck or because another player drove against you. If you're in second place, it's purely because of your skill. Now restart the race and do better!
I'd also reccomend Dirt 5 as when my xbox used to work I played that game nonstop along with Nascar Heat 5.
Heat 5's online servers are still up and are mainly active throughout the week mainly due to the casatrofuck known as Nascar 21 Ignition
Also most of the early 2000's EA Nascar games which have a lot of playabilty and funny moments
Trackmania 2020 is amazing though
Trackmania 2020 put custom tracks behind a subscription paywall. That was the one thing I really loved about TM.
Trackmania 2020 and TMNF are the only modern racing games I play pretty much
Trackmania 2 deserves a mention I think.
One of the major factors that made this "golden era" of racing games so memorable was the strong aesthetic and unique visuals the different devs really emphasis in their designs. Nowadays most of these game focused way too much on graphic fidelities, which only basically replicated what real life looks like but represented nothing from deep inside the emotions of the creator's eyes in an artistic perspective like the old days, they just all felt emotionless now.
The only game where they still managed to captured both the aesthetic and graphics is Gran Turismo, they still stayed true to create things from their unique perspective that we fans all loved.
Agree alot on this take. Everyone talks about how good graphics are in games now, and I disagree. As you said, graphical fidelity and geometric rendering/terrain is much more advanced today, and games look much sharper. But most modern games look dull, boring to the eye imo, older games with their unique artstyles were much more visually interesting and charming than new ones. If you see a video from an old game, you can often instantly tell what game it was, see a video from a new game and they all blend in together for me. I also hate the white filter or post processing effect many modern games have, just not a fan how it looks and its too bright.
not sure about that, why did everyone hate on the looks of unbound then? which imo looks bloody fantastic
@@shakyor875 It has very interesting and unique aesthetic indeed, however I do think it was a little too artificial...like it was an after thought, something of an addon instead of being designed organically from the concept phase.
Though I still heard a lot of people liked it, did I remember it wrong?
Idk about this. Everyone and their moms want realistic looking graphics, and devs are doing just that. Yes it makes them *look* visually less differentiated, but as you know games aren’t dependent solely on graphical fidelity to separate each other apart. Also what do you mean by “soulless”? Everyone throws that word around but does anyone even understand it?
@@fifteen8850 "It makes them look visually less differentiated."
I'm not trying to offend you or anything in that regard, but you've already explain one major factors yourself.
One really fantastic thing about game design is that, we get to see what artists imagine through their own lenses in a animated, living platform. Experiencing what they saw and feel about certain things first-handed, down to the personal level.
If the directions of aesthetic are all about replicating what real life looks like (which it that alone is not always a bad thing, it depends on contexts), it will all just ends up with the same mundane imagery that everyone already could see with our own physical eyes, especially in this age where any real life imagery could be search with a flick of a finger, it's just not very interesting anymore. There is this lack of "emotion" that wasn't yours for you to "experience".
It's like...instead of seeing an artist's painting (be it in realistic style or not), we get a random photo, taken with a cellphone and that's about it.
Even for imageries that we're all familiar with, it could still look very different in someone's imaginary mind, and I think it's why things got stale when majority of the industry only now approach creative projects with the mind of "creating the most realistic A or B", the eventual AI take over in the near future will likely amplifies that problem.
Ah...when it comes to topics like these I'm sure there'll be millions different perspective to look at it, there's no definite right or wrong.
The first Gran Turismo was a game changer. It brought licensed cars and the pursuit of realism into racing games (and environmental mapping). That alone makes it in my opinion the most influential, if not the best, racing game ever. Technology never stops improving but we wouldn't be playing modern racing simulators hadn't GT (and Geoff Crammond's F1GP, to a lesser degree) been there.
Not only did racing games of the 2000s get me into working on cars and various motorsports, those games are the reason i became a musician. Hearing Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, Kyuss, and Bullet for my Valentine changed my 8 year old world
That is what led me to play drums and now guitar. Such amazing soundtracks with so many memories attached.
right? they also had a great soundtrack to back up the game, creating a great atmosphere all around. now i have to suffer through listening to rico nasty and a whole barrage of foreign songs, that for some reason takes up literally 90% of the goddamn soundtrack. not even trying to be racist or anything, but im trying to listen to a song on which i can understand the lyrics, as well as it actually sounding good for once lmao
Don't forget Ekstrak
Smart reference to *Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)*
It's the best NFS game ever, behind it are Carbon, Undercover, and World.
@@theAdamAronggear Yes and Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground and Carbon were also hit at that time.
These games also had such a huge influence on my music taste. NFS Underground 2 and the Midnight Clubs had the BEST soundtracks with such a mix of music. When I was 7 years old, I heard Riders on the Storm for the first time and introduced me to the Doors and Snoop Dogg. Every time it comes up on my Spotify playlist it takes me back.
There was a Squaresoft racing game that had RPG elements in 1999. It was called Racing Lagoon. The story, tuning, and its style of gameplay puts many modern main stream Racing games to shame.
The fact a random video I stumbled upon from a 5k subscriber count channel is this high quality just goes to show how passionate the arcade racing community is. This video is amazing. Thank you.
I thought this video was by someone with over 400k subs, not someone with just barely over 3k! The quality, editing, and music in this video is astounding! Keep up the good work!
.....Subs don't create the videos but yh
@@osirisofthesouth2853no 💩
I'm surprised it's not often mentioned because for me Midnight Club was the only real open world racing game (where you could find different routes between checkpoints or take a wrong turn at any point) and made NFS and other games unenjoyable because of how "linear" the races were, to this day I still want racing games to give me freedom and not a lot of them give you the same freedom you had in Midnight Club...
The MNC games were so great!
I'm surprised that people forget that Burnout Paradise is also a real open world racing game (where you could find different routes or take a wrong turn at any point without worrying about checkpoints)
@@supreme_xenon it's super sad for real. Burnout Paradise and Midnight Club LA are probably the most underrated in their franchises but are actually the peak as well. In a world full of linear "open world" racing games Midnight Club gave us a gorgeous and super fun to drive Los Angeles while Burnout Paradise probably gave us the best open world in any racing game ever. Every corner, every sharp turn, every single drivable mile is used to create the most fun chaotic experience
NFS was built on circuit racing originally meaning laps around a track, even in open world they were doing track style racing.....the open world was you having to get to the next race lol
midnight club while good ran into issues cus the freedom could also sink you cus you could miss 1 fukkin checkpoint and have to go back and lose the race....those unordered races were a bitch and a half, then the AI loves to slam your ass al day so you could end up taking too much damage and lose...MC was kinda BS like that...but of course if you were some racing god you'd never ever fall into these traps right??
i like the MC series but it was also a ton of horse shit at times....especially the LA game....gods i hated that one...fukkin rich kid elite assholes as racers, get stuck in shit cars then on;y if you're a expert driver will the motorcycles be worth it but even then the rubberbanding AI was horse shit! all 4 games used rubberband AI catch up mechanics....
@@judgedrekk2981 bro talking about rubberbanding as if Most Wanted and Underground weren't the kings of the absolute worst rubberbanding ever
Great video and a sad insight on not only racing games, but games as a whole nowadays. We need publishers to give devs proper development time, and allow them to listen to their fans.
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
@@hansolo631This loser copy pasting the same comment multiple times 😂
Two of my absolute favorite racers were in the arcade. Initial D and maximum tune. Nothing better than lining up to defend your seat against like 30 ppl who had fully tuned cars on their card. Nothing can touch that atmosphere
This is how I felt about forza 1-2-3-4. Nothing beats community engagement and people having whole social scenes centered around a game. I miss calling people out and for a battle and having like 4 others volunteer to be judges etc. I wouldn’t trade a day of it back.
Those were the most unrealistic trash games in the world. I believe it contributes to why the world can’t drive.
@@richardyung7278 lmao L opinion
Oh man this reminds me of creating a Maximum Tune team with my buddies and having 2v2s vs other squads in my city. I will never feel that same level of anticipation walking into an arcade ever again.
Found my old pokemon binder. Last page was my "garage".
Man I miss those games. Back when Gameworks had solid racing games.
"Sometimes you just have to experience the bad in order to truly appreciate when something is exceptionally good"
that can be said about a lot of things in the real world too...
That reminds of final fantasy series lately 😂
Fun Fact: I played Burnout Paradise for over a year before I found the crash mode on accident! Talk about mind blown!! Like imagine if that happened playing gran turismo and how crazy that would be. That’s how it felt 😂
Burnout Paradise had a lot of fun little features that the game really didn't explain how to find. It took me months to figure out what a "power park" was and how to do it.
There's a crash mode? I've had this game for 7 years. THERE'S A CRASH MODE??
try beamng
SAME BUT WHEN I WAS 5 ON THE 360 😭
@@jackalope8017 yeah man.
hold left and right trigger buttons at the same time and your car will immediately spin out into a barrel rolling ball of senseless destruction
15:48 "mishmanagement" love that
great video tho man, watched a lot of your vids, and gotta say, good on you for bringing us this history with your own opinion in a style and format that's understandable and easy to follow whilst sleep deprived eating nacho's while drunk
One of my biggest guilty pleasures was Split Second.
That game was just so kickass as a kid
Mine too, god that game is so underated
I love S/S, not sure why one would consider it a guilty pleasure when it is genuinely good.
Classic
Blur fucking slapped too.
Yes
I was literally talking to my best friend about this around the time you launched this video. Games when we were younger just had something exciting about them, they transported you to another world and now especially with racing games. You feel like an uber driver getting from A to B. Grinding your heart out to earn a wage to then purchase vehicles. No more unlocking stuff. No storyline. No competition.
It's just us getting old man, growing up, I mean the games were great, but yk what I mean
It’s the same as when we were younger, except it’s the same thing for the 9th time in a row. So it feels incredibly stale and grindy now
@@LordLootus no, it's not the same. I still feel good whenever I change my car in flatout2 for something heavier and more powerful. Or when getting something new in burnout, and buffing up dumb cars in gt4.
I boot up FH4/5, do a lap, and get 17 cars with cero impact on my psyche and then I uninstall the game till the next month. I don't want to see GT7 even in videos with how hard they went to make ALL the money.
We are getting old, that's true, but that doesn't means that "it was the same", it's not even close.
Indies and emulation for the win.
Being able to play a game with hundreds of cars and lots of tracks coming out of a console and onto your TV screen was a fast-evolving thing between the 90s and the 2000s, and it was a very exciting evolution to see in person. The fad continued into the 2010s until it got to the point where we started taking it for granted and it was no longer as impressive or fascinating as it was in the 90s or the 2000s.
You really hit the nail on the head with this video. It's such a shame seeing all the games I grew up with, relegate to such lower quality over time. I miss seeing games trying to be ambitious, and actually taking risks. Now everything is just... Lacking.
You definitely gained a sub from me, and you've got a good taste in music might I add!
16:12 anybody who hates on nfs mw 2012 is just an infant who's still stuck in 2000s comparing every other project to his old favorite racing game, nfs 2012 wasn't even trying to be like the old one, the name was simply holding an idea of progressing trough the black list to the top, it's an arcade, the game was meant to be exactly the way it is. Hell, they've even made need for speed most wanted for the old phones with keys once, are you going to compare that one to the original aswell? The nfs 2012 was great, I loved the difference in feeling of each car when you drive, loved the game's looks, the music and an atmosphere as a whole was great, yeah maybe the map was kinda small, but overall it's a fairly good game and I honestly still love it.
Oh thank god i was looking for that comment
I thought this video was gonna be a well analyzed thing
Turns out it's just another OG Underground/MW2005 fanboy complaining
Im just sad people just always says "MW2005 BETTER, REST TRASH"
He didnt even mentioned Rivals who was one of the best games made by Ghost
NFS 2012 is a great game. It's a bit short and all the cars play like they're made out of paper, but it plays really well as an arcadey-racer. i do not see the 'poor physics' argument.
also, its funny how the FH series is glazed, yet forza 5 is so unimaginably boring. the map is huge and empty, it's atrocious. controls dont even work half the time for me either lmao
That was a wonderfull visit into the gems we still love to this day , I've was amazed how smoothly you presented each series, wonderfull video man and I'm looking forward to more videos from here! ❤
Yoooooo Dove, your NFS downfall videos and Eden's Iceberg vids were what made me think to do this next! I'm glad yall thought it was quality.
damn Dove is here too
Wow didn't expect a video of this length. Thank you for the effort in getting it out and loving your style of content. The music in particular is absolutely amazing. Pls keep it up
Thank you! I hope to make videos at least this long in future, but it will take some time before I another video like this out.
@@Fastminer07 What is the name of that song you used with the same sample as All Caps by MF. Need that track
@@TheOliverSnow it's not a sample, it's a cover by the duo of DOMi & JD Beck
GT3/4 were groundbreaking when they launched. Even today I still miss it.
and few months after gt4 came GTR - FIA GT Racing Game and wrecked GT4 in terms of driving dynamics.
@@hagestad Nah dont agree with that. GT4 was amazing with a wheel for its time, FIA GT definitely did not outbetter GT4. GT4 overall was superior, comparatively FIA GT was a cheap game.
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
@@hansolo631 shut up dork, 99% of people watching this video play Assetto Corsa/iRacing/AM2.. we all know how good modern sims are. They still don’t replace nostalgia and how damn good GT3 is from a holistic point of view. No one gives two shits about your lame ass setup.. You came out here to boast like this and you aren’t even running a 4090 gtfoh LOL.
@@hansolo631This loser copy pasting the same comment multiple times 😂
Finally someone mentioned Driver San Francisco. One of my all time favorite games growing up! So many memories
To this day Test Drive Unlimited remains my favorite racing game, and one of my favorite games ever. Such an amazing combination of an open world, amazing physics, great car selection and a huge cult following and mod developer community. To me it's one of the most realistic driving games ever created.
Download it couple of weeks ago and the handling is garbage what are you talking about? The only game with worse handling is tdu2 that game has the worst handling in the world
@@1738-l1j Someone hasn't played Most Wanted 2012
@@1738-l1j 😂 unnecessary
Physics are quite bad, but i just love TDU and TDU2 vibe. Besides gran turismo 2, those are my favorites.
What about Test Drive Unlimited: Platinum ?
This is the EmpLemon style of videos that we all need in our daily lives. Hopefully the racing genre deserves some respect like the 2000s.
NFS2010 is my favorite modern nfs by far, the brake to drift handling wasnt even a problem because there was no compromise between grip and drift, it just knew what its was, just a fun arcade racing game with great atmosphere and soundtrack.
As a gamedev student who's graduating literally next month and aspires to make quality racing games, I have to say that during my time albeit rather short in the game industry; I've come to realise that our higher ups are always people who know jack shit about making games and only care about money coming in so they can feed their materialism / hedonism while not really giving a damn about what their content quality is; most of the time they rely on marketing and pre-orders.
Because of this, we keep getting insanely unrealistic deadlines with the expectations of a product worthy of selling (regardless of quality) and that causes developers to rush and slop the whole development process that leads to mediocre at best quality of product and I can guarantee you that if developers were actually given time with less pressure; the games you get today would be far better. Especially nowadays when technology is constantly advancing and people like us have to adapt to it just so we know how to put out a better product and that in itself takes a decent amount of time.
My biggest wish is that game companies and publishers were actually passionate about the product they put out, cared about the needs and wants of the people they're putting the product out to and didn't only just care about stupid cash.
The whole gaming industry is absolutely shit right now and so is the automotive industry. While I wish for good things to happen, I do not have hope or expectations that they will
I want to follow the progress of your journey !
Think some bosses may be more reluctant to give more buffer time in project timetables as it'd seem like you're not pushing yourself hard enough
this is why i stay on old stuff
You're just starting, I've been in it for 20 years. Everything you wrote is dead on accurate, and as you say at the end: it's not getting better, it's getting *worse*
This is all a symptom of execs/shareholders/publishers/MONEY being the primary focus and the "game" part being a disposable part of get the money. These people do not understand that quality is typically how you get money, and quality takes time. Unfortunately, there are a long, long list of games that didn't care about quality and made billions anyway, so they point to that as justification. They have no interest in actually doing a good job for the players. Us DEVS do, but we can't. It absolutely sucks.
As a lover of Arcade racers especially (barely even touched on in this video, yet also very dead), this era of gaming has been far less fun for me. No one will make them except indies because no one is okay with having a decent success. it all has to be mega hits. Sad state of everything.
Good luck out there. Hope you can make something you'll be proud of.
Update: I've graduated but the sentiment remains the same
I was just thinking about a lot of those old NASCAR games, like NR2003, made right during the golden age of NASCAR and Racing sims. That game was a absolute bop to play, highly moddable, and a great modding community like many of the racing games of that time. Now the code base for that game is now used in iRacing.
Yeah, iRacing has by far the best current racing experience. Kind of shocks me that nobody has been able to rival them.
NOBODY besides the nascar games seems to get oval ai racing right.
I'd like to see some underrated racing games like Split/Second and Ridge Racer are back
man, i LOVE SPLIT/SECOND, i remember playing it with my brother, all my friends, my sister and even my neighbour
Ridge Racer is absolutely G.O.A.T.E.D. Nothing quite like drifting around hairpin corners at breakneck speed, all while having the most hardcore soundwaves blast into your ears.
The first Forza horizon was probably the first game I put just endless time into, undoubtedly the best one, trying to earn the next wristband and beat the aforementioned characters. Definitely shaped my music taste and any time I listen to song from it now the nostalgia comes rushing back
Glad you didn't forget Driver San Francisco!I miss the Driver series so much! Driver:San Francisco did amazed me and i fell in love with it. Sadly the dev team doesn't want to work on a new driver game anymore. Amazing video btw
I was planning on doing a video like this, but man have you done so much better than I could have ever imagined doing.
Really looking forward to more videos like this one
Yooooooooooooo MuYe! Thank you, and I'll try not to disappoint.
Also, thinking about it know, I probably should have talked more about BeamNG and AC + their mods as examples of great modern games.
@@jakajhah-0 yes, I do
Honeslty Midnight Club LA had one of the best soundtracks and game play. I think what made it really great was the community. Having 24 player spots in an online free roam lobby was awesome. It was a great game to just relax and chill and show off and talk about cars. Most of my friends list was from that game and black ops 2. Rate my Ride was an awesome addition as well. No other racing game has quite caught that same feel as Midnight Club LA
This is so true. I only had the fortune of playing the psp versions but even those we’re great and I still play. Can’t wait to get around to playing the ps2/ps3 versions
My brother plays MC LA and even though I never played it (or don’t play it too often) it has some bangers like Red Mist, Day n Nite, Switchin Lanes, etc. There are obviously more but I forgot most of the names. Rockstar has some really good taste in music
I think the biggest problem with the newest Forza Horizon games is the fact that acquiring cars is waaay too easy. You could have millions of $ and hundreds of cars over a weekend of gameplay. They just gift you cars constantly. With such an overwhelming pool of cars you receive, you lose any sense of progression because there's nothing to grind for aside from the few exclusive cars you win in weekly championships.
Unfortunately, many Forza Horizon players seem to like getting cars for free these days. And that's why the developers are doing it. I would also prefer a proper progression. But unfortunately we seem to be talking to a brick wall as far as that is concerned...
Progression in a racing game, why would you add an arbitrary time gate so I can't have fun straight away
@@linusperssonsgamingchannel7354what you want isn’t a game. It’s a sandbox. Go play beam ng drive or something then. Forza was not made for you
@@linusperssonsgamingchannel7354and that’s such a stupid argument. You can’t have a hypercar as soon as you start so that means the game “isn’t fun”
@@rhino5250 I really wish more people understood this
I think it started in the late 90's with with NFS 2 and Gran Turismo. The games felt like they had a soul, games that the devs were pouring their heart in to. The custom music for NFS2 - 4 was insanely good. I think that is something that is really missing from the games today, as the corporate greed drains the soul out of every game.
Need for speed 3 is when NFS got actually good.
This is something I had felt for a decade and I wasn't able to put to words. I'm glad that I'm not alone, but also sad that timeless experiences like GT4 and GRID are not coming back.
Driver, Nascar thunder 2004, 2005 Chase for the cup, and Dirt to Daytona are awesome games that just were timeless classics. 200% worth playing.
username checks out
Also to add to the sim racing category, beamng is probably one of the most impressive games to exist ever. The realism is unparalleled, and is constantly receiving quality updates. Once things like proper tyre thermals are implemented, and systems for seemless racing are implement, it will undoubtedly be the best sim racer out there.
I am a little older, so perhaps I got to experience a bit more obscure 90s racing games such as San Francisco Rush, Cruis'n USA, Daytona USA, Motorhead and Top Gear 3000 (amongst others), but there was plenty of variety from the mid 90s until late 2000s, there was such a diversity of racing games and you just don't see that creativity from them anymore. It's a shame that the fun got sucked out from mainstream racing games.
Amazing video by the way, brought back some great memories with NFS Underground, Driver and Burnout. Keep up the great work!
You just unlocked a core memory for me when you mentioned rush. I was obsessed with San Francisco Rush 2049 on sega Dreamcast as a kid. I remember the weird unique gameplay, an almost proto mario kart type game but less cartoonish. There was also a demolition derby game I cannot remember the name of on the Dreamcast, that I was equally as obsessed with. Both are super creative takes on the racing genre that don't really exist today. After I moved on from the Dreamcast, I played Midtown Madness 3 on original Xbox obsessively as well. The open world and option to choose whatever car you wanted was so fun, I would just drive around virtual France and New York for hours and hours changing cars and experiencing the difference driving mechanics. Man I miss those days
Yeah now i feel old... Daytona USA and rush 2049 were my shit
Also Midtown Madness!
Nah Rush and Daytona are older but some of the most popular arcade racers ever. Still a lot of fun to this day, don't get me wrong, but they have a pretty decent reputation.
It's a shame that neither have modern ports with basic QOL features like full lobby racing!
MY DUDE!!!
Those games are my childhood! Don't forget Top Gear and Street Racer on the SNES, Diddy Kong Racing & Top Gear Rally & Waverace on the N64 and Destruction Derby 1 & 2 / Demolition Racer on the PS1 either.
What kills me is seeing how soulless and recycled shit has become. You've got great taste man!
I loved Hot Pursuit 2010 soooo much. Its just the essentials, cool cars, cool island and cool music.
but ps2 only
@@KotchcusDomesticus ps3*
The last best non-customizable NFS game tbh. 2015-Unbound is the peak downfall.
Handles like Burnout, too arcadey for me.
I LOVED the original Midnight Club. I remember as a 6 year old asking my dad what the word "pedestrian" meant, and when he said it meant more people on the pavements, I was like "COOL, MORE PEOPLE TO RUN OVER" 😅
Burnout Paradise was another one I loved, spent hours and hours on it because the map was so expansive at the time.
I recently tried to play a Need for Speed (don't know which one), but I much prefer the F1 games these days...
I'm not even going to watch this video. With a powerful DD wheel, quest 3, rtx 4080, 7800x3D, loadcell brake, strong rig, and the fidelity and physics of modern sims, I can fuckin' drive any race car in history at any track whenever I want. Do you guys understand how crazy that is? I can completely convince my brain that I'm driving any car at any track. I can't even believe this is possible. But ya'll gonna sit here and cry that back in the day shit, because you can't install a muffler onto an rb19 or whatever dumb nonsensical BS this video is about.
@hansolo631 maybe you should watch it instead of complaining about stuff that's not in the video, because I actually have a section saying that despite the total decline in racing game quality, Sims are for the most part, better than they've ever been.
@@hansolo631 You must have a simple brain, or be 10 years old bro. Theres no chance any sim rig, not even the ones that F1 teams have can make you remotely feel like you’re in a car.
Did you get into GTA or Saints Row later on?
@@hansolo631This loser copy pasting the same comment multiple times 😂
NFS MW 2012 was a great racing game, if it hadn't been a NFS release, or sacrilege to the most Wanted name plate, no one would have complained
There's one important thing about NFS and its EA studios: only Black Box was consistently the same studio throughout.
When Criterion was assigned to NFS the first time around, it already wasn't the same Criterion, as people started leaving the studio after Burnout Paradise. When the franchise was given to Ghost Games, most of the Criterion staff left moved to Ghost Games themselves, with Criterion being reduced to less than 20 people.
At this stage, most (if not all) of the main Criterion devs from the Burnout days had already left, either to start their own studios - I believe the one that did On Rush is one of those - or to join other racing game studios such as Codemasters.
Criterion then became a small support studio for series like Battlefield and Star Wars, probably helping with vehicles in those games. Then EA bought Codemasters, gave NFS to their Chesire studio with Criterion as co-developers, and ended up merging both studios into the Criterion of today.
In short... Essentially and effectively, Criterion ceased to exist after Paradise; Ghost Games is the rotting corpse of original Criterion; and current "Criterion" actually is Codemasters Chesire.
When you realise this, it's no wonder that the Hot Pursuit reimagining was somewhat of a safe entry, the Most Wanted reimagining was an attempt to mimick Paradise, every NFS from Ghost Games went nowhere, and Unbound was the closest we had to a return to form.
Heat is better than Unbound IMO
Spot on. This is why I always tell my friends be skeptical when a company says "this studio is back", "from the people who made x game" or , "i hope this team can recover from this flop so they can make a game lile the last one".
The studio name will be the same unless it's shuttered, but the actual skill and talent gets shuffled and if you loose the key figures, the entire studio is going to change
This is one of the best videos I’ve watched on yt, the sadness, the excitement, the intellectual commentary, 10/10. You my friend are going places.
Even though I didn't agree with everything on here, I really appreciate the work you put into this video and the trip down memory lane. I played a bunch of the games you listed on my PS2 back in the day and they were truly great.
I think part of the reason we really haven't seen games like that lately is because game development has gotten waaaay more expensive and time consuming in the current HD era. I remember reading that creating a car for GT7 takes months at a time, and it really shows in the car models. You can zoom into cars in that game and see incredibly fine details up close with no noticeable pixellation. Do they have to work to that extent? No, but Gran Turismo has always been about a love of cars over everything else and it's in character for the series for them to do that.
Overall I came away from this video that some games may have gotten better, some worse, and some are just different and have gone in a different direction than maybe some people wanted.
And by the way, if you haven't played the new Gran Turismo on a controller, it's a revelation. Probably the best vibration and feedback on any PS5 game I've ever played.
Excellent video. I've been going back and playing all the stuff from the early 2000s. Nfsu2, txr0,gt3. I think it's so funny that with a 20 plus year old ps2 I can turn it on and actually be playing a game in less than a minute compared to a newer Xbox that takes 5 minutes just to start up. The internet has killed everything.
I'd give a special mention to MotorStorm games. With the release of the PS3, the first motor storm really had that wow factor and managed to give me a mixed vibe of flatout and Colin McRae.
Had a lot of fun playing it and still remember how shocked I was at the graphics the multi level tracks and mud physics haha
Had a lot of good ideas and a lot of love poured in
Motorstorm Apocalypse was solid stupid fun and one of my all time faves, sadly it's a forgotten franchise
shit i remember playing motorstom pacific rift and having the time of my life
@@Kiromony I play Pacific Rift on emulators to this fuckin day
@@Kiromony I miss Pacific Rift brooo dont make me cry
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights was my favourite racing game. The pink label races where you risk losing your car were great, and the customisation options were the perfect blend of simplicity & variety
And..... interesting advertisement....
I personally liked MW: 2012. Did it have the issues you mentioned? Yes. But I still liked playing it, the map was nice, the physics were unrealistic but kind of fun, and the fact you could just find a car and hop in it was also kind of cool, you would turn a corner and be like "what car is around this corner, or the next?"
I don't like the idea of hop any cars. I want to buy it and modify it using my money. The game is for people who don't want to spend time to playing it by just hop into a lambo and drive around.
Lol look at 2005 most wanted boss races, story cops ,slowmo, you'll get chased by helicopter ,you can drive under big trucks,modifications damn so many things
@@mrlazy2343 what is the point of your comment ?
@@Emiichocothey’re telling you the game sucks bozo go get some air
People who hate MW2012 are still butthurt over the fact it isn't exactly like MW2005. Overly edgy, boring characters that only say one line or two, awful AI and physics and just the same races over and over again.
The music choice for this video is amongst the best I ever heard.
You truly captured everything that made that era the pinnacle of racing games.
The approach you took as well as the rhythm hooked me up instantly.
I'm happy to see that all is not lost yet, the crowd demands a comeback of the true racing experience. Midnight Club, Burnout, Need for speed, those names deserve so much more.
Thanks for that nostalgic ride and keep up the good work!
This is such a well done beautiful video essay depicting the goods, the bad and downwright terrible of racing games now as well as the history behind these games. That was really good. You deserve more views
Two of my favourite franchises are here; Burnout and Midnight Club. The moment you mentioned Burnout having a screw loose, I couldn't help but get a big dumb grin as I remembered making chaos in Paradise. As for MC, I played Los Angeles so much I burned the disc in my 360. Wish I could play MC:LA again, but those memories will likely never fade.
One series I really loved was Midtown Madness 1, 2, and 3. Those were some of my favorites during the NFS Underground 2 days.
Rockstar Games would rather get in trouble with the Government's National Vulnerability Database for not having an effective anti-cheat engine in GTA Online (Currently ongoing as of 3 days ago. Case number CVE-2023-24059 on the NVD website. *They really screwed the pooch on this one* ) than put a dime in developing another racing game. This is the reality we live in and it upsets me.
Playing Midtown Madness 2 with the Logitech Wingman Formula Force GP. Oh, the nostalgia...
I love how you literally do the fall of 76 bug montage for forza.
For anyone who hasn't played Test Drive Unlimited 2, I can't recommend it enough. TDU2 was so enjoyable! I was so invested in it, even though I played it 9 years after its release (in 2020). That game was like the SIMS franchise, but with the spirit of solid racing. I remember it being so immersive, the solid gameplay, the thrilling races, the Hawaiian island location, and the music! It was just pure fun. Also, the music was hands down the finest in that game. It attracted me more to Punk/Alt Rock music. I highly recommend this game to anyone who reads this.
TDU2's main complaint was that it was initially more glitchy too, & some cars have unrealistic engine sounds e.g. the One-77 had an overly-refined sound, while 1 of the software updates made the Aston Martin DBS sounds like a V8 instead of a V12
@@lzh4950for me the main complaints of TDU2 beside the bugs, server problem (when it still alive), and car physics is a "Single Player Aspect" Which is damn TOO SHORT I mean this game has 2 island but the single player event is lesser then TDU1, this game is heavily relying themselves on Online aspect, I know TDU1 is also the same case but at least TDU1 still giving a good spot on Single player aspect (even better in PS2 and PSP version)
Also the game has lesser vehicle then TDU1 even with DLC (TDU Megapack has more then 140 Vehicle while TDU2 with DLC is barely reach 140) and some brands are missing and scrapped like BMW, Maserati, and Lambo
Man, great video.
Honestly, I just wanted a racing game that gives me a purpose, a goal, an end, etc.
My favorite racing game is Most Wanted, I know that the story is not exactly a masterpiece, but It was still believable enough to really have me invested, It was a mixture of revenge and being the best.
Yeah, if I were to call any racing game my favorite, it would either be that or underground 2, and I really hope they bring that kinda stuff back into newer games.
Project Gotham actually started off on the Dreamcast as Metropolis Street Racer. The idea was you would get points based on how much of a show off you were with your driving, and it was a terrific game. The team then made the Project Gotham games which had the same gameplay.
Tokyo Extreme Racer will always be a personal favorite of mine. It started off on the Super Famicom in Japan as a drifting game and then the Sega Saturn before coming to the US as Tokyo Extreme Racer on Dreamcast. TXR 2 was ported to the PS2 as Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero, a game I played a LOT back in the 2000s. I still remember managing to achieve pearlescent effects in my paint job on a MK3 Supra with 700HP, a car that took on the Vipers and the Speed King with a bit of dirty tricks and cock-blocking. I loved that game so, so much.
Test drive unlimited was my jam! I loved how you buy houses with garages to store your cars if you have too many cars you need to get a new house and the customization on cars from factory was amazing.
What an amazing piece you´ve done here. You covered pretty much all the classics from 2000´s. I´d say 2000´s racing games had a soul, some vibe that games from now lack. I don´t know if it´s because of great graphics or because we´ve seen everything before so it´s harder to show something really new now. The process that happened to games is similar to music. It´s sad but true.
So not a decline then, but rather nothing revolutionary
@@robertt9342 Exactly.
Ive been playing Forza 6 lately and while the racing itself and the physics are really good, the whole rest of the game just feels like a soulless husk.
The soundtrack is this random orchestral theme played over and over. I definitely miss the older edgier, more upbeat soundtracks of older racers
@@robertt9342 it could also be a decline though. It's easy to make things look good these days, but still just as hard as ever to make a fun and rewarding feeling game. Developers and players often focus too much on shiny shiny and don't realise what they're missing out on. The same happened in the 2000s btw, I remember buying a shooter game or two based on graphics alone and being heavily disappointed. But these days there is much more shit to wade through to find the diamonds.
Dirt and Dirt 2.0 have easily been my favourite racing games in the last decade, they are fairly realistic and challenging, with good progression from low power FWD cars up to Group B monsters
Need for speed rivals is actually pretty fun and I don't think you even mentioned it here. I was given most wanted 2012 shortly after it came out and hadn't really touched a racing game since the PS1. I fell in love with that game. I know it's not a good game but I have so many memories with it. Finding cars almost everywhere, doing insane jumps at the airport and resetting 50 times to get that final most wanted car. That game will always have a place in my heart even if I no longer find it fun to play.
All that to say, rivals just takes everything from hot pursuit and makes it better. I played with friends online and even today I still go back to as the last good NFS game. Heat is great but it feels like something is missing.
I always messed around with demos and on GTA but rivals is the racing game that truly got me into genre.
I had so much fun being the police and chasing my friends down and vice versa
Same experience as you with both games! NFS Rivals is still the best modern nfs. I really liked in-world car switch mechanic in Most Wanted 2012.
And yet people praised Most Wanted's cops for nostalgia but in terms of cop difficulty, Rivals is the most hardest.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Motorstorm. Its a completely different concept from anything I've seen before, it's completely insane all the time and it was great. No story though, very arcade indie feel and they made a few games before Sony shut it down. A little nugget of childhood for me.
The game is from 2006!!!! It's insane how good it still looks, from basically a one-off company that nobody remembers
I never played it myself, but seeing how many people brought it up, I'll have to give it a try.
@@Fastminer07 the man himself! Well, it would be hard to find it, but they last a long time. I've had a copy for 12 years on an old first gen PS3 and it all runs fine. Controls a little jank so be prepared
Oh man, Motorstorm and other combat racers...
Motorstorm apocalypse is in the playstation store for ps4. Just have to get an upgraded playstation plus subscription unfortunately
Motorstorm will always have a place in my heart. My first console was a PS2, and I remember just when the PS3 had come out, they had a demo station for it in Target.
One of the games you could play was Motorstorm, and I will never forget how much the graphics blew me away at the time. I couldn't believe the level of detail, and the fact that you could even see the 3D-modeled tire tread spinning around on the wheel. I saved up and bought a PS3 the next year.
If only another game could blow me away in the same way that one did...
Control came close.
the title should be "The decline of arcade racing games" because there are superb racing sim games
Ah yes NFS hot pursuit 2. The game that started it all for me! I'll never forget that line from the cop over the radio. Something like: "10-4, calling all units, a red opel speedster just flew by me". Thankful for my dad renting that from blockbuster when I was a kiddo
I remember games like nfs underground and midnight club had storylines where it was centered around you being the best street racer being thrown under the bus by some master manipulater and have you start from scratch and work your way up, it was fun because in terms of what it had to offer at the time it felt like it was something you had to achieve on your own compared to nowadays where the story is short and it holds your hand the entire story
And back then it was never seen before, and with graphics through the roof, tuning was just brought into light by fast and furious, and BAM you could do the same on your computer ...
It holds your hands the entire game
Pick fh5 for example you start with lots of money lots of wheelspins and you can have the rarest and fastest car in the game in one play.
@@RiriSion I remember me watching the movie the day before my dad bought me the game. Was so cool customizing Brian's eclipse in the game
@@roger6010 Yeah it was another world, right before the "infinity" came into our lives in everything we do ... FH5 I played 1h and dropped it for that exact reason, when the fun of driving the mclaren Senna around was gone ...
@@roger6010 They do this because nowadays, companies want more money than anything. They know more and more people are playing it casually for fun and they don't want to grind for these supercars they want, especially kids who only want fast cars. This is why there are better games back then than now. It's kind of like in real life where in the US, people buy more SUVs than sedans or other types of cars. Also especially with manual transmissions. Manual transmissions are a dying breed in the US because Americans don't want to learn it and buy them. It's come to a point where mostly only car enthusiasts are buying manual transmission cars. This has in turn made it so manual transmissions are costing more, rather than less like it would back then.
*This video was so good man, you're going places if you keep creating quality content like this bro.*
Fr I just found this guy and he had me invested the whole time, have a lotta hope for his career.
Dude, you really killed it with this entire video. I was a late adopter of Forza, Horizon 4 being my first, and while I had fun, it had no personality at all. What music festival? Indies have been a saving grace in the recent years for sure. The only "modern" racing game I play these days is one you didn't mention, DiRT Rally 2.0. Super cheap on sale and just plain fun, even with a controller. Loved hearing Tobacco randomly in the background as well, respect.
My introduction to Midnight Club was with the second game, which is still one of my favourite games. No customization other than colours but it was so good.
Man. When u brought up burnout I got taken back to my childhood where my mother and sister didn't like gaming. But when I turned on burnout, we would sit for hours just tryna crash each other's cars while keeping a scoreboard of who won the most races.
I remember I was planning to get a PS4 when they're releasing GT7 and immediately cancel that plan entirely after finding out the kind of shutshow was going on. My friend who was working to get it and get it day 1 was actually crying in disappointment and I honestly feel bad for him.
No developer or publisher should be allowed to getaway from making their customer cry like that.
loool thats funny
@@p5rsona yeah, losing a lot of money to scammer is funny, isn't it?
@@ShikayHawken Sorry to hear about your friend. Hope they are ok now. I was excited for GT7 on PS4 but as it's more or less always online I decided not to purchase
If you don't care about single player I suppose it's an alright game. Some cars are really expensive, even more than Sport, and the moneymaking isn't great. I got involved with liveries, scapes and online racing and I have my fun.
GT7 is a very good game now tbh
Need For Speed is probably the biggest example of how EA evolved. it used to be a very simple progression: do races, get cash, unlock more cars/performance parts by doing races/beating major racers (for every car, not just for a single car), unlock more visual customisation the same way, buy new cars if needed, rinse and repeat. now, some need for speed games have de-evolved in that, with upgrading not having that same feeling.
oh, i forgot to mention that post 2012, you could have talked about The Crew series, because in all honesty, the original The Crew had some of, if not, the best looking visual customisation, with the car being dismantled in multiple pieces, and those pieces switching with different pieces when switching between the customisation options. the story is rather lacklustre, and performance upgrades are somehow worse than payback, with parts being unlocked by doing races and open world challenges (which is somehow more boring than paybacks slots), the story (from what i've experienced) being pretty meh, and quite a few parts of the game being DLC (such as the standard dlc that you can buy from the game store you have the game on, or being literal in-game purchases of card), it might be something to have a look at on youtube videos.
as for The Crew 2, i have not played it myself, but with the addition of planes and boats, the game is sounds like it's 3 times as large, being able to dominate races in every element (land, sea, and sky)
The massive growth on this video must feel amazing! Well done!
Great points I really wish the studios would listen.
There is something in Forza horizon I wish you would've mentioned and many people don't mention which is it feels really fluffy and pink! really like the festival and the colors and the story, I don't know, it don't have the vibes of the old games especially when it comes to street racing and events. crowds just dancing for no reason, characters you don't relate to, and it just feels like it''s commercialized.
agreed, while I still enjoy Horizon 5 quite a bit (the fantastic car selection is fun with the arcade-y driving model) the progression feels kind of aimless, and feels like style over substance.
Super agree after 2 it felt generic & boring & got worse overtime. The festival is a joke nowadays.
I feel the biggest issue is more the nature of development of these games.
Like, Black Box didn't release 6 NFS games in 6 years because those games happened to be finished in 1 year each (you can see they have a lot of jank and a ton of cut content that would have really improved the games significantly), but because that was the deadlines they were set. The standards of consoles were lower on the 6th gen of consoles compared to now.
You can see this in action with the Gran Turismo titles that often had 5+ years of development per game. GT5 had many "legacy cars". Cars whose models were taken from the PS2 and PSP games. These cars were far less detailed, lacked interiors and looked worse compared to the premium cars made specifically for GT5. We know that in terms of development, it took more resources and development and time to create 1 premium car than several legacy cars. So you want a GT game with only premium cars, it's both going to take a longer time and result in a smaller car roster.
All this adds up to the demands of making a racing game no longer being as sustainable and quick as it once was. If in 2002, it took 1-3 years max to make a decent racing game (even if it resulted in a lot of cut content and jank), in 2023, 1-3 years is barely even half the time a racing game needs to even be decent. Making everything from cars, to tracks to gameplay is more demanding because the standards of now are much higher.
In addition, while people like to complain that NFS Heat or Payback aren't as good as the older games. But if these games released back then, people would love them way more. Nostalgia and rose tinted glasses also play a factor in people refusing to give many games a fair shake. So a new racing game now has to work even harder to compete with people's nostalgic perceptions of an older game.
This expense also makes it riskier for a game to do well. Midnight Club LA sold better than its predecessors, but Rockstar still considered it a disappointment in terms of sales. NFS Heat is a better racing game than Carbon or UG1 and I'd even argue UG2 but it sold a fraction of those games despite costing more to make.
So there's not really an easy answer. Publishers aren't exactly excited with giving racing games more time since they aren't guaranteed to sell 10+ million copies anymore so any additional development time will eat into the profits. Companies can't go back to lower quality graphics and models to save time and resources since players will complain and refuse to accept lower quality assets.
This man is a cultured legend. Tfs reference and shouting out my summer car? Subbed.
I'm surprised you never mentioned NFS rivals. It's said to be a much better version of HP2010 by having free roam, a story plotline, extra pursuit gadgets and extra visual customization. Though the game is also notoriously known for its bugs and glitches.
Nfs rivals (bugs aside) is no where near a better version of hot pursuit and I don't know why people say it is
I love the game to bits, but I can't even play the game anymore because of the sign-in glitch. I hope one day they fix it, but I don't see it happening anytime soon
@@LeaveMeAloneFBI why wouldn't it be?
rivals was garbage can't even pause the damn game mid race
@@minignoux4566 How grindy it is to unlock new cars and upgrade pursuit tech. Cops don't have it as bad since you don't have to spend speed points to get new cars, but you still have to buy and upgrade new pursuit tech, every single time. The grind is especially bad early game as racers because of how easy it is to get to heat level 10 and get fucked over by cops driving end game cars.
Speaking of pursuit tech, how blantanly overpowered and spammy they were. Hot pursuit pursuit tech required more thought and strategy, and you practically had unlimited uses since repair shops were everywhere
The pathetic downgraded car roster, it's especially bad on the racers side
Not being able to pause even if you're playing offline
This is my personal opinion, but racers were severely underpowered in rivals and felt like trash to play. Hot pursuit racers and cops felt even and fair. End game, cops have access to cars like the Veyron, F1, Agera, Hennessey Venom, all of which of insanely faster than the end game racer cars, even fully upgraded. Those cars can all hit up to 250+mph, keep in mind the pagani, that has the highest racer top speed, goes like 230-240mph. Yeah, good luck escaping cops late game. Especially with how ungodly rubberbandy they are. There's no "hiding" or losing sight strategy. Cops are programmed to always know your location at every moment. I know because I've tested it. Oh and did I mention cops have significantly more health than racers? Racers have barely any health, specifically late game cars, while end game cop cars still have a ton of health. You crash once as a racer and lose a solid chunk of your health.
The only thing racers beat cops at is acceleration and that's literally it. Cops have higher speed, health, and better nitrous. Hot pursuit was more balanced because both sides had access to the same same cars, and some pursuit tech. And the "side exclusive" tech has plenty of counterplay which goes back to my point about pursuit tech in hot persuit requiring more strategy
A lot of people who would also the Frame rate lock, but I think that's a dumb complaint personally. 30fps is perfectly playable and fine.
I don't hate the game, I actually love it. It just irritates me when people say Rivals is a better hot pursuit.
this video was like a personal live letter, thank you bro, this was so true to the soul of how the racing space feels and looks like every year to me, here’s hoping the street racing scene grows and gets its new need for speed champion again one day
Another series left in the dust is Ridge Racer. You had track racing like in Gran Turismo but arcade style driving. That's a series that really needs a comeback.
Driving games on consoles died for me when I played Forza 4 and noticed cars blanked out because I didnt have the DLC. That was on 360 and shows how deep in I was playing Racing Games. When you can just buying car ingame with IRL money it misses the point of playing a progress based racing game.
Horizon 4 or Motorsport 4?
NFS 2010 was one of the best nfs experiences I've had. The addition of playing your own music and how it implemented the music within the game's User interface really amped up the already great experience. Coming from someone who has started on the original need for speed.
Almost everyone I know grew up with Forza because they had Xbox. I had Playstation, and therefore I grew up with Gran Turismo. GT3 A-spec is a legendary game - you mentioned the soundtrack to Forza, but only mentioned the sweet jazz theme of GT, when it had Muse - Sober, Dead Man Leaving - Grand Theft Audio, Buck Rogers, Seven Days in the Sun and Just A Day - Feeder. But it truly was a great game, easy enough for a child to play, tough enough to require a bit of practice and commitment.
What you miss about the direction this franchise went and why it failed is this. GT Sport (and GT7 I believe) is a multiplayer only game. It has a single player campaign, that you cannot save unless you have online mode, which if you have no interest in playing any console game online, why would you pay for the privilege. Without saving, it should be obvious, the game is unplayable. Its a clear abandonment of a core player type, simply because offline players don't buy MTX content. To be a console gamer is becoming expensive as hell, and the quality of the games are not keeping up. Gran Turismo is just one franchise that has died at the sacrificial altar, but all of gaming is feeling it and I don't see it being saved any time soon.
I really miss Midnight Club series, really enjoyed those games growing up. And the Yellow Mazda MX6 being from the Mischief Series and making it on the cover is a great story for that too. I would argue that Test Drive is not quite dead as the new TD Unlimited Solar Crown is expected this year. Good video I enjoyed it.
What killed the games for me is how they took away split-screen racing and making all the titles 1 player. They no longer became games you would bring out when hanging out with friends. Which was a big part of my childhood since Need for Speed II where we would share the keyboard to race split-screen on PC. Even now if I'm browsing at a games store and see a new racing game, first thing i do is pick it up, turn it around and check how many players. When i see 1 Player I'll 95% of the time put it back on the shelf without reading any further.
Ha, I was wondering why that Hot Pursuit footage looked familiar 😉
You perfectly summarized how most of us feel about the genre these days. Loved the video! Most racing games of that era had such a unique take on the genre. I sorely miss standout titles like Driver San Francisco, TDU, MC, or certain NFS titles that dared to innovate. Not to mention the amazing and memorable soundtracks most of these 2000s racing games had! Man do I miss some good tunes in recent games! The few remaining giants (Forza, NFS) all feel extremely samey and lackluster with their recent entries. Driveclub and The Crew (1) were the only exceptions that really fulfilled my desires in this past decade. And indeed some indie titles like Wreckfest.
TDU: Solar Crown is the one upcoming racing game that might be able to revitalise the (arcade) racing scene a bit. Unfortunately it seems to be having development issues...
Once again, loved the video. Earned a sub from me!