4mo ago

A whole bunch of racing games were cheap recently, and there are so many that it's difficult to look through them all. What do you recommend looking out for in future?

Title edited as it has been pointed out to me that the sale has actually ended

I picked up Descenders and Absolute Drift. Only tried the latter so far, but it's great fun. Feels like there's an extremely high skill ceiling to it that I am unlikely to reach. It only cost me £1 too!

I normally go for sim racers like Assetto Corsa and Automobilista, but I have a real soft spot for the old Wipeout games and the similarly-aged N-Gen. Pacer (a touch light on tracks but a perfect spiritual successor to Wipeout) and Jetborne Racing (basically a tech demo and extremely demanding with a gamepad, but worth checking out) have been fun releases in somewhat more recent years

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BeamNG.drive + Automation: The Car Company Tycoon Game
Automation lets you dive deep into the particulars of a vehicle you create, which can then be exported to race with it in BeamNG.drive.
- Ooooh, this is a fascinating combination. I had no idea it was a possibility. I already have BeamNG too so I'm halfway there
  
  I can get lost for hours tweaking Automation creations to get them perfect - all for me to take them to BeamNG and accidentally wreck them.
  I made a Peugeot 206cc clone the other day. I called it the Pugo 2006cc (literally: poo go two hundred and six).
  I tried racing it and the understeer was I M M E N S E -- I love it!
Since you mentioned AG racers, check out BallisticNG and the Redout games.
- I've been keeping an eye out for BallisticNG! Sadly it wasn't significantly discounted in the sale, so it's one to pick up either when it is on sale or when I have gotten through the rest of my unplayed games. I was initially put off a little by just how hard it seemed to be aping early Wipeout, but someone on here persuaded me to take a look
  What's Redout actually like to play? I have seen a little bit of gameplay and it looks like it's aiming above all to feel as blindingly fast as possible
  
  I recently started playing BallisticNG, having never played the Wipeout games. I'm finding it hypnotic and the controls feel great. I'm still on baby speeds by the game's standards.
  Out of curiosity, I looked up videos of the PS1 Wipeout games for reference and they looked slow in comparison!
  
  Redout is a weird one. It got a lot of comparisons to F-Zero because of the speed but it plays a lot more like Wipeout, or like an F-Zero/Wipeout hybrid. It’s very fast, and the steering mechanics are interesting as it requires using both joysticks to steer through a lot of turns. I like it, but find it pretty difficult. The ships tend to be a bit floaty and the main thing is controlling well to not hit walls as they utterly kill your momentum.
  With BallisticNG, it does ape on Wipeout a lot (by design) but it’s an absolute love letter to the series and is extremely polished. It also has workshop support for all kinds of custom tracks and ships.
  There are things BallisticNG does though that are really interesting, like solo races where your goal is to go as far as possible without exploding from damage. You can’t use the brakes and it gets faster every few sections. Those are probably my favorite races.
If you like retro-inspired arcade racers, Slipstream is a fucking blast. You can use your own music if you want to and there are mods to add more cars.
- Hah, that looks like the gameplay of PS3 / Xbox 360 era Ridge Racer but sent back to Ridge Racer 1993 graphics. Definitely seems like one of those delightful projects where someone just has nostalgia for something and also has the skills and drive to just do it themselves
Idk how much it fits into your understanding of racing games, but one of my favorite vibing games of all time is Slipstream.
My favorite traditional racing game is the old DiRT 2. I‘m just not much of a sim guy, I dislike having to fight the car too much, it starts to feel like I’m trying to steer a washing machine on ice. I am challenging myself with DiRT Rally 2.0 (yes, confusing) though, not sure how far I‘ll get.
- Dirt Rally 2 is excellent! I've actually walked along a couple of the stages too, I was quite impressed by how well they recreated them. The limitations on multiplayer formats annoyed me quite a lot, but I do think it's the only game I've ever played where rallycross felt like it really worked well, and I love the rallycross format
I enjoy more arcade style racing games so over the last few years the ones I enjoyed the most were burnout paradise and the remake, trackmania, and forza horizon 4 and 5
I've been having a blast playing Descenders. I also picked up Hot Wheels Unleashed to play with my Hot Wheels obsessed 4 yr old.
- That's good to hear! I'm looking forward ot trying it. I used to love mountain biking when I was younger and I was reeeaaasonably good at it, but I've had enough sports injuries in my life so that's at the wayside by now
You'll have to sail the seas to get it but Fatal Inertia is my favorite racing game.
- Oh cool, I've never even heard of this one. Allowing the player some actual control over the z-axis is such an obvious thing to add to an AG racer now that I've seen it, but I've never even considered it before
  
  As far as I know you need a 360 emulator to play it. Very interesting and unique racing game with fun customization options. This day and age the lifespan may be more limited but it still some fun on the couch with a buddy.
Sale is already over, unfortunately! I was planning to pick up Aero GPX, but missed the sale, too
- Agh, I should have checked with it being a new week! Ahh well, there will be others in the future
  I see that Aero GPX has a demo I can try too!
Depends: are you looking for arcade or sim?
- Sim is my preference, but I'm not against an arcade if it's doing something interesting

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