ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2024
- Underground 3 when? No but seriously, with Unbound and the millionth festival game being all we get lately, I'm tired, and I just want a game with a bit of soul again, you know?
Couple of background tracks throughout were made by @DaydreamAnatomy , check them out!
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0:00 Intro
4:14 Why modern racing games suck
8:08 The problems go deeper than you think
9:10 The starter car dilemma
12:06 What Need For Speed Underground 2 did so right
18:56 Need For Speed 2015
21:29 Graphical fidelity ≠ Better graphics
27:19 The issues with Need For Speed 2015
32:41 Need For Speed Unbound
46:01 So, will it get any better?
#needforspeed #forzahorizon5 #racinggames - เกม
It has come to my attention, that some of my claims aren’t accurate.
Aussie yapping man made some shit the fuck up, so let’s fix that!
1: Fast travelling in NFS 2015
One of my nitpicks with 2015 came from how much sheer commuting you needed to do, and how tedious it ended up feeling because of how big the map is/spread out the races are. Turns out; there’s fast travelling! Something I didn’t realise even after playing through the game twice. Granted, after this was pointed out to me I did a quick google search to confirm it and found multiple Reddit threads of others also not realising fast travel was a thing, AND, it DID take over 600 comments and 24,000 of y’all to watch before anyone finally pointed that out.
Regardless, I’ll take the L on that one, it’s a pretty silly thing to not realise.
HOWEVER, I will say; the loading times in 2015 are so slow it’s probably faster to just drive to the next race than fast travel anyway.
2: EA play cars in Unbound
I made a point of being annoyed that cars are just given to you in modern racing games, with Unbound being an example. Little did I realise, this was only happening in my game because I played it on game pass.
Now, I’ll take this as a half L 🤭, cause let’s be real, a LOT of people would be trying this game on game pass and going through the same experience, so while it’s not universal, I’d imagine it’s pretty damn common across Xbox/PC. And I guess anyone on PS5 with EA play but I dunno how popular that is? It’s cheap as chips though so it wouldn’t surprise me if plenty of people signed up to try before they buy.
What I WILL take the complete L on is a sub section of this take about the wraps, they CAN in fact be removed, I dunno what I was waffling on about.
Thanks to the couple of peeps who brought these to my attention, I’ve replied to y’all individually anyway 🫶🏼
In the future, I’ll take a little extra time and care to be a bigger, better, and most importantly, more accurate hater 🫡
SSX games, Burnout titles, and Dirt racing spoke to me to completion. Pure (ATV offroading) was sweet and satisfying.
Look them up 😎
Developers sit around all day chief. "Crunch" is called overtime to us normal people. They aren't special because they make video games. I watched my mom work 65 hours a week for almost 40 years. These babies can do it for a few months at the end of a multi million dollar project. Not to mention they all get paid for that overtime and they are paid incredibly well. I bet you're one of those guys that says making games is hard and it's magic that we even get to play them. That is also a load of garbage right there as well
I am one of those guys that says making games is hard. To be precise making a good gameTEMPLATE is hard. If you have 5 star developers building on that template it's like a workingday in the office I agree. What baffles me is when a developerteam made a solid gametemplate with a game on top of it with a smooth menu and a bugfree game that runs smooth and sells well because of that.. "pause to breathe in" .. this developers team gets to deal with a (hostile) takeover by some a-hole company that doesn't allow them to work on that game template anymore. They only want to make money so pimp the menu a bit, take out some cars that will be DLC now and so on. What makes me very angry that most of the time they throw away a proven good working template and force developers to build a new one. Then throw it out to the public and actually tell them so if you find any bugs just tell us and we will patch them. This way they avoid the cost of beta-testing the game and let the gamesheeple that will buy anything work for free to test the game. Very good templates have gone to waste and others are still running with cracked codes and modds amateur developers make at home. Some of these modded/remastered games are the best you can play today. Why can't the big name game industry build us these games? Because they are greedy bastards that's why. And all the mistakes you made while making this video are forgiven. You are just another gamer with passion that doesn't want to see games suck and get destroyed. We talked about it all and some things we can agree or disagree about but the only thing stopping the killing of games are our wallets. Stop buying their crap!!!!! As always thank you for reading my rant. 😘👍🏻
@@johndodo2062 how does the boot leather taste?
@@johndodo2062 nobody should be slaving away for a company that looks at them as a disposable object
It's getting very dangerous this Gen for a publisher to openly say "buying isn't owning"
oh i guess you haven't been paying attention, ubisoft literally said recently "gamers need to get used to not owning their games" lmao those crooks are trying to remove our ownership of *everything*
then the consumers reply should be "Then Piracy isn't Stealing"
even if so far i bought everything in the last 10 years.
Fanboys and soul-less publishers be like:
"Nope, you're are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye bye." *proceeds to kill a studio*
Seriously it’s wild
They ve already won. As long as consumers are consuming anything they throw at them, we willnot receive anything better.
For the last couple of years i played new and old games at the same time. I grow bored of new games, with some exceptions,but the old games man.... I uninstalled heat after 10 hours, but Porsche, Underground, Most wanted, finished all 3 , had a blast.
Horizon, 4 yea, it was nice as it was the first game i played from the series. But eventually i grew bored and neve returned. The gameplay did not evolve naturaly. Of course i haven t played any other Horizon, because they are more the same.
But i finished TDU 10 times, without breathing.
Gaming is dead.
@@andipajeroking yeah I get the same feeling, I’ll play a new racing game in particular for an hour or so maybe? And never pick it up again
But I can easily stay gripped into an older game the whole way through
One game I’ve never played is MW 2005 funnily enough, and I reckon that’d be a good limit test cause it’s one I’ve got no nostalgia for and so many people regard it as the best game in the franchise
@@Viseak well you ever tried Blur 2010? Check it out.
@@Viseak No my my friend... games now sucks in general.. and the first reason why the games sucks today is because you don't own them.. and in 10 or 15 years most probably you will not be able to show it to your kids.. like with The Crew today and so many others...... meanwhile If I still have a working compatible computer.. electricity.. and the disks.. I will be able to show my great-grandchildren Half-Life and Half-Life 2.... This was the standard you see »» th-cam.com/video/tUAX0gnZ3Nw/w-d-xo.html .. Now the standard is that they take your money and scam you ..........+......... The other reason.. Is that today the games are stupid.... look Stellar Blade.. soooo popular because they put a pretty teenage face in a body with the fat ass of my grandmother.. ¿¿and what is the game about??.. running around.. then fighting a tree story height monster that sounds like a horse while she jiggle her fat ass.. until the monster health bar gets to zero.. same mechanic of Mortal Kombat 35 years ago.. with the difference that Sonya Blade had an awesome ass and Mortal Kombat has really cool characters training to save the world and humanity.. instead of already being everything fuc^%&ked up and with everybody dead which is typical stuff of the current losers generation.. Anyway Stellar Blade then runs around some more.. sit down for a while.. and repeat with the next monster that also sounds like a horse.........+........... meanwhile 20 damn years ago!!.. it was also another game with a tree story height monster.... but when you heard just one of his sounds... you jump off running because half of the building was going to blow up around you »» th-cam.com/video/vRqN56XZOlo/w-d-xo.html .... then you hide from him in the building.. in the sewers.. under bridges.. (well actually that's not very effective).. »» th-cam.com/video/62XlsBn1o0g/w-d-xo.html ...... but you keep distance.. because otherwise it will crash you obviously.... now if one of the enemies that fight alongside that thing throw you a grenade.. you can pick it up and throw it back at them... or use it for destroyed the tree story height monster.. »» th-cam.com/video/62XlsBn1o0g/w-d-xo.html ..... and well even if they make a PC game.. they can not do any of this anymore.. they have to make it lame.... so the idiots that play with the stupid console controllers are not in disadvantage....
At around 35 minutes...
NFS Unbound doesn't have cops because they wanted to pad out the game. It was specifically in response to most other NFS fans wanting cops to be more prominent and more difficult to get away from
I know they weren’t actually there to pad out the game, it’s just when playing, considering how much of a nuisance they are compared to other entries, it just FEELS that way 😅
@@Viseak I feel you lol (kinda pun intended now that I think about it)
@@Viseakits the fact that the game doesnt give you any incentive to engage in cop chases other than a small cash reward when you go back to your safehous
its really strange considering heat literally did implement a risk vs reward system by making the heat level serve as reward multipliers when you go back to your garage and honestly it wouldve suited unbound much more because of the time sensitive structure of the game
@@abslzero It's kinda strange though because even Carbon fumbled the cops horribly and it's literally just MW's cops again, but they're so disconnected from story progression that they're essentially meaningless and do nothing more than get in your way. The map also sucks which doesn't really help.
Newest NfS I got on sale was NfS Heat, but even with UNITE mod I just cant get over the fact that there are not meaninful ways to get rid of the cops. The world has so many opportunitys for pursuit- breakers but they just arent in the game. The only way to get rid of cops is to jump of stuff like the big mall which gets boring...
What happened is gaming became corporate and is just a line item for some wealthy dude who doesn’t care. The main motivation for making a game shifted from "how can we make this fun" to "how can we make the most money". All the big studios just produce trash now. I have no motivation to go next gen because all the AAA games are terrible and overly monetized. Thankfully I have decades of seasons in old NBA 2ks to play and a ton 2016-2021 racing games and RPGs for PS4. I have been accidentally boycotting this generation of gaming and I think I'll just turn it into a purposeful one. Its pretty easy when they don't make anything I want to buy. I pity anyone who sunk large amounts of money into this generation and has to convince themselves that it was worth it.
Oh 100%
When a few micro-transaction sales eclipse the profit of entire games (Halo TH-camr Mint Blitz just made a video about this too lol) of course developers aren’t going to put effort into the much riskier route of making a great game.
Why tell good stories and create lasting experiences? That requires dedicated staff with varying talents that’ll see the project through to the end and create something they’re actually proud of. Much more profitable to just outsource some designers and sell skins!
Sigh
It's also because the industry now is largely run by women and targeted towards women. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that men are better developers than women or vice versa, that's not the case. What I'm saying is that women don't care about racing, that's why the genre is dead and the few arcade racers left are trying to be everything but racers.
PS. There's still good stuff around though, like the Hot Wheels games made by Milestone (an old school arcade racer developer), also Wreckfest.
@DioBrando-qr6ye Uhhh...I don't think women are responsible for microtransactions and greedy publishing companies. I'm sure there are women as well as men, but I'm not sure which games you are referring to that are targeted toward women and ruining the industry.
@jamesmitchellmusic_official You clearly have not played games or are to young to notice all the looooong boring and useless girly conversations.
@xchalibur77 What games are you playing? And what would be considered and manly vs girly conversation?
what I think is missing (as far as I'm concerned) is vision. the old arcade racing games didn't pretend to resemble reality, but were actually the fruit of a vision, an imaginary version of reality, and this was what gave them character. Today I don't think we can say that arcade racing games exist anymore, because both from a graphic and physical point of view they try in every way to be as realistic as possible. When I play a game I want to perceive it as such, I don't want it to be a bad copy of reality because video games, like many other things, for many, have been and are an escape from reality, different worlds that can titillate our curiosity. another thing that's missing is a well-organized system that encourages in-game competition (I'm not necessarily talking about tournaments). And yes, the sense of progression is non existent.
Couldn’t agree more
And that’s why I was kinda saying I prefer good art direction to graphical fidelity, and why I think the style of Unbound was a pretty good direction to go
The same thing happened with Halo where they’re trying to make it so much more realistic, when it was always a little campy and fun in early on, but shag been forgotten over the years
The situation on racing games is so sad right now, especially with the passionate devs involved crashing against soul-less companies forcing crunch.
Hearing that Wangan Midnight OST makes this video even better
The rock OST definitely suits the early 2000’s games so well
Just finished watching it too and i was like "OOOHH OHHH I KNOW THIS MELODY"
I still need to catch-up from some of the stories for my cars in that game. I only got my 240sx (180sx) all the way to the max but I didn't unlocked the classic OST yet because of the BS requirements to do so.
I feel like the reason racing games are dying is because they are not splitscreen like before, a lot of us used to play NFS underground with our siblings, NFS Used to be simple and chill super arcade game that barely punished you for not braking around corners NFS is still an arcade game but not as much as before. Racing games are becoming more realistic/sim so the people playing racing games are people that actually love cars IRL the racing games that are thriving today are sim racing games and you need a wheel if u want to have the most fun.
Yeah not having split screen is definitely a con, but I don’t think it’s a make or break for these games
Couch co-op isn’t quite what it once was, but regardless, I still think it should be a standard in most games that could support it; cause like, why the hell not?
@@Viseak Exactly
that and The Crew style always online games like NFS 2015, TDU Solar Crown, The Crew Motorfest, and Forza Motorsport 8 could basically kill the genre as a whole, as in no way you'll ever enjoy these games in any shape or form whenever your internet gets cut off or EA/Ubisoft/Microsoft/Nacon decides to put an end to the online services for these games for good
What? Lack of split screen is the smallest of the problems, also NFS had more realistic physics in the past! Now the physics are bad!
@@adlibbed2138 definitely a HUGE problem we’re only just starting to see the effects of
I wish games were just on the disk man, it’s not too much to ask for
Let’s be honest, NFS Moost Wanted was a blessing and a curse. Every shitty story in modern racing games can trace their roots to that game.
It did it's job tho to convey the basic plot and set up the antagonist I always thought it was a deliberate choice to dumb down the story to make it more akin to the films that inspired it .
Game was perfect bro come on lol
@@Baddman3000 trust me, I LOVE the game, I still bust out my PS2 to play it sometimes, I’d say it’s one day/night cycle away from being perfect.
But it’s masterpiece status is why it’s format was copied, badly.
Tbh, I absolutely LOVE the Most Wanted story. Not because it's good, but because it's just so freaking bad. The over the top acting, cheesy early-mid 2000's edgy characters, absurd story, it's just fun. Paired with the soundtrack, it's like a snapshot of teen focused media as a whole around that time. I think the game is better for it.
For sure, I can see why people hate it, but man I love it so freaking much. Also, unironically, the guy who played Sergeant Cross was genuinely good, and his scenes are super fun to watch.
@@PloopChute This^^^^^^ A lot of people act like "bad" and cheesy writing is bad, when it's almost good... It can even be a overall good thing, because it can make it less forgetable and more impactful... MW story is great because of that, it's terrible, but the blacklist model works great gameplay and story wise (gives a good story arch and great gameplay progression, by default)... The fact that it's so cheesy and 2000's makes it more impactful, specially between the ones that were lucky to play this as teens.
NFS & underground was perfection.
My childhood was Burnout 3, NFS Most Wanted, Midnight Club 3. They were complete, content dense, and fun. Burnout has crash mode, most wanted had a cool story concept and the best police AI, and midnight club 3 had a unique atmosphere and used a fleshed out power system. Nowadays it just feels like copy paste.
A combo of complete, content dense and fun is hard to come across nowadays
It exists, but it sucks that it’s so rare
My 6 year old loves playing burnout now but Forza is not as fun.
Dude, your take on nfs unbound is dead on. If they re-added pursuit breakers to the mix the cops would be totally fine, but they refuse to. And the driving physics are worse than most racing games on PS1. 0% consistency.
i think you mean 'pursuit breakers', not 'speed breakers', pursuit breakers were where you crashed in to something and it killed all police nearby, speed breaker is where the game went in to slow motion
If you complain about Unbound's physics being inconsistent then you either suck or never played it
@@GymmyRhys yup I had it wrong.
@sssveden no no the physics trash real racing 3 has better but that's because I'm more of a sim racing player so I play assetto corsa, beamng, forza motorsport and horizon not the arcade physic style like nfs or the crew which I got all just got the unbound for the convertible mustang and the crew because it was almost cheap but they still don't get play time well unbound did till I was able to get the mustang after that I quit because I can't stands cops and the driving physics I won't even gone unlock the car but I told myself you paid 70 for it so yeah
The reason why some of ya'll think unbound's handling is because your a sim racer, an og nfs player, or just suck at driving.
When i first played unbound i hated the handling, but that because i sucked. But later on i started to adapt to the handling.
I feel like a big problem is that indie developers can’t really break into this market effectively. Indie devs are responsible for every major success I can think of for the past 5 years but racing games hasn’t seen much love.
I think it’s because they can’t afford licences for the cars. We expect to know what cars we’re driving, some of us prefer to drive specific brands. But each car comes with (I assume) a massive price tag. If a developer wanted to make a game like NFSMW 05, they would need to have about 20 or so cars in the game for the player to use and customise (to maintain that rags to riches style progression). If each car cost $1000 to license (which is a significant low ball estimate) then the development cost for the game starts at $20,000.
The only way around this would be to do what Rockstar did with GTA (make off brand versions) or use models that certainly look like the real thing but has a few off details to make difficult to prove. The more successful a game, the more likely someone will lawyer up.
Great observation. I was thinking to myself while reading other comments why indie developers haven’t pushed into this space. I hadn’t t considered the licensing issues which would seem like a massive barrier to anyone starting out
Night Runners needs way more praise in this aspect. It's almost exactly what you're saying (though at a smaller scale). It avoids liscencing by using copycat cars with changed names (might have licensing issues at release) though due to small team, at launch it will have only 10 cars, though even with only one car currently playable, it feels very diverse, especially due to crazy amounts of visual customization and engine modifications.
Highly highly suggest giving it a try since it's free on steam. Unfortunately it won't come to consoles as he actually mentions half way through the video meaning it won't catch mass success but is a phenomenal game nonetheless.
Gemini with their Tokyo Xtreme Racing 1 and 2, didnt have licensed cars, they just use the chassie code (which anyone can use) and took out the decals or just removed a part of the decals and they got away with it.
The last racing game I fondly remember was Need for Speed Carbon. I loved that game honestly. Racked up quite the bounty in police pursuits with my 1970 Hemi Cuda. Mmm she was a beast.
I think for me, the problem with racing games in general is that they lack any form of long-lasting engagement. Grand Turismo was fun, for like an hour. But it got boring racing laps with nothing else going on.
The Burnout series was fun because trading paint was a key secondary element.
At this point, the only racing games I would like to see now, would be a modern reboot of the Star Wars Pod Racer game.
Yeah that’s what’s wild to me, literally none of them can capture my interest for more than an hour or so max
There’s no substance it’s all just so surface level and it really sucks
Carbon holds a special place in my heart, i remember playing it for first time on my bud's pc and getting blown away by the graphics and general aesthetic, not to mention the customization was top of the line with the inclusion of Autosculpt.
I want Ridge racer and wipeout to come back
NFS carbon and undercover just hit different for me
The one racing game I was looking forward to was Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown but then I found out that the actual racing will be essentially multiplayer-only. I'm not a competitive racer, I never will be a competitive racer, I just want to have fun in single-player mode as was possible in the previous Test Drive Unlimited games. I know the Jedi Mind Trick I've seen tried on those of us who are complaining is that "Test Drive Unlimited was always an MMO", which isn't really true. Test Drive Unlimited was always a (sub-)series that had the option to play as an MMO if you wanted to play that way but the first two games also had full-fledged single player career modes for those of us who are simply uninterested in multiplayer.
There are faint rumblings that Nacon may be considering adding single-player racing, which I hope is true because I won't be buying it otherwise.
aww man, well, stick to Wreckfest then despite it has no livery editor. Probably the last great offline racer i played from the last 5 years.
@@meyers0781 Never played Wreckfest. I've mostly been playing PS2 racing games lately since I finally have a PC capable of PS2 emulation.
@@SteveBrandon for me that's the last good non-mandatory-online racing game. It has that PS2 feel and in fact the one that lead me into playing PS2 racing games after i ran out of it.
Aw man really
I haven’t been keeping up with it but TDU Solar Crown was the most promising racing game I’d seen in a while
If it’s all just straight up multiplayer that’s such a damn shame.
But hey, like I said in the video, I’m done getting my hopes up anyway.
@@SteveBrandon If you're into PS2 era racing games, you owe it to yourself to try out Wreckfest. It's basically a spiritual successor to the Flatout series. It's the only racing game I've played in a very long time where you could see that the developers main goal when making the games, was for it to be fun.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that preferred that Underground 2 didn't have cops
ive been playing racing games since as a kid, and man games certainly changed a lot after the 2010s rolled out. that decade was truly memorable to be as i could get to experience most of the games during that time, (nfs hp 2010, blur, mw12, split second, tdu2) and most of the games something had in common, they were just simply fun. whether they financially did great or not, they simply were better than the modern games we have nowadays.
There were some absolute gems in that era too
Micro-transactions really warped a whole industry, it’s crazy
The early Dirt games were fuckin goated.
Racing games have been going downhill since the 2010s. The late 90s and 2000s were peak racing games and while sure current games are a lot more realistic and modern they don't have the charm or satisfaction that the old games did like the midnight club games
The focus on realism over pure fun and quality of life in games these days is definitely frustrating to say the least
I’d say NFS comes the closest to getting it right, however these developers don’t have the right mindset. They tried their best but there’s a fundamental lack of understanding of what made older games good. Whether it’s from the fossils in corporate or the young developers with their silly ideas things are just kinda lame now.
That’s what gets under my skin the most, cause they ARE trying, but somehow they just keep missing the mark and it’s the most frustrating thing to witness from the background
It's clear that a lot of the devs left between NFS 2015 and Heat/unbound. Very clear. The story/characters/writing is just downright cringeworthy in heat and unbound. My buddy was playing unbound and it was near the start, I forget what was said But I was honestly baffled by how whack and childish the writing was. People hate on 2015 cutscenes but that shit was amazing, it made that whole game feel very real along with the insanely realistic city in Ventura bay. It truly is underground 3.
@@codymachado I agree hole heartedly “2015” was great. I’ll take the few moments of cringe over the constant cringe in the new stuff any day.
@@codymachadomany hated on 2k15 cutscenes but imo they were goated, and it is quite ironic they got shit on for the actor's style cuz that's pretty much the same style of the MW05 that everyone jacks off to
@@briancastro313 Bro nah, 2015 and most wanted 05 don't have the same style of acting at all, not whatsoever, not in a million years, 05 is goofy but charming, unintentionally funny, and has that early 2000's "wannabe cool guy who's really lame" vibe, 2015 in comparison feels like what an average 2012 9gag user thinks cool is. And it's awful.
Here's what I did: download pcsx2, ripped my GT4 disc, got the retexture mod, set resolution to 4k. Bliss.
In Underground 2, there was a RPG-like feeling of progression involved with starting out with your unmodified, slow crapcan and winning races, building up enough money to afford nitrous, playing the next races with nitrous, buying engine upgrades, playing the next races with nitrous and engine upgrades, etc. The map unlocked as you completed parts of the campaign and finding the performance parts shops in the new area would allow you to purchase previously locked parts. New cars were scarce and it cost money you didn't have to build up too many of them. This made your car feel unique to you and incentivized you to upgrade and tweak a particular model to its limits. Ironically, being deprived of choices made the game more fun. When you have all the choices in the world, you don't need to upgrade a 350z. You can just buy a Corvette and it would really make more sense to do exactly that.
Halo and NFS are my childhood, to see them in the state they are now really hurts. I'm not joking when I day I wouldn't be the person I am today without those games.
Same here man, Halo CE is one of the first games I ever remember playing
It’s so depressing to see where it’s at right now
@@Viseak I was 4 years old when my Dad didn't know what to do with me when my Mum had to go to appointments. So he taught me to play the PC port for Halo CE, look I was horrible and had many "skill issues" (I was 4 it was pretty much a Master Chief death montage) but even to this day Halo is still a massive bonding thing for me and my Dad
Halo isn’t a racing game but ok
@@madnessarcade7447 if you watched the video you would hear the part in which he mentions older games games that have fallen off, in said list he includes non racing games, including... Halo, please understand what you are saying before you say it
Agree those games were my shit back in 2005 I still played NFS U2 on my og Xbox until it broke in 2012.
We need EA to make an All in One bundle of the games from Underground to Undercover. No DLC necessary, completely functional when offline and on top of it all with split screen support
Honestly you’re right, a Master Chief Collection style game with all the old racing titles would be insane
They don’t even need to be remastered, I just wanna play them with quick loading times on a modern console (I’m aware this is possible on PC but we ain’t all PC enjoyers)
Black Box Bundle
@@fujieight now that’s got a ring to it
I don't trust them to do it. Plus do you really want to give EA more money? These big publishers need to fail or loose tons of money, they need to feel the consequences of their actions. EA ruined many studios and game engines over the years. Just get the old games. Straight up sail the high seas if you need to. I personally bought the Black pc versions of MW 2005 and Carbon and preserved them on my hard drive. And the btw @Viseak if you have Xbox game pass you like you mentioned are part of the problem. They want us to get the subscription, they make more money that way and it's not a good model for the consumer. Gamers need to protect their wallets a bit more and have higher standards. A videogame industry crash would be a good thing.
@@westonstaufenberg7278 hey man, don’t hate the player, hate the game
As it stands, gamepass is probably the best value you can get as a consumer in the industry, especially when so many products just fall apart and you’d feel horrible paying full price for em (like Unbound lol)
The problem is, is it the best thing for developers? Does the business model help them create great games? Maybe not, I don’t know the ins and outs of the industry because I’m not in the industry. However, as a consumer, that’s not my problem to figure out, what am I gonna do? Call the avengers? That’s Microsoft’s issue to sort, not some random bloke in Australia’s issue.
With that being said, it’s not like I don’t buy games anymore. When something comes along that truly feels worth it, something like Elden Ring, Armored Core 6, Cyberpunk 2077 (at least now lmao) then I’ll buy it. I want to put my dollars towards supporting games I feel are genuinely worth it, and I’d say a lot of people fall into that category as well.
And to be clear I don’t constantly hold a gamepass subscription, but when a game comes out I’m a little iffy on, like Persona 3 Reload for example, I’d rather cop the $18 month of gamepass and try it out rather than waste close to $100 on the full game and find out I don’t even enjoy it. That gap used to be filled by rental services like Blockbuster but we’re never going back to that, so it’s really the next best thing and idk how else you’d plan to fill that void.
Without watching the video, my guess is that racing games suck because the car culture is dying down.
- Cars are more expensive than ever.
- Electric cars are not as fun as combustion engine cars.
- Fun movies about cars are not being made (and Fast and Furious is just a wacky movie that happens to have some cars).
- In some places, specially the EU, increasing regulation is making having a car harder or illegal if it's too old.
All these reasons and more are making people disinterested in cars, and in turn, racing games.
And now, I'll watch the video. :)
for me 1 2 and 4 sound like MORE reason to want racing games.
This video popped up on my feed right below FM4’s OST “Paris Rouen,” and just hearing the heart behind that track alone triggered a load of nostalgia making me long for the glory days of racing games. The algo works in mysterious ways.
Sure does, good to see ya here 🫡
the opening line "there was never a better time for gaming" bro what? this is by far the worst time for gaming, for every good release yo have 20 other more that are subpar and a few others that are straight up scams, what are you talking about?
I think the good definitely outweighs the bad man, we’ve seen SO many amazing titles in the past 5 years alone let alone the past decade.
But the problem is, the bad ones are arguably so much worse than ever before so you’re right in that sense.
It’s a weird time, but I reckon it’s disingenuous to say right now is the worst time for gaming ever considering what we’ve got recently
@@Viseak Delusional. Skill Issue.
The last 5 years? RDR2 was the last major game that was hard to disagree with. 2018? 2019? And even that game is behinde some Rockstar BS launcher! Not even played RDR2 for that matter. GTA 5 on the Xbox 360! That and GTA 4! That Xbox got to see some INCREADBLE games. Today? You buy a Xbox S to do anything but play MS games. Mod it or whatever. Only legit reason anyone buys a Xbox anymore. Or give to kids? Something like that?
Elden Ring? Maybe? Have not played any darksouls games yet. Really should play them. Yakosa or whatver seems plausable that I end up playing too. Have a even bigger secret... Not played through Witcher 3... Horror! Shock!
I paused playing it wanting to get a better GPU. And still have not gotten a better GPU.
The only, ONLY way one can even attempt to call the last 5 years good? Well... Never has it been as possible to play actual good games on the go. Or play what ones was 'AAA' games on hardware that is budget friendly. And still have 120fps.
Do not own a SteamDeck. Heck due to GPU prices and shortages/crypto/AI? Everything with the game industry is making is hard to find any joy to buy new hardware. And I mean even console gamers have had a fun time with shortages and consoles completly usless to own. Xbox comes to mind. If you own a gaming pc that is.
TF2. Xbox360. PC Gaming pre BS? That was the best time for gaming. Today the indsutry is so ruined that some Balders Gate 3 whatever seems like the gratest gift and peak gaming. In due time I will look into that game just to come to my own conclutions. I find it hard to imagine it being anything but porno/henti whatever you call such a game. Internet is going to Internet I guess? It seems like nothing actually intresting in it.
Indi games are 100% the only thing keeping the hobby alive. And playing a back catalog of games made before... Last 7 years? Do not get me wrong. Disco Elysium took me years before trying it out. I think it is my latest purchase even? And for what that game is? I adore it. Simply for what it is. I really think it is Eldern Ring and RDR2 that even had a SLIM chance of being called 'grate'. Without it being Indi. Have and will enjoy playing almost any type of game. Do not like platformers and yet Pizza Tower was the game of the year for me. But the game industry said no... Can not let a game drawn in MS Paint win GOY.
And the only reason I'm even considering trying Yakosa or whatever those games are called? Word of mouth.
Last NFS I played was Carbon/MW 2005. MW 2005 is peak NFS for me anyways. Even if MW 2015 looked promising? Nope. Not worth it. If it had a solid singleplayer offline? And good driving physics? Maybe? Yet here we are still playing MW 2005 as it is actually fun. Cops or no cops. MW 2005 is the best NFS. Carbon maybe? UG2? Possibly? Nothing else. Unless playing something truly retro NFS.
we need another midnight club
We do but Rockstar doesn't care.
i've kinda lost interest in newer racing games that i resorted into buying a ps2 and a bunch of old racing games. the newer games just feels kinda stale IMO.
the only "newer" racing game i play these days is wangan midnight maximum tune on the arcade. even that has a lot of recycled content in it.
but hey at least for me racing games are a good way to spend time after work
Yeah that’s it man and that’s exactly how it should be, a good way to spend a bit of time
Not an ongoing subscription draining your bank account
this is me for all modern games, is till play the division 2 with a buddy but thats b/c im playing with a buddy and dont play it solo that often
@@0Heeroyuy01 playing with mates definitely enhances the experience
I just bought a ps3 to play the old games, tried motostorm pacific rift and omg, don't make games like these any more.
I did the same thing years ago. Even bought NASCAR rumble, Star wars pod racer, juiced, automodlista, crash n burn, 187 ride or die, split second and blur because even the non main stream racing games focused more on fun and progression.
i have the same feeling with the starter car issue.
Forza horizon 5 (and same for the 4th one, but less obvious) progression is pretty much absent, you can have access to end game races in like 5-10h of game, no incentive to use low class cars since you have hypercars given nearly directly when you start, while in the first one, you start with low class car, and then have to win to use higher tier cars.
Damn, was happy when i've tried Hot wheels DLC when i've saw that they put this system of locking higher tiers cars behind a win wall
Right? Like it’s just natural progression why the hell get rid of that for instant gratification?
Probably in part to sell micro transactions straight away (cause I guess it’d be kinda gamebreaking to lock ‘good’ cars behind a paywall when no comparable cars are unlockable at the start), and if there were actual progression they wouldn’t be able sell you the ‘good’ cars right away cause you wouldn’t be able to use them until the late game, and these corps aren’t gonna wait for you to maybe spend 10 hours playing until they can make their way into your wallet.
I probably could’ve worded that better but I think I’ve made some sense lol
Honestly the progression system of the hot wheels dlc was really the only thing that kept me playing. It was fun to work upwards. After I finished it I put fh5 down and haven't touched it in months
Response on the morale of the video:
The same goes to everything
Today, the trend is fast content
With the rise of TikTok, people loses their patient and attention span. Racing games, being the least interesting genre, has to throw everything they have at you to keep most players playing and I think it's logical for most game studios to do this as they are not charities. To be honest, I'm not really upset by this, I'm still able to find joy within these "soulless ganes" because a lot of the time, they aren't, they just changed to something else. Instead of locking content behind play time, they now lock content behind free updates (BeamNG, Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, etc).
Response on your point on Forza Horizon:
First, Forza Horizon hasn't really changed all that much(except for the storyline, that's a huge downgrade). It's always the festival simcade racer that priorities freedom. The reason why people is feeling fed up by this, it's because the competition started copying their formula. The new Forza Horizon doesn't have soul and the developers doesn't have passion on the game? This question alone is a disgrace to the developers whom is constantly updating the game, listening to feedback, and answering request from the community.
Yes, when the game launched it wasn't near good, the map is the worst among all entries and the progression system is filled with flaws but why people keep on playing? That's because the game is constantly updating, filling up with something new by both the community and officials. Now, the players are even starting to appreciate the beauty of the game map.
You can always find something new, something beautiful and make friends along the way. Isn't that what racing games were always trying to achieve?
Something I want to say:
Things needs to evolve and they always does. The first generation of super computer is nowhere near close to today's worst computer. Just like ChatGPT wasn't a thing before. We can admire the past but we cannot stay in the past or we'll be left with nothing but an abyss of shattered hopes.
I don't really play NFS, so I reckon I can't make any valid argument on the matter. I'm just trying to say as much as I can from my experience and thoughts growing up with mostly Simcade and Sim racers.(ie, GT, FM, FH, Dirt, etc)
The biggest problem holding modern racing games back are the car companies themselves, racing games have become big advertisements for car companies.
Every game story has to be about a character with no personality who want to be the best because ...they want to be the best... (I'm not saying NFS Carbon or Driver SF were Shakespearian in comparison but at least they tried to give us a story).
On top of this it feels like modern racing games are just going through the motions, no real variety or unique events (Standard circuit race, sprint race, drift events where your the only person participating, maybe a drag race and some form of off road event.) What happened to things like canyon duel from Carbon. Heck why has need for speed never had an event type where to you loose if your car drops below a certain speed?
Anyone else feel like since 2015 event open world racing game set in a city have had a pretty generic layout, all straight lines and 90' turns?
Yeah that is definitely a HUGE problem that I have no idea how to fix.
Cause if a publisher represent a car in a game that isn’t the way a manufacturer wants them to, even something as simple as having an antagonist drive X brand of car, they could be in for a whole wealth of trouble, which seriously sucks and is probably why we don’t see developers pushing the boundaries anymore, it’s just not worth it when they can make a guaranteed profit with micro transactions and playing it safe.
It’s just sad
Eh skill issue. I think there’s just something missing in the progression department for newer games. Making you actually work for the things you need. The new Forza Motorsport does that kind of but some of the races are long and I haven’t played it in a while.
Its the most broken forza game ever made
Yeah I didn’t completely hate the Forza Motorsport system (although sure it probably could’ve been better); but the game didn’t really have much that’d keep me coming back anyway so I dropped it after a few hours
The only racing game I've been excited about since GT5 was Wreckfest.
And somehow Wreckfest has some of the best arcade racing physics I've ever played. Its a bit of a different beast than things like NFSU2, NFSPS, GT4/5, FH3 and the like, but if you want a genuinely good modern racing game, I highly recommend it.
It’s not usually the type of racing game I’d go for but I might have to give it a try, especially if it happens to be in game pass
I was actually going to write a comment regarding wreckfest annd you went already ahead of me. It has an addictive gameplay loop, the driving feels awesome, the ost has this 2000 rock/heavy style attach to it. and hell, it's just plain fun to play it.
Have to agree, this game is so much fun to play, and sadly one rarely talked about.
They’re bad because they either don’t have a good story like the OG NFS Most Wanted or Forza Horizion 1, but also it has issues like the games of service where they recycle cars that have no reason to do so example FH4 and FH5 and the new Motorsport. And the poor quality of how they run as well as content that’s been lost or removed for no reason
Yeah the whole ‘games as a service’ thing has really left a stain on the industry I don’t think we’ll ever fully get rid of
@@Viseak I get it it’s an awesome concept to continue a game life by adding content but if its recycled or been removed to add later to extend a life of a game that pisses ppl off like older cars that were part of the previous game and tracks only to be added later that’s I think very thievery tactics
Developers come and go the ones making NFS now probably aren’t the ones who worked on it back then
NFS Unbound was the comeback title for Criterion Games as the NFS dev team. Prior to that, NFS Heat (2019) was the final installment Ghost Games worked on.
I’m so excited for night runners it makes me excited for the future of racing
I like cops in my racing games when cops are fun. Not when they’re impossible to escape like heat or practically nonexistent like in 2015. I loved running from the cops in most wanted and Carbon it was one of my favorite things to do. I’d hop on Carbon for the sole purpose of causing trouble. My gripe with unbound’s cops is the lack of pursuit breakers. The cops stick to you pretty hard and the only method you have of fighting back is ramming them or getting lucky with traffic. Adding pursuit breakers would make the cops much more fun in unbound.
I agree the burst nos sucks and forces you to race in a way that’s not fun or interesting, but the ridiculously fast competition in single player is actually a feature in my opinion. One thing Unbound made clear is that you’re not expected to win every race. You’re supposed to work your way up to it and I like that. Every arcade racing game I play is almost always disappointingly easy even on the hardest difficulty I never feel like I spend much time fighting for 1st and when I have it it’s smooth sailing to the finish. Unbound made me fight for it and while on the higher speed tiers the rubber banding was bullshit and terrible, it was great in the beginning. I see why they gave a limited amount of restarts but come on, let perfectionists be perfectionists
My BIGGEST gripe about modern nfs in general is the fact that classic muscle cars are ALWAYS cucked out of any sort of performance!
Oh man, I hated the cops in Heat! It's like they knew where you were at all times and it was almost impossible to hide. They were relentless to the point of it not being very fun. And not very realistic when you don't have to do much at all to get them on you. IMHO, I have the same problem with other NFS games developed by Criterion. I don't like how the way they code their cops. Now, mind you, if someone could figure out how to add a Nemesis-style system in a future NFS game, that'd be golden!
@@patrickdodson1713 agreed
@@patrickdodson1713 I don't find the difficulty frustrating, but the lack of ability to fight back. Most wanted made your car and indestructible brick, hot pursuit gave you weapons to fight back, but heat made your car break after 3 hits
@@ileutur6863 Yes, the lack of being able to fight back was definitely annoying. In fact, in Heat, the cops were so relentless. They would be on you for the slightest things, and knew where you were at all times. And Past NFS games were not like this. Whatever happened to line of sight? The games should make the player feel like they can escape successfully, without being rammed by cops all the time.
The reason I think why it had all that stuff is because of value people wanna feel like they are getting their money’s worth so they think more content = better game even if it isn’t true
A "locked" car should only be locked because either you can't afford it or the dealer won't sell you their high spec asset without you managing to go through some sort of licensing/driving school to show you're worthy of such possession.
There could also be some kind of grifter aspect where you could cheat the system to get a huge loan and/or "talk yourself in" but it would involve risking your access to certain brands (maybe even tiers) for good. But that would be too realistic and the car brands wouldn't probably want that sorta thing in the game
Getting endless amount of "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU JUST UNLOCKED A NEW CAR!" notifications after finishing a race is a really numbing experience. Maybe it's fine for some arcade without any credit/money system... but still annoying. (I'm looking at you Hot Pursuit, IIRC)
I rather want to get the first shitbox to near max spec and see how far I can stretch it.
I still have very fond memories of totally maxed out Renault Clio V6 RS in Most Wanted. It shot out from tight spots like a rocket, but being so light it was a task to keep it from police blockades when a ton of them were running at you at the same moment.
Also Golf GTI in ProStreet. It felt just awesome on a Thrustmaster T500RS, as the front tire slip made the steering super loose. A MazdaSpeed3 was also a blast.
As was the Nissan Pulsar GTI-R in GranTurismo. I remember finding it on the used car list and looking at the specs I noticed that it could possibly be a weapon once upgraded to max. And it was. Too bad at that time I had already played the game so much that I couldn't achieve much if anything anymore with it.
the issue isnt the games... its car culture, car culture has devolved so the media around it will too. are the games themselves bad? yeah totally, but thats because you dont need to put effort into a dying hobby. back in the 2000's it wasnt about the fastest cars it was all about tuning what you had. once that shifted to supercars, it got ruined because supercars companies are ANTI tuner and anti street racing, they dictate what goes in these games now.
Yeah I get what you mean, the supercar craze definitely hurts the genre
The thing is you can still do cool stuff with certain Supercars/Exotics, but like you were saying, I doubt the companies behind them would ever allow that to happen because they’ve got an ‘image’ to uphold
Any Burnout chads in the comments?
We are the lazy generation 🤙🏽
Rival GT, Expo video enjoyer here
As the Tables Turn,
It's the First day Of The Rest Of Your Life.
Specifically speaking, Midnight Club 2 will always be one of my top favorites.
I wish I could just say "skill issue" and that all the games are fun to play, you're just getting older and thus the games aren't entertaining any more. How ever, as you referenced, many other TH-cam content creators have voiced many similar opinions on the state of racing games, not just in general, but also in specific. One who I feel has given a wonderful insight would be Roflwaffle who did a video titled "Nostalgia Bias in the Racing Game Community" which touches on many of the same points that you made. Anything from what many people considered to be peak racing games like the EA Black Box Need For Speed Games and Midnight Club 3 / Dub Edition, to even more simulation based games such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport.
I personally feel the biggest problem that we have is a grand disconnected between what we as a consumer want versus what developers want, and subsequently producers expect. Referencing Roflwaffle, comments that are often made or "Why can't they just make Need For Speed like they used to?" or "Why can't they just remake (insert game title)?" At the same time, newer games are getting critically panned by fans with simplistic statements about "(insert game title) sucks, don't play it, it's not worth your time or money." This is terrible for both consumers and developers because what we (hopefully as a collective) want and don't want isn't being accurately articulated to the developer. At the same time, whether by developers choice or producers choice, new elements are introduced to new or existing game franchises, because if we just want more of the old stuff, we can just get the old game that already does what we want.
Unfortunately, a large contributor to the problem is consumerism in general. What keeps developers employed is releasing product for consumers to purchase. Because of this, we've seen many series turn into a regularly iterated franchise. While this is most prominent in traditional sports games so as Madden and NBA 2K, we see similar problems with racing games as well. For instance, Need For Speed EA BlackBox games were released yearly starting from 2002 to 2008, with the highlight being Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted, and Carbon. In some ways, this allowed for iterative development, but it also meant for those who enjoyed the tuner scene, from the time we started Underground to the time we finished Undercover, the series became bland and stale. Couple this with people who complained that Hot Pursuit 2010 and and Most Wanted 2012 were bad and wished that EA would return to "Need for Speed's roots" ignored what EA did for the original Need for Speed games.
With all of this said, it isn't explicitly we the consumers fault. As mentioned, triple a development, budgets, and profit margins lead to a large problem as well. Gone are the days of our fun on the fifth and sixth generation gaming where developers were allowed to try new and interesting things. In today's market, if a games profit isn't exceedingly shadowing the budget, it's viewed as a critical failure, doomed to at best go dormant, and at worst become extinct (Midnight Club is cancelled soz).
The truth of it for me is that I can ignore aesthetics like film grain and rain, the analysis paralysis from too many choices and too large of map, I can even ignore a car roster being too big or too small. I cannot ignore that the games are just no longer fun. I do feel that you hit the nail on the head, that much of what we have been offered does need to be scaled back. We need a good story that gives a reason to continue playing, we need good objectives that give us a good reason to continue playing, and we need a sense of progression that makes us feel like we're reaching some form of conclusion. The greatest problem is to get a good consensus for the consumer on what they want, to be able to present it to a developer for consideration, and to have some form of liaison between consumer and developer to be able to make adjustments, instead of the track that we're on that certain groups of consumers are ignored indefinitely, or in the event of something like Forza Horizon where everything is thrown at a wall and we see what sticks and what doesn't.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the EA Black Box Need for Speed games, I loved Midnight Club 2 and 3 / Dub Edition, I even enjoyed some slightly obscure titles like Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Genki titles, Juiced, Street Racing Syndicate / The Fast and The Furious (Tokyo Drift), but the truth is you can only revisit a street racing game so many times, the same way you can only revisit circuit track racing games so many times, before it feels like there isn't much of anything new that can be done. I feel as a consumer, instead of reboots, we need more of a reset. We need the ability to have a clean break of what racing games were and what racing games have become, and focus more on what racing games can be.
Ah, I love when my own community gives me more good video essays to watch
Already chucked Roflwaffles one into my watch later hahaha
And you’re right, it’s true we can just go back and play the old games for that thing we want, but at the end of the day you can only do that so many times until you want a new iteration of that same thing.
A perfect example for me is Armored Core 6, people have been FEINDING for a new entry for years and when we finally got it, it was fucking phenomenal. Sure, there were some small things some of the more vocal old heads weren’t 100% happy about, and that’s always gonna happen with any game, but overall, it had an extremely positive reception.
It retained what made Armored Core so special and just brought that into the modern day, no significant cut backs, just straight GAS.
That is what I want from a modern racing game and now I feel kinda dumb I didn’t mention it in the video lmao
But I get it, it’s hard for publishers especially when you’ve got so many people pulling you in different directions, and I can imagine it’s a decision from much higher up the chain that micro-transactions MUST be implemented in some capacity, which is like, the one thing everyone unanimously agrees is hurting these games.
It is hard to predict what people will want though, and like you said when they can’t iterate year on year like they used to (not that they ever truly had to) it does get harder to experiment, and I get people being over all the tuner games in the early 2000’s, they definitely fatigued that style the same way festival racers are super fatigued now.
But yeah, like you’re saying as well, a game that actually makes you care is instrumental. It’s why single player games have started making a resurgence, everyone is sick of live service, it’s so ironic that the games with the most longevity aren’t the ones with ‘10 year plans’ behind them.
Your last statement sums it up pretty well, a reset would be amazing, starting from the ground up and just delivering a complete product that can leave an impact is what racing games need, but likely, will never get.
And well, the part I find most depressing is that the fifth and sixth generation of gaming is where my fondness lies (I know, I'm showing my age). Using a game like Armored Core 6 as an example, I have much love for the first through third generation of Armored Core. Not that 4 / For Answer, 5 / Verdict Day, or 6 have done anything explicitly wrong, FromSoftware put forth much effort to not only give us great stories but also to give varied game play. But 4th, 5th, and now 6th generation Armored Core isn't first through third generation of Armored Core, the same way that Most Wanted 2012 isn't Most Wanted 2005. When it comes to Armored Core, I'm not fond of energy shields, auto / quick boost, and fps style controls, I like my traditional tank controls, barely managing energy values, and using square and circle to attack.
I feel that my opinion of earlier generation Armored Core (and Need for Speed) is applicable to the comment that you had made about Night Runners. As previously stated, I do enjoy the Tokyo Xtreme Racer / Shotokuo battle styles games that Genki produced, and I do believe that it is 100% applicable to your notion of "setting a game in a time era", but I also agree with what you said about it being an independently developed game. I hope that it reaches main stream status, gains more traction and following, but the grim reality is that more than likely, other than people like you and I who are actively pining for something of this style, few people truly care about it, and it makes it hard for developers and producers to care.
It's just frustrating that there are many of us that can identify an era, or even specific qualities of gaming, and say "We just want that again" and it's being missed. And the secondary problem to that falls back to what I was saying with consumerism, the only way we can make our voice heard is by buying what we like and not buying what we don't like, but frequently with developers if something fails to sale properly, it's considered a failure, and instead of critically examining why customers aren't purchasing the game, they decide that customers just don't want it at all (RIP Midnight Club / Smugglers Run).
I still really think that the best thing that could be done is the formation of some kind of advocacy group where consumers can discuss what they want from who, and then that advocacy group to be a liaison between customers and developer / publisher to petition (hopefully) in the best interest of consumers.
@@TheChikyChiky Yeah that’s perfectly fair enough man, everyone’s got their own preferences and you’re right, it is beyond frustrating that we can point out an era we like, voice that we just want something iterating on that, and still have developers miss the mark and say ‘what’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy? We tried, we did what you wanted?’ Brother NO YOU DID NOT you tried to appease EVERYONE and ended up making NOBODY happy.
And it’s not like I’m stuck in the past and just want Underground 2 again for example, I want something BETTER. Rather than a failed attempt at trying to recapture what made that game so special.
I think that’s what AC6 did so right, there’s lots of love out there for ACFA and rightfully so, it’s bloody good. But fromsoft didn’t just make ACFA again, or anything a hell of a lot like it, they took what worked, and improved upon it, and gave us something completely new that iterated on what everyone loved.
That’s what we need for racing games imo.
Btw, I watched the Roflwaffle video, and it was great, can’t say I have a problem with anything he brought up outside of maybe some minor disagreements in the importance of a games OST, thanks for the recommendation man
I really do appreciate this back and forth, I eagerly wait for the next video, and I really hope that an Underground 2 Like (if that is applicable?) is developed and released soon.
I get the impression that you're the kind of person who would be happy to sit down at a table with a beverage of choice and discuss a given topic with passion for endless hours, and I enjoy that.
@@TheChikyChiky hey no worries man, replying to comments and havin an actual conversation is one of my favourite things about TH-cam, it shouldn’t just be an echo chamber of what I think
And you’re right, get me going and I can yap about shit for hours with just about anyone
I don't understand the notion that a game can't be great because "it doesn't have AAA funding" behind it. That couldnt be more false. The backing is to have a bigger team to get more done faster and please investers, and has nothing to do with how good a game is. The most inventive, satisfying games are indies with a small team, or in some cases, just 1 person making them lol. Money doesn't create good ideas, it just helps get them completed quicker.
For the most part I don't disagree with you. I think what he was trying to get at with the statement is that real life cars cost a lot of money to license into the games, so the street racing sim part of the games can't exist in the same way without that budget.
More like another episode of niche topic that I want everyone talking about cause this shit means something to me
Damn straight that’s how we do things round here 🫶🏼
Im confused, unbound never gave me any free cars, only the prize cars for completing the qualifiers
Technically you can get dlc cars for irl money and there are pass cars but yeah
Certainly NOT a skill issue. I disagree with some of your points but overall a pretty solid essay about modern racing arcade games.
Cheers man appreciate you hearing me out and watching till the end none the less
One gameplay tip for Unbound, is for every race but the Sunday eliminators, you can make more money by running a lower specced car and getting bigger bet payouts with slower racers. So you strategically bet against someone you know won't win the race, but makes big bets, so you might only have to place 2nd or 3rd and win more money than having a max spec car and coming in 1st.
You can also win enough money to fully spec out your car to win the weekly challenges without hitting 5 police stars everyday, which meant I spent a lot less time being chased by police. I feel most people's problem is they feel the need to win every race available for max money, get 5 stars before the night begins and then wonder why they spend all night being chased by cops. I would regularly end nights at 4 or 4.5 stars until I unlocked the police scrambler so they take longer to recognize you.
It's trying to get you to play a certain way and I feel a lot of people just ignore the signs.
Come on, you're telling me the best way to "win" is not to come first place. In a street racing game. That's asinine. Good on you for figuring it out, but most people race to win, not to optimize cash payouts based on whatever nonsense system the game wants you to run.
Titles like ug, mw, carbon, prostreet, & 2015 had the vision for a good racing title, I sometimes imagine what 2015 would have been if it only had more content as prior titles,slightly bigger map aggressive cops, tons of customization to mix and match, autosculpt.. customization feels dry lately, and theyve even removed the option to shift with the analog stick which has been in prior titles and made it so you shift claw with lb and rb(Xbox) instead of adding multiple options, they need to use their imagination when it comes to parts apart from the stuff they get from actual manufacturers, I'm surey ou snd the viewers here have already pictured some awesome parts for the cars they use, what happened to roofscoops?... Picture a NFS with 2015 graphics & lighting, in a map detailed like carbon itd be awesome
atleast nfs is one of the few trying to innovate in different styles
Yeah I can’t knock them for that, and honestly I don’t mind the styling of Unbound either for example
The biggest thing for me is the gameplay, which is just, rough
@@Viseak yea they’re gonna release a new handling physics system with the new update i also feel like they should have kept heats police system but fixed the issue with cops basically killing you in one hit
There is one big huge giant problem: In the old days, better cars, or better tuning meant better chances for victory. That changes with NFS Ghetto Tuning 1 and 2 (which OP seems to love). Which went all in with cheating AI. While in previous NFS games your disability to break in time was your biggest enemy, the took that away with utterly unrealistic driving physics and introduced rubber band ai from hell. Fast forward to today: Enemy AI does not really matter, nothing matters. You get a faster car? Hell, enemies get a faster car, too. You get a bigger engine? No Problem, YOU get a bigger engine and YOU get a better engine and YOU get a bigger engine, EVERYBODY gets a bigger engine. There is no progression if enemies progress with you. There is no sense of archievement, if you can beat nearly all(single player) races with a stock starting car. It is great for Multiplayer, but dear lord it sucks for SP.
Nah I agree with ya, the rubber banding is absolutely insane
Like sure, the opposing cars do have to scale a little with you as you progress, otherwise there’s 0 competition, but to your point, it is kinda weird they progress in line with you so much that it feels like you aren’t progressing.
I don’t hate the idea of there being a final boss or something crazy like that in a racing game though, similar to how souls games do it, where they give you an impossible boss to start with, literally a race you cannot win, and by the end of the game you progress far enough to be able to beat that driver.
For a minute I thought they were gonna go down that route with Unbound and your car getting stolen but eh, not quite
Sounds more like an issue with rubberbanding AI rather than progression because difficulty scaling in video games is literally part of game design 101. Player gets better, game gets harder to match the player's skill and experience or else the game becomes too easy and unfun like beating up a vegetable.
Skill issue. I do wish someone would go back and make an old school street racer. What drives me most insane is all these modern racers get crazy high scores when in Forza horizon case they're no different to the previous game
I thought the reason my gaming experience in this game was so horrible was because i was forcing myself to only use the BRZ
Nah it’s honestly just built like that, and it’s beyond frustrating
I completely disagree with your opinion on Unbound. Nobody is forcing you to use burst nitrous and it's absolutely not needed to win any singleplayer races, even on the hardest difficulty - well at least if your car is fast enough, and you're decently skilled at racing games. I often just don't use it at all and race like that while still racking win after win... I also don't get bashing on the driving physics, you can literally turn off brake to drift, stability control, and other crap like that to actually gain control over your car. You can finally go full grip without drifting on every corner, also grip racing is now actually FASTER than drifting - It's finally the way it should've been from the very start. No offence, but from the clips in this video I can clearly see you're not good at this - trying to drift a FWD car, not using racing lines, etc. So if the game's too hard for you; my brother in Christ, just choose a lower difficulty setting. It's there, and it even gives you more restarts for the night, without any negatives whatsoever - you still earn the same ammount of rep and cash. It's really not the game's fault, you can tweak your experience however you like, yet you actively choose to have it up the hill.
The only point I agree with is the cops, as they really can be a huge pain in the ass at times. It's not the same feeling as in Most Wanted, where it was fun, challenging, and stressful at the same time, while in Unbound cop chases are just annoying.
I’m not gonna act like I’m some god at racing games, but I’m not THAT bad by any stretch
The racing in Unbound just didn’t gel with me, no matter what I did I just couldn’t quite figure it out. The cars would never do what I wanted them to do, and I purposely put in footage of me struggling rather than cherry picking moments where I kinda got it to illustrate that point.
To be clear, I’m not using brake to drift in a fwd car cause I think it’s supposed to work, I’m doing it cause it’s really the only option.
The cars not fast enough to get any value out of grip turns, so at a bare minimum spamming brake to drift (which just works on a fwd car anyway cause arcade racer I guess) is the only thing that works to fill burst nos, which is the only real thing getting you ahead.
I had the same issues in my S14 I started the game with, cars just seem to fuckin go everywhere in Unbound, you’ve got so little true control it feels like trying to hold a stick of butter. Make the tiniest nudge in your joystick and suddenly you’re fishtailing everywhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s some tuning I could’ve done to make it a little better but even then, no matter what I changed or how I tried to play, it all felt like I was being tunnelled down into burst nos, if I wasn’t spamming A I wasn’t getting anywhere, and that’s a fundamental flaw.
Sure, I could’ve lowered the difficulty, and sure, I might’ve won more, but that doesn’t change the way the driving in the game feels which is my main problem. I don’t mind a challenge, I don’t need to win every time, hell I love games like Dark Soul, but with Unbound, when it feels impossible without using the games niche mechanics, it’s kinda annoying. (And I get it, it’s a new mechanic, it should be used, that’s the purpose of adding it in the first place, and I’m not against innovation, but I just don’t gel with the way it seems to change everything about driving which is a real thing that should feel a certain way).
And yeah, the cops are honestly my biggest frustration even above burst nos I feel like I didn’t emphasise that enough. Even just then, I spent 10 minutes running away from the police trying to get back to my garage to check if I was on the lowest difficulty. Could I have googled it? Sure, but far out I didn’t expect to be bombarded like that.
Even if we can’t agree man, I’m glad you had fun with the game, AND, I’m glad you shared your experience. Not everyone’s gonna agree with me and that’s cool
Its the lack of real suspension tuning, tire pressure etc. all the grip to drift bar does is open and lock your cars diff. (At best) It doesn’t soften up springs to soak up bumps better. You cant put more tire pressure in there rear than in the front to break into a slide easier. Softer front allows more direction.
Alot of other components that were once customizable are now static. Unbound could literally add a handbrake strength bar and the game is already 10x better in the driving department. I think suspension tuning and dyno tuning is the easiest way to open a more competitive skill gap and allow diverse handling tuned to your style of driving.
@@Viseak big respect for not brushing off my comment as hate, as some people would
@@dusterpl6093 bro it’s all love here I don’t care if we don’t share the same views, it’s cool, this channel never has been and shouldn’t ever be an echo chamber
People are always gonna have different opinions it’s a fact of life so why get bent out of shape for it you know?
You took the time to watch and leave a comment on my video that had substance even though you don’t like/agree with what I said, and I gotta respect that enough to at least give you the time of day. Different story if you just threw out a ‘you suck you’re wrong’ or something lmao
I agree with this comment. I think Unbound's handling is great - it's biggest issue is its not very clear on how to actually use brake-to-drift. Once you actually modulate the throttle and control the angle of the car, drifting is an absolute joy in this game, resembling something closer to Daytona USA. But the game doesn't tell you this - it just says how to initiate, and every drift feels like a slow, oversteering mess. The video shows a lot of oversteer which absolutely is frustrating. Grip driving has a similar approach - you need to modulate the throttle far more in this game than the Black Box or 7th gen Criterion NFS games.
I think Unbound has a lot of issues, like as noted with the poor collision detection, and the cops are very aggressive. I like the style of the game even if it feels completely fabricated. I think the event structure is not given enough credit here - IIRC, lower tier races are typically on the east end of the map, and the higher tier events and safehouses in the west are available as the weeks go by - but it's not as explicit as the Black Box games. The same event structure and game design/ progression really does emphasize the relationship with your car - you're not going to come first, your going to be hard on money, and that's OK. It's a challenging game until you wrap your head around it. I get that it's different than past NFS games in many, many ways, but I don't think that makes it bad.
Are there issues with the general direction of racing games? Absolutely, as this video generally hits on. While not perfectly addressing all the problems of modern racers, I do think Unbound gets closer to answering those qualms than most.
I remember sitting down at a demo at i wanna say it was a best buy where they had a gaming pc with dirt 3 and a force feedback wheel setup and it blew my mind out of the back of my head. It was never quite the same when I got my own setup at home, idk if it was the lower end wheel or how inconvenient it was to setup, or the fact that it had been several years since that demo but I just didn't enjoy it as much.
NO MORE SPLIT SCREEN FUN FOR FRIENDS OFFLINE???? ONLINE ONLY AVAILABLE TO PLAY WITH OTHERS??? NOPE IM GOOD. THAT'S WHY I HAVE FORZA HORIZON series. Last great NFS besides the obvious classics like Most Wanted/Underground but besides those NFS SHIFT will always be my fav NFS because of the customization options. Some were far superior to even Forza. Need for Speed needs to hire a different Game engine va this Arcade template of driving physics they been using since forever! SHIFT1-2 are thr only NFS games that didn't feel like how you would expect other NFS titles to feel like. For some reason all these car gaming companies are ignoring JAPAN in terms of being the designated City to drive in. They know everyone wants to drive Touge and run the Japanese expressways. Like stop playing with the car culture. They went everywhere but Japan and if your lucky you might just get to race on a track out of Japan that's it. There is No open world in gaming where you can drive to different prefectures in its fullest detail possible compared to all other cities used in racing games. I wanna race in Tokyo I don't wanna have to always fight people do other shit other than Martial Arts out of Japan/China
last good game that still had passion in it was fh3. There hasn't been any other open world racing game since that has been good. It's sad when a crash physics game (BeamNG) is still king of open world fun these days that has really fun gameplay and drifting mechanics. I don't expect much from test drive 3
Onrush had a soul. And the community left it to fucking die. Because "ITS CHASIJG THE HERO TREND".
Also because it was primarily a car combat game with objectives instead of traditional races.
Gran Turismo 7 in VR is amazing, i cant even imagine having that as an option as a kid.
Problem is that the story mode works around the the Café, the most elitist and higienist idea ever.
Otherwise, there's no racers with own personalities, no plot, no drama. It's all about complete a car menu, learn about cars, repeat.
@@Drift4Driftersthat’s essentially gran turismo, the previous games didnt have stories.
@@Drift4DriftersThats essentially gran turismo, the previous games didnt have a story.
@@Drift4Driftersthat’s always been what GT is and what I want from the games. There is no BS subscription or whatever. They keep adding content for free. The only paid thing you can do is buy credits but it’s such an obviously bad purchase that nobody bothers (and I’m fine with that).
At its core it’s still a sim-y racing game for nerds, that has the best car personalization it’s ever had, and an incredible VR experience if you want it. 8/10 game.
As a kid you had no money for the cash grab feature, with the unique cars blablabla pay up sucker.
Because the people who direct and make these games now dont love or know anything about the thing that Racing games are about... the cars. Its just a succession of an idea execution now and no change or innovation that the genre still have to offer but are never implemented.
I used to be a big fan of racing games, but out grew the shitty A.I. of all the racing games.
Racing games were fun when I was bad at them, but as I got better, nothing could provide a fun challenge.
You could make the A.I. harder, but most of the time it just enables cheats for the A.I. where they are on rails and ignore whether condition physics.
So you only have two options as a seasoned race game player.
1. Be bored out of your mind while lapping everyone.
2. Be frustrated as hell by A.I. that ignores all handling handicaps.
The only real solution is to play real players and I don't like doing that because they are most often worse than the A.I. plus there is no progression system to work towards when playing online.
fully agree, it had to be said. i did enjoy unbound and the handling of heat was the worst of the newest era of these games but for me nfs carbon will always be the top, the best balance of everything. nfsu2 is legendary too close second perhaps. good video
Thanks man really appreciate it
It’s crazy how black box really captured lighting in a bottle and nobodies been able to really do it again since
@@Viseak one day it might be made, all itll take is funding the right director and studio
@@Ricys if the night runners team had the funding they might be able to pull it off, but that’s about it right now
@@Viseak idk. their kickstarter is doing good and their goals were huge and were setback , i dont have too high hopes for nightrunners but its still a good demo though not the best game that'd reshape the industry imo
arcade racer but tried hard to feel realistic... first thought that came to mind when i played one of the more recent NFS at a friends house...
Apart from being online mostly I’d say its the requirement of it being a next gen console like unbound and 2015 was when I was still on the 360 is my biggest gripe with unbound for me since I haven’t played it yet
In 2015s case it’s either the cops being a bit too easy to get away from, you can’t wreck them or you can escape them by going on the freeway are by main issues with 2015 and story can be kinda short but that’s just me
Idk dude, most of your complaining about Unbound leads to skill issue. Not jk
Oh for sure
The thing I always come back to though gameplay wise is that I’m perfectly fine in games like Horizon, and in games with worse handling like NFS2015, even though I don’t love it, I can get used to it and adapt in like 5-10 minutes
But Unbound? Idk what to say man it’s just wild and I can’t help but blame burst nos lmao
i haven’t watched the full vid but an amazing racing game that recently dropped that i’ve been keeping an eye on for a bit now is Night Runners, it’s a 1 man made game that’s been the most promising racing game imo for the last 2-3 years it’s been in development- i suggest everyone check out Night Runners if you enjoy a mix of nfs underground ideals and games of that era + Wangan Midnight
Yeah man I really need to install a virtual machine on my Mac and play night runners
I’m sure I’d enjoy the fuck out of it even if it’s just a demo
@@Viseak i’m pretty sure it’s slowly being fully released as of a month or two ago actually, but definitely worth grabbing!
also, not 100% sure you’d need a VM, as it’s a steam game if im not mistaken :)
@@sleezyzzzI’ll have to have a look, didn’t think it’d be compatible with Mac but you never know!
@@Viseak sounds good man, would be a great vid opportunity 👀
@@sleezyzzz or even a good stream at some point 🤔
NFS Heat night racing was close... they should focus their next NFS on that and expand on it
I might need to give heat a second shot
I tried it and passed on it quick cause I’m just not a fan of the police, but I hear some good things so maybe if I grin and bear it I might enjoy it after playing it for a little longer
Do you rate it?
@@Viseak if you dont like the police maybe isnt for you... but the cop chases in heat can become really intense. Just brutal at higher heat levels
@@87agomes yeah I’m inclined to agree, but then I hear how good the driving can feel and it makes me a little envious
It’s a shame I just can’t get past the cops feeling like a chore rather than a feature, but it is what it is
I really felt your point about the lack of progression by throwing cars at the player, when I played Horizon 5 and saw that I somehow had a Hurracan I was like: "what's even the point?". There's not even a campaign in that game, just some random stories about the grandma of some NPC I don't give a shit about, where's the rivalry, or the responsibility of organizing the festival?
But I have to disagree with the cops since I love police chases, and no, GTA is nowhere near as fun to get away because you don't achieve high speeds over there.
Honestly, i havent played a racing game since most wanted and Carbon for the Xbox. NFS Unbound has brought me back to the good ol days and it feels great jumping back into a racing game after almost 15 years. I dont have any problem with it other than the soundtrack and i fix that by popping in an earbud with my own playlists. The story isnt horrible and the character interactions are fun and barely take up a minute per drive. Maybe its because im not a jaded gamer, but i can honestly say Unbound feels as fun if not more than Carbon, most wanted, underground and underground 2.
With all due respect a lot of your opinions are crazy to me lol. I need full customization from the beginning, I love the way nfs unbound looks (I can’t believe they brought the auto modellista aesthetic to the series). Police belong in street racing series, that’s why we have other series that don’t. Going fast in a racing game is like going fast in a sonic the hedgehog game, it’s expected. Idk man I’ve been playing racing games seriously since 2002 and my main complaint about racing games today is the technical hiccups, not graphics controls or something else that really doesn’t matter. Give me my favorite cars and solid mechanics with smooth multiplayer, I’m good. Also git gud
Don't let people gaslight you into thinking you're the problem. There is not a single modern arcade style racing game like NFS that's actually good. Every game now is just feeling like tik tok speedrun simulator where you are constantly thrown cringey one liners and dropped into a sea of 4 morbillion cars. All with uninspiring physics, gameplay, damage models, visuals, music, and stories. I can't fuckin take this shit anymore. I had more fun playing the demo for nightrunners for 20 minutes than I did playing the entirety of fh4 and fh5 combined. It's not just a racing game issue, it's everywhere. It doesn't even stop at games. TV shows movies music, they're all the exact same.
Yeah it’s wild man, it all just feels like the entertainment version of fast food, and all I want is a nice restaurant dinner
Doesn’t even need to be Michelin Star just something 😭
@@Viseak I recommend beamNG drive, devs will treat you so well that you'll feel bad for not giving them more money.
Idk, Unbound will go down as one of the best in the series. Rough start, but it's awesome now.
I want another 1nsane. Very simplistic offroad racing game with the biggest selling point being the very realistic suspension and damage model (at the time) that could completely deform and change how your truck handles. Do you spend a few seconds to repair after a crash or do you keep driving with a twisted chassi to hopefully grab another checkpoint before your opponent does?
*Midnight Club 3 Dub edition remix was the peak of racing games*
Ah someone with a based take
Early 90's to early 2010's was the peak of racing games.
FTFY.
17:59 the reason there aren’t any 90s-2000s themed games is because some people like modern supercars and they might not be intrested in drifting or drag racing jdm cars
I feel like there’s a MASSIVE audience that does not care for Supercars in general, let alone modern ones.
I think Supercars are cool and all, but in a more crafted/soulful racing game, I’d be happy with none at all, and it doesn’t just have to be JDM cars either, there are plenty of euro, American and even bloody Australian cars from back then that I’d love to see in games
@@Viseak yes but there is still a big market for supercars which is enough potential customers to make a game studio add them in
@@caledonianrailway1233 for sure, but those games already exist in abundance
So it seems odd not to make something different
@@Viseak I think one of the best examples of what you're speaking to is Gran Turismo 5 right? there's loads of really high end cars but just as much attention is paid to japanese econo-boxes, 90's euro wagons, hell it even had a falcon and a monaro.
granted not every racer can be a GT5.
@@kosmokat111 yeah GT5 was iconic, it had an awesome campaign and great selection of cars
But that’s more of a sim-cade game, I’m looking for something more arcadey, with an actual story to get me invested, and a smaller more curated selection of cars.
I think Driver San Fransisco did this pretty well, but it did lack in variety of cars, like it had 15 different chevy’s but not a single Japanese car, sad!
Here's a thing about racing game stories, though. With all the social media we have today, I think there is zero chance to have an underground racing scene. You'd do one race, and it would be all over the internet by, at the very least, people randomly filming you race past them. There is simply no chance for sub cultures or scenes these days anymore; as soon as you do something, the world knows.
Yeah 100%, I talk about that a little in my Initial D video funnily enough
That’s why I kinda was advocating for a game set in the past, somewhere in the 80s/90s/00s would be awesome
But I doubt we’ll ever get it, cause then it’d be impossible to sell the newest hypercars in some race car battle pass thing 😔
I personally am loving NFS Unbound, finding the driving, the burst NOS, the cops, even the story and dialogue a lot of fun so far.
Though I do think you're right about how great NFSU2 is - unlocking certain parts of the map as you progress (meaning the map has more of a memorable set of distinct districts with their own flavour rather than a big blob of roads like heat and unbound have), the vast array of customization where they weren't scared to make each car have 40 hideous but charming bumpers and spoilers instead of just rocketbunny, and the slow reveal of cars!
I’m glad you enjoyed it seriously, more power to you
I wish I could too but there’s just too much that irks me to look past. But that’ll never be a universal experience so again if you liked it it’s cool
The vast customisation is something I really miss too, just random unofficial bits and bobs that kinda look cool for the sake of it. Now it’s mostly official brands and there are so few of them that’d allow themselves to be in an illegal street racing game.
Like you can still get cool real life parts like Mugen, Toms, MINE’s etc but getting licensing to put them in games might be a challenge.
@@ViseakUnbound has a ton of fake parts
All the Carbon, Chidori, Nextech, etc parts are fake
9/10 the speedhunter parts are fake too
Personally I was impressed to see some lesser known kits/parts like the Vorsteiner kits, Voltex kits, Mansory kits, most Varis kits, etc
6:40 facts man. If you have seen MFG its the same thing with it its soulless
100% man it’s frustrating
NIGHT-RUNNERS™ looks pretty cool
Quite the hidden gem, this is the small studios/developers era
Great take on Racing games! Curious though what that display case in the back is. Im digging the Aesthethic.
It’s bloody heavy is what it is hahaha
I got it second hand so I’m not 100% where it’s from, I just know it’s not IKEA unfortunately cause I can’t find another one 😭
If some of my older videos didn’t give it away, it’s also filled with Zoids model kits
Sim racing is where its at! I know this is more about the pad on console experiences but sim racing is a rapidly growing niche market that is in a mind blowing point with peripherals and different sims with insanely accurate scanned courses with amazing physics with a wheel and pedal.
Yeah sim racing definitely feels like the move, but the investment is still kinda pricey to get started 😅
@Viseak yea the initial jump can feel like a gut punch, but it really brings the fun back to racing games. I stopped playing for a long time and got back into it recently and now its become all I play. Bought a t300 and slowly the upgrades start coming in as you inevitably look for more realism. It 100 percent becomes an expensive hobby but that immersion you get is worth it. I promise you if you ever try GT7 on ps5 with psvr2 and even just an entry level wheel and pedals you will be blown away. As a mid 30s guy this experience alone reminded how far we have come and it's absolutely epic.
@@scottd7222 Sim games feel like work to me. After I come back from a long day, I'm looking for a power fantasy, not braking zones and tire management
I’m surprised you didn’t mention forza motorsport which is a lesson in why you must pay your devs or else
That’s a whole other can of worms for sure 💀
I mainly wanted to stick with arcade racers for this one, and even then I mainly talked about NFS 😅
@@Viseak fair enough
@@caledonianrailway1233 older motorsport or new one?
@@diecastreviewracing new one
I agree with you it’s been a long time since I’ve played a racing game
Right?
It’s such a shame cause they used to be such a staple in the gaming industry
@@Viseak agreed
First I'd like to say that I'm happy to see that someone else dislikes the cops in NFS. They are super annoying for me, but everyone that I have ever talked to absolutely loves them and wants even more of them.
Second, at 43:37 idk, most of the car edit videos I've seen have absolutely horrible music.
Third, it feels like racing games are all Sim racing nowadays. Arcade racers are rare. NFS is seemingly the only free roam arcade racer. Forza Horizon is a sim-cade, (and also FH5 is so bad that I wouldn't play it if I got it for free). Hot Wheels Unleashed is also seemingly the only track racer that is decent. I just want another game like Midnight Club 3.
Yeah the cops are just, not fun, and what baffles me is we’ve gone 20 years straight with cops in every need for speed game, why not just exclude them for once? It wouldn’t hurt.
The music thing is subjective let’s be real, my main issue is the lack of tracks with any oomf while racing, like cmon we need a little something to get us going
Sim racing definitely feels like it’s taking prevalence, but I wouldn’t call Horizon sim-cade, it’s far more forgiving than an actual sim-cade like Motorsport for example. It does feel weirdly somewhere in between though, it’s not QUITE arcade but not harsh enough to be a sim-cade, and I quite like it. While not perfect, Horizon probably has my favourite handling of all the modern arcade racers I’ve played.
The last game that genuinely had me hyped was Gran Turismo 7, and that was mostly due to it was my favorite racing franchise growing up. But nowadays, it's becoming really hard to even want to play that. I've crossed over to Forza Motorsports 7 and FH5, and I was initially impressed, but now after 1 year of FH5, I don't even look at it anymore, FM7 holds my attention when on PC. I thought I was crazy when games just doesn't scratch an itch anymore, and need for speed just doesn't scratch the street racing and police chase itch.
As you said, racing games doesn't have the soul (Gran Turismo hardly had an exciting soul, but more of your rich aunt soul), and it seems like it's a money game for game companies. We just gotta wait for Indie games to get the money and optimization. I really can't wait for a new Racing game, especially something like TXR or an off brand NFS. AND GET AWAY FROM THE FESTIVAL BS, it's not realistic, not everyday is a party, and I don't want to be the top dog, or a "superstar", give me turmoil or actual betrayal, OR a taste of a fast car, but put me in a Peugeot 208.
But also, you gotta look at the cars we have nowadays, a lot of commuter cars are making 250+ HP stock, a Hellcat costs 50-70k. I think we're just in the wrong era of people in charge of game businesses
SERIOUSLY like I’ve had ENOUGH of the festivals but I also understand it’s just not my thing, some people clearly love it
But it all just feels so shallow, like you were saying I want something with some depth, give me a reason to race not just a soulless world
I agree with you on a lot of points you mentioned about modern NFS games. They lack a proper story/objective, the sense of progression isn't even close, the tap/brake to drift mechanic is just atrocious and the music selection has gone downhill after MW 2012.
I personally feel the addition of Damage bar is ruining the fun in newer games. I know it was already implemented in older games but they never managed to ruin the fun aspect. Heat and Unbound especially are so annoying with their health recovery system that I don't have the will to replay them anymore.
Heat especially could've been my favourite if it wasn't for the traction less controls and missile cops whose sole purpose is to deplete your health bar. Unbound kinda fixed some of it but got worse in other areas. Anyways man thanks for this video, hope EA devs listen to our feedback and go back to their roots.
Honestly the damage isn’t even something I thought of bringing up but I can definitely see how it’d get to you, especially in Heat
There’s always something isn’t there, I don’t know how they just keep missing the mark in so many ways 😔
Dude I’ve been playing unbound on cloud gaming and even tho it’s laggy af and fucks me out of a win sometimes, now that I’ve figured out the handling and burst nos I love it. Even escaping cops is pretty easy once you know the right spots or have a fast enough car. Wish I had a console that could install it, I’d buy it.
Hahahaha fair enough man you’re allowed to like it, I just couldn’t get past the burst nos and the damn police no matter how much I tried 😭
I think Project CARS 2 had that secret sauce that made it incredibly memorable and comforting to play. It introduced me to several cars I now have a ton of love for (the Ligier JSP2 being just one example), and even introduced me to Rallycross. On a related note, Indy Car is psychotic and all of the drivers clearly have a cocktail of Red Bull and 5 Hour Energy running through their veins instead of blood. No one can convince me otherwise.
Never played Project Cars 2 myself but it looks like a great sim racer, might have to check it out someday
And yeah you could say the same for a lot of the peeps in motorsports, insanity but cool as all hell
@@Viseak Also, I saw another comment suggesting Gran Turismo 7, and to be honest, I think that game should be avoided. It's always online, and it's full of Modern Gaming pitfalls and baffling design choices that severely damage what would otherwise be a very solid game. Sure, it's been improved by updates, but it's still nowhere near as good as the classic GT games (i.e. all of the ones prior to GT Sport)
@@NineNovem very fair, and a shame
I don’t own a PS5 anyhow so I doubt I’ll be delving into GT7 anytime soon hahaha
Can always play GT5 if I get the itch
Elden ring’s focus was being Uber hard and maybe they thought pausing was too easy
The last Racing game that I was truly hyped for was Granturismo 5 and that went well 😢 but Blur was something truly special
Blur was my favorite!
I’ve got some fond memories of GT5 tbh
First non-arcade racer I ever played and loved the hell out of the campaign
Blur is one I completely forgot about though, that’s a throwback
GT5 actually exceeded my expectations at the time, so I enjoyed it immensely and it's still one of my favourite games. I have had hype for other games since, but few have had the same level of impact personally. I still think a lot depends on perspective though, so if I were to truly believe that a newer game was fantastic in the same way, then it obviously would be for me.
@@Viseak my problem was that I compared it to Gran Turismo 4 which is a bar that no racing game even a granturismo game can beat
underground to undercover is the best era for NFS
Disagree with that. I say hot pursuit 2 to pro street. Games afterwards weren't great
For me Hot Pursuit 2 - Carbon even though Underground 1 and MW05 are overrated
HP2010 Remastered-Heat were good too except MW2012. Had no desire to play that. Unbound is somewhat tolerable
@@evandaymon8303 i hated pro-street but your basically agreeing that all blackbox games are good everything else no so much right?
@@sambeezy007 MW05 overrated?
are you high right now?
its no where near over rated its a good game, arguably 05mw UG2 and carbon being the peak of nfs
@0Heeroyuy01 I'm not high I'm drug free my friend haha. Many may deny it but MW05 is overrated to me because it gets really repetitive as you keep going up the Blacklist and once you get to like #5, it gets very tedious. People talk about games like Heat and others being "dead" once you beat the story but the same could be said about MW05.
The problem is this:
1. Games are made with a SPECIFIC ROI in mind, and if ANY project that the pool of funding could go to will yield +$1, the game is canned.
2. Because of #1, games play it safe and use always online to collect tons of data and be more "stable" in their expected ROI predictions
3. Games are generally not made with lack of internet in mind, so physically media is dead for most games. This means 60gb+ updates, and NO penalty by hosts who host, for day1 patches. Games launch barebones as a result, because pre-release testing and "going gold" is VERY expensive, and thins nowadays can be "fixed later" or abandoned if the ROI isn't there for that fix.
The focus isn't on quality anymore, but merely a minimum viable product that meets an ROI goal, otherwise another project will get that funding pool.
I really don't think there's been a better time for video games, i love the growth of indie and huge leaps in fan projects and software, but the abuses of employees and consumers in the larger parts of the industry are worse than ever.
Every day is a nightmare.
Yeah it’s wild out there for sure
I hope it changes, but I don’t exactly see how it will in the foreseeable future
Skill issue
0:53 "Corporations have always and will always own the gaming industry..." No. That's only been true since the Dreamcast was taken off the market. It also ignores PC platform and mobile which is in no way centralised. Need For Speed is only really kind of a racing series. It's more about flash and sparkly things like Forza. So afraid to make a game that depends on having high quality, advanced, sophisticated gameplay, every game needs to be based on Smokey and the Bandit or The Fast and the Furious. Terrible movies.
If you want to play a good driving game there are options available outside the big 2. Plenty. But the lion's share of all the money and talant is poured into car collecting games or unbelievably cringe and shallow NFS games. There's very little focus on the technicalities of car handling. I'm not saying there is a 'wrong' way to do car handling. But it should be the main focus.
What EA should do is immediately liquidate the company and vow never to work in games again. Then there might be some hope. Buying every single UK driving game studio, leaving no UK company UK owned since Codemasters fell, having just mopped up about four studios in the past few years itself. All the Criterion and Driveclub devs are working on Need For Speed entry number 25 or Forza Horizon games. Boo hiss.
The reason I mention the UK no longer owns a single game studio is because there are no protections in place in this country to prevent predatory international business takeovers from well known asset strippers. Heck, they'll even sweeten the deal. Because that's cash in hand on a single transfer to spend on something fun. Never mind you'll never collect tax gain from that company again ever.
The UK had the world's biggest chemical company in 1994 called ICI. But Margaret Thatcher said it was better to sell it and have money just in case the economy needs more numbers to justify everything.
The best driving games were all from the company known as the United Kingdom and SEGA Enterprises Ltd. Up until EA bought Codemasters and Sega shelved the racing genre.
To my eyes, the best big car game currently on the market is The Crew 2.
Here is a very pertinent fact about corporations. They were invented as a legally government owned business entity intended to provide jobs not for profit. It's simply a different tax form these days in order to mitigate personal liability.
Been currently going through a bit of a hyperfixation around the DMC-12 DeLorean in games, and this has caused me to play a -lot- of current racing games trying to get one. The journey this put me on has given me a lot of appreciation for the only racing series I've ever actually enjoyed playing: Motorstorm.
So many modern racing games try so hard to make you feel cool and awesome. Forza literally refers to you constantly as a "superstar". All these games really want you to feel special, and Motorstorm never does that. You're never told how awesome you are, you're just some rando. You pick from a selection of random racers, you pick a vehicle, and you just race. There's no wasting time in an open world, tuning or buying cars, or grinding away at some sorta reputation meter. I understand that Motorstorm as a series is basically from the stone-age by today's standards, but it's the only racing series I ever go back to or remember fondly.
I’ve played every single racing game from 2000 to 2024, and you’re 100% spot on. Progression in newer racing games are genuinely nonexistent. Like there is no incentive to actually complete the races.
If you actually expect someone to watch your hour long video essay, maybe leave the "nostalgia" rant for the end.
Nah, gotta set the foundation somehow
But if it’s not for you that’s cool 🫡
In Unbound to win races is simple....Just use a AWD car.
Eclipse, Evo 9, Skyline and Murcielago were my cars for beating the game. RWD or FWD in most cases against the Ai just put you in a disadvantage.
Then there's the handling where they don't know were to go....because they trying to make a mix of Grip and Drift hasn't worked since 2015, for the next one they gotta pick.
They either go full grip (like NFSUG2) or full drift (like Burnout Paradise) no more in between.
Regarding the Police while it may have been put as answer to fans for more difficulty/challenges it's a very bad implementation. The heat level going with the player instead of the car is stupid, the chases resuming is clunky and again stupid since sometimes the chase resumes in a area close to the finish line while almost being standing still, also sometimes resuming even tho you clearly have escaped during the race and finally the units are a joke along side seeing them on the mini map.
If they wanted to go for a challenge then have just a little indicator that just points to where a cop is but still doesn't show the undercover unit, also have the cops chase the player if you go by them at full speed even if you don't have a heat level.
Most of the music was plain menu music since they don't really incite the player to get pumped up for racing it's just mainly slow paced music apart from 2 or 3 songs.
That's why people just compare to older NFS or other games were the soundtrack makes the player get into the zone.
NFS Heat imo was a good NFS but it was clear it was rushed going by the story after the mid point going in fast forward, 2015 on the other hand was imo on par with Undercover as a bad NFS.
Also let's be honest NFSUG2 and NFSMW'05 raised the bar too high and while both games aren't perfect they are amazing pieces of entertainment that somehow have alot of replay-ability still.
I agree with your view of having actual progression through a game. I've been writing down a long list of all aspects of a racing game I'd love to develop if I were to every get into making video games.
• Claims you can't teleport in NFS 2015 which isn't true, events aren't even spread that far from each other early on. Also, "the map is too big" makes no sense if you look at the numbers since it's roughly 10km² although the playable area is much smaller. Even ignoring that you are likely to spend more time commuting in Underground 2 trying to find events than to go to the available ones in 2015 (if you even bother driving to them instead of tp'ing).
• Claims Unbound "gives you everything straight-away" despite it being known for being very harsh when it comes to SP progression which, from looking at your garage, I can tell you barely engaged with. I myself had none of those cars you showed because those are for people who play through EA Play, and you can't really use them early on as there are no events for them.
• Poor argument for not wanting cops in a Need for Speed.
• Claims you can't take off the preset wraps in Unbound which isn't true.
Modern Horizon and The Crew 2/Motorfest suck, I'll give you that, but this is one of the most weird videos on the topic I've seen. Despite it being about racing games as a whole, most of the points were just toward NFS which is the only one worth a damn in the scene right now. The points about not being able to see anything in NFS 2015 also made my eyes roll to the back of my skull.
I've played NFS all my life and Unbound is one of my favorites. It's not as amazing as it could be, but it's the most fun I've had in a game in years. The cops are not that big of a deal if you don't suck at the game so to me they are quite fun to engage with even at the hardest difficulty, so I can't relate to the frustration in the slightest. And no, Burst NOS does not suck. It's arguably the shake up the monotonous driving loop needed.
About the stylized stuff, everyone wants to make the same video Raycevick did over a year ago but he put it best when he said that the driving effects in Unbound are like vegetables to a drug-addict. God forbid a game has style that isn't the Instagram-look something like The Crew Motorfest has.
By the way, at 39:25 you'll "never get ahead" because your car isn't up to snuff, so no wonder your professional driving won't suffice. Not the game's fault if you won't engage with the performance side of customization. By week 2 in the game I could clear any B race in my maxed-out Mustang with my eyes closed on the hardest difficulty and I didn't even spend that much buying upgrades.
Honestly I do agree with your skill issue and that maybe you've just grown out of them.
Yeah I didn’t realise 2015 had fast travel and am more than happy to take the L on that.
Still can’t believe after playing through it TWICE I somehow didn’t figure that one out.
The vision thing though, bro cmon, you can roll your eyes all you want but it was BAD. Visual clutter is a huge issue in modern gaming especially in the FPS genre, and it’s just as bad in 2015.
I never had an issue with the commuting in U2, and I have replayed it recently. But 2015 just felt unbelievably slow and monotonous by comparison. If you were to actually measure the distance between each race or from the garage to each race in each game maybe it wouldn’t be so different, but I didn’t go that far, I just went off how it felt, and that could leave bias to cloud my judgement, but idk, nothing particularly felt like a chore in U2 to me.
Again though, I want to emphasise I don’t HATE 2015, I enjoyed it enough to play through it again. Despite my complaints it’s the last NFS game that came close to nailing what I’m looking for.
And yeah I didn’t last all that long with Unbound, I gave it a fair crack, but it couldn’t hold me.
You could definitely use the EA play cars cars straight away though, there are plenty of events for them.
Speaking of, I’ll take the L on the wrap thing as well, maybe it was in Horizon I couldn’t take them off? Or I’m just making that the fuck up? Not 100% sure, but you right. Regardless though, that was a minor anecdote, my main issue was being given the cars in the first place. But again, considering they’re EA play exclusives it makes the point a lot weaker. I wouldn’t say void cause there’d be a hell of a lot of people trying the game on gamepass, but weaker for sure.
Even then, that still wasn’t my main complaint with the game. It was the cops and handling that tilted me the most.
Regarding cops that’s a whole different can of worms. Moral of the story, I reckon they suck, as a concept, I don’t want em in my racing games plain and simple, and a good number of people agree. There’s not really an argument to be made other than the fact they simply aren’t fun. If you enjoy em, more power to you, but we’ve had enough games with them, so what’s stopping there being games without them?
And yeah; burst nos does suck. It’s fundamentally the worst thing that could’ve been done to the game, it made an already arcade style racer feel so far removed from reality it’s frustrating.
Driving is a real, and very fun thing, which can be emulated to an extent in games, and I’d argue if you can’t find a good driving loop without weird mechanics like burst nos, is driving actually something you like in the first place? Or is it just screwing around doing wacky things?
It’s fine if that’s the case! Seriously it is. But it’s hard to call it driving, it’s just plain annoying. (And yes I know arcade style racing games aren’t meant to be hyper realistic, that’s what sim and simcade games are for, but I also don’t think they should be so far removed from reality like Unbound is, especially when it’s also TRYING to ground itself in reality in so many ways).
Plain driving in games can, and should be fun, and that’s one thing I’ll give Forza Horizon credit for, the driving and handling feels pretty great, it’s just basically everything else that lets the game down.
Oh and the stylised stuff, eh, I didn’t really care THAT much about it. Sure it was kinda over the top and overstimulating, but at least it can be turned off, and the cell shaded cutscenes and players were just fine, no quarrels there at all. It was something different and gave the game its own identity. Sure a lot of the dialogue was a bit of a snooze fest, but I can’t hate on the vision.
At the end of the day man like you said, you’ve been playing NFS all your life, you’re a diehard for it, and that comes with its own inherit biases.
I’m far more on the casual side, and yeah, I think at this point, the direction the genre is going might just not be for me anymore. Which is a damn shame cause I love cars and I miss it, but oh well, my backlog is big enough as is already I suppose.
In all seriousness though I just gotta say, if you enjoyed Unbound and it ticked all your boxes, I’m happy for you, but it just did not do that for me and so many others.