It's been awesome seeing everyone's love and nostalgia for the games that mean so much to them, that unfortunately weren't featured in this video. I loved games like Midtown Madness, Burnout Paradise and NFS World too! Like I mentioned at the end of the vid, even after 43 minutes it still feels like I didn't do enough games/franchises justice. I wanted to offer a *window* into the games and franchises that I felt had the biggest impact on open worlds, without giving the *whole* picture - as that would have led to a much, much longer and less focused video😅 So please know that I didn't forget them, or mean to do them any injustice, I just had to make some cuts somewhere and focus on what I felt made the biggest impact throughout the years.
I prefer UG2 style customisation shops with tdu2 style lifestyle, horizon physics, some goofy modes like takedown and crash from burnout, most definitely are we missing shift2U drift tandems, prostreet style drags, outruns, horizon and crew are probably 85% of the way there, just needs more focused modes already mentioned imo
this is why i dont even have much hope for the new test drive and forza horizons even thought tdu2 was one of my favourite games of all time. the crew 2 would hands down beat everything for me if they put decent physics in it. lack of innovation... this why ime sticking to modded older games on pc. games released way back when used to have enough good content to keep me happy but not now. ime leaving consoles behind even though i have been a console player all my life. this is because the people that care can do what they like with the game. modern games devs loose the need to innovate when they can monetise anything as easy as they can now. horizon 4 and 5 where just clones of 3 with added bullshhh, what even is a cross country race? its a lazy attempt at race design and just filler. the map on horizon games is tiny for what they could do now, i dont want the worlds best graphics when it sacrifices so much in terms of gameplay. we want a big map, good physics and ok graphics please devs... and the lack of storey in both. we dont even need an in detail good story..... just a start from the bottom to the top job will do in any means. that's what brings the satisfaction. plus all the forced stuff you have to do to get new cars is pure bull. if it doesn't become available to buy in the game i dont have time to do that crap i have a business to run my gaming time is limited and precious. ime not wasting it doing content that only serves as bragging rights for the devs... hey look guys everyone's playing our game this much..... yeh cos you forced them too to get most the game. even gta5 has annoyed me to the point i dont want to play he online because everything costs 20 trillion dollars, its like having a real job if you want anything. i want my gaming to be fun not a constant grind, i dont mind grinding for cash but as long as i only have to do it once or twice. not for every thing i want in the game. every company seems to be chasing rockstars ideology with this type of thing. honestly after the stunt gta 5 has pulled with the shark card and overpriced everything they may as well just change their logo to a picture of Jimmy Savile for how many kids they have had over a barrel. then you get all the idiots defending it saying yeh but bro its all free content...... no its not they have made billion's... not millions..... billions..... its like them flicking you ten pence back........
Thank you for calling out the biggest oversell of FH5 - evolving world. There was so much potential just wasted, and what they gave us can barely be called evolving
@@nyeeeeeee9346 in minor ways sure, look at the colour of grass etc in dry season compared to the wet.... also water levels, some bits completely dry up. there are tweaks and differences each season change but nothing huge.
The stagnation of open world racing games also ties into DLCs. I remember when expansion like South Central for MCLA or Big Surf Island for Burnout Paradise came out and everyone loved them. Seamlessly added districts to the existing map which provide a completely new vibe and layout. Nowadays Forza *still* has us fast travel to separate islands, and in the case of the recently revealed Rally expansion, don't even feel all that different. I miss getting excited for DLCs in this genre. Oh, and to add one more game to the list, one that even precedes the first Midnight Club - Driver 2 absolutely pioneered the bare basics of an open world driving game. It even came out before GTA 3 and had not one, not two but *four* completely unique maps based on real locations over two discs. You could even get out of the car and simply walk around, scare pedestrians walking down the sidewalk and the vehicle handling still holds up today. Also each map had a secret car hidden on each map, such as a classic Mini you could find in Havana. You'd need to find a hidden underground parking garage, which acted like a labyrinth of sorts, and navigate your way through it to find the Mini hidden in it. I miss open world racers having fun secrets like that. Nowadays it's very much "what you see is what you get".
It's not just lack of competition. It's what studios prioritize, or are told to focus on by publishers footing the bill. Games becoming mainstream played a huge role in this compared to when earlier racing games were released. Devs could do whatever they wanted, be it over the top arcade, or more serious sim-lite title like Porsche Unleashed. Now days, it's almost always about pushing graphical fidelity and open world scale versus good (engaging) game play. Some older games are better because they were focused and limited by hardware. So, devs had to prioritize certain features and do them well instead of using the "kitchen sink" approach where shiny graphics, huge but lifeless open worlds and Ray Tracing hide the shallow game play. This goes for all genres, but racing in particular since most people associate it with just car-to-car racing and nothing ancillary that goes with it like story, the quality of world itself, player interaction outside of cars, etc.
Split screen dying is the true crime. I remember going to mynjeighbours House to race in splitscreen. More tech, less options. Online is great. But offline options should be taken more seriously
I don't know if the mainstream appeal of games has really changed that much but definitely putting the emphasis on graphical fidelity and instant gratification has. Gran Turismo 3 and 4 are some of the best selling games of all time and still beloved to this day while 7 has been harshly criticized since its release for how shallow the gameplay is and being so focused on incentivizing you to buy your progression instead of earn it. The game looks incredible and had a ton of hype but failed to live up to any of it because devs and publishers are just greedy and out of touch these days. As a kid I would have bent over backwards for a game that looked as good as Horizon 5 or GT7 but as an adult I would much rather play their decades old predecessors.
@@ralphwarom2514The Midnight Club games before LA had split-screen in an open world! Driver SF also managed to pull that off in an even bigger map complete with the vehicle swaping mechanic!
I sank thousands of hours into Horizon by now, and yet the game that appeals to me the most here is probably TDU2. I guess I really want to see what Solar Crown will have to offer.
@@acid3129 TDU 1 also had better driving physics in the Hardcore Mode. However, TDU 2 greatly expanded on things to do outside of racing, I sank hours of gameplay on that casino alone. I really hope that Solar Crown doesn't turns out to be a flop or vaporware because so far we haven't got much information about it.
Personally the main thing I miss most in Horizon games is a sense of progression. You get bombarded with new cars all the time, making it so that you really don't value any car particularly highly...
Don't know about the first horizon, but I started with horizon 2 and in that game we already got crazy money and cars, especially with VIP and the old Forza Hub, we used to get the car and the amount of credit the car is worth, so win a lambo in the wheelspin and get an extra 400k and a monthly gift of up to like 2 mil or more (depending on lvl) which they changed to weekly in horizon 3 so once a week I could just open an app on my Xbox and get 400k. If only we could get the cars and handling of horizon on the gta 5 map, now that would be sick I reckon.
I mean... I value one car highly. The Mustang RTR was my favourite car in FM7 so naturally I started with that in FH5. Forza Horizon is more about exploring the open world, seeing what's there. I don't pay attention to the progression, but once I started exploring the map I noticed myself doing more and more to actually move forward in the game.
9:29 Black Box were black magic artists at blending city architecture. The skate series is a testament to their open-world building skills. Has elements of LA, Vancouver, New York and SF all blended seamlessly.
I wanted to mention how Midnight Club, 3 especially, used the open world in its races in a truly special way to me. None of the standard races in 3 had walls or barriers of any kind, just checkpoints. Combined with the more complex and more realistically designed cities of the third game, this means that learning the open world is crucial to being good at midnight club because you can approach the checkpoints from whatever the fastest angle you can think of is. You may see a checkpoint on a square corner, but remember a large parking lot or alley on you can cut through, allowing you to confidently approach the corner at full speed rather than slowing down for hard cornering. Already this makes the races and open world feel tightly connected, and then the game takes this a step further with the unordered races. These races would place checkpoints on the map with no order to hit them in. This was the biggest challenge to utilize the open world because you had to navigate yourself between all of the points while trying to be efficient and keep speed up. Depending on how much you knew about where you were and where you were going, these were either the hardest or the easiest events in the game, and I think they're a genius race type I've never seen again in a racing game.
This is the exactly why whenever I see “open world” I’m skeptical because I begin wondering if it’s as open as the way Midnight Club executed it. It added a layer of complexity with having to navigate based on your own knowledge of the city. Nothing, *nothing* comes close to the awesomeness of this series and everything else seems to pale in comparison. Midnight Club breathed new life into the genre because it was something different, something that hadn’t quite been done before. All the racing games nowadays are more or less the same with a few differentials. It’s almost like everyone’s vying for the idea that “Hey look at my game, it’s more realistic than yours”. The unordered races in Midnight Club 2 were absolutely brutal. Remember that Paris race against the world champion? That was a showstopper for most people.
To me, the reward for exploring in TDU2 was the roads turning blue (or yellow for off road). I can't tell you how many nights I sat there after I was burnt out from racing, I would just put on my favourite play list and start tracing roads. It really scratched that "collect-athon" itch for me lol. I just finished another play through a few weeks ago, and every time I am compelled to fill that map in.
The worst part of Horizon for me is the lack of progression. It just throws shit at you in a nonstop torrent of new cars and as a result you become numb. The game literally pushes you to stop caring about it.
@@PlanetThrill LMAO ur fucking kidding me, if you dont have time to play a progression system like nfs most wanted WTF are you doing playing video games? at that point mightaswell just watch a 5 min youtube video. nobody is expecting MMO shit like progression, but HAVING no progression fucking sucks and thats what forza amounst too. and with all the loading screens in forza its not really faborable to your argument of time lol.
@@PlanetThrill So don’t. Nobody is expecting you to finish an entire game in one sitting. Even if they were, why should games become unfulfilling skinnerboxes just because you personally don’t have the patience for progression?
Bro mentioning TDU, arguably still the greatest open world racing game around. Massive W. In all honesty though, that's a really deep and profound analysis and I appreciate the effort you put into it.
Absolutely. Not only the map, but the series has its own class. The PC and Xbox version is the best rather than tge PS2(some Xbox feature were not found in PS2 ver). But the hilarious is, the numbers of cars (both ver) and bikes (xbox ver) are above anything.
The more I play FH5, the more I feel they did Mexico dirty by literally just throwing a few disappointingly small towns and cities on a map with some landmarks and called it Mexico.
@@diablow1411 Nope, it was because Mike "not even a car enthusiast" Brown wanted a Map built *purely* around "The Eliminator" (the "Battle Royale with Cars" nonsense!), meaning the map needed to be as flat and featureless as Possible. Remember, the past 6 months or so have more than proven that 95% of the issues with FH5, *Starting* with the *Inexplicable* Choice of Mexico, are because of Mike "why was he even employed at PGG?" Brown being *utterly unsuited* for the Role of Chief Creative Director, and the Remaining 5% (such as promoting that Gnostic, Satanic, Feminist Dumpster Fire "Barbie" with a pair of Tie in "cars") are due to Microsoft and their Insatiable greed mixed with utter Incompetence! Eventlab is being used to Guide the Direction for FH6, Yes, which will Hopefully be a much Denser, much more Racing Focussed Map, with a lot more "Unbreakable Barriers" an "unsurpassable obstacles" again, as Torben Ellert, the new Chief Creative Director, has given us a Taste of his, much better, vision for Horizon in Rally Adventure, but Eventlab is not the Be all and end all. However, although I lost interest in Eventlab months ago and have not made my own event in it for ages, as it has just become too complicated to use, I personally feel that it is Better to focus on Eventlab, which works in Single Player, than to focus on a Toxic and Violent multiplayer only mode that hardly anyone even likes such as the Eliminator IMO! Sadly, however, as PGG are struggling to even get Permission to change the Texture on the Bushes from the Government of Mexico, who will not allow any main map changes without their Permission so their "country and people will not be besmirched", there is no way they would get Permission to Redo the main map from Scratch! FH6 will, hopefully, have a vastly better map if Rally Adventure is any Litmus, however, kindly do *not* Expect a Purely Urban map, despite all the "City" eventlabs, as Torben has stated, Openly, that he finds such maps to be Depressing and Ugly, also, please do not expect Japan, there are just too many Political and Licensing Hurdles in the way for Japan to even be remotely Plausible, I am afraid I am fully Expecting boring and generic California as a result of Donut Media Part 2, as Microsoft will want a Cheap to make Location like that (as it could be made purely with Recycled FH1, 3 and 5 Assets) to Maximise the Profits.
Looking at Steamcharts as of right now I see FH5 has 10k active players and FH4 has 7.7k, This just shows how nothing really changed between those games. Players just chose which environment they like the most at this point. Maybe just patch these two worlds together with an airport and bring the community closer.
That’s a terrific idea. Imagine being able to travel to any of the locations from previous FH games within one big hub world, with updated graphics. I mean, it is high time for games like this to switch to a game as service model, like Real Racing 3 (10 years old, still getting monthly updates and I am still playing every day) where things can be updated, upgraded all the time.
I was seriously hoping this would've been the DLC actually. You don't even have to update the graphics of the old game, that would honestly increase the charm of it. Imagine teleporting to Colorado and you basically teleport back in time to the old graphics style with the blur and color filter covering the screen. But everything else is FH5. All it needs is the events. Doesn't need the cars, the music, etc. Just port the maps to FH5 and let us drive around and race in them with the best handling model and sounds. Especially for something like online/open racing, which desperately needs new tracks to maintain players.
@@hellisio RR3 is a POS freemium game. I have also played it for years, however it just got really frustrating with the exorbitant pricing. They only update it regularly because thats how they get their money
@@horvathr95 I agree that the economics in the game are obviously designed to push you to spend real money on in-game currencies. And it works... sometimes :)
as someone who's played a lot of horizon, a lot of long time fans of the series prefer 4 to 5 rather than thinking that 5 is an improvement, sort of including myself, you start as the festival ceo and with several expensive cars(and then they immediately throw a bunch more at you for no real reason), entirely removing any sense of progression or accomplishment that the previous games had, we got another toy based dlc with the second iteration of hot wheels in forza which is making the dlcs feel super samey, to me the game just has very little soul compared to 2 and 4 (I haven't played 3), though it does have some objective improvements such as improved physics and vastly improved steering wheel support
I think you undersold the open world of Midnight Club LA a bit. I was a good recreation of Los Angeles, with so many fantastic roads, and highly detailed: Lots of pedastrians and good traffic. I never played a racing game where the world felt so alive and independant of me. A very Rockstar experience, so to speak.
I like the License system in TDU2, even though they were hard for me to pass, it allowed me to level up my skills. And the multi-race tournaments gave the game a better progression than Forza. I'm looking forward to Solar Crown, especially if the multi-player online is better than Forza (a low bar IMHO).
I'd have thought the Midtown Madness trilogy would be mentioned, seeing as it's an open world racing franchise that first released in 1999, earlier than Midnight Club, and I'm pretty sure its sequel released before that game also. The first Midtown Madness attempted to create a scaled back Chicago, and Midtown Madness 2 had recreations of San Francisco and London. The Driver games deserve a shout-out too, first hitting PlayStation in 1999. All that still, still an enjoyable video!
Maybe because it was PC exclusive for the two first Midtown Madness? I spent so much time on these, especially when Internet came to mod the thing from head to toe.
I decided to research the team behind Midtown Madness, and Angel Studios would eventually become Rockstar San Diego. Even-though HokiHoshi didn't mention Midtown Madness, he still indirectly showed them love by beginning with Midnight Club.
It’s sad to see the state of current racing games. Beautiful graphics, but empty worlds that lack things to do. NFS Unbound’s biggest problem is the repetitive events across classes. Horizon became a clothing simulator. I don’t know what we can do to better this situation.
@@megadeth8592 problem is the games appeal to the general public not a racing game enthusiast, so if the hardcore or car guys and gals stop buying it wouldnt begin to dent their sales.....itll take a company putting a whole new spin on the genre similar to wipeout or ridge racer etc for companies to think about changing their base mindsets
Is quite surprising that racing games, a genre that seemingly has no business looking ridiculously good, even racing games from 2010 like Hot Pursuit look gorgeous. Yet it's the genre that's always hungry and focusing on looking better rather than gameplay. Games like NFS 2015 and Horizon 5 are some of the most aesthetically beautiful games in my opinion, yet gameplay wise they fall extremely short.
I remember the first time cruising around midnight club la i was amazed at how the entire map is open to you the moment you start the career mode, you can literally go to any district and each one gives you a different vibe, going to areas like Hollywood or downtown you'll see pedestrians walking around or driving luxurious cars where as going to south central you'll see pedestrians driving classic cars.
Everyone always forgets to show Midtown Madness the love it deserves. I think I spent more time tooling around Chicago than racing. I mean, you could bomb through a shopping mall reliving Blues Brothers.
FWIW I did think about showing games like Midtown Madness! But figured I had to make a "start point" somewhere, and Midnight Club is by the same devs, released just a year later and continued on for longer, so just felt like the better game to feature. Like I mentioned at the end, even in a video this long I still wish I could have talked about more games and franchises 😭
@@HokiHoshifair enough, it just had a lot of things later games picked up on like race shortcuts, police chases, pedestrians diving out of harm’s way, and other drivers yelling at you (probably my favorite part).
@@BertTF2 I had 1 and 2, never got to try 3. The first 2 were so fun, I still have the CDs, I don’t know if I could get them to work on a modern PC, but I might just be inspired to try.
I think the thing about all open world games, racing or otherwise, is that they're so much better when the open world isn't just a hub to select the core challenges, it's part of them. Synergy is really important to designing complex, multifaceted games and it's often not emphasized enough. As mentioned in the video, Midnight Club demands you learn the maps and their shortcuts with unordered races and spread out checkpoints. In NFS Most Wanted, the cop chase are arguably the main attraction over the races and those utilize the open world. Burnout Paradise puts its collectibles in interesting places that show you shortcuts for races and areas where you can do things in stunt challenges. All these modern games like Horizon mostly just put you on a track that happens to use the same terrain as a part of the open world but still feels so disconnected from it you hardly even pay attention to where you are. And you end up with tracks that are actually less interesting than non-open world racing game tracks because they're limited by their existence in the open world. Aside from the Eliminator and taking obscene shortcuts in Horizon Stories, there's pretty much no overlap between the cruising/exploring open world and the core racing experience. Yes you can argue that it's good to have the variety of alternating between the two, but like I said, it just ends up making the racing less interesting when it's held back by being nominally still confined to the open world.
You are totally right, horizon races don’t feel immersed. You roll to a random pin to start a race a suddenly there’s a start finish line and a big crowd there and then when u r done it’s all done again. Games like nfs feel more immersed because it’s night time street racing there’s no crowd that suddenly appears just your competition rolls up to a temporary made start line. I think it would be a lot better if the start finish lines were a more permanent fixture as you could then easily see where races r and it would feel more seamless
if only forza could have a city space again. Most of the time the maps have good roads but have no walls anyway. Its all a giant lot of dirt or grass with some paths in it. For whatever reason I like the more closed off roads kind of map. Like underground to carbon. NFS 2015 was a good map but it was closer tied to being realistic. The freeways and roads in blackbox nfs were so wavy, canted, and not practical in a civil engineering sense but it was fun that way.
The whole "everything is open" thing really does make many roads seem kinda useless to drive on. Often the quickest way from 1 point to another is a straight line, so there's no point in following a curvy road. Having certain restrictions can make a game much better
Also, since driving off road is not very punishing, it's not really necessary to follow the road precisely much. It seriously adds a certain fun when the road is restricted. Forza roads feel way too wide to perceive how dangerous it can be to drive that fast, and crashes being way too forgiving.
@@Ganjatraining "Having certain restrictions can make a game much better" Say it louder so the devs can hear you. The first game company that realizes this will have an instant classic. We need a breath of fresh air so badly rn
@@chillaxTF Game maps used to be restricted because of technical limitations. Now that it's possible, everyone is doing it even when it is completely unnecessary in certain games. Also the way it is done now isn't as good as old Midnight Club games where you would drive through buildings and stuff, now it's all just off road driving
Another issue with the racing game genre in the modern age is how stagnant it has been with the constant chasing of "Realism" instead of innovating with the gameplay
38:29 That mechanic actually happened back in NFS World in 2010, when they would add a snowy map every winter, that also modified the golf course area to have some giga ramps to jump on!
I’m here to mention this exact thing, it makes me feel even more sad, also do you remember horizon live? It was fun and cool and also appeared in nfs mw12 in pretty similar fashion
I started on The Crew 2 recently after getting really bored of FH5 and it really shocked me at how much better the customization is, I can actually customize my car the way I wanted it to look compared to Horizon where I slap the same ugly rear wing to every single car just for performance. I was pretty shocked at there being actual F1 (Redbulls) and GT3 cars as well. Some other things like having a more crowded traffic and having actual pedestrains roaming around add to the game's atmosphere as well, something that I feel that Horizon is sorely lacking at times.
Same! I've had far more fun and enjoyment with The Crew 2 than FH5. I got bored of FH5 within 3 weeks, deleted it off my hard drive, and I have no intentions on playing it ever, even though I screwed up and pre purchased the DLC before they were even announced. More hot wheels shit!? No thank you! A real shame too. Forza was my favorite racing franchise since I started with FM2 in 2008. How far it's fallen since..
There's no denying crew has better customization But at the end of the day it's about driving and i really don't like the feel of Crew's physics.Forza still has the best physics for an open world game imo.
the thing i don't like about the crew 2 is that there is no meaningful exploration like in the first part. there is no challenge in exploring the world because you can teleport everywhere from the beginning. it was so much fun exploring the world piece by piece in the first part.
There's one thing that wasn't mentioned in the TDU segment that only the Crew 2 has been able to match in just the last few years. Thats combining the car world with the motorcycle world. TDU was so ahead of its time allowing you to race your buddies super cars with a super bike. In a lot of ways, I really think of the crew 2 as an extension of the TDU series, and I'm hoping the same for the Motorfest game.
I don't need the next big open world game to be that innovative. I just need it to have the features I want well implemented. I want to start at the bottom and work my way to the top slowly, not get flooded by exotic hypercars from the start of the game (like in Horizon). I want the handling to be good and not too arcadey. I want the open world to be dense and immersive, not filled with glowing icons and stuff. That's it.
@@rubenandrethorseth6265 I guess you must have missed this part: "I want the handling to be good and not too arcadey. I want the open world to be dense and immersive, not filled with glowing icons and stuff."
I would really love a return of arcade racing games like Split/Second, Driver, Blur, Burnout, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer... the racing game genre needs a breath of fresh air, something new and different, not only simulators...
It's crazy how you did a 45 minute video on open world racing games and didn't even touch Driver and GTA. Driver was literally the progenitor of open world racing games and police chases.
Whichever team first combines the driving dynamics and vehicle selection of Horizon with the lifestyle aspects and map size of TDU2 will be the new king of this genre.
I think skipping over Burnout Paradise was a huge mistake, because its formula is the most imitated in the 15 years since, without understanding what made the formula work. 1. Collectables on the map. In Burnout, they're used not only to encourage exploration, but they are also useful for all events (shortcuts in races, multiplyer bonuses in stunt run) and were fun to interact with even after the first time. In the games since, collectables feel plopped down randomly, show up on a mini map, and have no use in events. 2. Open World. In Burnout, the map is big enough to accommodate different themed districts, but small and dense enough that you'll know every road like the back of your hand. You'll eventually be able to navigate and race without even looking at the map or minimap, which is very underrated in open world games. In the games since, world size has gotten too big, relying on gps markers on-map and in-game, and the removal of road guards has made races feel more like off-road 4x4 events than actual street racing. 3. Multiplayer. In Burnout, the lobby could play not only races, but also cooperative challenges, variants on the event types from single player, or even just vibe out in the world. Because the world was small and dense, people could naturally congregate and just mess around setting up stunts and whatnot. It felt very social, which is the whole point of multiplayer. In the games since, other players are either ghosts, or they are focused on grinding whatever event is the meta. The maps aren't vibe-able, so players are typically on their own travelling to and from events, never stopping just to just exist in the space.
Burnout Paradise was one of my favourite open world racing games ever. I can't even count the hours that I rode my bike or car though the city and the hills to the windfarm and back down to the harbour. The bikes, the music, the driving and the visuals were just perfect.
Man the Crew was amazing the only bad thing was low money rewards (and some phisics things) but the Crew 2 doesn't feel like a the "crew" game in Crew 1 you build a Crew in the Story but crew2 has more freedom to the cars
I think the biggest failing of a lot of open world racing games is they've gotten too lost in the weeds of having no limits or pushing the open world and seamlessness to it's very limit that they do forget that it's supposed to still be a racing game. The core activity is so often overlooked and left half baked with the devs just assuming so long as the cars can move it'll all fall into place. We're seeing Horizon become increasingly guilty of the same thing too. Each new entry seems to put less and less focus on giving you good races and just giving you a bunch of random crap instead. I'd rather have new official routes or better support for the still very barebones event lab than yet another horizon story with cringe unskippable cutscenes that I'll play through once then never, ever, touch again.
yea i felt like that as well. instead of making 10 flashy "race events" with the hoverboard or racing with train, they should add things on the map, maybe like expansion or sth.
If a NFS game was released that had had the entire map of the U.S. but a fictional version with past nfs cities I think would be cool. Everyone has always wondered how the cities are connected
The Crew's map really was great. Sad to see the crew 2 leave out a lot of locations and simplify alot of regions, and now The Crew: Motorfest will take place in the same map as TDU...?
You should've talked about Road Trip Adventure. It's an obscure Japanese PS2 racing game with an open world that I think pioneered many things you'd see in Horizon. It had minigames and plenty of characters with their own short and cheesy storylines that compare to Horizon 4 and 5's "story mode"
One thing to mention about the crew 2 is the newest added race creator. BRO, that was a blast to me, because that is probably the best thing ever added to The Crew 2, as it opens allot of opportunities to people making tons of racings that Ivory Tower never made. Also, I'm hyped for Motorfest, this game is looking really good and fresh to me.
Have to say, well done on the video, you've covered the major shake-ups when it came to open world racers. Been a massive fan of Midnight Club 2, Test Drive Unlimited, Need For Speed Underground and Forza Horizon and I can definitely agree on your take. After Test Drive Unlimited it felt like no other game was striving for a bit more than just cars and driving for the sake of it, my main gripe with Forza Horizon. What I liked about TDU was the feel of the progression system and the collector side of things, felt like the old NFS titles which weren't open world. And there's so little emphasis on the immersion factor as well, as you said, the menu game, the whole game is played in spreadsheets and rewards for the sake of a cheap dopamine rush, it's a real damned shame if you ask me. Looking forward to the future though, so thanks for taking the time to make this video, cheers!
I really think TDUSC map will be innovative in its density, it'll be smaller for sure but +600km of roads in this size of map sounds like a very first to me
Spot on video 👍 Think you've pretty much nailed it. I remember back to TDU, thinking, wow, what's this gonna be like in a few years. Online car meets, insane customisation, much better handling. We've been let down pretty bad looking back 🤣 Forza have pretty much nailed the handling mechanics for the type of game imo, just the right amount of arcadiness. Going to be very hard to beat. Ive always enjoyed that aspect. The whole vibe of the game does feel like it's for kids though. All the cosmetic filler and the special events, reminds of destiny or some crap. Hope TDU or horizon pull something special out the bag, I doubt it though. Gaming industry is as lazy as they come these days.
@@ZoMTDU The online in TDU is missing a lot of the functionality that the original multiplayer had. All you can do is drive around and do point to point races. Don't know about TDU2 since I don't touch that.
Thank you for actually posting a video that has a reasonable opinion base. I'm so sick of seeing other videos saying that the current stock of racing games are all worthless garbage, when that's not true at all; the only real issue is the stagnation and lack of innovation. I really appreciate seeing a much more levelheaded perspective on things.
I’m honestly surprised Mr. Hoshi didn’t mention the Pixar Cars games by THQ. They’re more so in the middle of the racing game genre. They’re not too realistic like most of the games mentioned in this video, but they’re not too “arcadish” like Crash Team Racing or Mario Kart. Instead, it’s a nice combination between having fictional characters mixed with the “semi realistic” physics of actual vehicles. For granted, they’re movie tie-ins. And most movie tie-in games don’t do too well. However, the Cars games are perhaps an exception (at least the ones developed by THQ). Because while they are just tie-in video games (to a franchise nobody cares about except me), the Cars games do try to experiment with the world of talking vehicles. Even to where players can customize McQueen (especially in Race-O-Rama). In terms of events, they do vary from just the standard racing events. And in some cases, the side events are just as fun as the main events themselves. On the topic of open world games, the best Pixar Cars game to have freeroam, is without a doubt Race-O-Rama. While it contains different locations like a coastal view of the beach and a night city, it gives players the ability to explore the maps and unlock new challenges, characters, etc. In the end, I will definitely recommend the Cars games for just how much thought and effort was put into them. Maybe I’m giving the Cars games too much credit because they’re my personal favorite video games.
these games actually had life and weren't dead, with each location having its own quirks and features. Sad to see modern racing games are dead in liveliness and the enviroment around it.
I think the slowed-down tuning played well for NFS:U2. Today in games like Forza there are hundreds of cars available at any given moment with sharing tunes and paintjob as a main focus, as racing games now are targeted at online audience. Underground 2 was designed as a single player experience, but the biggest factor was the limited amount of cars available in the game. This forced more realistic attempt at tuning your car, making every car and dollar spent on it special as devs didn't want to get you bored instantly. This made every upgrade for your car into an adventure, where you finally ride to buy something you've been saving for for the last hours of gameplay. Getting your dream car and making it competitive was a long journey but very rewarding at the end. Great video, keep up the good work.
What a great video. Honestly i love this "history" racing game lessons, it shows me what i missed and how my favorite games compare to others. My first racing game was TDU2, i saw a friend play it and was immediately hooked even tho i didn't know a thing about the game. A few years later The Crew came out from which i have seen the trailer (still one of the best trailers imo), so i played that too. What i really appreciated in The Crew was the story, which often gets overlooked but is pretty much the best one in-class except Driver SF. Then came The Crew 2 which i got only quite some time after launch, and it just wasn't as good in some ways as the og. Especially the handling. In that time i rediscovered TDU (Solar Crown) when they dropped the trailer and that's how i ended up in the TDU 2 community, which is growing again! (Looking at Project Paradise 2 server members). And everyone's hope is now of course Solar Crown, which is probably the most anticipated game in a decade. And if they can pull it off, the racing game genre will finally have that spark again. (PS, don't wanna be that guy but TDU1 and 2 didn't have 1:1 maps. They were pretty close tho :D)
One other point to FH1, since the progression was much much slower, driving around while having that amazing sountrack blasting was truly joyful. It honestly reminded me of just enjoying a drive IRL, and its a shame i havent found a game that could replicate that
The issue with FH is that there is no real competition from other games. The Crew Motorfest & Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown hopefully will change that.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles nailed the open world in my opinion. It felt alive due to the pedestrians, police, other racers and dense traffic. Furthermore, it managed to use a real location but still adjusted the city and street layout to facilitate street racing. Honestly, MCLA is one of the most underrated games ever… possibly the last great arcade racer
When they said about FH5 evolving world, I was the same, no 2 months would look or feel the same. To me, the evolving world is actually a let down, just like there being no malls, car parks, fuel stations etc in the world. It feels dead, even in the town. Now we have car park parts in the event lab, why haven't they added a few car parks as a permanent addition to the map. Part of the issue could be having to cater for previous gen XBox One tech.
I think in a lot of Ways, they are being held back by their Inexplicable Choice to set the Game in....Mexico (They should have set it in Spain IMO!), as they are not even permitted to change the Colour of a Bush without Permission from the Mexican Government. The Developers have openly admitted this, so chances are, the Original Plan for EW got Scrapped due to needing Permission from the Mexican Government for every Single Tiny Change. There was going to be Fuel Stations in the World Originally, Ericship has Pre-Release Footage that Shows One, so I can only assume the Mexican Government Demanded it Removed as Gas Stations are common meeting Places for the Cartels in Real Life. As for the Car Park Parts, I think they are Assets that have been ported in from FH6 to see how well they would be Received, do Players want them as much as they say? The City feeling Dead is due to the Lack of Pedestrians, as there are very Few Sidewalks in Guanajuato (as it is an Ancient Place that feels stuck in 1442) , and even less Bollards, Planters, Shop Awnings, etc, they cannot have Pedestrians, as, to get a PEGI 3 Rating (a Rating that Microsoft has made *Mandatory* for all Future Forza Games as of 2019, and this has been Confirmed by PGG on Live Stream.) , the Pedestrians can only be Placed in Places where the Car *Cannot* Go! FH3, in both Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise, had lots of Pedestrians as they could use the Planters, Shop Awnings and Bollards to make Invisible Walls to place the Pedestrians Behind, they cannot do so with Guanajuato. Part of the World Feeling Dead is indeed due to having to Cater for Base Xbox One, as, due to its *extreme* SD-RAM Limitations (8GB DDR3, and only 5GB are available for Games) the Map, despite being 50% Larger, has the Exact Same Scenery Prop Budget as FH4, this means the Same number of Props are being Spread over a much larger Map, net Result, a Sparse, Empty, Barren, and Dead feeling Map. FH5's Prime issues are all Related to the Map. it being utterly Sparse and Dead due to not having a big enough Prop Budget for its Size owing to the SD-RAM Limitations of base Xbox One, the completely Inexplicable Choice of a Country with very little Modern Architecture, and Tragic levels of Poverty (its why everything just feels so Ancient and Run Down, and Dirty and Abandoned...because it is!) and the Mexican Government not even letting the Developers change the Colour of a Bush without their Direct Permission! FH6 can easily be Fixed with a Dense and Beautiful Map created purely for Series Systems and PC (drop support for the One, make 16GB the *Minimum* SD-RAM Requirement) , a Setting in a Wealthy and Prosperous *European Nation* with Modern Towns and Cites with Modern Up to date Architecture (and Plenty of Invisible Walls using Shop Awnings, Planters, and other Such Props, to enable Pedestrians!) as well as Stunning Rural Scenery, and a Licensing Government that will allow the Developers to add to the Map and improve the Game as they wont Demand in Triplicate Permission has to be gained before they can even change the Colour of a Bush, as 90% of the Funk with FH5 is not the Formula, as many People have gone back to FH4 (Same Formula) and are having *vastly* more Fun! but with the Map! Fix the Map, Fix FH6.
I would say TDU2 is the most insane Free roam game. I remember spending hours driving around… one end of the map to the other was a legit road trip. You could also use turn signals which was cool.
I agree that too many conveniences can detract from the immersion and feeling of the game. One recent example, though not a racing game, is how fast travel in Hogwart's Legacy work. You can fast travel from anywhere you want to a floo flame. But that's not how it's supposed to work. Having to interact with one floo flame to fast travel to another would have been much more immersive. The same can be said for racing games, and fast travelling from district to district, and not to specific locations, would have worked for NFSU2.
i've watched your video from start to finish, its pretty darn good! however i think you've forgotten a pretty big milestone for open world racing games - the Midtown Madness series is probably the very first mainstream open world racing series. the original game was released in 1999 and was set in an open world version of Chicago, the 2nd game in the series featured two cities - San Francisco and London (with the nostalgic infamous expression "More Tea, Vicar?", the third game flopped because it was an xbox only exclusive, but it was a really fun game too.
It wasn't forgotten, just sadly cut! When I first sat down to write I had to decide where to start and what to cover - right away you can see I kinda gloss over the very early open world games from the 80s/90s, but then it was between Midnight Club and Midtown Madness - both by the same studio, developed alongside each other, released around the same time, etc. Midtown Madness did come first, but Midnight Club is a more familiar name and extended further with 3 and LA, so felt like a more fitting start and good example of franchise innovation. I don't mean to snub MM 😅its just a pretty similar game to MC and I had to kinda pick one or the other.
This video summed up everything i think is wrong with games these days and why they are so forgettable Atmosphere. That is how you make your world alive. Old PS2 games had a better Atmosphere than any game from today
Ohhh man talk about a blast from the past I clocked a lot of time on midnight club, I think need for speed underground 2 is one of the best racing games ever. The customization maybe a bit dated by todays standard, but it gave you a sense of ownership you don’t really get in todays games.
Thank you so much for shedding light on this subject. Forza Horizon is one of my all time favourites and it holds a very special place in my heart. Never got to play 2 but it also looked a ton of fun, with the possibility to tune and drivetrain conversions (both of which handicapped FH1 a bit at least for me, considering these were already present in at least FM3, haven't played any Forza Motorsports prior to that so can't comment). Then I was super hyped for 3 coming to PC, and I did it. I pre-ordered my first ever game, and also my very last. It was just plain and simply disappointing. The world was cool, the graphics were there, but that was pretty much it. The campaign is just not for me... And I probably didn't even come to close to play it a tenth of the time I played FH1, which I still play every now and then. The Crew was amazing, 2 I haven't played much because again, the campaign, doesn't hit it for me. And the world on that is great, it is massive and there's plenty of boring areas I'm sure, but the fact you get to drive for so long and still see some landmarks along the way is just nothing short of amazing. Midnight Club 3 is also one my most played games on the PS2 and that was also incredible, absolutely top notch game. The campaign is very grindy but for young me, it was great. I've bought MCLA for the 360 not too long ago, but haven't played it that much yet... Let's hope TDUSC and The Crew Motorfest bring something new to the table, because after seeing FH1 and FH2, I am absolutely sick and tired of the Horizon games and the formula they stick to now, so so boring. No sense of progression, no connection, nothing. It has become a great big sandbox for people to play around with cars, and for that it is good, but that about sums it up for me. It has become a game that just pulls numbers and makes profit and what a shame it is.
Watching this makes me even more eager to see what Test Drive Solar Crown will be like, having a game with a more intimate relationship with your car is what’s missing nowadays imo.
Is it crazy that out of all the racing games out there, im most excited for the CarX Street PC release? Car Shows & Cruises are gona be easyer to organize and more playground for that. With Grip racing and FWD cars. Maybe its the whole "dedicated servers" option and your own themed lobby's. Idk, but out of all the stuff out there and stuff to come, im kinda looking for CarX Street the most. Great video, sumarizing everything that is going on in the last 2 decades. *cheers*
@@channe3049 i know, in the last 3 years i played and made content from CarX drift. Its more fun then all the AAA racing games out there. Custom themed lobbys, and i am a stancy boi, none of the games let me get my perfect fitment as i want it.
One of the very first things I say after the intro is that open world racing games have been around since the late 80s, while I show Test Drive and Vette. I don't claim anywhere that Midnight Club is the first, I said it's "one of the first to have the style we're familiar with today"
Horizon 2 was peek open word racing game to me. I haven't had the same feeling in a racing game since then. And just hearing the menu music gives me goosebumps.
Midnight Club Los Angeles contextualised the open world pretty well. A lot of detail in small areas, with multiple roads and side paths connecting together in different ways wanting the player to memorize the map, with some hidden collectibles scattered all across the city. But the best part was that the different missions the game offered were in proper locations you had to drive to or you had to find the opponent driving around the streets like back in MC1. You could find locations for race series's, race for cash that would be gone if you lost or even exited the game, and they also added racers who specifically cruise around the highway and wait for race challenges specifically there as a nod to the Japanese highway street racing culture which Mid Night Club was big in. Because the map had so much detail in every corner, the distances between places weren't that massive and the game gave you two different garages to quick travel to, 3 once the expansion pack came out. And if you still found it tiring, you could hop into Race Editor and just teleport around the map. This may not sound like much, but it makes the city feel more lived in, makes challenging any racers feel more immersive and made locations feel like places where characters genuinely hang out. Some cars even had clocks in them that showed the in-game clock, letting you know when the time of day would change, and you could also assign a button for putting the convertible roof on or off. This added to the level of immersion the game offered, which is also probably why you could customize the cockpit of a car so much too. You could even properly cruise around the streets by lightly holding the gas pedal which would make the car automatically match the speed limit. Useful for avoiding cops, but even more useful for simply sitting back and cruising around in your tastefully modified car or a Frankenstein's Monster of a disaster.
NFSU2 was originally planned to have police chases. There are references to them within the code of the game, but it's unfinished content. They either didn't have time to finish it or decided to cut the feature for some other reason. At that time the development of NFS games overlapped because of the yearly schedule, so it's plausible they wanted to do it but pushed it back for MW so they could focus on things better for each game. As for the future of the genre, I'm not too hyped about anything that has been currently announced. Although some of the big names from Playground Games left shortly after FH5 launched and have started up a new studio. Even though we have no idea what they're up to, I'm interested to see what they will give us. One to keep an eye on. I'm not super excited about TDU Solar Crown though. They have shown so little of the game, and what they have doesn't feel right to me. It comes across like they're trying to sell the fantasy of being an obnoxious rich person, not necessarily an exploration-heavy game in a beautiful location. I guess I can see how that's an evolution of the lifestyle stuff in previous games, but it's not something that I think should be focused on so much. The Crew Motorfest seems like it's trying to do its own take on TDU3 given the setting, but again there's next to nothing to go on at this point. I never put much time in to the previous games, but I wasn't that impressed by either of them. I think what we really need is something completely new. A new series that isn't just trying to do the same thing we've seen before but better, but can give us something really fresh that we didn't even know we wanted. TDU and FH1 were such a big deal at the time because they were games that you didn't even think could happen, but somehow did. I want that feeling again, not just another "greatest hits".
Tdu was alway about being rich. I mean you could buy really nice mansions, a yacht and play casino. Tdu also always had a focus on supercars and hypercars. So that rich lifestyle is a part of tdu and thats why its also the focus of the new tdu.
"Too much convenience in an open world is a bad thing" is a nice quote. I still feel like if Carbon had a little less of the fast travels and a little more "active" and "colorful" world, it would've been the perfect game. That being said, it just feels like no game has truly mastered this yet, it's like an open slot for it but no one is going for it...
I just want Forza Horizon with real progression, cutscenes with rival drivers, racing for stakes (like pinkslips or cash bets) & the ability to get out of the car. I need to buy property to store my cars visually in a garage similar to GTA Online. I honestly even wish they'd go as far as needing to repair cars after races, replace worn brakes & tires & just performing overall maintenance or improving the vehicle in a tangible way that builds connections with every car. I'd take 1/4 of the current car roster to get all these aspects together in the next Horizon game.
This please. I only drive a handful of cars anyways and can't find it in me to enjoy driving the racing trucks or some of duplicate cars from model different model years. I don't know how many people drive every single Audi RS model, but they tend to feel a little too similar to each other to feel unique. Sorry to Audi fans, it's just the first company alphabetically that i could use as an example. What I appreciate, but also acts as a double edged sword at times, is how Horizon tries to do everything. The problem is everything feels kind of mediocre and we have a lot of content that is not the best quality we know they can deliver. There's still absolutely amazing things we get, but catering to all of the different vehicle types, racing types, terrains, and themes for weekly/monthly events ends up ostracizing a huge group of people while appeasing a small group.
Things I want in horizon 5 is let us walk around our houses make it like crew 2 where we can showcase our favorite cars. Let me choose the transmission for the car not a blanket difficulty setting. I race in auto and drift in manual would be nice to just set it up on a per car basis. and ffs remove awd from drift leaderboards and online drift adventure or separate it again... Give us a track vote / blacklist... If I never have to drive cathedral again it would be too soon. reverse versions of what we have if they cant just add new ones. give me a 3 rotor option and maybe turbo for 4 rotor... If I choose a different car just put me in the car dont as If I want it delivered unless your going to give me an option to deliver or spawn at a house or main hub...
It looks like you forgot about the actual sequel of Midnight Club, Midnight Club II. It had three maps: LA, Paris, and Tokyo. Man I loved that game. I still play it every now and then
I spent HUNDREDS of hours on Tokyo Xtreme Racer back in the day. The retrospectives in this video really drove home to me how bad FH5's world is. While I don't really dig the physics, Unbound's world was a "wow" after FH5.
Regarding TDU1 and TDU2 and it's online open world: it had text chat. In FH you see a player - you drive past them. In TDU2 you see player - you write in chat and sometimes you just go for a cruise and suddenly all the 8 players in your instance are racing between the lights or helping out a dude to find some wrecks and clothes shops. All because communicating is really easy. And don't forget TDU 2's only open world event is when a player initiates a police chase and other players in instance get offer to try and catch said player. Also wheelspins ruin the excitement of getting a new car.
I LITERALLY want my copies of TDU1&2 to be buried with me in my coffin when I die; that’s how much those 2 games mean to me. And I hope I can say the same thing about the new upcoming TDU game (aka TDUSC aka TDU3).
I am also a big fan of tdu. Tdu 1 on the xbox 360 was actually the first video game i ever played and to me its still on of the best racing games. Later i also played tdu2 which i also like a lot. Now I play both games with the online mod on pc.
Midtown Madness 1 did the same thing as Midnight club street racing just a year earlier. Open world Maps you can drive in with not only NPC racers and NPC traffic, but even NPC Police to play with. Midtown Madness 2 sep2000 was my childhood game and lets you drive through San Fransisco and London.
I'm surprised you didn't talk more about the atmosphere of Horizon 1 and 2. Those are, to many people including myself, the reasons that the first two Horizon games smashed the competition as the worlds felt lived in and just pleasant to exist in unlike other games of the time and to this day,
@@megadeth8592 Nah 2 is my favorite. To me, the world is just enjoyable to be in because of the map design, the music, and general atmosphere. Go see UltraVoilet's video on why a lot of people think it's up there with 1.
Only the first one has the great atmosphere The rest are just souless and mostly because the first game was made by Ex-Bizarre Creations devs the rest are just the Playground Games era
One thing I hate about modern open world driving games is the complete lack of consequences. You can drive through lamp posts, fences, and trees as though they had the consistency of mist. Pro Street made you pay to repair a damaged or totalled car. Even Midtown Madness allowed a race to be lost if you wrecked. In Forza you can rip up 300 meters of dry stone wall and barely slow down.
Can't believe Xbox and Playground turned the legendary Forza Horizon series into a Gamepass filler. Now they just copy&paste with lazy recycled content. Forza Horizon 5 a disgrace of the series.
My sentiments exactly! FH5 is THE most boring/disappointing racing game I've ever purchased. I will occasionally replay all of the older entries, but I'll never touch FH5 again. I get sick just thinking about that pile of trash.
It's been awesome seeing everyone's love and nostalgia for the games that mean so much to them, that unfortunately weren't featured in this video. I loved games like Midtown Madness, Burnout Paradise and NFS World too! Like I mentioned at the end of the vid, even after 43 minutes it still feels like I didn't do enough games/franchises justice. I wanted to offer a *window* into the games and franchises that I felt had the biggest impact on open worlds, without giving the *whole* picture - as that would have led to a much, much longer and less focused video😅
So please know that I didn't forget them, or mean to do them any injustice, I just had to make some cuts somewhere and focus on what I felt made the biggest impact throughout the years.
my bad, you meantioned it the comment and i didnt see it xD
I prefer UG2 style customisation shops with tdu2 style lifestyle, horizon physics, some goofy modes like takedown and crash from burnout, most definitely are we missing shift2U drift tandems, prostreet style drags, outruns, horizon and crew are probably 85% of the way there, just needs more focused modes already mentioned imo
It was a great review, didn't mean to stir up trouble. 😶
this is why i dont even have much hope for the new test drive and forza horizons even thought tdu2 was one of my favourite games of all time. the crew 2 would hands down beat everything for me if they put decent physics in it. lack of innovation... this why ime sticking to modded older games on pc. games released way back when used to have enough good content to keep me happy but not now. ime leaving consoles behind even though i have been a console player all my life. this is because the people that care can do what they like with the game. modern games devs loose the need to innovate when they can monetise anything as easy as they can now. horizon 4 and 5 where just clones of 3 with added bullshhh, what even is a cross country race? its a lazy attempt at race design and just filler. the map on horizon games is tiny for what they could do now, i dont want the worlds best graphics when it sacrifices so much in terms of gameplay. we want a big map, good physics and ok graphics please devs... and the lack of storey in both. we dont even need an in detail good story..... just a start from the bottom to the top job will do in any means. that's what brings the satisfaction. plus all the forced stuff you have to do to get new cars is pure bull. if it doesn't become available to buy in the game i dont have time to do that crap i have a business to run my gaming time is limited and precious. ime not wasting it doing content that only serves as bragging rights for the devs... hey look guys everyone's playing our game this much..... yeh cos you forced them too to get most the game. even gta5 has annoyed me to the point i dont want to play he online because everything costs 20 trillion dollars, its like having a real job if you want anything. i want my gaming to be fun not a constant grind, i dont mind grinding for cash but as long as i only have to do it once or twice. not for every thing i want in the game. every company seems to be chasing rockstars ideology with this type of thing. honestly after the stunt gta 5 has pulled with the shark card and overpriced everything they may as well just change their logo to a picture of Jimmy Savile for how many kids they have had over a barrel. then you get all the idiots defending it saying yeh but bro its all free content...... no its not they have made billion's... not millions..... billions..... its like them flicking you ten pence back........
also 100 percent agree with you on tdu2 if you just put good physics in it and some fresh graphics it would out do everything for me.
Thank you for calling out the biggest oversell of FH5 - evolving world. There was so much potential just wasted, and what they gave us can barely be called evolving
i barely notice the difference in the world when they change the map
The rally expansion should have been a world change
@@Senhor_Queijo ...they change the map?
@@nyeeeeeee9346 in minor ways sure, look at the colour of grass etc in dry season compared to the wet.... also water levels, some bits completely dry up. there are tweaks and differences each season change but nothing huge.
NFS World had more of an evolving world 12 years ago than fh5 did
The stagnation of open world racing games also ties into DLCs. I remember when expansion like South Central for MCLA or Big Surf Island for Burnout Paradise came out and everyone loved them. Seamlessly added districts to the existing map which provide a completely new vibe and layout. Nowadays Forza *still* has us fast travel to separate islands, and in the case of the recently revealed Rally expansion, don't even feel all that different. I miss getting excited for DLCs in this genre.
Oh, and to add one more game to the list, one that even precedes the first Midnight Club - Driver 2 absolutely pioneered the bare basics of an open world driving game. It even came out before GTA 3 and had not one, not two but *four* completely unique maps based on real locations over two discs. You could even get out of the car and simply walk around, scare pedestrians walking down the sidewalk and the vehicle handling still holds up today. Also each map had a secret car hidden on each map, such as a classic Mini you could find in Havana. You'd need to find a hidden underground parking garage, which acted like a labyrinth of sorts, and navigate your way through it to find the Mini hidden in it. I miss open world racers having fun secrets like that. Nowadays it's very much "what you see is what you get".
Never thought about the expansions being separate worlds anymore till now. Massive missed opportunities
Driver 2 came out after Midnight Club and even then, Midtown Madness was the one that really set it in motion
Driver 2 was probably one of my first driving games and it was awesome
Yea driver games are Missing 😢
Driver and driver 2 were awesome, I can remember playing them my dad when I was a little kid, they were so much fun
It's not just lack of competition. It's what studios prioritize, or are told to focus on by publishers footing the bill. Games becoming mainstream played a huge role in this compared to when earlier racing games were released. Devs could do whatever they wanted, be it over the top arcade, or more serious sim-lite title like Porsche Unleashed. Now days, it's almost always about pushing graphical fidelity and open world scale versus good (engaging) game play. Some older games are better because they were focused and limited by hardware. So, devs had to prioritize certain features and do them well instead of using the "kitchen sink" approach where shiny graphics, huge but lifeless open worlds and Ray Tracing hide the shallow game play. This goes for all genres, but racing in particular since most people associate it with just car-to-car racing and nothing ancillary that goes with it like story, the quality of world itself, player interaction outside of cars, etc.
Split screen dying is the true crime. I remember going to mynjeighbours House to race in splitscreen. More tech, less options. Online is great. But offline options should be taken more seriously
@@ralphwarom2514 GT7 says hi
I don't know if the mainstream appeal of games has really changed that much but definitely putting the emphasis on graphical fidelity and instant gratification has. Gran Turismo 3 and 4 are some of the best selling games of all time and still beloved to this day while 7 has been harshly criticized since its release for how shallow the gameplay is and being so focused on incentivizing you to buy your progression instead of earn it. The game looks incredible and had a ton of hype but failed to live up to any of it because devs and publishers are just greedy and out of touch these days. As a kid I would have bent over backwards for a game that looked as good as Horizon 5 or GT7 but as an adult I would much rather play their decades old predecessors.
this is the reason i dont like the crew games at all, they are just ubisoft games
@@ralphwarom2514The Midnight Club games before LA had split-screen in an open world! Driver SF also managed to pull that off in an even bigger map complete with the vehicle swaping mechanic!
I sank thousands of hours into Horizon by now, and yet the game that appeals to me the most here is probably TDU2. I guess I really want to see what Solar Crown will have to offer.
The first TDU was way better because you also had the bikes TDU2 sold the bikes as a DLC but you only got 4 and they felt tacked on
@@acid3129 TDU 1 also had better driving physics in the Hardcore Mode.
However, TDU 2 greatly expanded on things to do outside of racing, I sank hours of gameplay on that casino alone.
I really hope that Solar Crown doesn't turns out to be a flop or vaporware because so far we haven't got much information about it.
This vid just wants me to look for TDU ports tbh.
@@Litl_Skitl if you see the ps2 version for all that is holy run ..... run like hell
@@Litl_Skitl both tdu 1 and tdu 2 can be free downloaded. You just have to search a bit.
Personally the main thing I miss most in Horizon games is a sense of progression. You get bombarded with new cars all the time, making it so that you really don't value any car particularly highly...
Don't know about the first horizon, but I started with horizon 2 and in that game we already got crazy money and cars, especially with VIP and the old Forza Hub, we used to get the car and the amount of credit the car is worth, so win a lambo in the wheelspin and get an extra 400k and a monthly gift of up to like 2 mil or more (depending on lvl) which they changed to weekly in horizon 3 so once a week I could just open an app on my Xbox and get 400k. If only we could get the cars and handling of horizon on the gta 5 map, now that would be sick I reckon.
I mean... I value one car highly. The Mustang RTR was my favourite car in FM7 so naturally I started with that in FH5. Forza Horizon is more about exploring the open world, seeing what's there. I don't pay attention to the progression, but once I started exploring the map I noticed myself doing more and more to actually move forward in the game.
@@hyacinthtiger62 Well I should hope you mean it if you're saying it.
@@jokerzwild00 Yeah, filler words are a funny thing
Agreed. The game covers up the lack of a good campaign by shoving cars down your throat, hoping you don’t get bored.
And another documentary on Racing Games? Sign me up.
9:29 Black Box were black magic artists at blending city architecture. The skate series is a testament to their open-world building skills. Has elements of LA, Vancouver, New York and SF all blended seamlessly.
I wanted to mention how Midnight Club, 3 especially, used the open world in its races in a truly special way to me. None of the standard races in 3 had walls or barriers of any kind, just checkpoints. Combined with the more complex and more realistically designed cities of the third game, this means that learning the open world is crucial to being good at midnight club because you can approach the checkpoints from whatever the fastest angle you can think of is. You may see a checkpoint on a square corner, but remember a large parking lot or alley on you can cut through, allowing you to confidently approach the corner at full speed rather than slowing down for hard cornering. Already this makes the races and open world feel tightly connected, and then the game takes this a step further with the unordered races. These races would place checkpoints on the map with no order to hit them in. This was the biggest challenge to utilize the open world because you had to navigate yourself between all of the points while trying to be efficient and keep speed up. Depending on how much you knew about where you were and where you were going, these were either the hardest or the easiest events in the game, and I think they're a genius race type I've never seen again in a racing game.
yes!!! this game was and still is, one of its kind.
I had to learn that the hard way when i first played Midnight club 2 and 3
This is the exactly why whenever I see “open world” I’m skeptical because I begin wondering if it’s as open as the way Midnight Club executed it.
It added a layer of complexity with having to navigate based on your own knowledge of the city. Nothing, *nothing* comes close to the awesomeness of this series and everything else seems to pale in comparison.
Midnight Club breathed new life into the genre because it was something different, something that hadn’t quite been done before. All the racing games nowadays are more or less the same with a few differentials. It’s almost like everyone’s vying for the idea that “Hey look at my game, it’s more realistic than yours”.
The unordered races in Midnight Club 2 were absolutely brutal. Remember that Paris race against the world champion? That was a showstopper for most people.
MC3 > Forza
This is literally what midtown madness did lol
To me, the reward for exploring in TDU2 was the roads turning blue (or yellow for off road). I can't tell you how many nights I sat there after I was burnt out from racing, I would just put on my favourite play list and start tracing roads. It really scratched that "collect-athon" itch for me lol. I just finished another play through a few weeks ago, and every time I am compelled to fill that map in.
The worst part of Horizon for me is the lack of progression. It just throws shit at you in a nonstop torrent of new cars and as a result you become numb.
The game literally pushes you to stop caring about it.
You gotta recognize that not everyone has the time, especially nowadays, to grind for hours just to get, like, two cars.
@@PlanetThrill sucks to be you
@@PlanetThrill LMAO ur fucking kidding me, if you dont have time to play a progression system like nfs most wanted WTF are you doing playing video games? at that point mightaswell just watch a 5 min youtube video. nobody is expecting MMO shit like progression, but HAVING no progression fucking sucks and thats what forza amounst too.
and with all the loading screens in forza its not really faborable to your argument of time lol.
@@PlanetThrill So don’t. Nobody is expecting you to finish an entire game in one sitting. Even if they were, why should games become unfulfilling skinnerboxes just because you personally don’t have the patience for progression?
@@IamCombustible I’m not saying that every game should. Not every game needs to be like Need for Speed.
Bro mentioning TDU, arguably still the greatest open world racing game around.
Massive W.
In all honesty though, that's a really deep and profound analysis and I appreciate the effort you put into it.
Absolutely. Not only the map, but the series has its own class. The PC and Xbox version is the best rather than tge PS2(some Xbox feature were not found in PS2 ver). But the hilarious is, the numbers of cars (both ver) and bikes (xbox ver) are above anything.
The more I play FH5, the more I feel they did Mexico dirty by literally just throwing a few disappointingly small towns and cities on a map with some landmarks and called it Mexico.
Easily the worst/laziest map of the whole series.
They have "lEfT iT uP tO tHe CoMmUnItY" with the dumb thing called EventLab
@@diablow1411 Nope, it was because Mike "not even a car enthusiast" Brown wanted a Map built *purely* around "The Eliminator" (the "Battle Royale with Cars" nonsense!), meaning the map needed to be as flat and featureless as Possible.
Remember, the past 6 months or so have more than proven that 95% of the issues with FH5, *Starting* with the *Inexplicable* Choice of Mexico, are because of Mike "why was he even employed at PGG?" Brown being *utterly unsuited* for the Role of Chief Creative Director, and the Remaining 5% (such as promoting that Gnostic, Satanic, Feminist Dumpster Fire "Barbie" with a pair of Tie in "cars") are due to Microsoft and their Insatiable greed mixed with utter Incompetence!
Eventlab is being used to Guide the Direction for FH6, Yes, which will Hopefully be a much Denser, much more Racing Focussed Map, with a lot more "Unbreakable Barriers" an "unsurpassable obstacles" again, as Torben Ellert, the new Chief Creative Director, has given us a Taste of his, much better, vision for Horizon in Rally Adventure, but Eventlab is not the Be all and end all.
However, although I lost interest in Eventlab months ago and have not made my own event in it for ages, as it has just become too complicated to use, I personally feel that it is Better to focus on Eventlab, which works in Single Player, than to focus on a Toxic and Violent multiplayer only mode that hardly anyone even likes such as the Eliminator IMO!
Sadly, however, as PGG are struggling to even get Permission to change the Texture on the Bushes from the Government of Mexico, who will not allow any main map changes without their Permission so their "country and people will not be besmirched", there is no way they would get Permission to Redo the main map from Scratch!
FH6 will, hopefully, have a vastly better map if Rally Adventure is any Litmus, however, kindly do *not* Expect a Purely Urban map, despite all the "City" eventlabs, as Torben has stated, Openly, that he finds such maps to be Depressing and Ugly, also, please do not expect Japan, there are just too many Political and Licensing Hurdles in the way for Japan to even be remotely Plausible, I am afraid I am fully Expecting boring and generic California as a result of Donut Media Part 2, as Microsoft will want a Cheap to make Location like that (as it could be made purely with Recycled FH1, 3 and 5 Assets) to Maximise the Profits.
Doing the landmark tour (longest race) the crew 1 was such a memorable moment, especially when doing that with a friend
I wish they stuck to cars in the 2nd one
Looking at Steamcharts as of right now I see FH5 has 10k active players and FH4 has 7.7k, This just shows how nothing really changed between those games. Players just chose which environment they like the most at this point. Maybe just patch these two worlds together with an airport and bring the community closer.
That’s a terrific idea. Imagine being able to travel to any of the locations from previous FH games within one big hub world, with updated graphics. I mean, it is high time for games like this to switch to a game as service model, like Real Racing 3 (10 years old, still getting monthly updates and I am still playing every day) where things can be updated, upgraded all the time.
I was seriously hoping this would've been the DLC actually. You don't even have to update the graphics of the old game, that would honestly increase the charm of it. Imagine teleporting to Colorado and you basically teleport back in time to the old graphics style with the blur and color filter covering the screen. But everything else is FH5. All it needs is the events. Doesn't need the cars, the music, etc. Just port the maps to FH5 and let us drive around and race in them with the best handling model and sounds. Especially for something like online/open racing, which desperately needs new tracks to maintain players.
@@hellisio RR3 is a POS freemium game. I have also played it for years, however it just got really frustrating with the exorbitant pricing. They only update it regularly because thats how they get their money
@@horvathr95 I agree that the economics in the game are obviously designed to push you to spend real money on in-game currencies. And it works... sometimes :)
as someone who's played a lot of horizon, a lot of long time fans of the series prefer 4 to 5 rather than thinking that 5 is an improvement, sort of including myself, you start as the festival ceo and with several expensive cars(and then they immediately throw a bunch more at you for no real reason), entirely removing any sense of progression or accomplishment that the previous games had, we got another toy based dlc with the second iteration of hot wheels in forza which is making the dlcs feel super samey, to me the game just has very little soul compared to 2 and 4 (I haven't played 3), though it does have some objective improvements such as improved physics and vastly improved steering wheel support
I think you undersold the open world of Midnight Club LA a bit. I was a good recreation of Los Angeles, with so many fantastic roads, and highly detailed: Lots of pedastrians and good traffic. I never played a racing game where the world felt so alive and independant of me. A very Rockstar experience, so to speak.
I like the License system in TDU2, even though they were hard for me to pass, it allowed me to level up my skills. And the multi-race tournaments gave the game a better progression than Forza. I'm looking forward to Solar Crown, especially if the multi-player online is better than Forza (a low bar IMHO).
The license system was frustrating at times, but on the other hand very rewarding when you unlocked a new license and thus new races.
I'd have thought the Midtown Madness trilogy would be mentioned, seeing as it's an open world racing franchise that first released in 1999, earlier than Midnight Club, and I'm pretty sure its sequel released before that game also. The first Midtown Madness attempted to create a scaled back Chicago, and Midtown Madness 2 had recreations of San Francisco and London. The Driver games deserve a shout-out too, first hitting PlayStation in 1999. All that still, still an enjoyable video!
Maybe because it was PC exclusive for the two first Midtown Madness? I spent so much time on these, especially when Internet came to mod the thing from head to toe.
Midtown Madness was so fun as a kid, I don't know why it seems as most have forgotten about it
I agree these games were awesome maybe he's too young to know what midtown madness was lol.
exactly
I decided to research the team behind Midtown Madness, and Angel Studios would eventually become Rockstar San Diego. Even-though HokiHoshi didn't mention Midtown Madness, he still indirectly showed them love by beginning with Midnight Club.
It’s sad to see the state of current racing games. Beautiful graphics, but empty worlds that lack things to do. NFS Unbound’s biggest problem is the repetitive events across classes. Horizon became a clothing simulator. I don’t know what we can do to better this situation.
Stop buying the games. That's the only way to show these companies we aren't happy
@@megadeth8592 problem is the games appeal to the general public not a racing game enthusiast, so if the hardcore or car guys and gals stop buying it wouldnt begin to dent their sales.....itll take a company putting a whole new spin on the genre similar to wipeout or ridge racer etc for companies to think about changing their base mindsets
Is quite surprising that racing games, a genre that seemingly has no business looking ridiculously good, even racing games from 2010 like Hot Pursuit look gorgeous. Yet it's the genre that's always hungry and focusing on looking better rather than gameplay.
Games like NFS 2015 and Horizon 5 are some of the most aesthetically beautiful games in my opinion, yet gameplay wise they fall extremely short.
Just wait for Test Drive Solar Crown
@@Alvarito205 Yeah, that aged like Milk!
Midnight Club was the GOAT IMO. I still have Los Angeles on my Series S and always have fun with all the vehicles and customizations.
I remember the first time cruising around midnight club la i was amazed at how the entire map is open to you the moment you start the career mode, you can literally go to any district and each one gives you a different vibe, going to areas like Hollywood or downtown you'll see pedestrians walking around or driving luxurious cars where as going to south central you'll see pedestrians driving classic cars.
Everyone always forgets to show Midtown Madness the love it deserves. I think I spent more time tooling around Chicago than racing. I mean, you could bomb through a shopping mall reliving Blues Brothers.
FWIW I did think about showing games like Midtown Madness! But figured I had to make a "start point" somewhere, and Midnight Club is by the same devs, released just a year later and continued on for longer, so just felt like the better game to feature. Like I mentioned at the end, even in a video this long I still wish I could have talked about more games and franchises 😭
@@HokiHoshifair enough, it just had a lot of things later games picked up on like race shortcuts, police chases, pedestrians diving out of harm’s way, and other drivers yelling at you (probably my favorite part).
Man, I loved Midtown Madness 3. The career mode was great and yeah, just exploring the map and messing around or looking for paintjobs was a blast
@@BertTF2 I had 1 and 2, never got to try 3. The first 2 were so fun, I still have the CDs, I don’t know if I could get them to work on a modern PC, but I might just be inspired to try.
@@HokiHoshi Honestly Midtown Madness did come first, Felt like you should've touched on it.
I think the thing about all open world games, racing or otherwise, is that they're so much better when the open world isn't just a hub to select the core challenges, it's part of them. Synergy is really important to designing complex, multifaceted games and it's often not emphasized enough. As mentioned in the video, Midnight Club demands you learn the maps and their shortcuts with unordered races and spread out checkpoints. In NFS Most Wanted, the cop chase are arguably the main attraction over the races and those utilize the open world. Burnout Paradise puts its collectibles in interesting places that show you shortcuts for races and areas where you can do things in stunt challenges.
All these modern games like Horizon mostly just put you on a track that happens to use the same terrain as a part of the open world but still feels so disconnected from it you hardly even pay attention to where you are. And you end up with tracks that are actually less interesting than non-open world racing game tracks because they're limited by their existence in the open world. Aside from the Eliminator and taking obscene shortcuts in Horizon Stories, there's pretty much no overlap between the cruising/exploring open world and the core racing experience. Yes you can argue that it's good to have the variety of alternating between the two, but like I said, it just ends up making the racing less interesting when it's held back by being nominally still confined to the open world.
You are totally right, horizon races don’t feel immersed. You roll to a random pin to start a race a suddenly there’s a start finish line and a big crowd there and then when u r done it’s all done again. Games like nfs feel more immersed because it’s night time street racing there’s no crowd that suddenly appears just your competition rolls up to a temporary made start line. I think it would be a lot better if the start finish lines were a more permanent fixture as you could then easily see where races r and it would feel more seamless
if only forza could have a city space again. Most of the time the maps have good roads but have no walls anyway. Its all a giant lot of dirt or grass with some paths in it. For whatever reason I like the more closed off roads kind of map. Like underground to carbon. NFS 2015 was a good map but it was closer tied to being realistic. The freeways and roads in blackbox nfs were so wavy, canted, and not practical in a civil engineering sense but it was fun that way.
FH2 had easily the best world in the series
The whole "everything is open" thing really does make many roads seem kinda useless to drive on. Often the quickest way from 1 point to another is a straight line, so there's no point in following a curvy road.
Having certain restrictions can make a game much better
Also, since driving off road is not very punishing, it's not really necessary to follow the road precisely much. It seriously adds a certain fun when the road is restricted. Forza roads feel way too wide to perceive how dangerous it can be to drive that fast, and crashes being way too forgiving.
@@Ganjatraining "Having certain restrictions can make a game much better"
Say it louder so the devs can hear you. The first game company that realizes this will have an instant classic. We need a breath of fresh air so badly rn
@@chillaxTF Game maps used to be restricted because of technical limitations. Now that it's possible, everyone is doing it even when it is completely unnecessary in certain games.
Also the way it is done now isn't as good as old Midnight Club games where you would drive through buildings and stuff, now it's all just off road driving
Another issue with the racing game genre in the modern age is how stagnant it has been with the constant chasing of "Realism" instead of innovating with the gameplay
38:29 That mechanic actually happened back in NFS World in 2010, when they would add a snowy map every winter, that also modified the golf course area to have some giga ramps to jump on!
I’m here to mention this exact thing, it makes me feel even more sad, also do you remember horizon live? It was fun and cool and also appeared in nfs mw12 in pretty similar fashion
I started on The Crew 2 recently after getting really bored of FH5 and it really shocked me at how much better the customization is, I can actually customize my car the way I wanted it to look compared to Horizon where I slap the same ugly rear wing to every single car just for performance. I was pretty shocked at there being actual F1 (Redbulls) and GT3 cars as well. Some other things like having a more crowded traffic and having actual pedestrains roaming around add to the game's atmosphere as well, something that I feel that Horizon is sorely lacking at times.
Same! I've had far more fun and enjoyment with The Crew 2 than FH5. I got bored of FH5 within 3 weeks, deleted it off my hard drive, and I have no intentions on playing it ever, even though I screwed up and pre purchased the DLC before they were even announced. More hot wheels shit!? No thank you!
A real shame too. Forza was my favorite racing franchise since I started with FM2 in 2008. How far it's fallen since..
There's no denying crew has better customization But at the end of the day it's about driving and i really don't like the feel of Crew's physics.Forza still has the best physics for an open world game imo.
I desperately wish that I enjoyed The Crew 2's handling model like at all 😭 All of the other aspects of it are pretty fun
The inclusion of motorcycles in The Crew 2 is nice too. I remember going on a road trip around the entire map on a Harley Street Glide. It was a vibe.
the thing i don't like about the crew 2 is that there is no meaningful exploration like in the first part. there is no challenge in exploring the world because you can teleport everywhere from the beginning. it was so much fun exploring the world piece by piece in the first part.
There's one thing that wasn't mentioned in the TDU segment that only the Crew 2 has been able to match in just the last few years. Thats combining the car world with the motorcycle world. TDU was so ahead of its time allowing you to race your buddies super cars with a super bike. In a lot of ways, I really think of the crew 2 as an extension of the TDU series, and I'm hoping the same for the Motorfest game.
Ivory Tower (The Crew devs) was formed from a lot of ex-Eden Games (TDU devs) staff, that probably has something to do with it.
I don't need the next big open world game to be that innovative. I just need it to have the features I want well implemented. I want to start at the bottom and work my way to the top slowly, not get flooded by exotic hypercars from the start of the game (like in Horizon). I want the handling to be good and not too arcadey. I want the open world to be dense and immersive, not filled with glowing icons and stuff. That's it.
Than play nfs
@@rubenandrethorseth6265 I guess you must have missed this part:
"I want the handling to be good and not too arcadey. I want the open world to be dense and immersive, not filled with glowing icons and stuff."
@@MetalGamer666 yea. I played some Crew2 and if the handling was good, that game would be perfect for me. but it's just unfun doing cruises...
I would really love a return of arcade racing games like Split/Second, Driver, Blur, Burnout, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer... the racing game genre needs a breath of fresh air, something new and different, not only simulators...
FH5 Is not a sim
@@420BudNuggets i know, it's a simcade
It's crazy how you did a 45 minute video on open world racing games and didn't even touch Driver and GTA. Driver was literally the progenitor of open world racing games and police chases.
true and the best and unique racinf game is driver san fransisco
Whichever team first combines the driving dynamics and vehicle selection of Horizon with the lifestyle aspects and map size of TDU2 will be the new king of this genre.
I think skipping over Burnout Paradise was a huge mistake, because its formula is the most imitated in the 15 years since, without understanding what made the formula work.
1. Collectables on the map. In Burnout, they're used not only to encourage exploration, but they are also useful for all events (shortcuts in races, multiplyer bonuses in stunt run) and were fun to interact with even after the first time. In the games since, collectables feel plopped down randomly, show up on a mini map, and have no use in events.
2. Open World. In Burnout, the map is big enough to accommodate different themed districts, but small and dense enough that you'll know every road like the back of your hand. You'll eventually be able to navigate and race without even looking at the map or minimap, which is very underrated in open world games. In the games since, world size has gotten too big, relying on gps markers on-map and in-game, and the removal of road guards has made races feel more like off-road 4x4 events than actual street racing.
3. Multiplayer. In Burnout, the lobby could play not only races, but also cooperative challenges, variants on the event types from single player, or even just vibe out in the world. Because the world was small and dense, people could naturally congregate and just mess around setting up stunts and whatnot. It felt very social, which is the whole point of multiplayer. In the games since, other players are either ghosts, or they are focused on grinding whatever event is the meta. The maps aren't vibe-able, so players are typically on their own travelling to and from events, never stopping just to just exist in the space.
Burnout Paradise was one of my favourite open world racing games ever. I can't even count the hours that I rode my bike or car though the city and the hills to the windfarm and back down to the harbour. The bikes, the music, the driving and the visuals were just perfect.
Also surprised you didn't mention Driver San Francisco.
2:40 ayo those subwoofers and W logo on a trunk look like a face. I can't unsee it now
Man the Crew was amazing the only bad thing was low money rewards (and some phisics things) but the Crew 2 doesn't feel like a the "crew" game in Crew 1 you build a Crew in the Story but crew2 has more freedom to the cars
I do really appreciate your content. You have taught me and inspired a lot.
I think the biggest failing of a lot of open world racing games is they've gotten too lost in the weeds of having no limits or pushing the open world and seamlessness to it's very limit that they do forget that it's supposed to still be a racing game. The core activity is so often overlooked and left half baked with the devs just assuming so long as the cars can move it'll all fall into place.
We're seeing Horizon become increasingly guilty of the same thing too. Each new entry seems to put less and less focus on giving you good races and just giving you a bunch of random crap instead. I'd rather have new official routes or better support for the still very barebones event lab than yet another horizon story with cringe unskippable cutscenes that I'll play through once then never, ever, touch again.
yea i felt like that as well. instead of making 10 flashy "race events" with the hoverboard or racing with train, they should add things on the map, maybe like expansion or sth.
You need to try hardcore mode for TDU1, that is a physics that beats many games to this day, especially on wheel. It a close to sim like feel.
If a NFS game was released that had had the entire map of the U.S. but a fictional version with past nfs cities I think would be cool. Everyone has always wondered how the cities are connected
NFS World had some cities connected
The Crew's map really was great. Sad to see the crew 2 leave out a lot of locations and simplify alot of regions, and now The Crew: Motorfest will take place in the same map as TDU...?
You should've talked about Road Trip Adventure. It's an obscure Japanese PS2 racing game with an open world that I think pioneered many things you'd see in Horizon. It had minigames and plenty of characters with their own short and cheesy storylines that compare to Horizon 4 and 5's "story mode"
One thing to mention about the crew 2 is the newest added race creator.
BRO, that was a blast to me, because that is probably the best thing ever added to The Crew 2, as it opens allot of opportunities to people making tons of racings that Ivory Tower never made.
Also, I'm hyped for Motorfest, this game is looking really good and fresh to me.
Have to say, well done on the video, you've covered the major shake-ups when it came to open world racers. Been a massive fan of Midnight Club 2, Test Drive Unlimited, Need For Speed Underground and Forza Horizon and I can definitely agree on your take.
After Test Drive Unlimited it felt like no other game was striving for a bit more than just cars and driving for the sake of it, my main gripe with Forza Horizon. What I liked about TDU was the feel of the progression system and the collector side of things, felt like the old NFS titles which weren't open world.
And there's so little emphasis on the immersion factor as well, as you said, the menu game, the whole game is played in spreadsheets and rewards for the sake of a cheap dopamine rush, it's a real damned shame if you ask me.
Looking forward to the future though, so thanks for taking the time to make this video, cheers!
I really think TDUSC map will be innovative in its density, it'll be smaller for sure but +600km of roads in this size of map sounds like a very first to me
Spot on video 👍
Think you've pretty much nailed it.
I remember back to TDU, thinking, wow, what's this gonna be like in a few years. Online car meets, insane customisation, much better handling.
We've been let down pretty bad looking back 🤣
Forza have pretty much nailed the handling mechanics for the type of game imo, just the right amount of arcadiness.
Going to be very hard to beat.
Ive always enjoyed that aspect.
The whole vibe of the game does feel like it's for kids though. All the cosmetic filler and the special events, reminds of destiny or some crap.
Hope TDU or horizon pull something special out the bag, I doubt it though. Gaming industry is as lazy as they come these days.
Technically TDU and TDU2 online still exists
@@ZoMTDU The online in TDU is missing a lot of the functionality that the original multiplayer had. All you can do is drive around and do point to point races. Don't know about TDU2 since I don't touch that.
Thank you for actually posting a video that has a reasonable opinion base. I'm so sick of seeing other videos saying that the current stock of racing games are all worthless garbage, when that's not true at all; the only real issue is the stagnation and lack of innovation. I really appreciate seeing a much more levelheaded perspective on things.
I’m honestly surprised Mr. Hoshi didn’t mention the Pixar Cars games by THQ. They’re more so in the middle of the racing game genre. They’re not too realistic like most of the games mentioned in this video, but they’re not too “arcadish” like Crash Team Racing or Mario Kart. Instead, it’s a nice combination between having fictional characters mixed with the “semi realistic” physics of actual vehicles.
For granted, they’re movie tie-ins. And most movie tie-in games don’t do too well. However, the Cars games are perhaps an exception (at least the ones developed by THQ). Because while they are just tie-in video games (to a franchise nobody cares about except me), the Cars games do try to experiment with the world of talking vehicles. Even to where players can customize McQueen (especially in Race-O-Rama). In terms of events, they do vary from just the standard racing events. And in some cases, the side events are just as fun as the main events themselves.
On the topic of open world games, the best Pixar Cars game to have freeroam, is without a doubt Race-O-Rama. While it contains different locations like a coastal view of the beach and a night city, it gives players the ability to explore the maps and unlock new challenges, characters, etc. In the end, I will definitely recommend the Cars games for just how much thought and effort was put into them.
Maybe I’m giving the Cars games too much credit because they’re my personal favorite video games.
Youve got a good point. They had great open world ellements and they where racing games so I think they deserve to be apart this.
these games actually had life and weren't dead, with each location having its own quirks and features. Sad to see modern racing games are dead in liveliness and the enviroment around it.
Amazing work. I hope, as a genre, we don't go the route of other sports games.
1:50 that guy on the mini map got destroyed 😂
i grew up with TDU. one of my favorite games i keep forgetting about. im super stoked for solar crown, the last bastion of hope for this genre for me.
Haha yeah so many let downs. This could save it for us older folks who remember the good ol' days.
Tokyo Extreme Racer... Now that's a name I haven't heard in close to two decades. 😅
If R* is smart GTA 6 will also be Midnight Club 5 👀
I think the slowed-down tuning played well for NFS:U2. Today in games like Forza there are hundreds of cars available at any given moment with sharing tunes and paintjob as a main focus, as racing games now are targeted at online audience. Underground 2 was designed as a single player experience, but the biggest factor was the limited amount of cars available in the game. This forced more realistic attempt at tuning your car, making every car and dollar spent on it special as devs didn't want to get you bored instantly. This made every upgrade for your car into an adventure, where you finally ride to buy something you've been saving for for the last hours of gameplay. Getting your dream car and making it competitive was a long journey but very rewarding at the end. Great video, keep up the good work.
What a great video. Honestly i love this "history" racing game lessons, it shows me what i missed and how my favorite games compare to others.
My first racing game was TDU2, i saw a friend play it and was immediately hooked even tho i didn't know a thing about the game. A few years later The Crew came out from which i have seen the trailer (still one of the best trailers imo), so i played that too. What i really appreciated in The Crew was the story, which often gets overlooked but is pretty much the best one in-class except Driver SF. Then came The Crew 2 which i got only quite some time after launch, and it just wasn't as good in some ways as the og. Especially the handling.
In that time i rediscovered TDU (Solar Crown) when they dropped the trailer and that's how i ended up in the TDU 2 community, which is growing again! (Looking at Project Paradise 2 server members). And everyone's hope is now of course Solar Crown, which is probably the most anticipated game in a decade. And if they can pull it off, the racing game genre will finally have that spark again.
(PS, don't wanna be that guy but TDU1 and 2 didn't have 1:1 maps. They were pretty close tho :D)
The Solar Crown devs do at least have a basic understanding of what made TDU special.
One other point to FH1, since the progression was much much slower, driving around while having that amazing sountrack blasting was truly joyful. It honestly reminded me of just enjoying a drive IRL, and its a shame i havent found a game that could replicate that
Hell yeah!! Another documentary of racing games from the master!
I'm still amazed that atari was able to port almost the whole TDU for the PS2 and amazingly for the PSP.
The issue with FH is that there is no real competition from other games. The Crew Motorfest & Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown hopefully will change that.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles nailed the open world in my opinion. It felt alive due to the pedestrians, police, other racers and dense traffic. Furthermore, it managed to use a real location but still adjusted the city and street layout to facilitate street racing.
Honestly, MCLA is one of the most underrated games ever… possibly the last great arcade racer
When they said about FH5 evolving world, I was the same, no 2 months would look or feel the same. To me, the evolving world is actually a let down, just like there being no malls, car parks, fuel stations etc in the world. It feels dead, even in the town. Now we have car park parts in the event lab, why haven't they added a few car parks as a permanent addition to the map. Part of the issue could be having to cater for previous gen XBox One tech.
I think in a lot of Ways, they are being held back by their Inexplicable Choice to set the Game in....Mexico (They should have set it in Spain IMO!), as they are not even permitted to change the Colour of a Bush without Permission from the Mexican Government. The Developers have openly admitted this, so chances are, the Original Plan for EW got Scrapped due to needing Permission from the Mexican Government for every Single Tiny Change.
There was going to be Fuel Stations in the World Originally, Ericship has Pre-Release Footage that Shows One, so I can only assume the Mexican Government Demanded it Removed as Gas Stations are common meeting Places for the Cartels in Real Life.
As for the Car Park Parts, I think they are Assets that have been ported in from FH6 to see how well they would be Received, do Players want them as much as they say?
The City feeling Dead is due to the Lack of Pedestrians, as there are very Few Sidewalks in Guanajuato (as it is an Ancient Place that feels stuck in 1442) , and even less Bollards, Planters, Shop Awnings, etc, they cannot have Pedestrians, as, to get a PEGI 3 Rating (a Rating that Microsoft has made *Mandatory* for all Future Forza Games as of 2019, and this has been Confirmed by PGG on Live Stream.) , the Pedestrians can only be Placed in Places where the Car *Cannot* Go! FH3, in both Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise, had lots of Pedestrians as they could use the Planters, Shop Awnings and Bollards to make Invisible Walls to place the Pedestrians Behind, they cannot do so with Guanajuato.
Part of the World Feeling Dead is indeed due to having to Cater for Base Xbox One, as, due to its *extreme* SD-RAM Limitations (8GB DDR3, and only 5GB are available for Games) the Map, despite being 50% Larger, has the Exact Same Scenery Prop Budget as FH4, this means the Same number of Props are being Spread over a much larger Map, net Result, a Sparse, Empty, Barren, and Dead feeling Map.
FH5's Prime issues are all Related to the Map. it being utterly Sparse and Dead due to not having a big enough Prop Budget for its Size owing to the SD-RAM Limitations of base Xbox One, the completely Inexplicable Choice of a Country with very little Modern Architecture, and Tragic levels of Poverty (its why everything just feels so Ancient and Run Down, and Dirty and Abandoned...because it is!) and the Mexican Government not even letting the Developers change the Colour of a Bush without their Direct Permission!
FH6 can easily be Fixed with a Dense and Beautiful Map created purely for Series Systems and PC (drop support for the One, make 16GB the *Minimum* SD-RAM Requirement) , a Setting in a Wealthy and Prosperous *European Nation* with Modern Towns and Cites with Modern Up to date Architecture (and Plenty of Invisible Walls using Shop Awnings, Planters, and other Such Props, to enable Pedestrians!) as well as Stunning Rural Scenery, and a Licensing Government that will allow the Developers to add to the Map and improve the Game as they wont Demand in Triplicate Permission has to be gained before they can even change the Colour of a Bush, as 90% of the Funk with FH5 is not the Formula, as many People have gone back to FH4 (Same Formula) and are having *vastly* more Fun! but with the Map! Fix the Map, Fix FH6.
I would say TDU2 is the most insane Free roam game. I remember spending hours driving around… one end of the map to the other was a legit road trip. You could also use turn signals which was cool.
I agree that too many conveniences can detract from the immersion and feeling of the game. One recent example, though not a racing game, is how fast travel in Hogwart's Legacy work. You can fast travel from anywhere you want to a floo flame. But that's not how it's supposed to work. Having to interact with one floo flame to fast travel to another would have been much more immersive. The same can be said for racing games, and fast travelling from district to district, and not to specific locations, would have worked for NFSU2.
So I really been playing open world racing games since day 1 wow
i've watched your video from start to finish, its pretty darn good!
however i think you've forgotten a pretty big milestone for open world racing games - the Midtown Madness series is probably the very first mainstream open world racing series.
the original game was released in 1999 and was set in an open world version of Chicago, the 2nd game in the series featured two cities - San Francisco and London (with the nostalgic infamous expression "More Tea, Vicar?", the third game flopped because it was an xbox only exclusive, but it was a really fun game too.
It wasn't forgotten, just sadly cut! When I first sat down to write I had to decide where to start and what to cover - right away you can see I kinda gloss over the very early open world games from the 80s/90s, but then it was between Midnight Club and Midtown Madness - both by the same studio, developed alongside each other, released around the same time, etc. Midtown Madness did come first, but Midnight Club is a more familiar name and extended further with 3 and LA, so felt like a more fitting start and good example of franchise innovation. I don't mean to snub MM 😅its just a pretty similar game to MC and I had to kinda pick one or the other.
Bro that burnout when you exited from the body shop in Jackson heights 12:36 was sick
This video summed up everything i think is wrong with games these days and why they are so forgettable
Atmosphere. That is how you make your world alive. Old PS2 games had a better Atmosphere than any game from today
Thanks for talking about this. I hope more do as well
Horizon is just way too squeaky clean and safe, and after playing 5 of the same game I’m just about done with buying them
Ohhh man talk about a blast from the past I clocked a lot of time on midnight club, I think need for speed underground 2 is one of the best racing games ever. The customization maybe a bit dated by todays standard, but it gave you a sense of ownership you don’t really get in todays games.
Thank you so much for shedding light on this subject. Forza Horizon is one of my all time favourites and it holds a very special place in my heart. Never got to play 2 but it also looked a ton of fun, with the possibility to tune and drivetrain conversions (both of which handicapped FH1 a bit at least for me, considering these were already present in at least FM3, haven't played any Forza Motorsports prior to that so can't comment). Then I was super hyped for 3 coming to PC, and I did it. I pre-ordered my first ever game, and also my very last. It was just plain and simply disappointing. The world was cool, the graphics were there, but that was pretty much it. The campaign is just not for me... And I probably didn't even come to close to play it a tenth of the time I played FH1, which I still play every now and then.
The Crew was amazing, 2 I haven't played much because again, the campaign, doesn't hit it for me. And the world on that is great, it is massive and there's plenty of boring areas I'm sure, but the fact you get to drive for so long and still see some landmarks along the way is just nothing short of amazing.
Midnight Club 3 is also one my most played games on the PS2 and that was also incredible, absolutely top notch game. The campaign is very grindy but for young me, it was great. I've bought MCLA for the 360 not too long ago, but haven't played it that much yet...
Let's hope TDUSC and The Crew Motorfest bring something new to the table, because after seeing FH1 and FH2, I am absolutely sick and tired of the Horizon games and the formula they stick to now, so so boring. No sense of progression, no connection, nothing. It has become a great big sandbox for people to play around with cars, and for that it is good, but that about sums it up for me. It has become a game that just pulls numbers and makes profit and what a shame it is.
Watching this makes me even more eager to see what Test Drive Solar Crown will be like, having a game with a more intimate relationship with your car is what’s missing nowadays imo.
Horizon 1 and 3 are the best games in the Horizon series for me
THANK YOU - Thank you for this hardcore, nostalgic trip.. Those really were the times..
Is it crazy that out of all the racing games out there, im most excited for the CarX Street PC release? Car Shows & Cruises are gona be easyer to organize and more playground for that. With Grip racing and FWD cars. Maybe its the whole "dedicated servers" option and your own themed lobby's. Idk, but out of all the stuff out there and stuff to come, im kinda looking for CarX Street the most. Great video, sumarizing everything that is going on in the last 2 decades. *cheers*
CarX Street for PC is just a port from the mobile version, which it's the main platform the CarX developers to worked on.
@@channe3049 i know, in the last 3 years i played and made content from CarX drift. Its more fun then all the AAA racing games out there. Custom themed lobbys, and i am a stancy boi, none of the games let me get my perfect fitment as i want it.
Driver from 1999 had open world. Midtown Madness too. Insterstate 76 and 82. Crazy how people wouldn't remember that.
One of the very first things I say after the intro is that open world racing games have been around since the late 80s, while I show Test Drive and Vette. I don't claim anywhere that Midnight Club is the first, I said it's "one of the first to have the style we're familiar with today"
@@HokiHoshi Gotcha
Wow, here nice and early. Looking forward to an amazing video
Horizon 2 was peek open word racing game to me. I haven't had the same feeling in a racing game since then.
And just hearing the menu music gives me goosebumps.
Blinded by nostalgia.
FH1 better
i still play Test Drive 1 with the platinum mod and still the best open world racing game for me
It's so good!
Midnight Club Los Angeles contextualised the open world pretty well. A lot of detail in small areas, with multiple roads and side paths connecting together in different ways wanting the player to memorize the map, with some hidden collectibles scattered all across the city. But the best part was that the different missions the game offered were in proper locations you had to drive to or you had to find the opponent driving around the streets like back in MC1. You could find locations for race series's, race for cash that would be gone if you lost or even exited the game, and they also added racers who specifically cruise around the highway and wait for race challenges specifically there as a nod to the Japanese highway street racing culture which Mid Night Club was big in. Because the map had so much detail in every corner, the distances between places weren't that massive and the game gave you two different garages to quick travel to, 3 once the expansion pack came out. And if you still found it tiring, you could hop into Race Editor and just teleport around the map. This may not sound like much, but it makes the city feel more lived in, makes challenging any racers feel more immersive and made locations feel like places where characters genuinely hang out. Some cars even had clocks in them that showed the in-game clock, letting you know when the time of day would change, and you could also assign a button for putting the convertible roof on or off. This added to the level of immersion the game offered, which is also probably why you could customize the cockpit of a car so much too. You could even properly cruise around the streets by lightly holding the gas pedal which would make the car automatically match the speed limit. Useful for avoiding cops, but even more useful for simply sitting back and cruising around in your tastefully modified car or a Frankenstein's Monster of a disaster.
NFSU2 was originally planned to have police chases. There are references to them within the code of the game, but it's unfinished content. They either didn't have time to finish it or decided to cut the feature for some other reason. At that time the development of NFS games overlapped because of the yearly schedule, so it's plausible they wanted to do it but pushed it back for MW so they could focus on things better for each game.
As for the future of the genre, I'm not too hyped about anything that has been currently announced. Although some of the big names from Playground Games left shortly after FH5 launched and have started up a new studio. Even though we have no idea what they're up to, I'm interested to see what they will give us. One to keep an eye on.
I'm not super excited about TDU Solar Crown though. They have shown so little of the game, and what they have doesn't feel right to me. It comes across like they're trying to sell the fantasy of being an obnoxious rich person, not necessarily an exploration-heavy game in a beautiful location. I guess I can see how that's an evolution of the lifestyle stuff in previous games, but it's not something that I think should be focused on so much.
The Crew Motorfest seems like it's trying to do its own take on TDU3 given the setting, but again there's next to nothing to go on at this point. I never put much time in to the previous games, but I wasn't that impressed by either of them.
I think what we really need is something completely new. A new series that isn't just trying to do the same thing we've seen before but better, but can give us something really fresh that we didn't even know we wanted. TDU and FH1 were such a big deal at the time because they were games that you didn't even think could happen, but somehow did. I want that feeling again, not just another "greatest hits".
Tdu was alway about being rich. I mean you could buy really nice mansions, a yacht and play casino. Tdu also always had a focus on supercars and hypercars. So that rich lifestyle is a part of tdu and thats why its also the focus of the new tdu.
I am waiting for the time to see digital cars going for real money through microtransactions...
"Too much convenience in an open world is a bad thing" is a nice quote. I still feel like if Carbon had a little less of the fast travels and a little more "active" and "colorful" world, it would've been the perfect game. That being said, it just feels like no game has truly mastered this yet, it's like an open slot for it but no one is going for it...
I just want Forza Horizon with real progression, cutscenes with rival drivers, racing for stakes (like pinkslips or cash bets) & the ability to get out of the car. I need to buy property to store my cars visually in a garage similar to GTA Online. I honestly even wish they'd go as far as needing to repair cars after races, replace worn brakes & tires & just performing overall maintenance or improving the vehicle in a tangible way that builds connections with every car. I'd take 1/4 of the current car roster to get all these aspects together in the next Horizon game.
This please. I only drive a handful of cars anyways and can't find it in me to enjoy driving the racing trucks or some of duplicate cars from model different model years. I don't know how many people drive every single Audi RS model, but they tend to feel a little too similar to each other to feel unique. Sorry to Audi fans, it's just the first company alphabetically that i could use as an example.
What I appreciate, but also acts as a double edged sword at times, is how Horizon tries to do everything. The problem is everything feels kind of mediocre and we have a lot of content that is not the best quality we know they can deliver. There's still absolutely amazing things we get, but catering to all of the different vehicle types, racing types, terrains, and themes for weekly/monthly events ends up ostracizing a huge group of people while appeasing a small group.
Betting cash on races is gambling so it is not E for Everyone safe. You've been banned for 9999 years for suggesting this.
I think we are asking much for a “cyberpunk” wish
Context: want so much but the game will take forever with half of the wants
So basically GTA Online just without weapons and given an E rating
@@rodracer4567 not at all … literally just the garage showcase idea. I could even say a game like Crew 2 if it makes your general assumptions better
Test Drive Unlimited is what Forza Horizon wishes it was.
Imo Fh4 and 5 are steps back for racing games. Racing games are also much too focused on the wrong things such as graphics.
Love you in most of the games you can collide with a light pole and not even slow down completely unscathed .
Things I want in horizon 5 is let us walk around our houses make it like crew 2 where we can showcase our favorite cars. Let me choose the transmission for the car not a blanket difficulty setting. I race in auto and drift in manual would be nice to just set it up on a per car basis. and ffs remove awd from drift leaderboards and online drift adventure or separate it again... Give us a track vote / blacklist... If I never have to drive cathedral again it would be too soon. reverse versions of what we have if they cant just add new ones. give me a 3 rotor option and maybe turbo for 4 rotor... If I choose a different car just put me in the car dont as If I want it delivered unless your going to give me an option to deliver or spawn at a house or main hub...
You unlocked a childhood memory with midnight club, I remember that you could play splitsscreen and hit pedestrians.
It looks like you forgot about the actual sequel of Midnight Club, Midnight Club II. It had three maps: LA, Paris, and Tokyo. Man I loved that game. I still play it every now and then
I spent HUNDREDS of hours on Tokyo Xtreme Racer back in the day. The retrospectives in this video really drove home to me how bad FH5's world is. While I don't really dig the physics, Unbound's world was a "wow" after FH5.
If technology is getting better then why arent racing games getting better? Hm.. Maybe the future we dreamed about isnt what we expected it will be
Regarding TDU1 and TDU2 and it's online open world: it had text chat.
In FH you see a player - you drive past them. In TDU2 you see player - you write in chat and sometimes you just go for a cruise and suddenly all the 8 players in your instance are racing between the lights or helping out a dude to find some wrecks and clothes shops. All because communicating is really easy. And don't forget TDU 2's only open world event is when a player initiates a police chase and other players in instance get offer to try and catch said player.
Also wheelspins ruin the excitement of getting a new car.
I LITERALLY want my copies of TDU1&2 to be buried with me in my coffin when I die; that’s how much those 2 games mean to me.
And I hope I can say the same thing about the new upcoming TDU game (aka TDUSC aka TDU3).
I am also a big fan of tdu. Tdu 1 on the xbox 360 was actually the first video game i ever played and to me its still on of the best racing games. Later i also played tdu2 which i also like a lot. Now I play both games with the online mod on pc.
Midtown Madness 1 did the same thing as Midnight club street racing just a year earlier.
Open world Maps you can drive in with not only NPC racers and NPC traffic, but even NPC Police to play with.
Midtown Madness 2 sep2000 was my childhood game and lets you drive through San Fransisco and London.
I'm surprised you didn't talk more about the atmosphere of Horizon 1 and 2. Those are, to many people including myself, the reasons that the first two Horizon games smashed the competition as the worlds felt lived in and just pleasant to exist in unlike other games of the time and to this day,
1 and 3. 2 was and still is bland and boring
@@megadeth8592 Nah 2 is my favorite. To me, the world is just enjoyable to be in because of the map design, the music, and general atmosphere. Go see UltraVoilet's video on why a lot of people think it's up there with 1.
Only the first one has the great atmosphere
The rest are just souless and mostly because the first game was made by Ex-Bizarre Creations devs the rest are just the Playground Games era
I sure do miss nfs underground 2, i used to drift for hours almost daily
One thing I hate about modern open world driving games is the complete lack of consequences. You can drive through lamp posts, fences, and trees as though they had the consistency of mist. Pro Street made you pay to repair a damaged or totalled car. Even Midtown Madness allowed a race to be lost if you wrecked. In Forza you can rip up 300 meters of dry stone wall and barely slow down.
I really do hope that FH6 does bring just new everything but most of all a fully connected world with it's expansions.
Can't believe Xbox and Playground turned the legendary Forza Horizon series into a Gamepass filler. Now they just copy&paste with lazy recycled content. Forza Horizon 5 a disgrace of the series.
My sentiments exactly! FH5 is THE most boring/disappointing racing game I've ever purchased. I will occasionally replay all of the older entries, but I'll never touch FH5 again. I get sick just thinking about that pile of trash.