Racing Games Suck Now

let's face it there has almost never been a better time for video games sure Nostalgia is probably going to warp our view and a lot of us probably have really fond memories of the 360 era where games weren't riddled with microtransactions around every corner it felt like nearly everything was just fun to play and developers were just making games with the sole purpose of selling you a fun experience not a $2 cosmetic more like $20 these days games let you do wild and crazy things without any barriers cuz well screw it it'd be fun that was the foundation for Heavy Hitters of that era games like Halo Mass Effect Assassin's Creed Gears of War Far Cry God of War the list just goes on and on now don't get me wrong I am well aware that these games were funded in the attempt to make money corporations have always and will always own the gaming industry and want to make a dollar at the end of the day so I'm not sitting here trying to glamorize the video game production of old cuz we all know it was riddled with crunch culture and people just going the extra mile because they were passionate about the project without Ever Getting compensated for that passion and as we know passion doesn't pay the bills so pay your [ __ ] Debs and that's also not to say the industry is even any better these days but I just know a lot of people including myself have these Rose tinted glasses of video game development of old for me it was from watching old bungee documentaries from the development of like Halo and Halo 2 where they only show the best bits and the cool moments and act like everything was fine and good back then when we all know it definitely wasn't but at the very least back then it didn't feel like soulless corporations were trying everything they could to reach into your back pocket grab your wallet out and just rip every single dollar they can out of you all that to say despite the flaws of modern gaming we have received some of the best games of all time in recent years incredible experiences like Elden ring God of War 2018 cyberpunk 2077 now that it's actually fixed and working ghost of tsushima Final Fantasy 16 Boulders Gate 3 armad core 6 Duma Turnal all of the recent yakaza games have all just been fantastic but there's one just one genre of games that I used to love with all my heart that doesn't seem to have any modern equivalent I can't even think the last time I've been excited for let alone played a good new racing game [Music] [Music] so what the [ __ ] happened looking back the last time I had fun playing a racing game was back with the crew and Ne for Speed 2015 which was literally a decade ago and the only other title that's edged me for a good game for over 10 years is Halo and I'm still working but even taking those two games into consideration I still didn't really ever love those games I like them you know but they just didn't hit they didn't grip me like older racing games used to genuinely not a single racing game has been able to scratch that itch that NE Speed Underground 2 and Midnight Club 3 used to do for me I hear he's saying there it is [ __ ] old man crying about why new game isn't like old game but it's true those games had been in an absolute choke hold as a child and I could play them for hours on end even into my teenage years without really ever getting bored that is when you know neas spe 2015 and the crew came out I would still find myself going back to these older games so what is it that's so different about them compared to the games we have now and is it actually that the games have gotten worse or have I just fallen out of love with racing games let's find out in another episode of Niche topic I'm going to Yap about for like an hour or so we'll start with modern racing games and what the [ __ ] is up with modern racing games I'm so sick and tired of booting up a new modern arcade racer and just going through the motions of the typical yo yo yo home slice Welcome to our wacky crazy Festival where you can literally do anything you want man these 100 race quests spread across the map everywhere so you have no idea where to go or where to start and don't forget you've actually got to do a little bit of every single different thing where offering to meaningfully progress I don't care if you don't like off-roading or stunt racing or any other random Niche version of a race in this game if you don't do them you're not going to get anywhere because God damn it this is a racing game and we are going to give you every single kind of race known to man and you are going to play and enjoy every single one of them just you wait until our next Festival when we introduce cycling don't forget to buy the racing battle pass whatever the [ __ ] to unlock all of these crazy wacky exotic cars right away and hey just for booting up the game and playing for the first time his 10 cars that are splattered with our ugly ass decals on them that you can't take off cuz [ __ ] you but you're going to use them anyway cuz they're faster than anything you have and we're just going to give them all to you right away cuz we know that your little brain just can't wait to unlock everything and if you don't have a Lambo or a Supra in the first 5 Seconds you're just going to go out of your way and complain on Reddit or something so get on out there earn nothing Marvel at our one style of rocket bunny kit and maybe a carbon hood and splitter or something that we call good customization and don't let the decision fatigue hit you on the way out like come on man I don't even have to name the game what the [ __ ] is this and I just got a know here like let's be real this isn't too invalidate anyone's experience I understand there is a market for a game like this clearly there are some people playing it or a lot of people playing it because they keep making them and if you have fun with games like that more power to you but personally they just aren't for me and aren't for a lot of others to me they have no soul they're forgettable and they can't even keep my interest for like an hour before I just get over it then they inevitably sit on my series X's hard drive collecting dust taking up space until inevitably something better comes along and they get the boot these games just don't do anything to make me care and they try so hard to grip at me and make me stay by throwing free cars and random [ __ ] at me but that just doesn't work you can't just throw freebies at the problem and expect the game to suddenly be good all they're doing is adding extra weight to already fragile foundations all I can say is I'm super glad all these racing games are free on Game Pass cuz I would feel super bad if I had actually genuinely paid for any of these things and yes you don't need to tell me in the comments I understand I am paying for Game Pass as a server so technically I'm paying for the games you got to consider these games I try and end up being absolutely garbage and uninstalled are offset by the actual great games that I get value out of like like a dragon giden and Persona 3 that just totally offset the costs I'm really really I'm paying nothing let's be real I know it's copia but whatever oh okay I get it who you saying Festival arcade races are just the theme of the times and if I don't like it well too bad I'm sure plenty of people didn't like the 100th Street Racing Style Racing game back in the early 2000s when they came out and they were all the rage but here's a thing there's so much more to it than that this goes far deeper than just the trending style of racing games this drills all the way down to the fundamental way they're created and the tactics that they use to try and keep you engaged like I said before it's a common trend for a lot of these games who just give you cars right off the bat because [ __ ] it don't in hit stay keep playing these Publishers can't afford for you to lose interest in their game otherwise there's zero chance of you eventually potentially buying one of their microtransactions that they feature so rather than actually make the game interesting to try and keep your attention they compensate by throwing a hell of a lot of [ __ ] at you and just hoping something sticks and fortunately for them a lot of the times it does otherwise they wouldn't continue making racing games in this way but the problem is doing this isn't without consequence to the player at the end of the day and it all comes at the cost of well an actual interesting and fun racing game this spiral downwards all starts with your starter car and don't get me wrong I don't inherently have an issue with starter cars in some of these modern racing games as even Nea speed has kind of stuck with its roots and maybe giving you a wider selection of cars but haven't given you insane cars like A90 supas or the brand new niss Z is starter cars in these games but our most modern NE speed generation Unbound has its own issues we will definitely get into later I think my main issue with this comes from how fast you cycle through cars meaning that you really build no attachment to that car you started with or any car you progressively unlock for that matter because I mean hell why would you stick with that old Type R when eventually like not even an hour into the game you'll get a Oran just thrown you away as a bonus for playing for an hour and really why would you stick with any car for any prolonged period of time when you just chucked a decent sum of money very early on in the game and every single car available is pretty much like available to you at the start now I get it this one's a bit Niche it's kind of related to me and my personal preference for the games and a lot of people would probably get annoyed at being stuck in one car for a prolonged period of time and really want to see the catalog of what's available for them so they can save up and buy something straight away and have the car they want from the very beginning and I mean I get why a lot of people would want this Freedom I'm guilty of it as well sometimes I'll boot up a new racing game and the first thing I will do is go to whatever shop there is in that game and try to find my own car only be disappointed that they never have the ISF it's the RCF or if I'm really lucky the LFA which is cool but it's just not the same damn thing but even so personally I'd rather a game where that isn't even an option A game that just features some progression restrictions now I know that may sound contradictory to what I said like a couple minutes ago when I said games just let you used to do everything cuz [ __ ] it it to be fun but progression restrictions I feel like are different from gameplay restrictions when I'm talking gameplay restrictions I think more of things like Halo and where you used to be able to go out of bounds and do all this crazy [ __ ] whereas now the kill Tim is there's a difference there hopefully that makes sense though what I'm looking for in a racing game is a more crafted experience with a curated smaller handpicked selection of cars that eventually unlock as you progress so you don't know what everything's going to be right away this in turn keeps you excited to progress further and see what you're eventually going to unlock like imagine like back in the day you would see cars all blacked out with question marks just Silhouettes right now you don't get that sense of wonder you already know what the end game is but that's just no fun is it you've got nothing to look forward to by the end game and I know that I'm not the only one that wants this style of racing game back which is why so many people are just unhappy with the style of game we've got now and why so many people are desperate for a remake of Need for Speed Underground 2 Underground 2 was the Pinnacle of racing games for me it had the vibe it had the customization it had the most Godly soundtrack I've seen in a piece of early 2000's media since the Digimon movie it captured the essence of car culture without being overly cringy and a personal favorite aspect of the game in my eyes is that it had no cops I'm going to say it I'm not a big fan of the police [ __ ] the police even all cops are bastards if you will at the very least in racing games if I wanted to be pested by the goddamn cops I would just go out and street race in real life or play GTA or something there's obviously a market for it and that's where games like hot pursuit or heat kind of have their Niche and should stay but any game that's dedicated to street racing that doesn't have some form of Pursuit police any game that doesn't have the illusion of police in the title shouldn't have police in the game if that makes sense to me cops have always been a nuisance in racing games but that's topic we can delve into a little bit deeper when we start to talk about the modern iterations of NE speed a little bit later for now let's put our Rose tined glasses on and reminisce about what made this NE for Speed so great starting with aggression you know that crazy over stimulation and decision fatigue I was talking about with modern racing games well gone instead of flooding you with endless random races and cars they start the game by giving you a little treat being the 350Z and swiftly just take that away from you leaving you with some slow somewhat boring cars to start with because you have to earn your way through the choice paralysis and endless typ of cars given to you for free does not exist exist here there is a very manageable amount of things to do at any given time and there are a nice number of hidden things sprinkled throughout to keep you engaged as you go through first and foremost though the reason that this can all work is because the game lays out its framework by not giving you the entire open world to roam through straight away so you're given the chance to learn and explore and delve into this small section that you're given to start and the best comparison I can think of with this is Camaro from the araza series sure it is small and repetitive we go there game after game after game that's a different scenario but it's charming and there really is something special about learning every nook and cranny in this smaller map and knowing the whole thing like the back of your hand then in Underground 2 as you progress the world starts to open up to you little by little section by section until you inevitably have access to everything by the end and because you don't get access to the entire open world map the second you launch the game content can actually be drip fed to you as you progress you know the thrill of those barn finds in Forza Horizon well imagine that but for a variety of things other than just old cars one thing that I always found so damn cool about Underground 2 is that at each stage when the map opens up and starts to get a little bit bigger step by step more shops become available to you but you don't know that because each and every one of them is hidden and not shown to you on the map there are multiple body shops performance shops Graphics shops car lots and car specialty shops all scattered around the map and each new shop that you do find will have a larger inventory based on your progression as you go through the game but again you've actually got to go out explore and familiarize yourself with the map to find them and half the time you don't have to go so far out of your way they might be near races it's very intuitive and it's fun it's cool it's hidden but it doesn't waste your time and speaking of how easily are find it's pretty obvious where these things are hidden if they aren't on your way to a race or somewhere else the map actually has inbuilt signage with little either circles or triangles in different colors to show you where a shop might be and you can just follow those signs to get there so yes the game does technically tell you it just doesn't pinpoint on a map so you can find it straight away you've got to do a little bit of exploring and I mean sometimes if you just look at the map you will see a little dead end somewhere off a highway or some random stretch of road when you see that fork in the road or dead end it seems kind of obvious there's going to be something there it was a rewarding part of that game the shops were fun to come across and as you found new shops and unlocked new parts it actually made you feel like you were progressing and you know in the sense of this story gaining a reputation for yourself you were out there winning races and earning that sweet sweet street cred so why wouldn't these shops want to give you more stuff not only were the shops hidden there were also hidden races scattered through around the map they were never essential to complete but were really cool to come across and the best part when you win you would pick up a sponsorship what does that mean it means a mini in-game photo shoot with your car and a photo of it smack bang on the front cover of a magazine now sure this is the concept that has kind of been lost to the digital age however people clearly still love the idea of seeing their car on the front of a magazine because whenever a noob put your car on the front of a magazine filter shows up on Instagram you see every [ __ ] in their dog Chuck their car in it and post it straight on their story and even if the concept doesn't resonate in the modern day what is stopping developers from just setting a racing game in the past why haven't we got a game set in the wangan around ' 80s 99s Japan why haven't we got a game set in the early 2000s with a fast and furious aesthetic why isn't there an Australian P plate simul yeah no actually that exists already and yes before you comment I know night Runners exist and it looks cool as [ __ ] but at the end of the day it is is only a demo game right now and after all it is an indie game so it might never actually get a finished version plus I highly doubt it would ever be on a platform other than PC which is just a damn shame and really kills the Mass Appeal a game like that could have not like I could expect an indie developer to put their Niche racing game on all platforms but you know what I mean it is worth mentioning though that night Runners does do almost exactly what I want out of a racing game and also works as a great proof of concept to show that there is an audience out there for this type of game an audience that is sick of all these modern racing games just like I am and would rather play something a little more down to earth with a little less microtransactions and a little more soul I think the Steam Reviews kind of speak for themselves in that aspect too but there are a lot of things night Runners doesn't have and likely never will have because it doesn't have that AAA budget behind it so if we fast forward from something like Underground 2 what's the closest we've got to a truly great modern arcade racer and I think we only get as far as 2015 with Need for Speed this game was set out to be a reboot for the Need for Speed franchise and a return to form going back to its underground roots and to that end it did a lot right it nailed the aesthetic even if it was a little two on the nose with the monster product placements and real life cuts scenes like no word of a lie you could have cut easily 10 15 minutes with a fluff from the beginning of the game to really set the mood in a different way and get into the action so much quicker but overall even with some of kind of cringe cut scenes at times I much prefer this approach to something like Unbound which don't worry we'll get to the customization was great and the addition of suspension tuning to get near perfect fitment in most scenarios was pretty great there are a few Kinks and quirks in the customization like the wheel selection that annoy me a bit I actually much prefer the catalog style it's got and under and also there was one little glitch that was never actually fixed where it seems like only on some cars or some parts you can't remove parts to add other parts that become restricted because you have Parts on for example say you progress and unlock a new front bumper cool the problem is you can't actually view these new front bumpers because you happen to apply a splitter earlier on then issue two that really exacerbates the issue is there's no way to actually remove just that splitter so then you can see the new front bumpers but I've noticed this depends on what car you're using for example this just wouldn't work on my type R but when I purchased an fdrx7 I could press the triangle button to just remove the splitter and see the new front bumpers so on certain cars the only way to actually remove the splitter to see new front bumpers or vice versa with any part of the car I guess this would apply to the rear bumper as well or maybe even the side skirts is by using the remove all function which as the name suggests removes all the modific ifications you've already done meaning you have to just do it all again which is just it's stupid as frustrating it shouldn't be a thing and hey at the end of the day why the hell can't I have front Splitters with these other bumpers it's not like it's crazily integrated into the bumper It's just at this point in this game basically a flat freaking polygon underneath a damn bumper tangent aside customization while not perfect was back and better than ever the game was completely set at night which I know while some people didn't love I got to complaints here however what I do have some complaints about is the constant rain the film grain and the motion blur all of which you just can not turn off brother half the time I'm driving I can't [ __ ] see sometimes when I'm driving in this game I think to myself damn this this has got to be what people with a stigmatism must see when they're driving cuz I I just can't see anything and I know there's no astigmatism effects in this game I'm just trying to emphasize the fact that when I am driving in this game because of the combination of it being at night wet film grain motion blow when you're racing I just can't see and mind you I have 2020 Vision there shouldn't be a problem the game can be so pretty when sitting still or in photo mode but when you're racing man if it weren't for the bright shining arrows directing me where to go I'd be [ __ ] this is a real Trend I've seen in modern games as a whole though not just exclusive to Need for Speed even in games like Call of Duty because of how much visual clutter is on the screen enemies are just harder to see now plain and simple players just blend in with their environment far easier and the difference is starking when you go back and play older games like Modern Warfare 2 Black Ops 2 and the like the only way you'd be able to easily spot someone nowadays like you used to be able to is if they're rocking some flashy non militaristic type skin so the point I'm trying to make here is that higher graphical fidelity does not always equal better graphics and my perfect cherry-picked example is Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary in 2011 10 years after its initial release combat evolve got its remaster by 343 Industries who from the very beginning cemented themselves as a studio who had no idea what to do with Halo because they absolutely ruined it what they delivered wasn't an improvement on the game in any capacity what they delivered was literal cancer upon the eyeballs everything was just too much this remaster is what I like to call a literal sensory overload there is way way way too much going on and if you want to hear me rant more about it you can check out some of the stream vods from when I played it live but the TDR of it is they just added so much stuff seemingly for the sake of it it and in doing so absolutely ruined the atmosphere at so many points in the game it's one of those just because you can doesn't mean you should kind of situations my favorite example from this game is in the mission Truth and Reconciliation in the original game it's dark ominous and overall painted as very clearly a stealth op you're supposed to go in quiet and Infiltrate The Covenant carrier to rescue Captain keys and the look of the mission reflects that it's a little dark but not godamn why is this movie shot so dark I literally can't see anything dark and if you just happen to have terrible Vision the sniper you actually given at the start of the mission has an inbuilt night vision the set piece of the mission is the Covenant Ship The Truth and Reconciliation and it is ominously weighing above you for the first half of the mission the reason it feels so oppressing is because of its sheer scale and part of the reason it feels so daunting is because of the way it just Blends in with the night sky keep in mind at this point in the series we have never seen a covenant carrier before this is the first and this wasn't just some graphical limitation issue it was a deliberate art Direction choice to make the ship look bigger than it is and hide amongst the stars in the night sky from below I'd almost say it's akin to that picture of Naval camo you might have seen floating around online it's intimidating it's awesome and every single thing that I've said was stripped away in 343 remaster the mission they just brighten everything up and add so much senseless detail you lose any sense of Mystique the original had and not only does that piss me off for thematic reasons there is just so much going on here that again this is just an objectively worse experience than the original was despite there being more detail and this is not so different for racing games Underground 2 was dark but not too dark it has plenty of street lights and ambient lighting to make the road and environment easier to see because it's old and isn't committed to being as realistic as physically possible I mean it might have been back then but those standards are very different to now you lose all that modern visual clutter of just putting stuff around for the sake of it and just end up with far more straightforward roads and paths and because developers weren't worried about things like light Bloom and all these other crazy effects to make the world feel more realized and Moody which don't get me wrong can be a good thing you want these games to look realistic but when these things aren't considered as much lighting just becomes more bright and abundant and your suspension of disbelief doesn't really matter that much you kind of take the quality of life of being able to see over the suspension of disbelief and again that might sound contradictory to what I was saying with Halo but in that original Halo Mission everything was pretty clear and easy to see you didn't need to brighten that up where Need for Speed and Need for Speed 2015 everything is just dark like I said before I love that it's set at night and the atmosphere is great but when you pair the film grain with the constant rain with the motion blur it just becomes a little miserable Vision aside there are a number of other downsides to 2015 as well it's by no means a perfect s speed entry always online is a huge detriment that just ruins the quality of life of this game and makes it annoying to play sometimes like I'm playing on a series X that can load up games like Elden ring and cyberp punk 2077 near instantly but NE speed 2015 it always takes forever and I can only assume that is because it is always online plus even more frustrating you can't even use Xbox's quick resume feature because each time you clock CL the game it fully closes and then you have to go through that loading screen and wait endlessly all over again so there's really no pick up and play continue where you left off here as a full grown adult sometimes you only get 30 minutes to pick up and play here and there so all of this senseless waiting really just gets to me and I know I know it is the most first world problem ever but it is what it is it's not like my internet's slow either but yeah load times are just frustrating it's not 2005 anymore I shouldn't be waiting endlessly for a game to pick up and load on a powerful console my biggest gripe however is that you can't even [ __ ] pause the game properly because it is always online like I could be in the middle of a race and then my dog might start going off it's nut because something is happening and I I got to go check what's going on and because life just happens I lose a single player race in a single player game like when you're in a multiplayer game fair enough these are things you understand but a single player experience really I shouldn't be punished for having to leave the game for 5 seconds and even in games that aren't always online like Elder ring I just mentioned a second ago it still frustrates me I wish pause was a thing there's no reason it shouldn't be life happens in even speed's case it's stupid and we are going to see further consequences of it being online probably in the not so distance future with old game servers shutting down left and right will probably end up being left high and dry just like the crew which is another game from this time I do remember enjoying despite some flaws but one I can't really talk about with much depth in this video because I can't go back and replay it to experience it again anyway wrapping up my NE speed 2015 negativity speedrun the map feels too big at times and half the time it feels like you're spending more time traversing between races and commuting rather than just actually racing this is especially frustrating in the early game when like come on man I just want to progress not commute as I already mentioned I definitely prefer the Underground 2 method where the map is slowly opened up to you so really at the start you've only got a small area to Traverse and you're not spending yonks commuting from one part of the city to the other just to go to the next race it's a waste of time the music was it's just kind of H this is super subjective and my Nostalgia goles might just be on a little bit too tight here cuz NE for Speed Underground 2 soundtrack is very early 2000s but it just feels far more varied and Timeless whereas 2015 soundtrack well it just feels very very 2015 with the dubstep and the electronic music and I don't know it's not really a period of music I tend to find myself going back to personally sure I might have enjoyed it over 10 years ago back when I was like 15 and playing this game nowadays I just don't feel like it really holds up to me it just kind of gives off that Riser kid energy you know and the whole Monster Energy plugs and the corniness of the cutcenes all just kind of feeds into that too so the whole overall package and facade that this was going in the right direction with the right aesthetic kind of starts to break at the seems a little bit here and finally the biggest issue outside of the cops cuz like I've already said I don't really like cops in my racing games unless there's specifically a cop centered racing game like let's be real here this is Need for Speed this is supposed to be an underground kind of homage this is it most wanted but the biggest issue that St this game from being great is unfortunately how the driving feels which is somehow very common Trend in modern KN for Speed titles and it's insane how dedicated racing games somehow can't get the driving part right in 2015 the best way I can describe it is that it feels a little bit floaty sure you can tune the car to feel a little better but no matter what you do it always feels like the car isn't quite doing what you want it to do but once you get used to the play style it's not completely unplayable and I can't say I hated my time playing through it the whole break to drift thing is a little weird and kind of annoying but I can almost forgive it in this game because it's nowhere near as a greed this is what our most modern installment does which is a great segue to one of the worst racing games I've ever had the displeasure of storing on my hard drive Need for Speed Unbound for [ __ ] sake this game is frustrating and I think the main reason for that is because music could have been so good unlike 2015 the graphics are a little bit more stylized and less RTX on in your face and you can see it side by side with this type R I picked as a starting car in both games I think that's a step in the right direction I'm always more for stylized and nice art Direction than I am graphical Fidelity and the best part is it's a lot easier to actually see what's going on at least At first I can also turn off the motion blur which is a huge plus however despite that there is still way too much going on in this game even with the crazy wacky car graphics turned off which mind you wasn't an option at launch the game is still quite literally a sensory overload it's like that one meat Canyon Mr Beast skit I was blind in 2015 but then after looking at Unbound God what a terrible day to have eyes and did such a shame because it can look cool it has its moments and a lot of Stills and slower parts of this game will look quite good just like in 2015 but when you're racing it's just you take turbo out first that is how it feels to play Unbound everything is just skittish and fast and overwhelming and I I just hate it even down to the customization screen I feel like I'm going to get most o sickness trying to navigate through the parts like whose idea was this and why is it so fast like calm down and it's a shame cuz the customization options at least from what I saw and the time I played seemed just as good if not maybe better than what was available in 2015 it has that same issue of the map being way too big right off the bat so you spent half your time just [ __ ] commuting I mean hell some of the missions aren't even races you are just commuting as a glorified Uber driver and I know all right I know I'm complaining about driving in a racing game make it make sense but in these games especially early on you just want to get stuck in the action so that you can actually progress because progression and customization is half the fun of an arcade racer and I don't want to waste my time with random filler [ __ ] if I did I'd just go on play an Ubisoft game and it's not like we're in some crazy gorgeous flesh out world like cyber Punk or something where i' actually want to go on the scenic route and take in the atmosphere we're just in a pretty un remarkable American city lacking in both charm and character night City that that deserves it name I don't even remember what the city in Unbound is called and it doesn't really matter at all all that aside though the thing that takes the cake for getting under my skin and wasting my goddamn time in this game is you guessed it the police and holy [ __ ] are they ever ever present and [ __ ] annoying in this game they are just everywhere and they are way too aggressive they pop up in nearly every race and ruin it and then they have the audacity to stick around post race like a bad smell and are impossible to get rid of I am confident they were made in this way just to Pat out the game time otherwise it could only be advertised as and revie viewed by IGN as like a 10hour game Max honestly I feel like a lot of things are just added in Pat out time and it's frustrating this whole game is just so frustrating and that's the best way I can put it and it's not the way anyone should feel playing a game it's supposed to be fun speaking of things that aren't fun it's time to address the elephant in the room the thing Need for Speed a racing game still can't manag to get right the driving like I stereotyped and [ __ ] on Horizon in the beginning and it does have its own wealth of problems but for God's sake at the very least the driving actually feels good and you get a cockpit view which is a nice touch but how how in the world does Need for Speed keep [ __ ] this up the main issue with unbounded racing is that it's all centered around first Nos and burst noos [ __ ] sucks the introduction of burst noos is this game's little Quirk to set itself apart where if you take on any risky or stylish Behavior your burst NOS meter will fill up progressively one bar at a time and for a limited time while the bar is full you can hit a button to burst a little bit forward in reality the amount you boost isn't insane but they make it really fast and snappy which again makes it harder to actually see in those moments so you're more likely to crash and become a victim to this game's awful and inconsistent crash physics plus because burst NOS is a resource that expires quite quickly you pretty much just got to use it when you get it even if it is the most inopportune time you can't just sit and Bank it for when you have a nice clean straight ahead with no other cars the biggest issue though is that because burst nost exists it fundamentally changes the way this entire game plays it's not something you can just ignore you need to completely change your play style and just do stupid [ __ ] that does not make sense or you can incorporate it or you just won't win any races all because it is baked into the game plus the rubber banding is insane and so are the AI drivers in general the whole thing is just so stupidly unforgiving and expects you to change everything you do just just so you can drive in a way that gets you burst NOS so that you can spam burst NOS because of all that every race in Unbound typically goes something like this massive [ __ ] clump of cars at the start and around the first Corner if you're lucky you'll cheese ahead of them but then you can't make a single mistake or you just won't win because if at any point including that first turn someone gets in front of you you're never going to get back in front because the AI rarely makes mistakes and is always going at full speed no matter how well you learn the course and how perfectly you execute each and every one of the remaining laps you will never get ahead and that's just so frustrating and leaves the game to be start a race find any way to cheese yourself in front and if you can't do that right at the very beginning hit restart cuz it's a waste of time and if you do find a way to do it but then make any small crash or mistake also hit restart because the AI is going to very swiftly overtake you and you will never get back ahead what makes this even worse there is only a limited amount of restarts you are able to do per iname day like seriously for a game that's so unforgiving I just I hate it I hate it so damn much and again I have no idea how Need for Speed the franchise that have been making racing games for literal decades now continue to [ __ ] this up even without the dreaded burst NOS that makes you change the fundamental way you drive the stock standard driving also still feels kind of crap rather than feeling floaty like 2015 it's gone way too far in the complete other direction and just feels far too heavy and weighty and I think this Reddit post I found sums it up best you feel the weight transferring across your car when you're cornering which means that too much gas at the wrong moment can easily make you spin out of control this is good because it teaches a player early on that attack angle and exit matters or at least it would but the developers are trying to have it both ways meaning that the handbrake is still some magical object which temporarily displaces your car's mass and makes you stop in an instant and the breake the drift system is so broken that the game might think that you're trying to drift when you're halfway through a turn and suddenly your traction is gone there's some sort of invisible traction control that steers your car probably added to make driving easier but it also makes the car handle in completely unpredictable ways and a lot of the reason for why it feels that way is because the developers are trying to incentivize you to drive in a very particular way that'll fill your buros I'm tired man just let me race normally for God sake I think white light summed it up best sharp corners should be the biggest challenge not for any reason rooted in game design but because arcade or not in Need for Speed I want to feel like I'm driving a carlike thing not a UFO so where does that leave us with Unbound is it a complete disaster kind of did it do anything right the music was all right I suppose I [ __ ] with some of the songs but I think that's just because they're modern but honestly nothing really stood out to me I kind of see it going the ways of 2015 where I just kind of get over it in a couple of years and comparing it to underground to I mean it's night and day just listen to No W nobody give it all in my head crashing foreign cars the death and Resurrection show scavenger determin Black Betty and it's not even all just rock listen to stuff like rush hour and hard ebm that sounds like it came straight out of an old armed core game then of course we've got all the early 2000s hip hop to boot it holds up so well today and each of those songs especially the ones I listed off left an impact they hit hard and made you just want to drive fast and nothing really does that for me here like why not add some heavy rock music into Unbound unless there is some somewhere that I completely missed but I did listen to the whole soundtrack again on Spotify and I don't remember hearing any and even if they didn't want to do that iterating more on the style they had here with just more better impactful tracks could have been great too they had a slow Tire feature so why not actually use some of his songs that had fit this game so much better how about Terror read or take it back a little with some suicide boys ski mask hell why not just go to Tik Tok or if you really want to get to these Boomer corporations go on Instagram reals and check out all of the car edits and what songs are being used there cuz near all of them would go hard in any racing game rather than I don't know what we've got now I guess the car models and customization was all right but that's kind of it even the story just annoyed the hell out of me I really appreciate understated stories and Silent protagonists in particular go along way especially in racing games where you just want to be in the driver's seat and immersed much more than some other games but man do these characters ever love yapping including your very own character these guys just go on and on and on and I'm not even joking you can't even get a single second of peace without these guys telling you some [ __ ] you just don't really care or want to hear about over 90% of the time I was cutting off their dialogue because I just happened to enter a race or a cut scene that would end it there they weren't even finished and I was getting sick of it plus there's also all the phone calls you get and are forced into unlike in 2015 where at the very least you could just hit the decline button if you weren't ready to have that conversation right now but an Unbound you just strapped in like Alex Mason and force fed constant yapping like chill out let let me play the game without chewing my ear off I got so over it I ended up going to the settings and turning the volume for character voices all the way down to zero just so I could tolerate the game for long enough to form an opinion on it and the only reason I know what the entire plot is is because I watched another review going over speed Unbound and just I lost nothing muting it let's be real here now the iry of me complaining about yapping while going to make basically an entire essay about this game constantly yapping isn't lost on me and you're wellth than your right to turn my annoying voice all the way down to zero but hey you clicked on this video and you've gotten this far so clearly I'm doing something right in my case I just wanted a racing game I didn't sign up for the [ __ ] Yap Olympics and this isn't to throw any shade at the voice actors either it isn't their fault they were served up [ __ ] yappin as their scripts I don't know if I can ever say the [ __ ] word yapping again with that sound like a cockhead um so where does this leave us at the end of the day I have done a lot of yapping and really it's not very helpful to say why isn't car game like other car game I've pretty much just vented my frustrations of car games over the past near two decades and again I know I'm not the only one dissatisfied with the current racing game catalog hell even the Grand Turismo and Forza fans aren't having a great time right about now at this point you might be asking yourself why doesn't this guy just give up pack it in maybe I just don't like arcade racing games anymore maybe I've grown up Beyond it and they just aren't my thing because really looking at the current offerings the only thing that seems interesting anymore is I don't know building a full racing Sim and getting a setto corser so pretty much just Sim racing I'm just older now and maybe I really just have grown out of arcade races either I drive in real life or just the damn closest thing to it but that's just not true is it because there's one just one massive glaring issue with that thought process in recent times I've genuinely had so much fun racing in games that aren't racing games games like yaku a 5 where an entire side Quest is dedicated to racing it was absolutely fire hell speaking of yakaza I had more fun with the pocket racing mini game than I did in the whole of fora Horizon 5 and the biggest standout for me of all things was cyber Punk 2077 the driving in this game feels great and I heard it might have been clunky at launch and things have changed but right now if you play this game it may take a second to get used to but it feels fantastic even the motorcycle riding it almost feels better than the driving ironically enough it feels more like you're driving a real car in the futuristic game than it does in something like Unbound I genuinely had more fun in the racing side quest of cyberp punk 2077 which mind you was only four races than I have playing near any other racing game in the past decade and of course like I said earlier i' still love going back and playing those old racing games like Underground 2 and Midnight Club 3 you could paint that Under The Nostalgia brush so it doesn't exactly help my argument but I'd be doing a disservice not to mention them like imagine going back 20 years and telling the younger version of yourself hey bud this is the best it's going to get wild so what is it we established what was so cool about these older arcade races like Underground 2 we established how modern ones have fumbled and how ironically racing in non-racing games have been much more fun so why why is it that modern dedicated racing games aren't fun anymore I think we just come full circle to what I was saying at the start they simply have no soul they're forgettable they can't keep player interest and just come off as desperate by trying to shove endless free cars in your face to keep you excited you know that feeling sometimes you get in the pit of your stomach when you just want to go back and play a game so bad like maybe it's already got to like 11 12:00 at night you've got work the next day you really need to stop playing so you go to bed and the second your head hits that pillow all you can think about is waking up again and playing that game that still exists for me in certain circumstances that existed for me with armad core 6 that existed for me when I played through cyberp Punk 2077 obviously I wasn't staying up that late but regardless I would want to wake up you know before work in the morning at like 5 a.m. so I could get a quick hour of gameplay in before the gym these things just don't exist for me with modern racing games anymore because they have no soul a lot of it also boils down to these games just wasting your time with filler they're doing the absolute most to try and Pat out the game's runtime to make it feel like good value for money but you can't cover up all the negatives some being so egregious as the driving itself with a massive Banda a vast soulless open world and a sensory overload of things to do playing Modern racing games to me feels like playing Modern Pokémon games it's still masquerading as the thing you love but it's a shell of its former self a soulless cash grab banking on your love of a niche Hobby and I'm sick of it I haven't been excited for a racing game in over a decade and I can't see that changing anytime soon so instead I'm going to spend more of my time and money on my car in real life and leave racing games behind sure I can't street race in real life but there is always the track and that is quite an expensive Venture by comparison but hey maybe we can uh bump those subscriber numbers up and get those views up and you guys can uh subsidize that thanks I got a long way to go till uh YouTube can subsidize my hobbies but anyway what do you think about racing games do you agree with me do you have different reasoning or did you watch this whole video Until the End so you could take all of my arguments pull them all apart and just dunk on me in the comments either way let me know in the comments and if you did get this far be sure to put skill issue in your comment so I know you actually watched all the way to the end as always thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to sit here and listen to me yapping and have a good one thanks

Channel: Viseak

Views: 72,697

Keywords: racing games, need for speed, nfs, unbound, need for speed 2015, Underground 2, Underground 3, Forza, Forza Horizon 5, The Crew, The Crew Motorfest, Need for speed heat, nfsug, nfsug3, car, need for speed underground

Id: HDI1L56Hzoc

Length: 51min 58sec (3118 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024