 A reader is upset that racing games have lost their sense of character and personality, and looks back to the glory days of Race Driver: GRID. Recently, I was offered a free trial of Amazon Prime and since I had a few bits to order over the coming month I took them up on the deal for once. I spent the following weeks using my new Prime Video access to watch shows like Invincible, Jack Ryan, and Good Omens. Eventually, I needed something I could just turn on and tune out to. So I turned to the, always silly, British racing show Grand Tour, putting it on in the background and going about other projects. Inevitably, it built up an urge to play some form of racing game. The problem was, nothing I had recently played made me want to do anything more than a few laps of a track and turn it off again. When did racing games lose all their character? Many (many) years ago I often sat down to play one of my favourite games as a kid: Road Rash. It was a game on my Dad's Mega Drive console and in the early 90s it was top tier entertainment. The premise was pretty straightforward: Drive a motorbike from point A to point B, avoiding traffic, the police, and other weapon-wielding bikers to earn cash rewards. Use the cash to buy a better bike and move on to the next set of longer and more challenging races. It kind of had a story. Some of the racers would trash talk you and scoff (Biff often received a swift left jab on my way past) or even give you words of encouragement (and for that Natasha, you will always be the one biker I didn't clobber with a pipe). Some would move up the ranks with you. Even the monstrous early level bosses Viper and Shiva moved up, settling into the middle of the pack to show just how much tougher the new opponents were getting. It was a simpler time. In later years racing games split between story/arcade and simulation racing. Huge series like Need For Speed took a story-heavy approach, Pr){kind=link}
A reader is upset that racing games have lost their sense of character and personality, and looks back to the glory days of Race Driver: GRID.
Recently, I was offered a free trial of Amazon Prime and since I had a few bits to order over the coming month I took them up on the deal for once.
I spent the following weeks using my new Prime Video access to watch shows like Invincible, Jack Ryan, and Good Omens. Eventually, I needed something I could just turn on and tune out to. So I turned to the, always silly, British racing show Grand Tour, putting it on in the background and going about other projects. Inevitably, it built up an urge to play some form of racing game.
The problem was, nothing I had recently played made me want to do anything more than a few laps of a track and turn it off again.
When did racing games lose all their character?