Arcade Racing

[Sukhāvatī]

Sister thread to the Sim Racing thread, but for those who enjoy more casual racism.

Current best future racer:

Curratum What was the additional workshop set you recommended for BallisticNG?


New arcade rally game:

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Was considering getting the Moto Racer Collection on Steam after seeing it in this LGR video, but the users report technical troubles.

 

[Curratum]

Sukhāvatī Steam workshop collection for BallisticNG:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1948759147

Don't buy the MotoRacer collection, bought it for 1 eur as a key to see if the tech issues were real. They are very real, none of the games run.

 

[†††]

I'd argue that BallisticNG/Classic Wipeout isn't entirely "arcade"... they have very intricate physics, quirks and a learning curve unlike like your normal arcade. Whereas racing arcades are easy to get into, hard to master... Wipeout/BNG is hard to get into, hard to master. It's its very own thing. Very satisfying once you learn how to go fast without bumping into walls.

 

[Curratum]

I only got comfortable up to the third of five speeds. Speed 4 and 5 just melt my face off, my brain is too old for this.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I'd argue that BallisticNG/Classic Wipeout isn't entirely "arcade"... they have very intricate physics, quirks and a learning curve unlike like your normal arcade. Whereas racing arcades are easy to get into, hard to master... Wipeout/BNG is hard to get into, hard to master. It's its very own thing. Very satisfying once you learn how to go fast without bumping into walls.

Yeah, they're just trying to simulate the physics of something that doesn't really exist. They're not really trying to imiate something like Trackmania, where you can change how fast you're going in mid-air by breaking or taking your foot off the gas, or games where you can turn 180 degrees without losing any speed.

 

[manifest]

BallisticNG is an incredible game. I just reinstalled it last night. The campaign is annihilatingly difficult if you try for the max rank on every race, and I would ward you off this folly before you even begin. Each set of levels is capped by a tournament. Some of these tournaments encompass whole DLC expansions, so you're racing through 6 or 8 tracks in a row on the ones closer to the bottom of the list. Even with a hefty amount of memorization, some of BallisticNG's tracks feel like they're intentionally designed to fuck with Wipeout Pure or HD habits. Tilting is a lot more important than it is in any Wipeout game, and you can sort of launch yourself out of turns by pulling back on the stick at the apex. AI is rarely more than half a second behind my best lap times and getting robbed at the finish line of a race by a stray powerup is a feeling you should be acclimating yourself to. Doubt I'll ever actually finish it. There's a lot of cool skips and shortcuts whipping yourself around turns, which become mandatory on some of the time trials. Plays frankly quite badly in third-person camera modes, make sure you use the first-person view.

Spoiler

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Any words on RedOut 2 warpig ?

I hear people don't dig it as much as the first game.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Make way for the best Arcade Racing Videogame of all time



Obviously you have to keep in mind this is a TAS - it's a theoretical "perfect" playthrough, therefore impossible to be humanly replicated


This next one is an actual human doing the deed (no assists):




These ones are mine:

 

[†††]

I like F-Zero X more. The track layouts in GX are too wide, too simple. The soundtrack in GX was also a downgrade, and I say this as a guy who digs electronic music.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Contrarian opinion
Tracks are wider because machines run 3x faster, are harder to pilot, require more finesse to mantain speed and drifting is now a skill that actually takes time and precision to master
And still any tracks above 2 stars of difficulty are a bitch to get through without dying and land top 3
In general GX will beat you senseless if you're fucking around and get distracted for even 1 second - in comparison X is relaxing a game

 

[spectre]

As far as I'm concerned, Star Wars Racer was close to a perfect arcade racer. Would really love to see it remade... though not sure if such things are worth wishing for these days.
It's got great sense of speed, nice upgrades system and sense of progression. Biggest con was that the AI racers very quickly stop being threatening and the only challenge was in
learning the ins and outs of the tracks and winning without taking too much damage.
And the tracks were pretty good, plenty of alternative and secret routes.

This used to be a favorite of mine when I was a kid. Tried getting back to it, but it wasn't a happy reunion, not sure if it's a bad port or it just works like ass on modern systems,
but the very choppy framerate and bad controls made it unplayable. Can't be bothered to emulate a 133Mhz for it.

 

[V17]

Anybody plays Trackmania? It's different from most arcade racers in that it's purely about time attack and while all players race at once, there are no collisions and the visibility of opponent cars can be turned off. What is special about it imo, apart from the fact that the whole game is based on an advanced track editor being available to everyone and most tracks being made by the community, is the physics. They managed to create cars that are arcady and can be driven with four keys, but the complexity of the physics is close to some simulation games. This has led to some unintentional mechanics, like the possibility to initiate drifts at low speed by shifting around the center of mass of the car. The developers also decided to keep in some things that were obvious bugs but created new interesting ways to drive the car.

It's honestly a lot of fun and the skill ceiling is very high. The community is pretty big and since there's not a lot of interaction necessary, people aren't too retarded. Although this may change after the main game comes out for consoles, which will be soon.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Aye, it's quality. Ross' video on Trackmania Canyons is worth a watch if you haven't seen it already.

 

[V17]

Another one that I sometimes play is GRIP: Combat Racing. It's basically Rollcage 3 in everything but name. I cannot 100% recommend it as I've never played in singleplayer, but in hotseat it's great fun, especially if you have some nostalgia towards Rollcage. Physics is similar, the tracks look good and some of the more advanced ones can be quite difficult to play well, the weapons work similarly as well. The one thing where it really is special imo is the soundtrack. It's full of drum n bass bass that sounds close to the heyday of neurofunk and techstep at its best and it's made by producers that are actually successful in the genre, not some randos.

 

[minakami]

 

[fork]

Anybody plays Trackmania? It's different from most arcade racers in that it's purely about time attack and while all players race at once, there are no collisions and the visibility of opponent cars can be turned off. What is special about it imo, apart from the fact that the whole game is based on an advanced track editor being available to everyone and most tracks being made by the community, is the physics. They managed to create cars that are arcady and can be driven with four keys, but the complexity of the physics is close to some simulation games. This has led to some unintentional mechanics, like the possibility to initiate drifts at low speed by shifting around the center of mass of the car. The developers also decided to keep in some things that were obvious bugs but created new interesting ways to drive the car.

It's honestly a lot of fun and the skill ceiling is very high. The community is pretty big and since there's not a lot of interaction necessary, people aren't too retarded. Although this may change after the main game comes out for consoles, which will be soon.

Trackmania United Forever (especially stadium of course, i.e. TMNF) is great (is it still playable, are there still players?). One of the best games ever and the epitome of easy to learn, hard to master. With its thousands upon thousands of user created tracks, dedicated servers with server side custom music playlists etc. it could probably be played forever.
Everything since then has been shit. Ubishit ruined it.

 

[V17]

Trackmania United Forever (especially stadium of course, i.e. TMNF) is great (is it still playable, are there still players?).

TMNF still has a community and runs well on modern systems, although since the release of TM2020 the number of players has been going down.

I honestly think that TM2020 is good and Ubisoft hasn't fucked with it in any way except it being available exclusively on the Ubi store. That is not to say that the game is flawless - it has many flaws, but with the exception of poor optimization those are all standard Nadeo incompetence flaws present in all the games, not something new. I'd say the only regressions are losing a bit of the beautiful simplicity of TMNF (but some of the new features are great) and the fact that it's now subscription based, but I also cannot call that a true regression as it's imo a legitimate solution to the problem of releasing a full-priced game every two years and dividing the community between like 5 different titles. Paying 10 USD per year instead of buying the games and getting continued development and community in one place is not a bad deal.

 

[fork]

lol

Shill.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Burnout baby!


Easily the best one! Nothing needs to be said.


Not my fav. but it's unique in the way traffic is handled and that's gotta count for something.


Hate the fact that you gotta learn the map to play but game's awesome!

 

[V17]

lol

Shill.

How bout you say something about the game, retard

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Anybody plays Trackmania? It's different from most arcade racers in that it's purely about time attack and while all players race at once, there are no collisions and the visibility of opponent cars can be turned off. What is special about it imo, apart from the fact that the whole game is based on an advanced track editor being available to everyone and most tracks being made by the community, is the physics. They managed to create cars that are arcady and can be driven with four keys, but the complexity of the physics is close to some simulation games. This has led to some unintentional mechanics, like the possibility to initiate drifts at low speed by shifting around the center of mass of the car. The developers also decided to keep in some things that were obvious bugs but created new interesting ways to drive the car.

It's honestly a lot of fun and the skill ceiling is very high. The community is pretty big and since there's not a lot of interaction necessary, people aren't too retarded. Although this may change after the main game comes out for consoles, which will be soon.

I remember playing, I think Trackmania 2: Stadium sometime after Ross made his video and found that while it was fun, by the time I stopped playing it was getting tedious. The mid-point tracks didn't really feel like they were made for mere mortals like myself, but rather driving maniacs who enjoy shaving 0.008 off their time. As such I never bothered checking out the community tracks, since I figured if the game was that hard, the mods would all be made by people who want a challenge after beating the campaign.

 

[V17]

I remember playing, I think Trackmania 2: Stadium sometime after Ross made his video and found that while it was fun, by the time I stopped playing it was getting tedious. The mid-point tracks didn't really feel like they were made for mere mortals like myself, but rather driving maniacs who enjoy shaving 0.008 off their time. As such I never bothered checking out the community tracks, since I figured if the game was that hard, the mods would all be made by people who want a challenge after beating the campaign.

Cannot say for sure if it would be better for you, but if you ever get the Trackmania itch again, you may try TM2020 (the one that's just called "trackmania", fucking reboots) as the basic version is free, similarly to Nations Forever. You don't get full access to player-made tracks (only one community server is open at a time for you), but you do get full access to the seasonal campaign, 25 tracks that change every 3 months. The difficulty curve from Stadium is basically compressed into those, so the first 5 are trivial and the last 5 are really rough. The community is much bigger than in TM2 and growing, which means that the ratio of beginners is higher, and as console players start flooding in soon it will undoubtedly increase further, so the overall difficulty balance is slightly different than in the previous games.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

NFS Heat going for £3.

 

[Curratum]

NFS Heat going for £3.

Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: EA on-line activation and Origin client software installation and background use required.