Unchanged Genres Part 3 - Racing Games
This is going to be a long entry, so to read the whole thing you'll need to click on "more" down below. Yeah, I'll be editing the blog skin to make it clear that is actually a link.
I love racers, or at least I used to. In general, racers can be categorized as realistic, action, arcade, or futuristic. There are variations on the themes, but these are the general areas most racers will fall into. All of them need work anymore.
Making a good racing game is a challenge. Players are going to expect a certain level of performance from the vehicles, especially if they're not in a futuristic setting. There is no conflict like most games establish. Instead it's a matter of driving harder, better, and/or more aggressive then your opponent. Not to mention the various attributes of your vehicle will play a factor as well. After all, you're not likely to win a race against a Corvette if you're driving a Yugo.
The problem is that racers, much like the old space simulator, haven't evolved much in recent times. "Realistic" racers tend to not be so much in that they take away a lot of things that might happen when cars hit each other and I think the amount of deceleration you have to experience is unrealistic in the extreme. They've become more about technical racing and less about frenetic action. The problem is that the more action oriented racers have become heavily formulaic, so you can't simply jump from one to the other. Arcade is shallow, and very few futuristic racers are ever well done enough to achieve any success.
The trend lately is a heavy focus on "rice burners", or imported Japanese cars so-called for their low fuel consumption. A lot of the games set in contemporary times tend to focus on these cars. I want to know what happened to American muscle? Why are we so content to race vehicles manufactured by former Axis powers? Sure, if you want exotic you tend to think Italian, but many of the cars represented in these games are not the supercars we tend to fantasize about. When that's the case I'd rather drive a Chevrolet Camaro or a Ford Mustang than a Honda Civic any day of the week. Also, your game does not have "100 different automobiles" if you count the 12 types of Lancer variants as different types of vehicles. Puh-lease.
I want good ole American muscle and I want it in something other than a budget racer for the PC. Why don't the folks who do the Need for Speed series go back to their concept for Motor City and make a single-player version and put in some of the customization options from Need for Speed Underground? That would be sweet. No more Civics, no more Lancers, and no more Golfs. Who wants to race compact cars? I can go BUY a freakin' compact if that is what I wanted to drive. There is not much of a fantasy element if most of the cars available are automobiles I can actually afford.
For that matter, I am also tired of endless racing at the lower levels just to get an upgrade for a car that is just a better compact. Project Gotham Racing 2 had a good system to avoid this. You graduated to higher races and you spent tokens on the vehicles available for whatever classes you had unlocked. You want to race a classic Camaro? No problem, just spend the tokens you earned from before. No need to unlock every compact car in the garage first. You unlocked what you wanted to, and earning the new levels was not particularly heinous either. I think it struck a good balance between challenge and reward. Games like Gran Turismo finally turned me off because they want far too much commitment from me. I want that fancy car you keep showing in the screenshots. No I am not happy with earning a Toyota Celica, no I will not be content. Do the designers of these games really think it's fun to have to work so hard to earn this stuff? Granted, people keep buying the games, but I'm not a big fan of mixing work and play.
No, I haven't said much about arcade or futuristic racers. These games don't really sell all that well anymore. Even F-Zero GX seems to have fallen in price pretty quickly. I think the arcade racers tend to be too shallow for anyone to care about. Honestly, I can't even think of a recent one on the current generation of consoles. Crash 'N Burn maybe? Futuristic racers just don't seem to capture my attention, though I've tried quite a few.
Of course this touches on a point about why this is not going to change anytime soon. For the time being this is what sells. Lots and lots of effort for little reward. Lots of time in cruddy little cars that someone working at McDonalds could afford. Using a bunch of cars that are not classic, exotic, or even very desirable. These things sell, and will continue to do so for the near future. Which is too bad because at some point I'm sure this will all come screeching to a halt. What was the last blockbuster space simulator or flight simulator? Has anyone ever stopped to wonder why these games stopped selling. Maybe with the occassional gems out there like Burnout the genre will continue to prosper. Not to mention the enormous brand power of games like Gran Turismo and Need for Speed will almost always guarantee sales.
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