Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
If you really want to drive a car, go drive a real car.
A day at the local road course all told runs me a bit over $1K(track time, tires, maintenance etc). That gets me the chance to drive one car over one track. There is a good reason why those of us who love driving also love driving sims. I haven't done too badly on the financial end in life but I'm not even close to being able to afford something like a Veyron, and even if I was, I would be rather loathe to take a corner at 130+ MPH for obvious reasons.
The last racing game that I really enjoyed was PGR3.
Have you tried Mario Kart? In terms of realism it is the closest to PGR3 I can think of(not meant to be demeaning btw, just it is a racer you can pick up and get the controls down instantly- no real learning curve just like PGR).
Kaz has a racing license, he does drive race cars and owns several sports cars.
Heh, he spun his GTR out on the Ring, they had a show about his time in Germany in his GTR on GTTV, they didn't show his spin but had him taking his GTR up to 300KMH on the Autobahn and showed him playing around on the Ring(crappy weather for it though).
A valid point on cost, but we have nothing that even comes close to simulating really driving a car, and to get even as close as we're able to now you're going to spend a bunch (seat, wheel, etc), and it'll never really give you a feel of driving a Veyron. Maybe in the future, but right now there's a lot of feedback that cannot be properly transmitted.
Mario Kart Wii has awful controls, and is nowhere near PGR3. I didn't take offense, but I don't agree that they're anywhere alike. In fact, I'd say Mario Kart has a higher learning curve (especially if you try to mess by steering with the Wii-mote instead of the d-pad/joystick). I'm a bit confused about people talking up the cockpit view, as PGR3 did a great job of it, just that was 4 years ago. I don't doubt this is probably more realistic in that aspect (and in general), but seems like a lot of what PGR did well this game does too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying PGR was realistic, but its been one of the better ones at nailing the fun with the visceral feel of racing.
That's the racing game I like, its not super arcadey (which I enjoy and actually feel there's a pretty big dearth of even excessively arcadey racers really worth playing), but it doesn't forego the fun, the whole point of a game for me, for realism.
I agree with you about realism tending to be making the controls seem terrible and the handling unrealistically bad. I felt GT4 was that way (I remember putting racing slicks, lighweight modifications, suspension, spoiler, and adjusting things and the Viper still handled terribly and couldn't even take an easy corner at anything more than a crawling pace). I chalked it up to being obsessed with Burnout 3 not long before that, but I've played it multiple times and it just never felt right to me. It bugged me a lot, as I was big into Gran Turismo (spend an entire summer playing the original, spent Christmas break and plenty of weekends with GT2, and quite a bit of free time to GT3). Probably the reason I was so turned off with Burnout now as well. They don't seem right any more. I can accept, and actually assume its not the games, but rather me that the issue actually lies (I'm just not a huge gamer any more for one).
Just thought about another game that had good sim aspects, but was still enjoyable, Test Drive Le Mans on the Dreamcast.
Hmm, thinking about this, I guess I'm not sure I even had a point. Bleh, I sure wrote a lot considering that as well.