The Death of Simple Racing Games

Flatout 2 was the only game in which rubberbanding never bothered me. "Oh, Benton, you're catching up? Allow me to introduce you to THE WALL!"

The reference with the thumbnail is SSS++ tier

NIGHTRUNNERS MENTIONED WHAT THE FUCK IS ENGINE COOLING

FlatOut 2 Mentioned <3

Funny thing worth mentioning: the Blur and Split/Second staff both went to Sumo Digital when their studios closed. They later ended up developing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which is also super underrated.

fun fact: The boost explosion in motorstorm propels you forwards. This means you can technically use it to push you across the finish line faster

The ridge racer 7 community especially in Japan is still strong even today. It makes you wonder why Namco still decided to axe the whole thing

I miss racing games like, RUSH RallySport Challenge, Flatout 1 & 2, The earlier Burnout games, NFS: Hot Pursuit (original), Underground 1,2, and Most Wanted. Dirt 1 & 2 The Original GRID

man, if mw 2012 had been released with another name instead of mw, it wouldnt get that much hate as it gotten

Fun fact, Blur is now abandonware, and can be freely downloaded and shared legally. Multiplayer still works too

So this is where you were saving up FlatOut, Ridge Racer, etc.

I'm tired of all the seriousness and effort being put into sim racers, with the arcade genre being reduced to festival "you're the winner" racers and asphalt feeling drift fests.

I know that the video is kind of about a different style of arcade racing, but I am very grateful that we have Trackmania in this day and age. Out of all the options that are available, this is the only racing game that scratches the itch for easy to learn, hard to master, easy to hop on, hard to hop off game...

Split Second, Blur & Ridge Racer are all game series i wish came back But we all know they won't But i had my fair share of memories with them

There's a game series you didn't mention that could also fit very well in this category: WipEout. It was released after the original F-Zero but improved greatly on that formula imo. It's easy to learn in the slower speed classes but very challenging to master once you get to the faster ones, it feels genuinely thrilling to play. And what amazes me the most about those games are the physics. The ships have a realistic handling and weight without losing the "arcadey" feel of it. And i could also talk about the amazing soundtracks, the entire world building that feels like an actual attainable future at times, the backstory of the games, i could go on. Sadly it's not around anymore (if you exclude the Omega Collection which is a remaster for the PS4) but i think there's rumors for a new game on the PS5, hopefully that's true. Nonetheless, it also has an amazing spiritual sucessor and great tribute to the earlier games called BallisticNG, you should give it a try.

I count Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010 a "simple racing game", due to its lack of story and straightforward gameplay. Little customization, just pure Racers vs Cops, and it's one of the best games i've played in a long time. I've put over 2500+ hours into the Hot Pursuit Remastered, it's just simple yet soo easy to pick up and play for a few hours. And for me atleast, that's all I need. I know it's extremely unlikely to happen, but i'd like Criterion to give the Hot Pursuit/Rivals style of gameplay another shot, especially after the disappointment that was Unbound. Despite them continuing support on the game, I think Criterion need to take a step back on the all out tuner shit and give us something more straightforward for the next game.

Well I m still playing Flatout 2 about 11 years (5-16) and still getting same enjoyment. I got this game Steam version at 2023 for respect because it was my childhood. Hey at least we got Trailout which is similar to Flatout 2

As a indie racing game developer, I really think that this kind of games will be brought by indie developers, since we dont have the resources and goal to achieve the most money making racing game, but just want to put our ideas out there, mostly inspired by 2010 games since that the time we grew up!

Fun fact there is a spiritual successor to Flatout called Trail Out and its a choppy on thevedges but the same adrenaline filled fun

If you loved Flatout 2, you should play Ultimate Carnage! It's basically a 7th gen port of flatout 2 with more gamemodes (but still including the original race career!) and 12 racers instead of 8. More chaos and more fun!