i want a shitbox simulator, drive a rusted honda civic, without trunk cover with holes in the exhaust
Youre in luck
The Long Drive
One of the most hilarious yet endearing games ive played in the past 5 years. I keep coming back to it!
Pricing on this is something else, man. 70€ base, 100€ deluxe, 120€ for the premium. And they moved most of content into the premium tier. The only difference btw the 70 and the 100 € versions is the car pass ( which could act as a huge car pack as in the past they had a couple dozen cars ). Also the premium tier does not include future car packs ( which may be fair but i have a feeling they will nickle and dime us for cars already present in FH4/FH5 ). There’s a good chance the game will be good, but you can also bet MS will squeeze us dry.
Hard pass. After playing FH5 and leaving for a few months only to be locked out of races and stuff I had access to at the start of the game due dlc coming out and locking you out unless you paid for the content that we already had access too. No thanks. I’ll sail the seas.
When did that happen? I thought the paid DLCs were the Hot Wheels and Rally expansions, plus the car packs. I don’t remember them locking out previously free content, unless that happened within the last year or two since I stopped playing…
They’re lying or somehow completely misinterpreted what they saw in game. At no point did they lock base game content behind another paywall.
I honestly don’t remember. When I saw I was locked out of content I uninstalled and never buying another game or using PC Xbox Game pass.
As someone who wants to approach car racing games, what would be the suggestion to start with? I remember I played need for speed undercover and shift many years ago and I enjoyed them (shift was one of my favorite) But I haven’t been in the scene for a long time. I just want to casually play, because I kinda like the genre and I was thinking about getting a steering wheel eventually.
Any recommendations?
If you just want to jump into something small, and single player. Super Woden Rally Edge would be my first suggestion.
Then from there you can decide what you want to jump in to next, more rally would be Assetto Corsa Rally, or Maybe something a little older like Dirt rally 2 or EAs WRC. Rally is probably the easier choice for controller if you want to start diving in to more sim racing stuff.
If you decide you want to look more into track racing, check out Raceroom as it is free and you can do a few weeks of their free multiplayer races(learn the tracks first) or some free stuff in single player, or you can grab something like Automobilista 2 on a sale for cheap, these are both pretty drivable on a game pad, but a bit easier to jump in on a wheel. Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Evo are probably not great on a game pad to jump into, but pretty good options for driving on a wheel, with something like Le Mans Ultimate being the current multiplayer sim racing game of choice(not including iRacing).
If you decide that you want to stick to something more arcade, and controller friendly then Forza Horizon is really good and probably the best option. Gran Tourismo 7 is also a good option if you are only on playstation.
Super Woden looks interesting! Thanks for the suggestion
My favorites are dirt rally 2 and assetto corsa. They are more sim like but still really fun and not too punishing.
Wheel makes the experience a million times better even if you just get a driving force gt for $60 (what i have used for 15 years)
Yeah I’ll probably get the wheel eventually. I also found that I have dirt 1 and 3 in my steam account, probably got them for free. I will give them a try as well
I actually had a lot of fun at first with FH5 in the exact same position. The unlocks flow fast and there’s a ton of stuff to tinker around with and explore, and the racing itself is very beginner-friendly. The difficulty settings and assists are very granular and can be fine-tuned to suit your skill level.
I particularly appreciated that it avoided a linear progression system and didn’t make you start off on the slowest cars and slowly work your way up to the good ones, as it’ll give you some insane hypercars right off the bat. The upgrade system and vehicle tiering also ensures that the “slower” cars are never truly obsolete. You can drive what your like, and the game never punishes you for it (in singleplayer, at least).
However, once I got through most of the single player content available, I started to sour on it at a certain point. The constant drip feed of new content in the weekly challenges was fun at first, but felt like a chore after a while, and it definitely takes advantage of FOMO, as the new unlocks in a given week are exclusive to that week and can’t be obtained anywhere else, unless buying them from another player at often exorbitant rates. They do re-run previous exclusive vehicles in the secondary challenges sometimes, but there’s no telling how long you’ll have to wait for a particular car to come around again if you miss it the first time.
So yeah, your mileage may vary, so to speak, but I did put something like 300-400 hours into it before I dropped it for good, and I don’t regret most of that.
Yeah well 300h is a lot, it’s gonna be hard for me to reach that level. That’s a good option, I’ll definitely check it out. However, I don’t understand how the game works in terms of cars availability and if the base game is enough since there are thousands of dlc and in addition you, as well as others, always mention this weekly unlock thingy.
The DLC car packs contain exclusive cars that cannot be obtained elsewhere. The weekly cars are often “hard-to-find” in that they are generally not available elsewhere until they re-run them, but apparently, now that the game is late in its content cycle, they’ve also added a “backstage pass” thing recently, which allows for easier acquisition of some previous “hard-to-find” vehicles.
There are a ton of base-game vehicles that are not exclusive to any particular time or event. Many can be obtained in the Autoshow, which you spend in-game credits to buy cars outright, or in wheelspins, which are basically lootboxes, but they hand out free spins like candy, to the point where I never felt any pressure to buy more. Most spin reward cars are pretty cheap on the auction house anyway (which also uses in-game currency, no IRL money or anything).
Need for Speed Heat and Unbound are decent, usually go on sale for dirt cheap. They are much more arcadey (which isn’t a bad thing)
Forza Horizon is a great simcade experience imo. It’s a good blend of realism and arcade style driving mechanics.
Dirt Rally 2 if you want to try rally style racing.
Racing games cover such a large variety of styles and levels or realism so it really depends what you like in a racing game.
There are proper sim racers but they are much harder to get into if you are just getting started (Assetto Corsa, iRacing, Richard Burns Rally to name a few)
Thanks for the suggestions! If I’d go with a Forza horizon, which one should I pick? Do you know if there’s any Linux support for the game you mentioned?
If I’d go with a Forza horizon, which one should I pick?
I mean 5 is the only one available right now lol. 6 isn’t out yet, and every older title has been delisted from sale due to expired licenses.
The Forza Horizon Games all work great on Linux, but in case of doubt you can of course always check ProtonDB
Wait so does this mean that if I buy the 5 it will be eventually delisted because of 6 and lose everything?
I know both Forza Horizon 5 and Dirt Rally 2 work on SteamOS as I have played them on my steam deck
It’s hard to say which Horizon I would recommend. Horizon 4 is better than Horizon 5 imo (I much prefer the setting of 4 vs 5) but with Horizon 6 coming out in May it could be worth waiting for it.
Honestly check both 4 and 5 out and see which one looks more appealing as they play very similarly. 5 has more active players but if you just plan to play against AI then this is a non issue. Or go for whatever one is on sale if you just want to dip your toes in.
I will warn that Horizon games aren’t very well structured and can honestly be overwhelming with all the content added over the years (think joining an MMO with years of content releases).
I love that the setting is in Japan this time around and even that alone will likely draw me into this game. We’ll see how this goes.
based on past versions, is this one gonna be 1TB? /j
Snow tunnel looks cool.
Looks just like Horizon 5. :D But in Japan setting off course, which is very interesting to me. Its one of the few Microsoft IPs that do well in recent history.
Here’s hoping they have more than three blocks of city streets to race on…
Autozam AZ-1 my beloved
I played the first game, I think, it was fun… Itching for some arcade-ish racing. Does the new entries have paid DLC cars, gated progression or any shit like that?
If anything, I feel like it’s the exact opposite? You can’t drive more than 50 meters without the game gifting you a new car or some shit.
I stopped playing FH3 because of that lol
Don’t know if the new games introduced gated progression though.I hated that, felt like I had to keep swapping, it was anti elden ring, they should have stats for the driver you can reset to encourage not swapping as frequently, maybe you do better with certain types of cars, idk, prob stupid af to do in a car game. I just hated how the progression felt. You’ll have more cars than you know what to do with a few hours in.
FH3 onwards these games were full of DLCs, special editions, VIP status for faster progression, live service content, fomo mechanics, gambling, etc pp
The “story”, “writing” and “characters” are also painfully bad. Cutscenes arent skippable. You can mute those bland corporate written assholes though.
Gameplaywise it isnt a nice little campaign like in FH1. Its more like a sandbox where the game shits out a new car for you at every given moment but desireable cars are locked behind seasonal/weekly events and grinding. then the map gets clogged up really fast in thousands of races and other activities which you can do however you feel like. If your after a more guided experience your out of luck.
Still pretty solid games with great artstyle, tons of cars, very good driving physics, tons of content etc.
But after the Forza Motorsport 2023 desaster i dont trust Microslops marketing one bit. Playground Games’ track record is still pretty good and they overtook Turn10 a long time ago. But i’m going to wait it out until the honeymoon phase wears off and the more critical opinions start to appear.
Thank for the thoughtful answer! Kind of sad to all that FOMO in every single AAA game. Will wait for a demo and see.
The “story”, “writing” and “characters” are also painfully bad. Cutscenes arent skippable. You can mute those bland corporate written assholes though.
I only played FH4 but yeah they were pretty awful. The Drift guy was okay though, he was basically like “hey go have fun and show off”. Generic but pleasant enough. Other characters were unlikeable.
Playground Games’ track record is still pretty good and they overtook Turn10 a long time ago.
???
These games are made by both Playground and Turn10.
FH5’s characters were some of the most insufferable NPCs I’ve ever encountered in any game, which is an accomplishment for a game that really didn’t need that much story or character dialogue anyway to begin with. I’m not even exaggerating when I say the game is easily better when their voice slider is set to 0. They’re actually a net negative for the experience. It’s an outrageous combination of top shelf cringe being voiced by some unskilled VAs under the direction of someone who should never have had that job.
I played FH4 and progression was quite easy I had good cars and cool cars early on but there were still cars to grind for.
I see, thanks!
You know what a fun game is that works perfectly and doesnt require online data stealing accounts and dlc bullshit on unfinished games?
PS1 GT2. Byeee
Need for Speed Underground 2.
no, the other Gran Turismo
GT4
perfection
Also great
I’d rather the older Motorsport games, up to Motorsport 4. FH6 is going to be toxic, cheated, manipulated, and a mess.
A video about that nonsense is on YouTube from 2023, and it’s this (using an Invidious link): https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=KkmxCwi6RVs
