I couldn’t find anythingike this (although I didn’t look too hard, honestly ) so thought I’d start one.
If there’s a game you like, for whatever reason, and you like more of that thing but don’t know where to go, post here and let the awesome Grouvee community help you out!
To star off, I’d love to play some more arcady racers. Not kart games as such, but stuff like Forza Horizon. Not much worrying about tyre types, or gears, or areodynamics or how thick your windshield is, just getting onto the track and blasting along.
Need for Speed Heat, Rivals or Hot Pursuit are solid free roam racers featuring actual cars and varied locales. Well, hot pursuit isnt free roam, but same series.
Hot wheels Unleashed is surprisingly fun but a little bit limited in content. Worth it for 20 bucks or so.
Grid Legends falls in between arcade and sims with nice weighty physics, Some of the Dirt games are similiar but usually a bit more sim, and focus on off road stuff.
Burnout Paradise is great, an open city with something to do at every intersection and a ton of fun side content. Also the crashes.
Wreckfest is a distinctly derby inspired racing game with awsome door to door aggressive racing, including some off the wall activities like lawn mower racing, figure eight tracks and more.
I really like Forza Horizon and I really find it hard to find something I like just as much among contemporary racing games. I’ve tried the last three Need for Speed games, and they all get super grindy in a way Forza Hrozon 4 or 5 don’t. I also kind of hate dealing with cops in driving games, so the premise that Forza is a racing festival is pretty great. I know I’m being super unhelpful, but I too would love something arcadey and chill in a racing game.
I hesitantly would point you towards the Crew Motorfest. But highly recommend trying a demo first if possible. If not Id not spend more than 25 or so on it. I personally had issues with it, but it does have a fan base. The physics seem real hit or miss depending on whose playing. You might also keep an eye on the upcoming Test Drive Solar Crown which is aiming for a similiar feel to Horizon by way of Gran Tursimo in that its a bit less party atmosphere and bit more Snob/Hobby Racer Tropic Cruise sim. The last title was on the ps2 and featured a surprisingly accurate Hawaii while this new one is moving the action to Hong Kong.
I was excited for GT7 and even preordered it. I loved ideas like coffee and cars and other car appreciation centric elements. But the game just didn’t feel engaging enough. Forza Horizon is kind of cheesy in many ways but the fact that I can collect cars and then bum around the map doing whatever I want is so much fun. I just want to drive cool cars and not grind for every tiny upgrade. And I think it says a lot about what I want because GT7 isn’t really a sim, but it’s enough like one that I couldn’t get into it.
Racing games are hard sometimes as a genre to recommend. Theyre all focused on pretty much the same goal when it comes down to it, but they offer different flavors and physics that can vary pretty greatly from person to person. Forza offers probably the most varied experience and has been hard to top overall, but recently for me it seems like theyre slipping a bit. While i enjoyed the recent games for a while they all start to feel a bit too samey for me. Its physics are still pretty top notch though and most attempts at a similiar formula havent done nearly as well. Im pretty interested in seeing how Solar Crown does, as it offers the Forza-like open world with persistent updates and activites but im hoping for more of a sense of progression, which is what has really killed Forza for me recently. I still bum around on it sometimes but i dont much care for the feeling that im just being handed everything.
Edit: now that i think about it what would be awsome is if Forza added a way to have a grindier “career” mode like the first game had, but then also had a mode like it is now where you can just collect and enjoy and cruise
When you start Forza Horizon 5 there is a progression system. It’s just very flexible and you can choose from a wide variety of activities in order to progress. I still 100% the base game before DLC because it was fun, not because I was forced to. So I still got better, improved, made it to the top percentile and unlocked everything while completing every race because I was genuinely never made to feel like I had to do things in a specific order. I was granted a way to organically ease myself in. Other racers I’ve played make you grind the same race over and over just to get cars or kit upgrades to eke out marginal stat boosts just qualify for higher level races. Being made to replay the same track is a drag. Knowing I can go elsewhere to continue levelling up in Forza Horizon 5 is freeing. And then re-running races becomes fun because I’m doing it by choice, or to try out new cars, rather than to grind.
Oh, I know. I put ridiculous amounts of time into Forza as a whole, both motorsports and horizon since the originals.
I like the ability to go do anything you want, thats great, keeps it from feeling grindy. The issue i have however is they give you too many too fast. Within a couple days you can have a ridiculous collection and plenty of money without a ton of effort. My issue is not that they give me stuff, just that i dont have to try to have a bunch. It makes me personally feel like theres no challenge to it, no reason to keep racing when i can just build anything into an absolute track monster or whatever and roll over everyone. And ive played it at hardest difficulty and done things to make it more challenging but the progression is so wildly fast i dont get real satisfaction out of it. . Sometimes i do enjoy just driving around, and i enjoy the stories and obvious love for cars and car culture/history, but i crave the challenge and Forza just doesnt challenge me anymore. Maybe ive played too many racing games lol
The last Forza Horizon I played was 3. I played 2 and really enjoyed but didn’t plan to buy another as I was happy with that, but once 3 was set in Australia I just had to. I think it’s the better of the two, and not just because of the setting (it’s a pretty fictionalised version of the country. Distance is very truncated, to put it mildly). I “finished” it in such a way that you can ever finish those games, but I didn’t get all the cars etc. Should really go back and give it another go.
If the next Horizon game gets good reviews I’ll probs pick it up.
Do you have Game Pass? Both 4 and 5 are on Game Pass. 4 is set in the UK. I really enjoy both. Racing feels more fluid in 5 but 4 is still pretty great.
) so thought I’d start one.