Nostalgia Bias in the Racing Game Community 

Innovation takes effort, spoon-feeding people content is efficient and much more monetizable, and this goes for more than just gaming in this day and age.

I believe the reason why KT Racing and Nacon felt obliged to release gameplay footage even though they were clearly not ready at all to do so was simply because of the community constantly asking them for gameplay reveal, aswell as investors needing proof that what they were investing in wasn't complete bull.

It's an interesting point you made about a snapshot in time. I think a big part why older racing games can't be replicated is that their atmosphere (the music, the UI, the graphical style) were emblematic of, and could only exist, in that time period. Regarding Gran Turismo 4, though it is my favourite video game of all time, I'll happily agree it's not a flawless masterpiece - there are many things wrong with it, but the main thing I think it did better than pretty much any other racing game before or since was providing you options for your own vehicular narrative. The game gives you so many possible paths to reach the GT World Championship, and there's a reason why a far greater number of these recent GT challenge run videos have been on GT4 as opposed to GT3. Every playthrough is genuinely different to one another in the car trajectories you take throughout the game, and it makes GT4 far more replayable to me than GT3's more rigid structure (not to mention the early repetition of tracks - the lack of content from its PS2 launch-title status does show through a fair amount).

The problem I have with current games, with the focus being more on multiplayer, it's diluted offline game progression, since people want access to everything now. In the past certain cars or tracks would not be available until a certain level was reached or unlocked and that could take a while, but that was part of the fun, going about what car or tune would work, the game lasted longer. Where now caught between sandbox & progression, more sandbox.

We're currently witnessing a fighting game renaissance. Hopefully the racing genre sees a renaissance of its own in the near future. But the racing game community needs to wake the hell up first.

One interesting part about nostalgia is that it differs from community to community. For example, in the States, the 2012 Most Wanted is generally criticized as a bad NFS game because it lacked everything that NFS was built up on, the modifications and the progression system. There were no substantial modifications to the vehicles in game and the progression system is just weird and seemed a bit too easy for players. However. this is because American audiences have been used to older NFS games like underground or the previous Most Wanted title. In China, where I used to live, sees this issue from the completely other side. Most people here, although believing that the original Most Wanted was indeed a better game, percieve the 2012 game as a classic, despite its many flaws. Because for many Chinese people, around 2010 was when they started to being able to afford a decent setup to play games on and the spare money to buy a racing game, so the 2012 entry was one of the only racing games that were available right out the get go. We were just used to playing online flash games when this came out, so it was a big deal. I have also played both Most Wanted games, and it is safe to say that the original Most Wanted is a better game and yes, to some extent, the 2012 entry kind of butchered the title, but since I also am that part of the community where the 2012 game was one of the first racing games along with dirt3, the 2012 Most Wanted Still holds a special place in my heart despite it not being the most ideal game. It doesn't really matter what everyone else says, because it's hard to admit, but I kind of enjoy that game.

17:05 "Man, there is so much potential that could be improved in meaningful ways with new ideas", but that's exactly the issue today. Big videogames corporations have lost any interest into making actually new ideas that would make the game more fun (like an engaging career) and went focusing entirely on the technical aspects of the game (graphics, big numbers, presentation) to push people to purchase their products, and possibly keep making them spend more money soon after. I agree with you that people only complaining about GT7's microtransactions is redundant and not helping considering the other big flaws and bizzarre design choices they went through, but we have to consider that many of these design choices are most likely put in place to maximise people's engagement while preventing them to enjoy their gameplay "just enough" to start feeling the grind to be obnoxious, so that they will resort to further purchases instead of actually playing the game. Big studios nowadays hire psychologists to analyze the best balance between fun and frustration to find the best combination of being an engaging game but never giving enough for you to not feel the need for solutions to artificially accelerate progression. Solution which they happily sell to you. I dropped GT7 exactly because I realized I had the same feeling from other games with similar "Loot-focused" features. That constant feeling that it's not "the driving" the main goal gameplay, it's the collection of rewards at all costs. Which bring sense on why the career constantly feels so unsatisfying, as you start feeling bored at having to make that same race again and again to be able to afford yet another car that you won't be able to use anywhere other than custom races. MTX are not the only issue about GT7, but many (not all, must underline) issues in that game are directly related to their need to justify your further purchases after you bought the game.

The NFS community is on some some bullshit sometimes. You're kinda right about how annoying they've been about certain things.

The reason why the NFS fanbase is much more toxic than the rest is because of the way it grew. GT and Forza slowly built up fanbases over several releases, while NFS was relatively niche, before it absolutely exploded globally in a span of just 2 years and then never topped that level of hype again. Kind of like what happened to top gear. The rise to fame was so massive that one version of it became the ONE DEFINITIVE version in the heads of millions of people. Nothing else will be accepted afterwards

As a modder of the classic NFS games, i.e. Most Wanted Pepega Edition and ProStreet Edition, I got to experience this whole drama from a perspecitive that's very close to developer's and it's quite shocking. For reference, our mods have quite the reach in the community (for better or for worse as their contents are hit or miss by design) to the point where the likes of BlackPanthaa have made a video about our more recenet mod (ProStreet) not living up to the philosophy of the older one (Most Wanted). This opinion so popular that I constantly read stuff like it on Social Media. As I watched that video and read these criticisms about our project only one thought crossed my mind: What am I supposed to do with this? Let me elaborate, although it's pretty much similar to what you said in this video, which is why I'm writing this comment in the first place: With the newer mod we wanted to go a more mature path using our increased modding experience, so we did just that. So for a hypothetical next mod, we either revert back to the style of the older, less mature mod, but sacrifice authenticity because it's just not what we want to do, or we go foward but potentially upset a lot of people. So Everytime I read that statement, in my mind it rings like "Please do what you don't want to do" and it's unimaginable how dreadful it is to read. And funnily enough we're basically stuck in the same loop that the whole franchise is in currently. But us modders thankfully have that freedom of doing what we want to, because we technically don't have to please an audience - we aren't tied to money, press, licenses and so on. So technically you could argue that the critique I mentioned doesn't really apply to game developers themselves, which brings me to a second and last thing I've read from our community. Now from people liking what we do, we read (also on Social Media) stuff like "EA should hire them" and "I'm more hyped for this mod than the new NFS". And, while it might be nice to read the first couple of times, again I don't really understand what this is doing. By hiring modders you're effectively bounding them to the exact restrictions listed above and it would result in the same people that are the actual game developers. Are they maybe implying that game developers aren't passionate? That's a pretty unfair assumption and honestly I wouldn't say so, especially looking at newer titles like NFS Unbound. This all has put me in a spot where I stopped modding basically for good, and it doesn't help that modding communities in their cores are inherently toxic as well. And looking at the fact that what I mentioned here basically reflects what you said in the video really makes me feel bad for the game developers. I'm probably (hopefully) exaggerating, but I can see more and more game developers just quitting and the work field becoming more and more slim over the years. Anyway, thanks for reading this massive wall of text that maybe came off as self-advertisement at first, but I hope you got to understand that it wasn't meant this way at all. Rather the things said in this (great!) video just resonated with me on a personal level and I wanted to share it along with some proof that it actually does. ~ Cheers Edit: This is BlackPanthaa's video I was talking about: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QG6INgOKDt0.html&pp=ygUXYmxhY2twYW50aGFhIHBlcGVnYSBtb2Q%3D

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - Henry Ford

racing games its biggest problem is the audience, devs end up *so* confused as to what people want. I think the only way the genre can actually grow is by having people who actually worked on these games just make what they envisioned

I think a big reason people have nostalgia for older racing games is how none of them can be put on modern systems due to licensing issues that make hell look like Heaven. Without having them readily available… people can’t play them on the newest PlayStation / Xbox / Switch or Steam, which makes people angsty. I really wish all this legal stuff was not such a roadblock.

As an almost 40 year old I see this happening in many things regarding nostalgia (x thing was better in the past, just make x over and over). The problem is that most people relate to what they got them hooked when they were growing up and won't move from there. I myself have a big bias for those 90's games that impacted me the most as I was going through childhood and puberty and absolutely love them but that doesn't mean anything; just those games have a big impact in who I am. In the grand scheme of things that's irrelevant, and that's what imo most people is uncapable of understanding, regardless what game was that one that impacted their inner selves growing up.

When people say GT7 should have been "like GT4", maybe they're pointing out that even shamelessly rehashing previous ideas would be better than what they've got.

The racing game community wants originality but then complain when a game try something different

One thing that keeps me going and has helped me mature a bit is the fact that most of the braindead comments are not made by people who actually mean it, they're just "bait". With the years i learned more and more to distinguish them from stuff actually worth engaging with, and knowing that there's people out there with absolutely NOTHING better to do with their worthless lives than just fan the flames of the endless gaming discourse because it makes them happy to see numbers go up gives me life, because no matter how stupid i may sound, i'll never, ever be as pathetic as them.

People said that about the original Metal Gear games too, I recall. I do agree that the racing genre has a lot of problems, but I think many gamers these days will simply never be satisfied because they don't want a good new game, they just want to come back to what they had when they were children. They project their lost happiness onto older games.

Well since there are not a lot of huge game developers left, (cancellation of Blackbox for ex.) the lack of innovation and readiness of taking risks to develop something unique, let racing games become blend and left out to be mass appealing for making profit. There are tons of factors leading to this. I think the greatest problem is that the early eras (the really first Need for Speeds) were mostly inspired by car magazines like Road and Track, or Midnight club 3 with the ''DUB'' magazine. Then came the first fast and furious movies where illegal street racing and tuning becomes like a new genre entirely. But since the hype wears off and these things become a relic of a complete different time. I think this is the main reason why older titles often have these kind of ''nostalgia bias''

My biggest problem with Unbound is the gameplay, i can't do a turn without my car drifting because I braked. And when I'm in high speed, some cars lose all the rear stabilty for nothing, feels so random. If the handiling was better I would play more.

One of the pieces of gamedev advice I heard from multiple different people was, "Whenever someone says 'I don't like this aspect of your game, do [...] instead', throw everything after the first comma to the trash, because people don't know what they really want, they only know they aren't satisfied"

I feel like an alien at least 90% of the time because I apparently don't have a set of "nostalgia glasses". It's an extraordinarily odd phenomenon from the outside looking in tbh. I can equate it to being in a 3 person conversation and the other 2 people are talking about a subject you have absolutely no knowledge of. It feels just about that bad...

Why does the XP system for Forza actually sound pretty good? Like I really want to be able to work towards things, and I think it might be something that racing games need. I want to see innovation in racing games, I want something new, even if it turns out bad, it's worth trying something different to see what works. Just because something is familiar, doesn't mean it's what we need. Gran Turismo 7 tried something different (kind of unintentionally) and turned out pretty bad. That doesn't mean change is unnecessary. We need something new. We need innovation.

As a game Dev I have learned never take most people's feedback at face value. It takes a LOT of work to design, implement, tune, and integrate game systems together into a coherent experience. What you need to do is read the sub-text of what they are saying, and infer and development systems, and experiences that address the sub text. There are also many types of gamers, that are looking for different experiences, broadly there are two types, to oversimplify, one is gamers, they want to know what they need to do to win. You create a fun experience that leads them to a completion experience so they can say they finished the game and won, or completed it. Another are players, they want to explore the simulation, they are not necessarily motivated by completing, they are more interested in exploring experiences and challenges, even if they are self created challenges. GT 7 pretty much failed as a game because it isn't a game and wasn't intended to be a game. They slapped on game aspects to appeal to a wider market and appeal to different demographics. But ultimately GT 7 is a driving simulator. Where for the most part you try to solve driving challenges, and create your own driving experiences depending on how you like to play the game. It is very complex and to get good at the game there are a lot of subtleties that have to be mastered. Ai being one example, at first the AI feels punishing, but after you have achieved a certain level of mastery you can watch the AI cars literally moving out of your way to let you through. Having watched your series of criticisms about GT 7 I think they are mostly correct especially through the lens of a 'game', but if you look through the lens of a simulator many of the points become more or less irrelevant. I think we are coming to the end of driving games. The physics/car performance are astounding, the cars are beautiful, and customizeable. The tracks are varied and present different challenges. The performance tuning is on the verge of moving out of what is possible for pretending its a game, into real life performance tuning challenges. You can repackage this in different combinations to appeal to different player groups, but that is cosmetic. I'm not saying its bad, it's just not really changing anything about the underlying game mechanics. As for grinding, that is subjective, if your goal is to 'complete' the game then I can understand why that's frustrating, you just want to get through the game to the reward/win as quickly as possible. But, if you just 'enjoy' playing the game, the sensation of driving, and solving challenges, then there isn't a grind, you're just doiign what you enjoy doing and getting rewards for doing it. Long rambling rant, but just needed to say a bunch of things

As much as I adore the first 4 Gran Turismo games because they were essentially my childhood, I disagree with the "Just make a new GT4," comments because they should make the current game or the next game better with more innovation. Anyway, keep fighting the good fight, waffle! The racing game community needs more people like you.

Somehow I see the NFS fanbase as the Sonic fanbase equivalent of racing games, as the devs of these franchises prioritize innovation over cohesion coupled with arguably inconsistent quality in each installment, it triggers division among the fan base to the point it become toxic And btw, I think since the racing game fans in general (outside Mario Kart and its clone) were seen as niche but vocal, it complicates matter to devs and publishers alike and pleasing everyone with uncertainties over the critical reception and the amount of their game sold when compared with the rising cost of development and content licensing (if any) nowadays, will be an herculean task so corner-cutting in some aspects will bound to happen, obvious or not. This also the same reason why we rarely seen new racing game IPs recently.

Something I've been doing for quite a while now is replaying games while keeping in mind the context of what came before, what was offered on release alongside said game and the mistakes of the future. What I've personally noticed is that lot of the games that have the most nostalgia fangirling have already reached peak velocity or even started slowing down at the time. If this is modeled as say, a parabolic curve of interest, that would mean the rate of descent rises exponentially, leading to the perception that x game is the downfall while the actual process might date back to x-1 game or even x-2, x-3 and so on depending on multiple factors. What I've noticed for Need For Speed for instance is that from the very beginning the franchise was all annual releases. The most limiting factor about these sorts of releases is that they are much more dependent on short term profits, meaning that something with more broad appeal over a long period of time is generally beneficial. This is why I find the time where NFS jumped on the F&F train to be perplexing from a business standpoint, as while it achieves the strong advantage of having a strong direct symbiotic relationship with the car culture of the time, it's also attaching itself onto a part of car culture that's extremely variable compared to say, what simcades and sims are into where almost everyone can agree that good clean racing is the peak of entertainment. It even explained why ProStreet was made, as that's also where that part of car culture was shifting towards with the whole "maybe tracks are cool after all" sort of deal with more interest in how cars truly handle, track days and the like. However, this was so different from what Black Box was doing that they couldn't adapt due to yearly schedules limiting flexibility, turning into what I assume to be a big reason as to why ProStreet was not doing well, thus causing what I call the headless chicken arc of NFS where the identity of the franchise kept changing constantly. Sometimes it's a simcade (Shift series), sometimes it's trying to be like Most Wanted again (Undercover), one time it tried to be like what F&F was actually becoming like at the time (The Run), then it tried paying tribute to the really old classics (NFS 3, HP2) with HP 2010, then when that somehow worked tried doing it again with MW 2012 but forgetting to switch up the identity to match. People do seem to appreciate ProStreet more these days, but there's barely such thing as liking something in retrospect when it comes to annual releases. The basic takeaway of this is that one shouldn't be afraid to go back to these games and actually dig into them. Gut them out, find the inner workings and absolutely do not sugarcoat especially if you know something was missing, dated or stagnant from back then. Do that with the golden children and their classmates and their predecessors and successors. You could find unique innovations done in previous games you may barely hear about as well as find the beginning of the end of your favorites. The example of NFS is one I like bringing up since from my analysis, the start of the state of the franchise going down a bad path could go not just as far as NFS 2015 or MW 2012, but even as far back as beloved classics such as MW 2005 or even UG 1 by settling on unstable ground unlike their more stable predecessors (they were closer to "good clean racing fun but we're little rascals unlawfully driving at high speed through exotic places") or even the very dawn of the entire franchise by EA's continuous insistence on annual titles if you wanna stretch that far. oh btw when they gonna get that sim netcode thing under control seriously it's as bad as fromsoft netcode

There’s a deeper nostalgia issue with these games. Cars. Like music or fashion, there’s a period of time for every person that had “the best cars” and while new cars are fun, there’s less of them than ever before, especially performance cars, and they’re in a lot of cases increasingly reliant on stability and dynamics controls that add a whole other layer of complexity to making them drive right in a game. The GT-R being the formative warning of that technological oncoming storm. Which leads me back to Nostalga car periods. Thanks to GT itself, a lot of people are emotionally pegged to late 80’s through 90’s cars, particularly Japanese manufacturers. Back when Toyota alone had 3 completely different awesome cars Being sold at the same time (Cellica, Supra, and MR2) to say nothing of the Subiedorks and EVOtaku folks in the muddy anoraks. German manufacturers were going crazy with Icons they still ride the coat tails of to this day. The other big landmark point was everything they covered on Top Gear for the 2000’s. 430 Scuds, Zondas, Koningsingsingsingsingeggs, the Veyron. The apogee of the old way of making cars before skynet. V-12’s, V-10’s, all flavors of V-8’s. Cranky finicky Turbos. The Racing games just can’t keep everything, and manufacturers want their new cars licensed and represented because it sells cars. And there’s some great new cars. But, people also get nostalgic for their old friends, their cranky exes, their posters hung up on their walls when they were young enough to not comprehend what $200,000 actually means in the real world. And even if they can’t put their finger on it, the games will always feel a little unfulfilling, unsatisfying, the flaws in the gameplay easier to criticize as a scape goat than the void left by the loss of a favorite car, maybe not even a car they cared a lot about in real life, but a car that was part of their experience.

Love that you're starting to sound comfortable in front of the mic and that you're implementing jokes and all that. Really adds to the entertainment

The real problem is social media its always swaying the majority, which ultimately confuses developers making another set of people upset, so instead they should go dark not even announce a teaser just focus on perfecting new mechanics new ai and new leveling systems it might take years to develop or not idk but that alone would greatly improve the racing community whether a idie or triple A

In my opinion, one of the big issue with racing game genre is that we players are way to trigger happy at complimenting how well the game looks. Whenever there is a trailer, the most comments/contents are about how good/bad the trailer looks. But then, developers get mislead thinking players only care about graphics.

i loved gt7, but my problem is there is nothing to do. once i finished the career, i just sat there. wondering what to do now. i don’t have the playstation subscription thingy, so playing online is out (and paying $10 a month to go racing online is a ripoff). so i have no idea what to do in the game

I strongly disagree with the OST argument in need for speed. You are overlooking the fact that most wanted had dynamic soundtrack meaning the soundtrack changes as the pursuit is evolving becoming more dramatic. This is gone or not as much present in unbound despite the fact that they try to make pursuit high states. There is also the fact that the music choice doesn't fit the pacing at all. For instance, if you look at older games, the menu music has a much different feel than the racing music. You don't get that in unbound at all. For example Underground 1 had rap music in the menu and rock in race. Unbound soundtrack feels like it was just thrown together at random. MW 2005 and Underground 1 and 2 feels much more deliberate.

People want games to become better, but they also hate change. Basically, they want re-released games with better graphics.

The nostalgia bias part is rather interesting. Thing is, what do people talk about most from the old games? The gameplay. Who was it again who had a video segment im memoriam of events such as 'like the wind', 'MR challenge', '1000 Miles.'? *looks around* Sure it was someone around here...

It feels like one of the issues that ties into nostalgia goggles being so powerful is that people seem to start from the assumption that perfection has to exist in the first place. They conflate something aligning with their tastes to hit them perfectly at a specific time with something actually being perfect. But I've been playing and replaying these classic racing games off and on a fair amount in the last few years, and even with strong nostalgia goggles for some of them I see plenty of glaring room for improvement. And even though a lot of that is with the lens of having seen the innovations and improvements of games that have come since, even trying to strictly evaluate the games in the context of their time, it's very possible to see where they could have been better. And I'm 100% sure if you could go back and ask around the development team of one of these games the day after shipping what they wish they could've done differently, they'd have a whole list of issues of their own. Understanding and appreciating that GT4, or FM4, or MW2005, or Burnout 3 or any of these games have problems has no reason to take away from or invalidate our love for them. I'd even argue that seeing their faults and shortcomings and still being inspired by their virtues to wish for even better games in the future shows even more love than just mindlessly parroting how they're generically "the best," because the former shows passion for the games themselves and the latter just shows passion for having favorite games to evangelize. But sadly, these problems with racing games discourse are just microcosms of the massive problems with discourse in general these days, and I don't really see how it could get much better. I think the only way people will start to let go of nostalgia is if the stars align so that some new racing game absolutely knocks it out of the park on all fronts to the level that enough people have to recognize that the genre has potential to be more than just what the golden age is remembered as.

I’ve only just started watching, but when the Driv3r menu music started playing, I went “oh my god”. It’s so cool to see a somewhat niche, or at least out of the spotlight game’s music used! It was my most played childhood game - it is broken at points, but huge fun. Spent soooo many hours playing it, and the music was a highlight. EDIT: Just finished watching, I agree on every point you made. As much as the old games were fun, and they still are, I think developers should always strive to create new experiences while recognising what made older games great. GT4 2.0 would be enjoyable, sure, but GT as a whole is dated in areas that going back to 2004 wouldn’t fix. In my opinion, rather than trying to recapture the highs of the past, the goal should be trying to make new ones. Something new which drums up interest and elicits responses the same way as, say, GT1 and GT2 did. I don’t think that means everything that made older games should be ditched, but deconstruct it, see what worked, and why it worked, and then consider if you can infuse it into a new system - if that works best for it. It may be that a completely new structure is the best way to go, but even if that’s the case, lessons can be drawn from the past. We can look at GT3 and analyse its progression, then go, “Okay, having multiple tiers of the same event allowed players to keep their car and upgrade as they go, or choose a new one with a higher base performance”. And then, see if that can be applied in a way that gels with the rest of the system. I agree with you, I think GT4 is overrated. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, not at all - it’s very good. But the AI is really not good, it’s barely aware of your existence, and there are only 6 cars on track. You have to handicap yourself if you’re a decent player to make it a challenge. GT4 has lots of content but all of it is beholden to slow AI. While it has variety, the actual racing experience isn’t great. GT3’s AI wasn’t great, either, but in cases like this, I am all for measured rubberbanding (that doesn’t slow the AI down insane amounts when they’re well ahead). Something like Boost Weak in GT7’s custom races. Keeps it relatively close without the overbearing system in the regular races. That would also make grid starts or close rolling file starts more competitive. The better solution is improved AI, but barring that, a somewhat subtle rubberbanding system is a good band-aid, in my opinion. At least until Sophy or otherwise faster AI is ready. As you say, GT7 is prime to become the best GT game ever - the best racing game ever. But Polyphony just don’t seem to realise that there’s an issue with the systems they have in place. Or they do, and they don’t mind. Hell, as players, we can create a much better experience using custom races. That’s the thing. PD could just let the community do the work, if we could share custom races and championships (and if they would fix the 95% AI throttle bug - kicks in after the first corner, where, after the first braking, the AI no longer get to 100% throttle and instead max out at 95-97%). It shouldn’t have to be on us to do this, but if PD don’t want to make a better career, with a few additions and fixes, the community could make at the very least, a GT League style career. We couldn’t do prize cars, and other progression elements that custom races don’t allow for, but more engaging events are possible. I hope GT8 takes notes from your critiques and improves the whole experience, making the racing better, and utilising more of the car list with new events (both in general, and for all types of cars). I really enjoyed the video, and have for all that you’ve made. Great work, and thank you for producing them 😊

As somebody that works in the industry and sees both the player and development side of them every day, this is an excellent video that eloquently points out many things that aren’t really discussed online. Player feedback is important (when respectful, detailed and constructive, like most of the videos I’ve seen from you), but at the same time games need to evolve beyond simply being “more cars, tracks and nicer graphics”. Developers aren’t always going to hit the right mark with innovations, but I would rather them try and fail than stick with what’s been done before with no room to improve. This is why, despite playing Gran Turismo for 25 years, GT Sport was my favourite. There was a clear vision and for what Polyphony was trying to do with that game on an emotional and psychological level, it did a good job. It was a game that truly represented why I got into racing in the first place and why motorsport is important to so many people. It didn’t connect with the mass-market and the classic Gran Turismo fans, but it tried something new and I applaud them for giving it ago. Also, your closing thoughts are exactly how many people within studios (not just racing, gaming in general) feel about the level of discourse online. There is amazing feedback out there, but it’s drowned out by stuff that’s simply exhausting to read through. When people calmly explain why they like or dislike something, give reasons for why they feel that way, and suggest alternatives to explore in the future, developers do take those kinds of comments seriously and sometimes those discussions impact the direction of future updates and games. I played a pretty heavy hand in DiRT Rally 2.0’s post-launch discussions, and some of the good feedback that got fed back into the dev team not only affected later patches, but also generated ideas for future games. Swearing or screaming into the void will never get this response, and ultimately encourage studios to ignore comments entirely, thus ensuring the “good feedback” never gets heard. tldr: Feedback is welcome, so long as everybody is nice when giving it 🙂

People pine for the old days because noone is taking what old games did and improving upon it. So many mechanics and ideas trapped in older games, never to be used again

I like the idea of the car XP system if it's well implemented. In the earlier Forza Motorsport games, through a mix of a slower flow of cash and me playing poorly as a kid, I would be stuck with my early cars for a long time as I kept spending what cash I got on upgrading them to lose a bit less, and that gave me a great feeling of progression that the series has lost and it left me getting attached to cars in a way I just don't in the likes of Horizon 3/4/5 where I have a garage full of hundreds of cars I can barely differentiate from one another.

What i want from a modern racing game, is taking what people loved about the older games, and expand on them, or even add completely new features that has never been tried before.

Enthusia Professional Racing has a car upgrade structure which rewards the player for driving each car and winning races, by accumulating points toward car improvements. It felt rewarding and I enjoyed getting to know each car, and upgrades never became meaningless like may happen in other games where after a while you just have a pile of money or credits and can do whatever you want, without significant investment.

The FM car XP system is an interesting idea to me. I think it forces you to play the game like you had to play GT4 in the beginning stages, which in my mind is what made that game feel good in terms of progression. When you get to the point in a racing game where you can buy whatever car you want and fully upgrade it without going broke the game is no longer a challenge.

easily one of the best video's i've seen about the genre; hit the nail on the head about people not knowing what they want. keep the content coming please, it's very very well done.

Video Games today may have very good graphics , but lacking everything Else . Because theyre produced with the minimum of effort and designed around Dlcs and microtransactions.😢

I played gt4 for the first time years afterwards on emulator and its absolutely not overrated. It blows the newer gt's out of the water

My issue with a lot of modern games is that they do things that make me think "Why the hell would you do that?" GT7 didn't let you buy engine swaps until recently, leaving them up to very slim odds. Need For Speed Unbound locks the M3 GTR behind a subscription that will take the car from you once you stop paying for it, even if you bought the thing already. Forza Motorsport will be always online. These kinds of decisions make absolutely NO sense on a fundamental, logical level. To address them individually: Engine swaps are a new, exciting thing for GT. Why restrict them so much? I know they fixed that, but the fact that it was an issue at all is baffling. Why would you lock a car behind a subscription, much less one that's IN THE PREVIOUS GAME? How desperate/stupid does EA think people are? Finally, Always online (barring dedicated multiplayer games obviously) will not only royally piss off the fanbase, but will also stamp an indefinite expiration date on your game you paid 60-100 dollars for. And you better hope there's no outages on your side or theirs, cause if there is, NO GAME FOR YOU! These sorts of issues, AO in particular, have obvious, beyond- the- game level downsides. But they keep seeping into new releases despite how damaging they are. I would love either "old, but better", or "new and awesome". I'm not very picky in that regard. But "blatant bullshit" needs to go and stay gone.

Bless up 🙏

I think the 2000 to 2010 was the golden era for racing games. Not because of nostalgia but because this was a time when developers actually tried new ideas

i said this before and I'll say it again... what people lack is impartiality and possessing a "mature" mindset (ig like a chill person would do) that doesn't just attack someone because blablabla different opinion blablabla... learning to appreciate and being understanding is also important as well not to mention, people also lack individuality. they usually deviate towards what everyone raves about. i think people should look to themselves personally and think/do what they *REALLY* think/wanna do, regardless of outside opinions. lastly, innovation and moving forward is important as well. old, past games and stuff should just be old, past stuff (depends. you can improve on it just like how anything can be improved on). old is gold and there are cases that it actually is better, but don't pretend to claim "the best ever" just because there is a nostalgia bias to it. as with all things, there will always be better than everything/everybody in any way. like how we were better in the prehistoric humans or smthng or how graphics have improved than the past.. what we should do is accept change and keep being better as a whole even if it's just being a better, nicer person. people seem to be afraid of change. change is inevitable, and that can never be *changed* (lol "change" words in both start and end cos it IS the beginning and an end.. or rather, change happens within those.) the moment people learn to accept others' opinions and still treat each other with respect like how friends do or smsht, as well as look for long-term gains without stepping on others is the moment the world starts to be a better place

every argument about modern need for speed soundtracks always boils down to "music chosen to appeal to 15 year olds was waaaay more better when i was 15 years old" without any sort of self-awareness

I like the idea of the carpg system in Motorsport but I’m worried that if it’s done wrong I won’t be playing with friends as much. The good thing about having all the car upgrades available is that I could go on with a bunch of friends and we could all build cars for whatever challenges we could think of doing with each other. now everyone has to pick a car and invest time in it first. I would feel more comfortable if the system had us unlocking things for types of cars instead of individual cars. But I understand how that wouldn’t make sense and can easily be done wrong if not worse.

“I didn’t know I wanted Driver: San Francisco, but once I had it, I wanted the shit out of it.” -Yahtzee Croshaw, Zero Punctuation

My two little brothers, who are 10yo and 13yo like games from ps2 and ps3 era more, than the ones, that are made today. Older one said, that he likes them more, because he can just play them, without creating accounts or having to pay for more content.

Need for Speed has been killing it on the presentation front lately, especially Unbound. The reason it’s been shunned so broadly by the community is because the physics and handling model in the post-Frostbite era are truly, truly abysmal.

I feel bad for creators like you. You put in so much effort making intelligent, eloquent, well paced and argumented videos about a topic you're passionate about, only for it to fall on deaf, oversimplifying ears and eventually disappear in the larger discourse around the game. Internet brain rot has really made rational conversation impossible. When everyone gets a say, nobody gets a say.

Your criticism of Need For Speed fans is entirely unfair. People don't want the "X year"-culture, they want to see things they LIKE. The only reason we played those games was because we liked them. Asking us to put ourselves in Criterions position is a very bad argument. You make products to satisfy your customers, not frustrate them. If fans remember the franchise the way it used to be before Criterion and want exactly that it's not our fault the company is being stubborn and keeps trying to inject Burnout into NFS. We are paying for Need for Speed, not for Burnout. You don't just try to sell hotdogs with chocolate in them and act all confused when your customers complain about the wrong taste. NFS is pretty compatible to F&F in that regard. The old fans only want somewhat grounded street racing with cars being the main heroes. What we are getting every single release instead is a corny action movie / videogame with some racing in it. We keep saying it's not what we want but the creators are so high on blow all the time they can't just show an ounce of humility and accept the fact criticism comes from us genuinely not liking the product rather than some blind nostalgia.

You know what really grinds my gears, is people wanting or imagining a GT4 remake or remaster. I’ve been hearing that statement from the GT community for the last 5 years and it has become too much to think of. Technically it’s already happening all thanks to the modding community making that game even more better with the new Prize car randomiser etc. But seriously can we accept a remake or remaster is never gonna happen officially any day because PD obviously have other priorities. The future of GT7 and the next game.

The entire racing game community is half filled with childish adults who can't accept new thing and move on and can't even get off thier nostalgia goggles and can't respect other people opinions and praising negative opinions who in their right mind would do that to get attention and drama they are just miserable cowards who have nothing to than taking their anger out on everyone for no reason just for clout and this is why some people are leaving the racing game community because of bullcrap likes this something needs to change and yo rof thank you for speaking up about this and making this video because this needs to be said because you are speaking the truth hope many people see this video as a wake up call and as Kratos says WE MUST BE BETTER

I do not have played NFS UNBOUND, But.. one thing that i liked is the visuals.. some people don't liked... But one thing that i have to tell. IN YEARS this is the first game that try to innovate the visuals of a racing game.. and i give way more points to that!

Thank you for finally calling out the nostalgia bias for NFS Unbound's soundtrack. The amount of people that say "it needs more rock" and then immediately mention all the old songs from the old game really gets tiring. Especially when the Unbound soundtrack has some true gems on it.

In my own honest opinion, Nostalgia should be used in something like this; game devs should know what made their older titles great and not just utilize it... But also improve or expound on it and make sure those improvements are good. The feeling of nostalgia will come more on how the game made you feel while playing it instead of the game just having everything from the older games. Games should still make an improvement, making a game entirely for nostalgia feels more like a rerelease instead of a new game, a copy-paste you could say. The older games shouldn't be put on these "holy pedestals" because while they were way more fun, polished and have over all better quality, like you said here, old games are not flawless. There is always room for improvement and another truth is... No one will ever be fully pleased. There will always be demands for "to do this or that". For me, I just want a game that made me feel nostalgia because of how fun it was, not because it felt like the older games i loved. A game that makes me play it for countless hours like how i used to when i was young. A game that is GOOD, and just that, not a game that "its good, but has a big problem." And for those who just want nostalgia, JUST PLAY THE OLDER GAMES THEN, AND IGNORE THE NEW ONES, NOTHING'S STOPPING YOU.

they added a fucking ambulance in gt7 and a five year old gt3 car the game is saved 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

33:14 - 33:23 I absolutely agree with this. One game that immediatey comes to mind is Snowrunner. You start off with stock vehicles which are not very capable, force you to be careful and keep some areas / missions virtually locked for you. By playing you level up and unlock upgrades little by little, which then open up new tasks and areas of the maps with their rewards and new missions. By the end of the starter region you end up with capable vehicles, but by continuing to play the game and the other regions you get the possibility to buy better vehicles which are needed for the more difficult tasks and terrains.

The NFS community is blinded by nostalgia and keep asking for "hurr durr,MoSt wAntEd remake"

the year is 2047, a new video has been released by _insert classic game reviewer_ "Why gran turismo 7 is the greatest racing game of all time" under the video there are many comments from people: "man, gran turismo 11 should really have a career mode like gran turismo 7 had." "gran turismo 7 was the greatest racing game, it was always fun" "with all of the 240 fps and 36k upscale mods, gran turismo 7 really looks so much better than games like gran turismo 10, smh gt7 was such a better game"

Nostalgia is given a much bigger credit for impact than it has in reality. Not long ago, I went on a Rewatch of cartoons I watched as a kid, that I had massive amounts of Highly positive nostalgia for. For all the amazing nostalgic memories I had, my actual present day viewing experience was drastically different. Some shows were even better than my nostalgia led me to believe, others went from being an extremely positive nostalgic memory, to an abysmal viewing experience in present day. I realized, it doesnt matter if you are nostalgic for something. If it's actually bad, your present day experience will be bad, regardless of how fond memories you had of them, and if its actually good, it can end up being a better experience than your past memories led you to believe. Your nostalgia will affect the way you Think about and look back on something in your memories, not the actual re-experience itself. Now, as someone who played all the main NFS games and all 7 Gran Turismo games, I can attest to that no, GT4 isn't overrated, nor is it nostalgia bias. It's the best Racing game I've ever played, nor was it my first one. If the game wasnt as good as it was in their memory, they would've been able to tell that on a present day replay of it, they would have realized "Oh, it has alot more flaws than my nostalgia led me to remember, I guess it isnt as good as I remember". Truth is, it is everything people say it is. Every game in a franchise is bound to have people loving it like nothing else, and others having nothing but complaints, but the focus shouldnt be put on the fact that these 2 sides exists, but what each side Actually says. The slightly negative reception for GT4 when it came out weren't the best of logically thought out critiques, they were mostly Highly Biased opinionated nitpicks on things that aren't that important. GT4 is a marvel, considering it's a ps2 game. GT4 does indeed lack some things, but the things it lacks, arent *nearly* as important as the things it isnt lacking. It is first and foremost, a racing sim. The actual feel of the driving, the progression system, the UI, the quantity selection of cars, the difficulty, the tuning of cars and graphics. It's phenomenal.

As someone who didn't grew up with the most popular classics, after playing them they weren't really *that* good

22:42 YES THANKS FOR BRINGING THIS UP. This also applies to arcade vs simulator physics tbh. I know it's unrelated to the video about nostalgia bias, but still it can be applied to this comment I'm making. People have come to accept realism as the ONLY vibe that must be implemented in a racing game, which honestly isn't right. This mostly comes from Forza Horizon games, which had simcade levels of handling and people started demanding that ALL arcade racers (like Need for Speed) adopt the same kind of handling. Nostalgia isn't really going to help innovate things tbh. Speaking of the Unbound soundtrack issue, all those shitposts are really off putting and are only for clout, clearly missing why it was that in the first place. I'd say Unbound really tried something new, but the community just hates change.

I must say.... I never thought like that about gt4 and fm4. It's like we were blind all the time. But finally someone opened our eyes. Thanks for the good and understandable content. Thank you

This has always been an issue. People tend to remember the game being incredible with no negatives , we've all been there. Sure there are some classics that people go back to and enjoy, i have a few games i always go back to. However there are countless times where I've played games for nostalgia and ending up underwhelmed and quickly bored. As for forza, i was not that much into the hype of FM4, i played the series since FM 1 and experienced the gaps between each game release. FM 4 felt like an updated FM3, sure for most it was the better product but not that impressive when comparing the gaps to earlier titles. However Many did start with FM 4, where that is not an issue to them.

My bias in racing games (and non-racing games) is that I like games with full-fledged single-player campaigns that I can fully own and which I can play fully offline until the day I die (and not just until the day they shut the servers off).

The worst part of the response to Unbound was that it was genuinely trying to do something different visually in a genre's that's been looking static for a while. But because of the reaction and expectation that "it should be like MW!", it's likely that EA won't try any 'bold' moves like this again.

I have always wondered in NFS Unbounds Case, why they don't introduce a Radio Channel System The old GTA's in the early 2000's can do it, why can't it manage to do it aswell? Even if the Develepors want a particular style of music, just make some Radio Stations and everyone will love it Here's an example list of How it could look like Radio Unbound: Mostly the Music that is currently in the Game already Need For Speed: EDM, Fast paced Electronic Music Chill Out: Chill Music, something like Lofi Stuff Radio Throwback: Old 90's-80's Songs Speed Rocks!: Rock Music (Like the old NFS') These are just examples I throught off in less than 5 minutes

as someone whos been playing nfs unbound for quite a bit seeing as how ive only picked it up during season 2 going into season 3. i enjoy TF out of it i understand the critique of the soundtrack and the cell shaded art style but like you said , in an arcade racer those stuff doesnt matter, i usually play my own music anyway regardless of music choice. i have recommended this game to numerous people. the story is meh imo. (SPOILERS) i didnt like the idea that the character yaz kinda gets away with what she did BUT in terms of the things that she did TO MAKE UP for what she did by having us steal back the cars that were stolen from rydell. and the fact that she did apologize for it and EVEN STILL took on the challenge of the main character to get our car back, im okay with the outcome of her working her way back into rydell side. she even waits to apologize to rydell until she can do it face to face, theres respect in that. (SPOILERS OVER) even with all the issues that people have about the game. the one thing i want to praise ea for is that they made a fully fledged game without micro transactions and are still updating the game with content. while im not a fan of the art style and the story and the music either, i still play the fuck outta this game because its fun and i feel its what i would expect from an open world nfs game

Comparing unbound to older games shows that it has a severe lack of content

Rewatching this, and never noticed the use of Driv3r music in the beginning, class 👌

Damn... When you showed the results of that poll?! We are fucked. The potential is still huge but I don't think we'll get there honestly Good work mate.

That FM defense really aged poorly, eh? Wanting direction is not the same as wanting a grind to level up every single car I want to drive just to be able to put tires on it. I think that's lacking more than anything else in a lot of racing games. There's not a lot of direction, no push to go and do something. Honestly, my biggest dream for a racing game would be an actual "progress your way up the racing ladder." NFS Shift did it, the Grid games do it, Project Cars did it somewhat, the old FM and GT games did it. Make me feel like a racing driver, not just someone who likes cars and wants to take them out on track occasionally, at least from a single-player perspective.

To be fair i started playing Need for Speed Underground last night and i just love this nightime atmosphere that Olympic City gives off.That said not everyone has to like Need For Speed games or Gran Turismo or maybe even Ridge Racer and Colin McRae/Dirt games.Everyone plays what they are comfortable with after all.

I believe forza 4 and GT 4 are held at the height as it is kinda like the Honda S2000 and NA body NSX and it's lifecycle. Stick with me for a while. The S2000 was released at 1999 and was an instant hit as a focused sportscar. But honda kept making it into 2009 without much improvements until they released the final edition, the S2000 CR. Which at the time seems like a cash grab for a dwindelling sportscar. But it's only after the fact that people realized what we have lost and went back to it crowning it as the king. The AP1 and AP2 S2000s are great, but undoubtedly the CR is the ultimate edition so that's why a nice S2000 CR is reaching dangerously close to a 6 figure car with nicest examples breaking 200k dollars. When enough time has taken hold, we will go back and get nostalgic about certain things, and that includes games and we will always find that game that marks the end of an era. Even if that game wasn't the hottest in its context, it is the best, and usually the end of the line and that's why it's held to such high regards.

You completely missing the point, people doesn't want old games, people want good games, need for speed undercover is old, but no one asking ea to make another undercover. Also, modern nfs soundtracks sucks exactly because they made for mass appeal, in my opinion arcade racing ost should contain mostly aggressive fast music, simply because its fit what going on screen. If black metal, folk or country suddenly become mass music, adding them to game would make same awful soundtrack.

My way of redesigning games is based on the many games I've played and I gotta admit that all Gran Turismo-esque racing games (Forza, Ride and such all fit into here) should follow 1 of like 4 different paths when it comes to progression: · Path #1 = Calendar system from Advan Racing - A rolling calendar with events, you compete in the stuff you can, there're conficting dates... It can be an annoying system but it can also motivate you into going for another year so you finally have time to win that one championship or race in that one event plus there's the realism side of things (can't race in Monaco, Indy and Charlotte on the same day IRL!). · Path #2 = League system from Burnout Revenge - Events are split into ¿10? tiers starting from lowest-performance and you try to unlock the next one. You can go for 100% completion but you don't have to. · Path #3 = Regional system from NFS Carbon - You pick a car type (or car origin or car layout) and you do as many localized events as possible until you unlock the bigger later events. · Path #4 = Pyramid system from World Touring Cars - You start with superspecific competitions before unlocking bigger and bigger events that culminate into a World Championship or Open Championship or whatever. Lowest tier could have like 10 series and in the end the top tier would be just 1. Gran Turismo would probably benefit from ANY OF THEM. All have tremendous positives and they're all much better than what GT6, GTSport and GT7 have. Pyramid system is probably the closest in spirit because you could start with superspecific kei car, muscle car and Euro hatchback competitions in tier 1 before moving on to Supercars from all nations, racecars and such.

It's almost like they can't make a complete racing game. Each developer seems to excel is 1 thing or another. Nobody seems to be able or willing to do it all well

I have been thinking about this but never said anything, so that's a first. As someone with a "globalized" music taste that know most of the artists on the OST; The problem with the Unbound OST is that the bad music is REALLY bad. For example Anna Lunoe, 303 was a BANGER in Heat for those who like EDM, I can't see why they picked Ice Cream other than the japanese touch from なかむらみなみ when they could have choose What You Need or One Thirty. Even if it was for the なかむらみなみ pick, Pree Me (Chris Lorenzo Remix) and even ROYAL MILK TEA it would be a fine EDM addition instead of Ice Cream, god, even cho-chocolate drip goes HARD AF. And this is ONE example out of hundreds I can make just from the top of my head! Don't even get me started on Ash-B, JP THE WAVY, Moksi, Alison Wonderland and so on. I hate how they mudered my boys Higher Brothers like - BRUH - 16 hours, Flexing So Hard, Gong Xi Fa Cai, Mr Bentley, Isabellae (used to play Payback listening this one). BRO WHY THEY DIDINT PUT Vroom Vroom from Charli XCX instead?!? Trophy is okay but Vroom Vroom is already a classic in the hyperpop community. I'm ending here because it was to be a short comment, but...

I always think to myself when I see someone say "make it like X! I don't like Y!"- WHY NOT JUST PLAY X. If you want X so bad, then fucking stick to it.

I agree with most of your points regarding bias, mainly with Need For Speed, since it's the textbook definition of being blinded by nostalgia. Many self proclaimed fans say they want something like NFS Underground back while in reality, they just were truly overrated games that lived off the hype that was the Fast & Furious movies. The first one being extremely linear as you never, at any point in the game, had the freedom to select what race you want to play. U2 fixed that problem but forgot that the fun part was racing and not getting TO the races (seriously, it was extremely tedious running up that mountain to start a race). Most Wanted fixed that and was arguably the best entry so far as it included everything that made NFS what it is (Supercars, police chases, customization) and I have no complaint...Except drag racing, those should have been removed long ago. However, the reason players are unsatisfied is because most of the playerbase...simply didn't grow up. Calling Unbound "woke cringe" while ignoring the fact that Most Wanted had "edgy cringe" is just hypocrisy. However the points that were made with Gran Turismo, especially Gran Turismo 4, just didn't click. The main reason why is because right before that you praised GT2 for being GT1 but with more content, yet criticized GT4 for being GT3 "just" with more content. Moreso, GT3 did not bring anything new to the table either, really. In fact, it had little content compared to GT2 and the only thing it has on it was the graphics, which isn't something it should be praised for. They leaped into a new console generation, it's an obligation for the graphics to be better and not something to be praised for, the PS2 itself should be, but not the game. However, I will not make a point about GT5 and GT6 as I have not played those. GT7 was not well received because...well, you made an entire video about it. It was expected to be like GT4 but better, yet it failed something that was present in every single Gran Turismo game: Freedom. In every GT you purchased any car you wanted to start off with, you had so many patterns of starting and progressing through the game while GT7 you were stuck doing what the game told you to do.

I want to see the balance between the freedom in GT4 and PD keeping everything fresh so everybody is satisfied plus a casual mode must be added in case the servers shut down

The only 2 issue I have with gt7, is the dull career progression, and the illusion that they give you that you have a free choice.

It's funny how this video truly sums up how I feel about GT7's online mode. Why are people asking for more cars when I clearly see the majority of lobbies in that game only play with Group 3 cars or the exact same PP range? What is the point of adding more tracks when you're only just going to constantly play the newly added one for a few weeks, only to then just default back to the same 2 or 3 race tracks that's been in the base game? GT7 has given players so many features to make some of the most interesting races they could ever experience, and yet it's the playerbase's fault for reducing all of that down to just playing the same way with no switch up into anything that they do. They're just begging for more cars and tracks as a very poor way of just saying "keep adding stuff until you finally add the specific content I want in the game"

Hi i'm a now retired NFS modder, part of project unite for NFS 2015, NFS Payback, NFS Heat, and the cancelled Unbound mod, if you heard of any it, but I agree 100% with you, I had to leave because anything in the mod had to be compared to older games or people would complain, keeping the original vision of the games was frowned upon, we had to make the handling like pro-street visuals blend in with generic photorealistic games, music that of old games, even the car sounds. I tried so many times just keeping the original style or but improved, maybe harder economy and that's it, similar physics but more consistent, better sense of speed and particles, but no dice. Few of those would be fine, most was bad because cops aren't hard like in Most Wanted, Car sounds aren't from Pro Street, vibes aren't like carbon or 2015, economy and progression isn't heavily easier And then god everyone only talks about those games, and needing remasters, and comparing everything to them, and NFS underground 2 is the best game ever even though it wasn't that well received back in the day. It'd come to if you disagreed you'd be told to off yourself, bullied by big names (RU-vidrs mostly) or similar. Unbound was a good game, the physics ***felt*** worse than heat and payback, the story was horrendous and the dlc and updates are lackluster, but it otherwise was so much better specially in progression and economy, visuals ofc, a lot of cars have new parts and new shaders and textures and modelling, so much shit has been redone under the hood, like there's actual suspension, momentum, tire physics and collision unlike heat! But no one cares cuz it's not the fabled NFS underground 2 remake. Also I do hate the soundtrack but just because slow pace yeah, some songs I genuinely dislike, but they added song skipping in an update, people will keep complaining x song is there anyways.

With regards to the NFS series, and in particular Most Wanted 2005, I’ve always felt that the way the police were handled wasn’t that great. Here are my reasons why… 1. In terms of what tactics the police have at their disposal, there isn’t really anything that consistently keeps the player on their toes, save for the infrequent Rhino SUVs and the occasional rolling roadblock. (The helicopter sometimes drops spike strips and will occasionally try to act as a roadblock in and of itself, but these don’t really do anything to significantly alter the overall experience). Most of the time, if the player can’t go around something, they can usually just plow through it using Nitrous and the Time Slowing ability. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that the game’s method of increasing the difficulty of said pursuits is to continuously spam the player with more and more police vehicles until it either becomes literally impossible to escape, or the game’s frame rate starts to take a hit, which…as I’ll further explain in a bit..does nothing but further bog down the game’s pace and makes achieving even basic forward progress a frustrating chore. And I find this particular problem to be the most frustrating not only because I know that Black Box were perfectly capable of making police pursuits fun to engage in, as can be seen in Hot Pursuit 2, but also because the solutions are so incredibly simple that it genuinely bewilders me that they didn’t think to implement them. The solutions in question? Let higher-tier cop cars use Nitrous, give lower-tier cop cars EMP weapons that force the player to zigzag across the road, add roadblocks made up of Rhino SUVs that force the player to change routes on the fly, and let the helicopter drop explosive barrels on the player (or even fire missiles at them). …I think I’ve made my point here. Let’s move on. 2. Because Most Wanted puts such a great emphasis on the police, the other elements of the game that are just as critical to giving the player an enjoyable experience - things like customization, event type variety, world/track design, etc. - don’t get the same level of attention and care, which led to those elements becoming stagnant or even taking a step backwards in terms of quality. This can be most easily seen with the range of vehicle customization available to the player: Options that were in previous games, such as neon/underglow, advanced decal and paint job editing, trunk and engine bay customization, etc. - are now largely absent. One could make the argument that these extra customization options don’t really work well with the specific tone and aesthetic that the game is going for. And while I can see where that argument comes from, it also begs the question: If the devs were so concerned about trying to make sure the various customization options didn’t clash with the established tone and aesthetic they were aiming for…then why let us customize the HUD dials and the window tint? Wouldn’t the inherently more garish/overly sleek and shiny nature of those customization options make them as equally unfit for the game as the rest of the cut customization options? And if so, then why not just remove them outright? And just so I make myself clear, this lack of attention isn’t just seen in the lack of customization options; It can be seen everywhere in the game. From the way the roads in the various subdivisions of Rockport all kinda end up blending together and not really presenting any sort of unique driving challenge, to the lack of variety in the types of racing events players can participate in, to the fact that most of the racers on the blacklist - save for like the three or four that actually get some screentime - have basically no chance to establish themselves as characters in their own right…like, it doesn’t take a particularly skilled observer to notice how much the rest of the game has suffered in order to make the cop chases the most interesting part of the game. And…well…I don’t really have a concrete solution for this problem other than “EA shouldn’t have pushed the devs into making the NFS series an annual release franchise, and should’ve given them the money and manpower to let them make the best product possible”, but it’s a little late for that now. So let’s move on. 3. The way the police are implemented as a game mechanic often clashes with the rest of the game in a way that ends up bringing down the experience as a whole. For example, despite the fact that the police are supposed to encourage the player to find the best route through Rockport that will allow them to complete their required milestones and make a clean getaway…many of the other regions of Rockport are barred from player access, particularly early on. This makes the task of completing the milestones - an already arduous and time-consuming process - that much more of a hassle, and one that really doesn’t get much better later on, even once the player is given full access to all regions of Rockport. Speaking of milestones, though…that brings me to the other problem with the police in this game: The player ends up spending more time messing around in pursuits and achieving (or trying to achieve) the various milestones needed to go up against the next blacklist racer than they do participating in the actual racing events. And considering that most of the racing events don’t tend to have any special flair or hook that would make the player interested in completing them alongside achieving the milestones, especially in the later hours…it’s not exactly a stretch to say that it often feels like the racing part of this racing game is the least enjoyable part of the experience. …With everything that I’ve said up to this point, I wanna make something very clear: I’m not saying that the police are doomed to always be an inherently detrimental part of NFS games, nor am I saying that I dislike having the police in NFS games on principle; Three of my five favorite NFS games have police in them as a gameplay mechanic. What I *am* saying is that I really dislike the way the police were handled in Most Wanted 2005 in particular (though Carbon and Undercover are definitely not exempt from this). It could’ve and should’ve been handled better. But the way that many folks within the racing game community - and especially the NFS community - like to mount Most Wanted on a figurative golden pedestal and claim that it’s a nearly flawless template of perfection that all other future NFS games have to live up to frustrates and worries me. Cuz if we keep doing this…if we keep treating Most Wanted (and other Black Box-era games of similar design) as unblemished templates of perfection, then we won’t just be dismissing any good ideas that the other games may bring to the table. We’ll also be allowing the very things we claim to love to become and stagnant and ultimately never be allowed to grow and develop into the best version of those things.

Yeah, this can be specially applied to the NFS games, like how people judge Most Wanted 2012 for not being the same as 2005. Like, bro, of course it's not gonna be as good as the original, BUT IT'S GOOD ON ITS OWN

While listening to this subject in the background I’m also playing through the Forza Motorsport 3 career. I completely agree that people including myself hide our minds in the older games when we see the new releases do so badly against them. During the run up to the last few Motorsport games I have been very sceptical on what they will deliver, hoping for cool and new innovative ideas yet more of the same that I’ve been enjoying so much in the older games. Sometimes I think the next one will be better, other times I think that the new ones will never have the same feeling as the titans of the franchise in FM3/FM4. We’re all guilty of those beliefs in many genres, I guess for some it’s a tough nut to crack. Really enjoyed the video, thanks for the thoughtful topic 😄

I would really love to have the option to qualify for races in Forza and GT in Single Player instead of chasing the pack and be condemned to have some overpowered setup to be able to make the difference and catch more than half of the field in like 5 laps. It kills every sense of realism for me.

Re the bit about CarXP: My biggest complaints come as a painter and having run custom multiplayer series before. As a painter, I can’t fit wheels and a bodykit after a vehicle purchase without an hour of driving. In past games, I painted lots of replicas with the intent of sharing rather than driving. As someone that did BoP for custom series, balancing just 5 cars means about 15 hours of driving just to unlock enough parts and points. My group did multiclass racing, so it was usually more like 12-15 cars total. Forza is a sandbox game that, due to extremely slim standard gameplay options, has always invited players to make their own fun. This time T10 decided to include a mechanic that serves almost exclusively as an impediment to fun.

Literally bought a dedicated sim setup JUST to play GT4 and F1 CC 99-02 on PS2. Basically peak 2005 sim racing experience, feels like time traveling and i love it

As a kid that grow up with the golden age nfs game’s the game that i love from the new generation of nfs game’s is the remaster of the 2010 Hot Pursuit.

I bought into the narrative as well that "GT7 is terrible because of micro transactions" until I started watching through your critical videos of the game. The clincher for me was the $20 million 1938 Alfa Romeo. I never really connected the dots but when the point was made that the car is actually useless to progress in the game, as are many of the other super expensive classics, that clicked for me. You don't really "pay to win", you more like pay to collect useless items, which would make you dumber than the game of you do that. There really is no need to pay to "win", you can "win" without doing much of anything because the progression of the game is so convoluted and nonsensical. And that's why it's a bad game. But it took me, a player of Gran Turismo games since the late 90's, these videos to realize it. Just have to say great work you are doing here, in depth legitimate criticism rather than ranting which is mostly what you find elsewhere.

Bit of an offshoot in relation to what the video is about, but I liked the mixed approach to Unbound's effects. Having someone commit as hard as Automodellista again would be neat, but Unbound reminded me a lot of Blur - good looking graphics with over-the-top creative stuff overlayed. It also reminded me of design cues from other games from that time in a few ways, like the menus for MotorStorm: Arctic Edge but during gameplay and with their own touch. I think it worked for what they were going for. It's just sad that I think we won't be seeing more of that anytime soon looking how this 'beautiful' community reacted to it.