The Decline of Racing Games 

Loved both videos so far! keep it up!

This video doesn't necessarily just apply to the racing game scene, but moreso the gaming industry as a whole

I really miss Test Drive Unlimited 2, there is something about this game that no other racing games have. The feeling of actually spending the racing money on houses and cars + being able to walk in them, inspect every car "in person" was a huge immersion-wise. Every car felt "special" and not just like a toy given to you.

Forza Horizon 4 and 5 focused so much on making a bigger world rather than focusing on progression system. It is so easy to get new cars that the sense of progression gets lost very early in the game

Micro transactions is what's ruining the gaming industry, not just racing games, all games. The focus is now on money instead of quality games. The whole structure of each game now is based on how companies can further extract more money from the customers after the game is released. So, we end up with mediocre games with no soul.

One series I miss dearly is Ridge Racer, which sadly was left behind due to shift in genre focus

I'm 39 and haven't liked gaming much in 10 years. I thought I was just getting old but I go back and play these classics and love them. I'm glad you made this.

Midnight Club 3 to this day is still my favorite. The music, the atmosphere, the massive amounts of content, the variety of cars & bikes, the unique powers, the arcade-feel... ALL OF IT WAS PERFECT

Watching this made me feel so lucky that I grew up in the golden era of racing games in the early 2000s. I don’t really play video games much anymore, once in a while I’ll hop on Forza Horizon or whatever but it feels so boring now. It’s sad that we don’t have many options out there for great racing games now. I will say racing games motivated me towards my career as an auto technician and to get my own project car. And that’s something my inner child who stayed up all night playing Gran Turismo 4, is very proud of!

Could not have summed up the last two decades of racing games better myself. Despite the dip in quality for a lot of long-running franchises, it's nice to see the classics still being kept alive on RU-vid, Twitch and all over the internet pretty much. In addition to your mentions, I can also strongly recommend digging through some older "one and done" titles, such as Auto Modellista and Enthusia. The amount of great racers out there who never got a sequel is almost criminal. Great video, liked and subbed! Also thanks for the Pepega Mod shoutout 💚

Until today, I still yearned that one day EA realized they have Burnout in their inventory and decided to give it one more whirl. My childhood was defined by Burnout 3 and Revenge, and it influenced the music I listened to today.

I LOVED the original Midnight Club. I remember as a 6 year old asking my dad what the word "pedestrian" meant, and when he said it meant more people on the pavements, I was like "COOL, MORE PEOPLE TO RUN OVER" 😅 Burnout Paradise was another one I loved, spent hours and hours on it because the map was so expansive at the time. I recently tried to play a Need for Speed (don't know which one), but I much prefer the F1 games these days...

another example is GTA San Andreas where I could spend hours exploring the map during my school holidays. It was terrafic. I think the simpler the game is, the more fun it actually delivers.

Forza Motorsport 2, you had the option to not only change tire compounds, but also the manufacturer for each tire. And even if you chose a racing compound each one had their own handling characteristics. A small but noticeable detail. One I wished stayed in the series.🗿

These games also had such a huge influence on my music taste. NFS Underground 2 and the Midnight Clubs had the BEST soundtracks with such a mix of music. When I was 7 years old, I heard Riders on the Storm for the first time and introduced me to the Doors and Snoop Dogg. Every time it comes up on my Spotify playlist it takes me back.

I personally feel like the Pixar Cars games deserve an honorable mention. The THQ Cars games weren’t very arcade-like and they weren’t full blown simulations. They were more so in the middle. And for just being movie tie-ins, they do a fantastic job at standing out. The first Cars game is still my favorite video game of all time because of that. As for Cars 2 and Cars 3: Driven to Win, they fall into the basic arcade style racing game. Not to say they’re bad. Cars 2 is a pretty solid video game. And as for Cars 3…you’ve basically played Cars 2. Just by that alone should give you an idea of the drop in quality of the Cars games.

Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights was my favourite racing game. The pink label races where you risk losing your car were great, and the customisation options were the perfect blend of simplicity & variety

One of my biggest guilty pleasures was Split Second. That game was just so kickass as a kid

Midnight Club is the main thing I would love to see a modern iteration of.

There's one important thing about NFS and its EA studios: only Black Box was consistently the same studio throughout. When Criterion was assigned to NFS the first time around, it already wasn't the same Criterion, as people started leaving the studio after Burnout Paradise. When the franchise was given to Ghost Games, most of the Criterion staff left moved to Ghost Games themselves, with Criterion being reduced to less than 20 people. At this stage, most (if not all) of the main Criterion devs from the Burnout days had already left, either to start their own studios - I believe the one that did On Rush is one of those - or to join other racing game studios such as Codemasters. Criterion then became a small support studio for series like Battlefield and Star Wars, probably helping with vehicles in those games. Then EA bought Codemasters, gave NFS to their Chesire studio with Criterion as co-developers, and ended up merging both studios into the Criterion of today. In short... Essentially and effectively, Criterion ceased to exist after Paradise; Ghost Games is the rotting corpse of original Criterion; and current "Criterion" actually is Codemasters Chesire. When you realise this, it's no wonder that the Hot Pursuit reimagining was somewhat of a safe entry, the Most Wanted reimagining was an attempt to mimick Paradise, every NFS from Ghost Games went nowhere, and Unbound was the closest we had to a return to form.

For anyone who hasn't played Test Drive Unlimited 2, I can't recommend it enough. TDU2 was so enjoyable! I was so invested in it, even though I played it 9 years after its release (in 2020). That game was like the SIMS franchise, but with the spirit of solid racing. I remember it being so immersive, the solid gameplay, the thrilling races, the Hawaiian island location, and the music! It was just pure fun. Also, the music was hands down the finest in that game. It attracted me more to Punk/Alt Rock music. I highly recommend this game to anyone who reads this.

my last hope is TDU: Solar Crown. I'm glad they had a delay and I really want them to take their time, blood sweat and tears making this as a passion project.

While not "exactly" a sim game, I find Trackmania might at least be a honorable mention in the racing game genre. It was released around that time and offered some unique experiences. - Trackmania (2003) - Trackmania Sunrise (2005) - Trackmania Nations (2006) - Trackmania United (2006) - Trackmania Nations Forever & Trackmania United Forever (2008) For the ones who don't know, the selling features were these things: - You can build your own tracks in the track editor - You can race and compete on these tracks - All single player tracks made by the creators can be completely rebuild from scratch in the track editor, the editor is that powerful - No race car customization, so your car is equally as powerful and handles equally as well as any other car. Cosmetic car skins do exist, and some people modded their car to be a different model altogether. But even these models use the exact same car-to-wall collision, so it's purely visual. - All races, even multiplayer ones, are glorified time trials. There is no collision between cars. Every car starts at the exact same starting point. Physics are determined. If you're in second place, it's not because of bad luck or because another player drove against you. If you're in second place, it's purely because of your skill. Now restart the race and do better!

Honestly Driver San Francisco was way ahead of its time not only having incredible gameplay mechanics but also a damn good story which is pretty rare in racing games.

The first Gran Turismo was a game changer. It brought licensed cars and the pursuit of realism into racing games (and environmental mapping). That alone makes it in my opinion the most influential, if not the best, racing game ever. Technology never stops improving but we wouldn't be playing modern racing simulators hadn't GT (and Geoff Crammond's F1GP, to a lesser degree) been there.

Not only did racing games of the 2000s get me into working on cars and various motorsports, those games are the reason i became a musician. Hearing Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, Kyuss, and Bullet for my Valentine changed my 8 year old world

Test Drive unlimited was something else. It was really fun to drive around the map in a normal way without making a single scratch as if you actually owned that car. The map was huge and the island tour was a full one hour long race where you really had to concentrate.

Amazing video bro! May I just add that MotorStorm is another massively underrated arcade racing series from the 2000s. It was really unique and innovative, and doesn't get half the appreciation it deserves. It ran from 2006 - 2012, so was in the latter half of the golden era.

One of the major factors that made this "golden era" of racing games so memorable was the strong aesthetic and unique visuals the different devs really emphasis in their designs. Nowadays most of these game focused way too much on graphic fidelities, which only basically replicated what real life looks like but represented nothing from deep inside the emotions of the creator's eyes in an artistic perspective like the old days, they just all felt emotionless now. The only game where they still managed to captured both the aesthetic and graphics is Gran Turismo, they still stayed true to create things from their unique perspective that we fans all loved.

Burnout Paradise was way too ahead of his time, absolutely loved that game

Need for speed rivals is actually pretty fun and I don't think you even mentioned it here. I was given most wanted 2012 shortly after it came out and hadn't really touched a racing game since the PS1. I fell in love with that game. I know it's not a good game but I have so many memories with it. Finding cars almost everywhere, doing insane jumps at the airport and resetting 50 times to get that final most wanted car. That game will always have a place in my heart even if I no longer find it fun to play. All that to say, rivals just takes everything from hot pursuit and makes it better. I played with friends online and even today I still go back to as the last good NFS game. Heat is great but it feels like something is missing.

Great video and a sad insight on not only racing games, but games as a whole nowadays. We need publishers to give devs proper development time, and allow them to listen to their fans.

Two of my absolute favorite racers were in the arcade. Initial D and maximum tune. Nothing better than lining up to defend your seat against like 30 ppl who had fully tuned cars on their card. Nothing can touch that atmosphere

"Sometimes you just have to experience the bad in order to truly appreciate when something is exceptionally good"

Man. When u brought up burnout I got taken back to my childhood where my mother and sister didn't like gaming. But when I turned on burnout, we would sit for hours just tryna crash each other's cars while keeping a scoreboard of who won the most races.

I feel the biggest issue is more the nature of development of these games. Like, Black Box didn't release 6 NFS games in 6 years because those games happened to be finished in 1 year each (you can see they have a lot of jank and a ton of cut content that would have really improved the games significantly), but because that was the deadlines they were set. The standards of consoles were lower on the 6th gen of consoles compared to now. You can see this in action with the Gran Turismo titles that often had 5+ years of development per game. GT5 had many "legacy cars". Cars whose models were taken from the PS2 and PSP games. These cars were far less detailed, lacked interiors and looked worse compared to the premium cars made specifically for GT5. We know that in terms of development, it took more resources and development and time to create 1 premium car than several legacy cars. So you want a GT game with only premium cars, it's both going to take a longer time and result in a smaller car roster. All this adds up to the demands of making a racing game no longer being as sustainable and quick as it once was. If in 2002, it took 1-3 years max to make a decent racing game (even if it resulted in a lot of cut content and jank), in 2023, 1-3 years is barely even half the time a racing game needs to even be decent. Making everything from cars, to tracks to gameplay is more demanding because the standards of now are much higher. In addition, while people like to complain that NFS Heat or Payback aren't as good as the older games. But if these games released back then, people would love them way more. Nostalgia and rose tinted glasses also play a factor in people refusing to give many games a fair shake. So a new racing game now has to work even harder to compete with people's nostalgic perceptions of an older game. This expense also makes it riskier for a game to do well. Midnight Club LA sold better than its predecessors, but Rockstar still considered it a disappointment in terms of sales. NFS Heat is a better racing game than Carbon or UG1 and I'd even argue UG2 but it sold a fraction of those games despite costing more to make. So there's not really an easy answer. Publishers aren't exactly excited with giving racing games more time since they aren't guaranteed to sell 10+ million copies anymore so any additional development time will eat into the profits. Companies can't go back to lower quality graphics and models to save time and resources since players will complain and refuse to accept lower quality assets.

I thought this video was by someone with over 400k subs, not someone with just barely over 3k! The quality, editing, and music in this video is astounding! Keep up the good work!

There's one series that's mostly forgotten that I used to play a lot on the PS1; the TOCA series. Developed by Codemasters (Colin McRae Rally, DiRT, GRID), it was a fun and arcade-style racing series of which "TOCA World Touring Cars" (also known as "Jarrett & Labonte Stock Car Racing" in the US) entry was my personal favourite (plus it had a banger OST, check it out!)

There was a Squaresoft racing game that had RPG elements in 1999. It was called Racing Lagoon. The story, tuning, and its style of gameplay puts many modern main stream Racing games to shame.

Glad you didn't forget Driver San Francisco!I miss the Driver series so much! Driver:San Francisco did amazed me and i fell in love with it. Sadly the dev team doesn't want to work on a new driver game anymore. Amazing video btw

The fact a random video I stumbled upon from a 5k subscriber count channel is this high quality just goes to show how passionate the arcade racing community is. This video is amazing. Thank you.

I feel like games back then had wayyyy better story modes and for fun game play than current games because games now focus so much on graphics, a lot of game developers miss out on what made us fall in love with the game in the first place

As a gamedev student who's graduating literally next month and aspires to make quality racing games, I have to say that during my time albeit rather short in the game industry; I've come to realise that our higher ups are always people who know jack shit about making games and only care about money coming in so they can feed their materialism / hedonism while not really giving a damn about what their content quality is; most of the time they rely on marketing and pre-orders. Because of this, we keep getting insanely unrealistic deadlines with the expectations of a product worthy of selling (regardless of quality) and that causes developers to rush and slop the whole development process that leads to mediocre at best quality of product and I can guarantee you that if developers were actually given time with less pressure; the games you get today would be far better. Especially nowadays when technology is constantly advancing and people like us have to adapt to it just so we know how to put out a better product and that in itself takes a decent amount of time. My biggest wish is that game companies and publishers were actually passionate about the product they put out, cared about the needs and wants of the people they're putting the product out to and didn't only just care about stupid cash. The whole gaming industry is absolutely shit right now and so is the automotive industry. While I wish for good things to happen, I do not have hope or expectations that they will

Finally someone mentioned Driver San Francisco. One of my all time favorite games growing up! So many memories

I'm surprised it's not often mentioned because for me Midnight Club was the only real open world racing game (where you could find different routes between checkpoints or take a wrong turn at any point) and made NFS and other games unenjoyable because of how "linear" the races were, to this day I still want racing games to give me freedom and not a lot of them give you the same freedom you had in Midnight Club...

I was literally talking to my best friend about this around the time you launched this video. Games when we were younger just had something exciting about them, they transported you to another world and now especially with racing games. You feel like an uber driver getting from A to B. Grinding your heart out to earn a wage to then purchase vehicles. No more unlocking stuff. No storyline. No competition.

A few racing games i grew as a kid were being, Midtown Madness, Crash Time, Burnout paradise, Full Auto, Test Drive Unlimited, forza and Driver San Francisco.

Midnight Club 3 Dub had independent controls to move your weight around on the motorcycles. That was pretty unheard of even in actual motorcycle racing sims! And those PGR menus were not 2000s-vibe but were actually based on the original Need For Speed menus from the mid nineties (pre-Blackbox). IMO the best racing game menus ever. Man you brought back a lot of nostalgia with this..

I was just thinking about a lot of those old NASCAR games, like NR2003, made right during the golden age of NASCAR and Racing sims. That game was a absolute bop to play, highly moddable, and a great modding community like many of the racing games of that time. Now the code base for that game is now used in iRacing.

This is the EmpLemon style of videos that we all need in our daily lives. Hopefully the racing genre deserves some respect like the 2000s.

NFS 2010 was one of the best nfs experiences I've had. The addition of playing your own music and how it implemented the music within the game's User interface really amped up the already great experience. Coming from someone who has started on the original need for speed.

I was 14 when gran turismo 4 came out, and it remains the only videogame that exceeded all of my expectations. such hype for it where i lived!

Honeslty Midnight Club LA had one of the best soundtracks and game play. I think what made it really great was the community. Having 24 player spots in an online free roam lobby was awesome. It was a great game to just relax and chill and show off and talk about cars. Most of my friends list was from that game and black ops 2. Rate my Ride was an awesome addition as well. No other racing game has quite caught that same feel as Midnight Club LA

That was a wonderfull visit into the gems we still love to this day , I've was amazed how smoothly you presented each series, wonderfull video man and I'm looking forward to more videos from here! ❤

Really dope intro in the "Sim Racing" category. Great video man.

Have been playing racing games all my life and love them! Feel like more recent “arcade-y” games have been on a sort of decline or victims of monetization and live service games. But sim racing games have been improving drastically and are really fun and getting better! Assetto Corsa Competizione has been my favorite lately!

Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero: Can not express how many hours I played and loved this game, frustrating and totally of the era but so unique and visually still good today. There were others in the series to where you did mountain racing and a drift one but I don't remember now, favorite classic racer. 👍

Fun Fact: I played Burnout Paradise for over a year before I found the crash mode on accident! Talk about mind blown!! Like imagine if that happened playing gran turismo and how crazy that would be. That’s how it felt 😂

To this day Test Drive Unlimited remains my favorite racing game, and one of my favorite games ever. Such an amazing combination of an open world, amazing physics, great car selection and a huge cult following and mod developer community. To me it's one of the most realistic driving games ever created.

Thanks for the great compilation of great cut/play scenes. Excellent selection of games. I see value in experiencing these franchises as they debuted and evolved, which your perspective lacks. So much to explore.

During the "Golden Era" a great alternative to Burnout was the Ridge Racer series! It was a crash simulator, but still very fun to play

Wow didn't expect a video of this length. Thank you for the effort in getting it out and loving your style of content. The music in particular is absolutely amazing. Pls keep it up

The dev studio behind Project Gotham,"Bizarre Creations" was acccquired by Activision in 2007(the same year the final Project Gotham game was released).In 2010 the studio launched thier final racing game 'Blur' which had good reviews by both critics and users but didn't sell well.The studio had plans to release a sequel but it was closed in 2011.That game is now abandonware. You should try it out sometime. It has a little community that is trying to keep it alive.And upto some extent they are going good.They even managed to bring back multiplayer which is someting quite rare in old abandon games.

You really hit the nail on the head with this video. It's such a shame seeing all the games I grew up with, relegate to such lower quality over time. I miss seeing games trying to be ambitious, and actually taking risks. Now everything is just... Lacking. You definitely gained a sub from me, and you've got a good taste in music might I add!

GT3/4 were groundbreaking when they launched. Even today I still miss it.

is your glitch bit in the modern Forza section a reference to Internet Historian? LOL! This was a really fun video to go down memory lane with. I appreciate the niche that you found for yourself with racing games. I hope your channel is blessed by the algorithm gods

This man is a cultured legend. Tfs reference and shouting out my summer car? Subbed.

NFS2010 is my favorite modern nfs by far, the brake to drift handling wasnt even a problem because there was no compromise between grip and drift, it just knew what its was, just a fun arcade racing game with great atmosphere and soundtrack.

I think it started in the late 90's with with NFS 2 and Gran Turismo. The games felt like they had a soul, games that the devs were pouring their heart in to. The custom music for NFS2 - 4 was insanely good. I think that is something that is really missing from the games today, as the corporate greed drains the soul out of every game.

I think the biggest problem with the newest Forza Horizon games is the fact that acquiring cars is waaay too easy. You could have millions of $ and hundreds of cars over a weekend of gameplay. They just gift you cars constantly. With such an overwhelming pool of cars you receive, you lose any sense of progression because there's nothing to grind for aside from the few exclusive cars you win in weekly championships.

Oh The Gran Turismo 4 Theme starts at the begining of the video, i love this theme!

I am a little older, so perhaps I got to experience a bit more obscure 90s racing games such as San Francisco Rush, Cruis'n USA, Daytona USA, Motorhead and Top Gear 3000 (amongst others), but there was plenty of variety from the mid 90s until late 2000s, there was such a diversity of racing games and you just don't see that creativity from them anymore. It's a shame that the fun got sucked out from mainstream racing games. Amazing video by the way, brought back some great memories with NFS Underground, Driver and Burnout. Keep up the great work!

The first Forza horizon was probably the first game I put just endless time into, undoubtedly the best one, trying to earn the next wristband and beat the aforementioned characters. Definitely shaped my music taste and any time I listen to song from it now the nostalgia comes rushing back

Dude, you really killed it with this entire video. I was a late adopter of Forza, Horizon 4 being my first, and while I had fun, it had no personality at all. What music festival? Indies have been a saving grace in the recent years for sure. The only "modern" racing game I play these days is one you didn't mention, DiRT Rally 2.0. Super cheap on sale and just plain fun, even with a controller. Loved hearing Tobacco randomly in the background as well, respect.

As a 2000s baby and Avid gamer. THANK YOU!!!! excellent video! If you haven't already you should really try the LA Rush series! I played it on PS2 and it's AWESOME! Also don't forget the most underrated forgotten GOAT of the Bunch: Test Drive: Eve of Destruction which catered to me a country raised derby loving 2000s kid and was so ahead of it's time.

I was planning on doing a video like this, but man have you done so much better than I could have ever imagined doing. Really looking forward to more videos like this one

Ah yes NFS hot pursuit 2. The game that started it all for me! I'll never forget that line from the cop over the radio. Something like: "10-4, calling all units, a red opel speedster just flew by me". Thankful for my dad renting that from blockbuster when I was a kiddo

Also to add to the sim racing category, beamng is probably one of the most impressive games to exist ever. The realism is unparalleled, and is constantly receiving quality updates. Once things like proper tyre thermals are implemented, and systems for seemless racing are implement, it will undoubtedly be the best sim racer out there.

Man i really love the attention to music in your videos thanks for that

I loved Hot Pursuit 2010 soooo much. Its just the essentials, cool cars, cool island and cool music.

I'd like to see some underrated racing games like Split/Second and Ridge Racer are back

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO. I WAS LOSING MY MIND PLAYING FH5 WITH THE WHEEL SET UP. god damn how do you not have good wheel integration on a racing game.

Awesome video. I used to be a really big fan of Forza horizon, specifically 2 and 3. For me personally, I feel forza horizon 2 was the peak of racing. Even though I put more time into forza horizon 3, I have more fond memories of 2. The aesthetic, music, and the weird things they tried experimenting, like bucket lists, more mission types, and a spin off game for fast and furious. Overtime I drifted (unintentional pun) away from racing games, constantly switching game types I play, even still today. I never forgot forza though, which lead to my love for eurobeat from watching initial d. I do hope forza makes a remaster of the first two games. I would love to revisit the setting of those games, with little changes to the gameplay. Also if you want a great racing game, try inertial drift. It is a racing game about mastering different types of cars and winning races across a fictional world. The game also has great time trials and challenges to try out.

This is something I had felt for a decade and I wasn't able to put to words. I'm glad that I'm not alone, but also sad that timeless experiences like GT4 and GRID are not coming back.

Driver, Nascar thunder 2004, 2005 Chase for the cup, and Dirt to Daytona are awesome games that just were timeless classics. 200% worth playing.

Great video. Great music. Looking forward to what you cover next. In future could you put the music list in the description so we can copy paste.

Enjoyed the vid, did cackle at New Order - Blue Monday being described as 'solid EDM' though.

One series I really loved was Midtown Madness 1, 2, and 3. Those were some of my favorites during the NFS Underground 2 days.

I'd give a special mention to MotorStorm games. With the release of the PS3, the first motor storm really had that wow factor and managed to give me a mixed vibe of flatout and Colin McRae. Had a lot of fun playing it and still remember how shocked I was at the graphics the multi level tracks and mud physics haha Had a lot of good ideas and a lot of love poured in

Thank you so much for doing this video. While everyone was growing up with classic games that everyone knows, I grew up with the majority of these racing classics, just having the regret of not playing the first burnouts or some gran turismos, but NFS 3 Hot Pursuit, Porsche Unleashed, HP 2, Underground 1 & 2, Most Wanted, Carbon and Pro Street, as well as GT 1, 2 and 4 were my primary arcade racing games when I was a kid/teenage. I grew up with them and felt so happy playing them, mostly because I was a car nerd back then, not as much as nowadays. It pains me to see this sagas and games screwed by the current game industry who only wants to sell simple because of the brand

GG man great vid. Subbed.

Project Gotham actually started off on the Dreamcast as Metropolis Street Racer. The idea was you would get points based on how much of a show off you were with your driving, and it was a terrific game. The team then made the Project Gotham games which had the same gameplay. Tokyo Extreme Racer will always be a personal favorite of mine. It started off on the Super Famicom in Japan as a drifting game and then the Sega Saturn before coming to the US as Tokyo Extreme Racer on Dreamcast. TXR 2 was ported to the PS2 as Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero, a game I played a LOT back in the 2000s. I still remember managing to achieve pearlescent effects in my paint job on a MK3 Supra with 700HP, a car that took on the Vipers and the Speed King with a bit of dirty tricks and cock-blocking. I loved that game so, so much.

Project Gotham Racing 4. The only game with races of cars against motorbikes. What a legend! Best intro of games history.

Amazing video!! Another franchise that disappeared is Ridge Racer. The 5th will always have a special place in my heart..

You put effort into the video. Thanks, man.

The massive growth on this video must feel amazing! Well done!

I remember games like nfs underground and midnight club had storylines where it was centered around you being the best street racer being thrown under the bus by some master manipulater and have you start from scratch and work your way up, it was fun because in terms of what it had to offer at the time it felt like it was something you had to achieve on your own compared to nowadays where the story is short and it holds your hand the entire story

Test drive unlimited was my jam! I loved how you buy houses with garages to store your cars if you have too many cars you need to get a new house and the customization on cars from factory was amazing.

the problem with modern racing games is that there's zero atmosphere to speak of in any of them. NFS Unbound brought back some of that atmosphere but it was never consistent to make it immersive. you could go from helping one of your rivals and having them say they're eternally grateful to having them trash talk you throughout the entire rest of the game during races, and it's always the same exact lines so even that loses it's charm after the first 3-4 races. I think what we need is to go back to the PS2 era of racing game design where the games were simple but insanely fun and the atmosphere of the games were almost always perfectly executed. The Tokyo Xtreme Racer games captured the feeling of racing along the highways of Japan to a insanely realistic degree. NFSU + NFSU2 perfectly captured that old Fast and Furious vibe of the early 2000's that was so damn popular back then. Gran Turismo captured the feeling of starting from a nobody racing in the Sunday Cup, to eventually competing in the most competitive racing championships. The thing that all of these games had, that no modern racer seems to have brought back, was a consistent sense of progression, and an immersive atmosphere that tied into the progression enough to make everything work together. Tokyo Xtreme Racer has over 600 rivals, each with their own lore and each team you raced had a specific theme they followed to make the game that much more immersive. We don't need innovation, we need immersion. The gameplay systems of NFS Unbound are actually pretty good (albeit a bit lacking in variety), but the atmosphere and immersion of the game is so inconsistent, and that makes the overall experience feel dull and boring because you don't actually feel like you're doing anything when playing the game. The story doesn't go anywhere throughout it's 20+ hour runtime. Get your car stolen, win some races, get it back, the end. You're back to square zero and are left with little to no satisfaction after beating the game. The characters in Unbound had the potential to be great, especially since those escort missions gave some much needed lore on them, but that's the only bits of lore you get for the entire game and then it's back to the same cheesy "i'm gonna smoke you" dialogue when you actually race them. The world is actually really nice but the races only cover a tiny portion of each area and there's so little variety in them that you end up racing the same tracks 20+ times over the course of the story. Forza used to have immersion, then it switched to being a showcase of how powerful the new Xbox console is and completely ditched the progression system that the series once had. The same goes for Gran Turismo since the main means of progression in that game is the car menus, which you can complete by buying the required cars from the used car dealership. And the championship series are so short and inconsistent with the restrictions and the amount of races they have that they're just not fun to play through.

Even though I didn't agree with everything on here, I really appreciate the work you put into this video and the trip down memory lane. I played a bunch of the games you listed on my PS2 back in the day and they were truly great. I think part of the reason we really haven't seen games like that lately is because game development has gotten waaaay more expensive and time consuming in the current HD era. I remember reading that creating a car for GT7 takes months at a time, and it really shows in the car models. You can zoom into cars in that game and see incredibly fine details up close with no noticeable pixellation. Do they have to work to that extent? No, but Gran Turismo has always been about a love of cars over everything else and it's in character for the series for them to do that. Overall I came away from this video that some games may have gotten better, some worse, and some are just different and have gone in a different direction than maybe some people wanted. And by the way, if you haven't played the new Gran Turismo on a controller, it's a revelation. Probably the best vibration and feedback on any PS5 game I've ever played.