Yahoo Autos Revisiting the Racing Games We Played in 2022
All told, 2022 was a solid year for racing games. It gave us a return to dramatic circuit racing with Grid Legends, the long-awaited (if imperfect) comebacks of Gran Turismo and Need For Speed, the first F1 title to wear the EA Sports badge loud and proud, and old-school arcade vibes in the form of Horizon Chase 2 and the expanded release of Slipstream. It also inspired us to take a few strolls down memory lane and reacquaint ourselves with the worst the genre’s ever had to offer. Here in this list we’ve compiled snippets of all the games — new and old — we covered in the past year. Have at it, and happy racing into 2023!
The Switch’s Shittiest Racing Game Is On Sale For $2.50 So I Bought It — And Maybe You Should Too (1/7/22)
Speedway Racing truly comes alive when you load up on 22 gallons of Suonco race fuel and hit the asphalt. Lunacy is guaranteed. The artificial intelligence exhibits none; computer-controlled cars are also so incredibly slow in a straight line relative to you that they’re impossible to avoid. When you hit them, they fly into the air weightlessly. Even if you do your best to steer clear, they’ll still send each other into the stratosphere. It’s a regular occurrence to blow past AI cars stationary on the apron for no obvious reason; hell, half the time they’ll venture into the grass as soon as the green flag drops.
Read more
Grid Legends Is Pure, Playable Motorsport Spectacle In The Best Way (2/24/22)
While there’s little about the Driven To Glory plot that I feel like I’ll recall months from now, it does feel like the perfect narrative companion to the Grid gameplay experience, which has always been one of chaos and bustle. You feel it most on the city circuits, where this game is truly at its best. The throngs of crowds lining the streets of Shanghai, Chicago and Barcelona; the dust kicked up as cars cascade into Turn 1 at Dubai; the warm glow of the lights strung over the track from building to building in Havana. The fireworks, the confetti, the balloons. God, the balloons. The artist responsible for designing the balloon archways in this game deserves a raise.
Gran Turismo 7 Is The Racing Sim That Isn’t Afraid To Be A Video Game (3/9/22)
GT7 is your youth in 4K, with ray tracing. It’s a remarkably earnest celebration of automotive history and the gaming franchise that disseminated that history to the masses 25 years ago. A celebration so earnest, it’s sometimes awkward.
There are surely racing games that are more realistic than GT7. Harder than GT7. Ones that have even more cars and better music. Definitely better music. But there isn’t another racing game that will demand your patience like GT7 does. For that, you might hate it, and I couldn’t really blame you.
Or, it might just remind you why you fell in love with cars in the first place.
Slipstream Is A Shot Of ‘90s Arcade Racing Nostalgia Coming To A Console Near You (3/24/22)
Slipstream has been out for a few years now, but only on PC, via Steam. It’s a fun, gorgeous tribute to Sega’s classic proto-3D Super Scaler racing games, like Super Hang-On, Power Drift, Rad Mobile and, of course, Out Run. The candy-colored skies, endless palm trees and nostalgia-swelling synth wave tunes are melded with a drift-centric handling model and a small selection of late-’80s and early-’90s performance cars, like the Nissan Z32 and Lancia Delta Integrale.
The Game Boy Advance Was A Secret Haven For Technically Groundbreaking Racing Games (4/5/22)
Racing games on the Game Boy Advance — it’s a pairing that sounds like a bad time. The GBA, beloved though it was with many fantastic titles in its library, was at its core a system designed to play 2D games. And driving a car is an experience that benefits greatly from a third dimension. It’s surprising so many publishers even bothered with the genre on the handheld at all and yet, my rough don’t-quote-me estimation is that there were about six times as many racing games released on the GBA than the Nintendo Switch has now. Why even talk about them?
I’m Delighted To Inform You That The Crazy Taxi 2 Website Still Exists, Thanks To Dedicated Fans (4/25/22)
