TG GAMING MARATHON
What’s the best driving game ever? It’s a question that’s furiously debated at TopGear. Being on lockdown, now appears to be the perfect opportunity to find out
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Hallelujah. It’s the job my inner 10-year old always dreamed of but my career counsellor said would never ever happen: get paid to use a selection of emulators, consoles, handhelds and a diet of nothing but Deliveroo and radioactive maize snacks to find the ultimate driving game ever. Let’s do this, Leeerooooyy Jennnnkkins!
There’s only one place to start: with a fistfu l of Monster Munch and Gran
Turismo. Why? Because Kazunori Yamauchi’s iconic series changed the game. Literally. It’s the original console racing simulator and a true groundbreaker thanks to typically Japanese attention to detail and frustratingly anal elements (curse you driving licences). Seven generations later, it’s still the bible for petrolheads – a portal and education to the sights, sounds and dynamics of hundreds of cars that up until then we could only dream of. Quite how Polyphony managed to make a few blocky pixels so pretty and addictive in 1998 is nothing short of revolutionary. But, admittedly, GT can be a bit too much for some. Luckily, that’s where punchy, addictive arcade racers come in.
Games like Sega Rally and Crazy Taxi loosen the tie of stuffy sims, making driving games accessible to everyone. But there’s one game that just hit different at Hollywood Bowl: Out Run. No real-time tyre degradation or dynamic weather systems here; just you, a generic red convertible (that definitely isn’t a chop-top Ferrari Testarossa, promise) with a sexy 16-bit blonde in the passenger seat and a near infinity of American freeway. Admittedly, physical arcades may be two loading screens away from death, but – luckily – this style of game isn’t.
Rocket League is a newcomer that mixes the hilarious consequences of drunken anti-gravity driving with five-a-side football, making for an addictive online arcade game where chunky, rocket-powered buggies compete to punt a huge ball into the opposing team’s goal. But a great driving game isn’t just about easy ways to waste away the day, sometimes they can also help inform and accelerate cultural movements too. Need for Speed:
Underground captured early Noughties tuning culture and surfed the neon-lit wave created by the The Fast and the Furious perfectly. Bringing unprecedented customisation and personalisation to racing all to the legendary crunk soundtrack of Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, it still slaps two decades on.
If you want to get really serious, you need to crack out a hardcore sim like rFactor 2 and plug in a Thrustmaster wheel for example, for added authenticity, immersion and achy wrists. With its realistic physics, rFactor has helped propel sim-racing into the mainstream. But if you prefer things a bit muckier,
Dirt Rally 2.0 is your bag. Whether you’re dancing a modern R5 machine through a sequence of fast sweepers or muscling a Group B monster around a narrow mountain hairpin, it’s an absolutely convincing off-road sim. To the point where we now insist on having pace notes read to us during the morning commute, wear a bobble hat to bed and have changed our name by deed poll to Juha.
However, we have to thank a moustachioed Italian plumber for breaking down the nerdy barriers of car gaming and giving it mass appeal. Hearing your mates erupt with anger as you smack ’em with shells around the Rainbow Road means
Mario Kart will always be near the top of any list. And now, thanks to the Nintendo Switch version, you can pop out the controllers for instant two player battles – or keep playing even in the bath.
But what’s the ultimate driving game? Well, it’s one that puts all the elements listed in the games above, plops them in a blender and makes a flawless gaming cocktail. It’s Forza Horizon 4.
Having arguably stolen Gran Turismo’s simulator crown, the Horizon series injected fun back into the Forza franchise back in 2012 by taking the series’ comprehensive car list and physics and throwing them in an open world. Now, Forza Horizon 4 doubles down on this by setting itself in good old Blighty but cranking up the craziness. It’s basically like tearing across the intro to Emmerdale in a McLaren Senna, only to be racing a fighter jet at the same time. It’s the ultimate car-based escapism from the comfort of your sofa. And that’s what gaming is all about.