August 20th 2023.
Recently, I was offered a free trial of Amazon Prime and since I had a few bits to order over the coming month I took them up on the deal. I spent the following weeks using my new Prime Video access to watch shows like Invincible, Jack Ryan, and Good Omens. Eventually, I needed something I could just turn on and tune out to. So I turned to the British racing show Grand Tour, putting it on in the background and going about other projects. Inevitably, it built up an urge to play some form of racing game.
The problem was, nothing I had recently played made me want to do anything more than a few laps of a track and turn it off again. When did racing games lose all their character? I remembered many years ago I often sat down to play one of my favourite games as a kid: Road Rash. It was a game on my Dad’s Mega Drive console and in the early 90s it was top tier entertainment.
The premise was pretty straightforward: drive a motorbike from point A to point B, avoiding traffic, the police, and other weapon-wielding bikers to earn cash rewards. Use the cash to buy a better bike and move on to the next set of longer and more challenging races. It kind of had a story. Some of the racers would trash talk you and scoff or even give you words of encouragement. Some would move up the ranks with you. Even the monstrous early level bosses Viper and Shiva moved up, settling into the middle of the pack to show just how much tougher the new opponents were getting.
In later years, racing games split between story/arcade and simulation racing. Huge series like Need For Speed took a story-heavy approach, Project Gotham Racing had a unique take on racing with style. Then you had giants Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport for the simulation fanatics. You had cartoony circuit racers like Mario Kart, Formula 1 racers with licenced teams and cars, and future racers such as F-Zero and WipEout. There was a lot out there to play and the, admittedly, saturated market probably didn’t need another big racing game, but in 2008 I played something that felt unique.
Codemasters released Race Driver: GRID. It had an arcade style racing system like many of its peers. It had some licensed cars. It had a few licensed tracks like the LeMans 24’s Circuit de la Sarthe. It also had something unique: me. Boot up the game and fill in your details. Then when you reach the main menu the game’s female AI voice will say ‘Hello Ashley your car is ready and waiting.’ You then proceeded to make your team. First you pick your favourite event type, buy a second-hand car and get to work impressing enough people that a sponsor will drop you a line. Soon enough you have a small fleet of custom-painted cars. A shiny sponsor adorns every panel of the vehicle. You also have room enough for a teammate.
You can’t afford to pay them much and they can’t drive very well but you make do with what you get. You get yourself a rival team and you find you and your team plonked near the bottom of two very long leaderboards. The goal is simple: win races. Thats it. Drive fast and win races. However, there’s a lot to consider. How much does the race pay? Does the sponsor have any special requests for the race? Can my team-mate even make it to the end of this kind of race?
During the races your team-mate and pit crew leader are in your ear giving updates and plans for the race. Too often you’ll be 22 hours into the 24 hours of LeMans endurance and hear, ‘I’m sorry mate, I’m out! The cars gone.’ At this point you can use the last of your limited flashbacks to try to save your helpless partner. Knowing full well your own 200mph supercar is a bit wobbly round the last few corners, is it worth trying to get the 1-2 finish and risk crashing yourself?
The point I’m making is this: GRID has story. It had triumph and heartache. It had tension and emotion. Letting my first teammate, Gaz the Welshman, go to hire the Scottish touring car monster David ‘The Coop’ Cooper was not something I took lightly. When Coop started beating me in the touring events and knocked me off my number one spot for the season I considered drastic actions during the final event to show him who’s team this is.
It wasn’t just a check list of tracks with various conditions to race on. It wasn’t a thousand realistic looking/sounding/handling cars and 10 tracks to play on. It was my team, my story, my… name. Back to today and I could play a racing game like Forza Horizon 5 and see the vistas of Mexico in all its splendour, driving a gorgeously rendered 1960s Ferrari worth £30 million. I could do that but I’ll always have that nagging feeling that nothing I do matters. The other cars in the race don’t care that I’m there. There’s no continuity between races, no stakes. I can drive around a track a thousand times on my own and gain exactly the same experience and rewards as racing 100 other cars. It’s beautiful, yes, but sterile.
Give me 10 cars and 300 tracks over 300 cars and 10 tracks any day. Give me a racing game with a world inside that cares I’m a part of it. Please?
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