Personal Gaming Thread

[Jason]

Well, there's no 20% race length in Nascar 25 - it goes from 13% to 25%. My race at Charlottesville was 100 laps, which should have realistically taken me about 50 - 55 minutes to complete. With interruptions, it took me a little over 2 hours, so I may have to stick with 13% races with 4x tire wear/gas consumption for now. I wish there was an option for either 18% or 20% race lengths.

[Ted]

Games need to stop forcing you into certain gameplay modes before you even reach the main menu. If I wanted to try out My Player I would have chosen it from the menu. I had to forcibly exit the game and go back in to bypass that BS just to get to the main menu.

Could not agree more.  I find it very annoying.

[Brad Company]

Can you simply run hot lap/time trial in Nascar 25?

[Jason]

Unfortunately not. The closest you can come to that is the practice session in the Quick Races. All tracks/cars are available and you can run your practice for up to an hour. It tracks your lap times and your best lap for the entire time you stay in practice.

[GB_Simo]

A youtuber popped up in my feed that plays a ton of driving sims and he was showing off some grand prix races in Assetto Corsa and Automobilista that really caught my attention.  But then one of his videos showed the old Grand Prix Legends title from 1998, still supported and heavily modded.  I bought that game on release but could never get into it very well because my PC at the time couldn't handle it.  Now all these years later it's a free download with a wealth of content made over the years.  I spent all weekend racing 1967 Grand Prix over classic tracks.  So hard and technical, but really fun.

Your journey from "Formula Legends is the kind of driving I prefer these days" to "I'm about to start modding Grand Prix Legends" had fewer intermediate stops than I was expecting!

The YouTuber in question sounds a lot like GPLaps but if it wasn't, and if you haven't already, he's well worth looking up. Really knows his stuff and if you dig back through his archive, he's showcased all kinds of GPL mods. You'll undoubtedly end up buying both Automobilista titles if you spend too long on his channel but you'll get over that after a short while, I swear it.

[Ted]

ADAM!!!!!!

It was indeed GPLaps.

Do you like the Automobilista titles?

[GB_Simo]

I do. Different beasts, though, which means either that there's room in your life for both or that you'll have a definite favourite.

If I could only have one of them, I'd get AMS2. There's such a staggeringly vast selection of cars and tracks that you'll never run out of things to do, it's the only place to drive things like early-90s F1 and mid-90s IndyCar, and it's a really enjoyable drive. Reiza are still ironing out some of the bugs and quirks of the Madness Engine but where the game was once very like Project Cars 2 (overdriving/almost drifting being the quickest way to drive, for instance), it's very much its own beast now. There's new content on a regular basis (some of it free, most of it paid DLC which is regularly discounted), and the best implementation of wet and changeable weather (puddles, blinding spray, some areas being drier than others, needing to change your line in some corners because the normal 'rubbered-in' line is now too greasy) yet seen in sims.

You hear a lot about "hero physics" with AMS2 (less so with the updates made in the last 6-12 months), and to some extent I get it, but I'd say a couple of things in response. Firstly, while driving a car to its very limit is difficult, just "driving a car" is not, which is something the 'difficult = realistic' crowd fails to acknowledge. Secondly, as long as the underlying driving experience is convincing (this one is), I don't know why it's bad to feel like a hero. I got into this hobby because I wanted to be Mario Andretti, not Milka Duno.

AMS1 is built on the gMotor2 engine which powered the original rFactor 20 years ago, and while Reiza got an incredible tune out of it, the experience is naturally less immersive than AMS2. There's less content too, though still plenty to get on with, and still with enough Brazil-centric cars and tracks that'll be genuinely new to you.

Where it's probably still better than the sequel, and than most other sims too, is in the tyre model - its approach to slip angle recognises that a tyre generates peak grip when there's a bit of a difference between the direction it's facing and the direction it's travelling, which something like iRacing punishes you unrealistically for. It drives really well, every input you provide produces a logical result, and the AI is decent too. It'll also run on pretty much any root vegetable you have to hand, but...AMS2 is no resource hog, drives just fine and is a more polished, still-expanding package.

[Jason]

The big Playstation summer sale started today. I'm planning on picking up Resident Evil Requiem, The 7th Guest Remake and the Season Pass for Nascar 25.