Hot Pursuit to Gran Turismo Sport – review

Tenth place – Mario kart 8 (2014)

At first glance, the series Mario kart – This is fun exclusively for children. It really looks straightforward: cartoon characters drive on maps along the same cartoon tracks, collect all sorts of bonuses, interfere with opponents and try to get ahead. But if you look at the franchise more closely, it suddenly turns out that Nintendo for many years now it has been releasing one of the deepest races in the industry.

Physics of cars seems to be easy to master at the initial level, but it takes a lot of time to understand all the subtleties and compete with truly serious rivals. The tracks are so thought out and intricate that for success you have to use every free meter, every cut and every opportunity to accelerate. And, of course, we must not forget about these same “bonuses” – thanks to them, a real battle unfolds on the tracks, sometimes even tactical.

In the end, playing Mario Kart is just fun (especially if you do it in good company). Of all the games on this list, Mario Kart 8 is perhaps the most conservative, but without it this top would certainly be incomplete.

Ninth place – Project CARS 2 (2017)

This game is perhaps the most controversial title of the entire collection. It will take a lot of time to list all the sins of Project CARS 2: here you have the strange behavior of the suspension, and racing on ice, and a boring career mode. But at the same time, chasing Project CARS 2 is simply nice – driving, on a gamepad. And most importantly, it occupies a niche that has long been empty after the “restart” of the series Race driver.

Project CARS 2 is probably the best way to look behind the scenes of motorsport with one eye and drive on IndyCar cars, the Renault World Series and other licensed championships. In detail, imagine a full-fledged career as a rider, from karting to professional tracks.

And finally, Project CARS 2 just looks great in VR. Even if you compare the two videos, the actual IndyCar helmet recording and VR gameplay are as minimal as possible. And now you can’t get such emotions from racing on ovals anywhere else.

Last at the moment part of a series Driver so knocked out of the rest of the top that there were even thoughts to remove it from here. But still Driver: San Francisco deserves its place in the compilation. It boasts excellent arcade physics: it’s nice to drive each car, and when you let the car skid, you always know what to expect from it. There is also an excellent fleet of vehicles, which includes almost all the cars that are characteristic of the American market. And most importantly, there was a place for the plot – and a very entertaining one.

The story revolves around a policeman who learned to move into the bodies of other drivers, changing cars literally on the fly. And he took advantage of this ability wisely: he decided to catch the escaped criminal, his eternal counterpart. All this comes to great music, with competent production, the atmosphere of sunny San Francisco and the mood of American comedies of category “B”. As expected, with humor and a bunch of funny scenes.

Yes, the races and competitions themselves were almost not paid attention to, in some places the game seems clumsy, and the “cheating” ability of the protagonist spoils the balance a little. But then the chases and action in Driver: San Francisco work great, and it’s really interesting to follow the detective story from start to finish.

Seventh place – Forza motorsport 7 (2017)

Forza Motorsport 7 is still not a race for everyone. Physics is still able to bring hysteria with its craving for drifts, the AI ​​of the opponents is excessively arrogant, and you should not plunge into real motorsport disciplines here. But of all the games that are on this list, it is perhaps the most expensive, licked and sparkling gloss.

Despite the fact that it’s generally fun to drive here, there are several hundred luxury cars, and the career mode is interesting to master, the seventh part is primarily an aesthetic pleasure. There is a gorgeous picture and ForzaVista mode, when you can literally “get in” into each car in order to study everything down to small seams on the dashboard. But how fascinating is the visual-sound design of the ride – when in the rain you feel every puddle under the wheel, and the rear-view mirrors rattle when hitting a curb!

Finally, Forza has Drivatar – a system that borrows the habits of real players and teaches them bots. While it works somehow and is rather annoying than amusing, but in the context of technology and the development of the genre, this is an important step. If at least a tenth of the developers will ensure that the “drivers” drove, like living people, the sensations of virtual racing can change dramatically.

Yes, over the past decade, the NFS series has changed a lot. A variety of games came out under a loud heading – there were both good and bad ones among them. But here excellent you can remember only one: Hot Pursuit for authorship Criterion games.

In a sense, skeptics will be right. But this does not negate the fact that even now the latest Hot Pursuit is one of the best multiplayer races on the planet. The local physics allows you to chase in a drift at insane speeds, and on the tracks you have to memorize every meter, every small cut, in order to defeat your friends in the fight for the last ten seconds. And here it doesn’t even matter which mode is turned on: a regular race or a police chase. Skirmishes often come out so dense that they continue until the last turn, giving a storm of emotions.

Finally, if you play alone, Autolog comes into play – the built-in “social network”, which allows you to compare your records with the results of friends or casual users and thereby forces you to pass the same races purely out of sports interest. Some of my friends have been periodically peeking at Hot Pursuit for almost a decade to see if they have broken records. And they interrupt them time after time. What is this if not a sign of a great game?

Here could be the fifth and sixth parts – also in their own way great races in which there was a place, it seems, to everything. And dozens of tracks, and thousands of cars, and serious physics, and even a full-fledged driving training, thanks to which some people are much easier to learn and pass exams in real driving schools.

But the Gran Turismo series has always been something baboutmore than just a game. Already in the context of the latest numbered releases, fans began to discuss things like Kazunori Yamauchi’s incredible approach to detail right down to the location of the stars in the sky. Or his special relationship with the real automobile industry. Suffice it to say that, especially for the Yamauchi games, the largest automakers and even the great racing designer Adrian Newey have developed unique concepts of “dream cars”. And if we look at the success of the series from this perspective, the GT Sport will nevertheless become the leader in importance among all other parts.

Thanks to GT Sport, the series has entrenched in history not just as a great race, but as an important step for all eSports. But if you still do not agree that this part should take the place in the top, then you can just cover the word “Sport” and put the numbers 5 or 6 in its place. Both previous games are also worthy of a place in the top – and with probability 99% would be here, not ahead of their Gran Turismo Sport.

Fourth place – F1 2019 (2019)

Top could not do without a game dedicated to Formula 1. Moreover, license projects did in Codemastersand they are truly laudable. The last part will act as the representative of the series in this top – it was she who actually became the peak of her evolution.

Here is the most advanced (perhaps not only in the series, but in the genre in principle) career mode with car refinement, negotiation of contracts, transitions of rivals from team to team, interviews and other realistic activities. And also – a couple of dozens of historical fireballs, which can now be studied both on the track and in the showroom, which debuted in the same part.

There are also licensed F2 championships of 2018 and 2019, where you can lead to the titles of Mick Schumacher (yes, the son of the great champion) or Antoine Hubert who died tragically several months ago. And for the bet on the eSports championship, which is gaining more and more popularity, I also want to praise the developers.

Third place – Assetto corsa (2013)

Yes, Assetto Corsa turned out to be not the most beautiful game in the world – it had an uncomfortable interface and a weak single mode – but everything felt like a ride. One of the players vowed that while driving this simulator he experienced the same thing as driving a real car. In Assetto Corsa you don’t even need any competition – it’s interesting to just drive, drive, learn every new car and find more and more new limits of your capabilities.

Second place – Dirt rally (2015)

Sometimes it really hurt to play Dirt Rally: the car flew into the ditch, it seemed impossible to catch it from drift, and crashes and loss in just a couple of turns to the finish line became a normal practice for many racing fans. But this risk had its own charm – especially in those cases when you finally succeeded, you flew past the trees at great speed, and pebbles plausibly pounded about the bottom of the car.

In addition, the success of Dirt Rally not only changed the Codemasters development strategy, but also influenced a series of competitors – for example, official WRC games. Over time, dangerous tracks and a new approach to complexity migrated to the games under license, so it was even nice to drive them.

First place – Forza horizon (2012)

But it was the first part that showed what race can and should be in the open world. That, it turns out, car searches can be organized interestingly. That, in addition to competitions on the map, you can logically and reasonably arrange dozens of various entertainments, and most importantly, it is not necessary to arrange cat and mouse with the police and put the riders behind the wheels of tuned monsters.

The developers of Forza Horizon came up with something better: they arranged what was happening in the game as a completely legal racing festival with awesome music, colorful characters, heated competitions and DJs who discuss racers between songs. Only here they thought of making players compete with a train or a balloon to make this show out of it. In a word, Forza Horizon did not add stress to the players, but rather fascinated the atmosphere of this holiday. It’s as if some Sziget festival and races were brought together, taken to nature and allowed us to take part in all this.

Gradually, other series, such as Need for Speed, began to adopt this approach. Only now, nobody managed to take the palm of the championship from Forza Horizon. And thanks for this is precisely the first part.

To guess what this genre will turn into in another ten years is pretty pointless. But I want to believe that in the best races of the 2023s, there is a place for Assetto Corsa meticulousness, Dirt Rally risk, and side activities like those in the Forza or F1 series. Real racing championships are also slowly returning to the game, so perhaps soon we will see them in even greater numbers.