Racing Games, from the outside looking in

[00:00:00]Hello viewers. So, different video for me today. I thought more reflective video. Um over the years I've always been involved with the games industry. I've always been there when it comes to playing games pre-release. And on Team VVV, I've probably had more world exclusives and more first looks than probably any other racing channel or website of its type of the racing genre in the world.

[00:00:28]And it's always been a privilege, but at the same time, I've been doing that for about 30 years. So, since '94, I've always been playing games pre-release or at release.

[00:00:43]Uh and so at the moment, while I'm having my time out with my health, I've taken my foot off the gas as it were and I need to take a step back. I can't do all of that kind of work at the moment.

[00:00:54]But it's given me a chance I've never had to reflect on other people's work. And I've looked at some of the games coming and I'm listening to their opinions and their thoughts and trying to see things from a viewer perspective.

[00:01:11]You know, over the years uh you always see people who say whether they're shills or they're promoting a game. And what are they allowed to say? What they not allowed to say? I think it's really important of how things come across. And I think sometimes when you get that early access, there is a there is a control in what you can and can't say.

[00:01:33]So, for example, if you're receiving a game early, it will be you'll receive some development notes saying this game is early, uh these three things are broken in the game, so we're not talking about those yet. They will be fixed in the final game. So, you say, "All right then." And there may be things that are not optimum and all that. And also, you're not reviewing the game because it's unfinished. You can't review it.

[00:01:57]So, generally all you can do is tell people the features that are in the game, such as the game we can take a look at the graphics, we can take a look at what we can see, we can talk about what we can see. It might be we're going to test one player mode, but we can't test career mode cuz career is not finished yet, or we can't test online because the online servers aren't up. So, it's really limited in terms of what you can say and what you can look at.

[00:02:23]Last week we saw the new footage of Clutch, and I don't have any footage, so I'm I've just been looking at various footage on social media, uh and a lot of debate over people saying, "Well, does it look good, or does it look bad?" To be frank, I think it looks nice. It looks like a really nice Unreal 5 game. They all look pretty similar to me in their sort of look. The bit I see about the car drifting around Monaco, I think looks all right. I mean, um I've seen people talking about JDM cars and stuff like this. You wouldn't be seen dead in a car like that in Monaco because in Monaco, you want a car that cost at least a million pounds, not some thing that you bolted a body kit on and had a few bits and pieces to make the engine louder.

[00:03:09]It's about class in Monaco, so you wouldn't be seen dead driving some of these cars in Monaco. It's going to be interesting to see how the story works with Monaco. I think having been there quite a bit in the past and traveled around it in for a short time, uh I've I know a lot about the principality and the the the sort of way it works there and how a story how the lunacy that probably the story will integrate into being how unrealistic it is, but the main thing is that it's a fun driving game, uh and it's how that comes together. So, in terms of the uh tow cable round the corner business and all that, doesn't really bother me in case it's if it's an action driving game and you're blowing things up and you're doing things, then that's all part of the fair. I think as long as it plays well, it's fluid, and it keeps me coming back, then that's all good. Uh I've got a few questions at the moment about the story mode as to where it's going and how it's going to work.

[00:04:04]Something isn't quite clicking for me on it yet, but we'll wait and see how that all comes together. It's a big project for them.

[00:04:11]Another project is Crazy Taxi. We've seen some early footage on that. Again, I can't get any footage. I've watched some of it online. It's looking all right. There are some questions over how you hit other cars and how things connect. That's something we're just going to have to look at later. I think it's going to be a fun, relatively simplistic game.

[00:04:30]Crazy Taxi was never a big game. It was never something that changed the world.

[00:04:33]It was just a fun, simple game you play for half an hour, and that's the end of it. Not massively deep. Obviously, some people really love it, and it has a cult following, and some people aren't too bothered. So, we'll wait and see. I'm I'm looking at it as a fun arcade romp, something to do between more serious titles.

[00:04:52]I've seen a bit of footage on the Stuntman game, and the first bit looked quite impressive, jumping over a a rocky bridge and everything blowing up. And then I saw the uh the the the little bit was Fast and the Furious and a bit of Back to the Future where the car jumps in the air, and the jumps look appalling. The physics, not just the physics, but the way the cars look through the jump and land on all four wheels, and the way things break up, it looks budget. And I I'm really concerned about that. I think the other thing as well with Stuntman where I was looking forward to a lot more in the way of seeing the camera crews and bits of green screen behind the scenes dotted around, so that you actually felt like you were performing to the camera. So, when you're coming around this corner, it would be go as close to the wall as you can. Now, touch that car. Do a donut here. Keep it stylized. And perhaps the more you drift, the more sort of kudos, if you want to take something from PGR, the more kudos you get, the better it looks on screen. So, when you watch the sequence afterwards, you can see how well it works. And they can rate all that with drifts and how close you get.

[00:05:59]But at the moment, it doesn't quite seem like the physics have got that much depth to it. It feels like a toy car driving around. Very little to it. More of a simple feel-good experience. I hope we see a bit more to it. It looks to me like it needs a lot of work to be done.

[00:06:15]Uh and also I've seen the new Hot Wheels Infinite Rush bit of gameplay from that.

[00:06:21]Um quite surprised that gameplay has been released with no audio. I know no music because the music's part of the game.

[00:06:30]When when games companies release footage with no audio, it makes the game look awful because you you lose a big part of the atmosphere. Quite often, I upload videos to the channel that I make no income from. I just upload them for you guys to enjoy them. I've got probably 500, 600 videos I've never made a penny from because other people have monetized the content in there.

[00:06:53]Some of those videos have taken me days, weeks to make.

[00:06:57]Such as my Sony PlayStation one last year that a band to took took the credit for for the music.

[00:07:06]They had nothing to do with it, but they claimed it and YouTube's broken money system means that they can monetize it. But the point I'm getting at is it it's it's bad footage. And I'm I'm really surprised that games companies have been allowing what we call B-roll in the industry. This is just clips that you're supposed to use to cut between scenes. And they're letting people upload full B-roll clips.

[00:07:31]And it's strange because years ago they said you're not allowed to do this. And then people did it and the games companies did nothing about it. And now it just gets out there. And it was never for that purpose. So, I'm quite surprised that some of the quality has been pretty poor and it doesn't show the game in a great light, but we'll wait and see how that comes across.

[00:07:48]The point I'm getting at in the end though is that I've had to rely on other people's opinions and in the end I find my own observational opinions is slightly different to what I'm actually hearing people say sometimes or the raving is very hard to determine from the fog of war as it were as to how good a game really is. I guess it really depends. I tend to cover games in more detail that I actually enjoy. Like I I really love testing the WRC games from Nacon. I loved all of those games. I spent hours and hours and hours streaming it, playing it, streaming it.

[00:08:21]It was just my bag. I play a lot of Gran Turismo 7. I really enjoy Gran Turismo 7. Bit bored with it at the moment and it could do with some more some more tracks and I think some proper endurance races and mixed class races. It It all feels very you know, very uh like I've done it all before, but I'm going to talk about some of the other racing games in another video because I've also seen people saying, "Oh, uh you know, racing games are back. Arcade games are back and all the rest of it."

[00:08:52]Like this is And I I'm actually finding a lot of the lot of the games I'm seeing really big brands, but I I would I wouldn't give them top marks. Very few games would I might looking at would I give top marks to. Uh there's a lot of very average games coming out, but nothing I'm looking at and saying, "That's going to cover me over the next few years. I'm going to be playing that all the time." So, we'll wait and see.

[00:09:15]Uh I've got my eye on a couple. I think Star Wars racer is looking fun at the moment, but we'll wait and see what it plays like. And I will go through some of this on future videos, but just a word from me, do let me know what your feelings are on these games in the comments, what you're seeing, what you think of my uh observations so far. And as ever I'll endeavor I've contacted the companies, all of them, to get a hands-on or get some footage, and nobody's replied. It's hard for me getting getting the footage from games companies these days. As soon as you're out of it, even though I've been covering all this for 20 years, they just shut the door. It's very hard getting back in again. So, I will endeavor to try what I can, but my with my health being as it is, I can't visit some of these companies. So, I have to hope that some at some point I can get stuff sent through. But, um that's it from me for now. As ever, more soon.

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