Racing games for Xbox 360?

[Amoramor]

So, does anyone know of any good racing games for the 360? I was a big fan of Need for Speed Underground 1&2 and Most Wanted. My PS2 retired and I'd like to have a similar racing game for the 360.

 

I know there are some NFS games for Xbox 360, but I've tried two of them, and they were both bad.

 

I'm open to all suggestions. Thanks.

[paganwannbe]

my little brother has "Race pro" for it, It's the only one I know but I haven't played it so I can't tell you anything about it

[Vindekarr]

Haha, now you're talkin my genre: I've played pretty much every single rtacing game for the 360 to 100% completion, and have experience in real life as a minor league race driver.

Right: firstly, the top echelon are:

Forza Motorsport 3: a little dry, admitedly, but probably the most realistic, and the best sim on the console by far. It's all about building race cars, and if you like building your own race cars, you'll love this game. Tons of lfe, great online modes, about every good car ever, and fantastic gameplay.

 

F-1 2010: anyone who likes F-1 will adore this game. It's for the true F-1 fan, and it's wall to wall F-1, with superb gameplay, and excellent background and historical aspects. top grade sim.

 

DiRT-2: the dark horse of this list. In my opinion as both a former gaming journo, and as a rookie racing driver in real life, I think this is probably, in it's genre, the single best racer on 360. I cant say enough about this game. 10/10 for graphics. 10/10 for AI a solid 8/10 for multiplayer and a very easy 9.5/10 for gameplay. A must buy for any serious racer geek.

 

Burnout Paradise. getting on in the years but still the undisputed king of it's genre. This arcade racer, built in a shed in Guildford, is the most fun game on the list. grab an old copy for $20, you have no excuse not to. 8/10 graphics, 9.7/10 gameplay, 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999/10 for the awesome fictional cars.[color="#98FB98"

 

]Second echelon: near the top, but not quite there, or a bit niche.[/color]

 

[color="#98FB98"]Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, yep, it's not fully out yet, but trust when I say it'll be hot when it is. This game is from the guys who brought us Burnout Paradise, and for me, that's enoough to get my mouth watering. graphics are superb, It's Need For Speed at it's very very best, and that it's cop chasing, awesome cars, and great roads at there very best.

 

Flatout UC, Full Auto, Split Second Velocity :well they are hardly the best racers out there, but you'll love em anyway. they all combine good visual, good fun, and lots and lots of vehicular manslaughter. grab a used copy if you have nothing else to buy, they arent the bets, but that doesnt mean they arent excellent.

 

Test Drive Unlimited 2. it aint out yet, but the first one, now tragicaly shut down forever, was made of pure win. An excellent game on it's own merits, made even better by the fact that it's a full featured racer MMO of the highest quality.

 

AVOID: Pimp My Ride(made of fail) Project Gotham 3(a shadow of it's sequal) test Drive Unlimited(a remarkably good game, but it's about to shut down servers and release a new one, it's also a driving MMO of the utmost quality, but about to be replaced and shut down forever)Others: for the kids, try hotWheels, velocity X, it's ancient, and for the PS2, but I played this when I was 10 and it absolutely blew me away with it's depth, quality, graphics, longevity and funfactor. Crash: family fun at it's best, a smash em up for the original Xbox, it'll take a serious Ebay field trip to turn up copy, but if you've got the hardware, this gem is worth it.[/color]

[Amoramor]

Wow, thanks for the versatile answer!

 

I've only heard good about Forza Motorsport 3, but I'm not that much into pure racing. Building your own race cars sounds nice, though. If it's not over 20€, I'll probably get it. Also, I'll have to think between Burnout: Paradise and Dirt 2. My friend had Burnout 3 a few years back, and it was mostly about crashing on other cars. I'll download the demos of both games, and I'll choose then.

 

PS. I heard NFS: Hot Pursuit was coming, but I'm not very excited about it. The NFS series has had so many flops over the past 5 years that I've almost lost all of my faith on them. The first thing that came to my mind, when I heard I could play as a cop, was a high-performance Lamborghini escaping a high-performance super unique cop car...

 

Anyways, if most reviews consider it good, I'll give it a try.

[AliasTheory]

I found Blur to be fun with the absolute chaos.

 

http://www.bizarrecreations.com/article.php?article_id=5354

[Vindekarr]

Blur I would recomend against.

 

It's OK but it's a pale shadow of anything else in that catergory.

 

If you want an arcade racer, try Burnout Paradise or Split Second-Blur is just too generic, too uninspiring.

[Amoramor]

I tried the demos of Burnout: Paradise and Forza 3 yesterday, but they both felt a bit strange.

 

First, Forza 3 was a bit too realistic for me. It was hard on casual and when auto-break was off, but a bit too easy when auto-break was on. I also couldn't get the cars to turn somehow. I guess because of NFS I can't handle realistic racing games. Another thing that bothers me is that the game has 400 cars, but they are all available from the start. I'd prefer to unlock new buyable cars that I could buy when my old one just doesn't keep up anymore.

 

Second, Burnout Paradise seemed better than Forza 3, mostly because of easy controls and the "free roam". The bad side was that, at least in the demo, I wasn't able to modify my car. That's an important feature for me.

 

Anyways, according to the demos, Burnout: Paradise is good and suits for people who just like playing good games. Forza 3 for one, is made for "real life car fanatics" or what should I call them, and I'm not one of them. Not until I get a car and a license, at least.

[Vindekarr]

Burnout doesnt have any custmisation but trust me when I say the cars dont need customising past half way.

 

The idea was that Criterion would take a real car, stylise it's most dramatic features, and then use that in game.

 

About half way through you start to get real, honest to goodness supercars. Everything from the Carson Fastback onwards is pretty much awesome.

 

As for Forza 3, the trick is to practice.

 

And to learn the cars.

 

Trust me when I say not everything is available from the start, The career reward system is excellent, but you'll have to save for a bloody long time to get a LeMans racer. Likewise modding a cheap car to stardome is possible but expemsive, you're looking at about 100,000 CR to get to class S, then another three hours worth of tweaking to make it competitive.

 

FM 3 is probably the best game around at the moment that has tuning. You'll have to take tuning out of the equasion if you want better gameplay.

 

For the most part Forza is best once you've gotten the few days of practice under your belt that the game expects.

 

Because all the events take place on the same 25 real world tracks and their variants, you can learn them all pretty quickly, and thus learn how best to brake.

 

 

Braking is absolutely key to success in Forza, once you learn this game, it's superb, but it takes patience to get a good car and the knowledge of how to drive it. And even then, every car handles diferently. I've got a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro modified into a full race car for use in the world championships, but while I find it exhillerating to drive and just right for my driving style, my girlfriend, also an expert driving gamer, tested it and said I'd made it way to responsive and twitchy.

 

For the most part front and four wheel drive cars take a lot of braking to get around corners, rear wheel drive cars and high end sports cars are very nimble, but tend to slip.

 

However the most important thing to remember about Forza is to manage your throttle carefully. Brake hard going into the corner, shifting down to about third(use the manual shift, you're missing out on a speed advantage with the auto box) when you turn in, make sure you're at less than one third throttle, or else you'll go skidding out wide.

 

You can howeverm totaly alter how a car handles once you've learned how the interface works. Once you buy a Racing part, you can fine tune that aspect of the car. So for example if I buy a Racing front bumper, I can adjust how much Downforce I have, either reducing it for more speed or increasing it for better cornering. Likewise for the brakes, suspension, anti roll bars, gearbox, diferentials and pretty much everything else. If you want more turn response, you can get it by upping tyre pressures, softening the front suspension, and increasing downforce.

 

It's a big part of how the game works. You can win in a truly lousy car if it's well set up, likewise a Racing part is expensive, and you can have many of them if you want to meet homologation, but a single well chosen race part, and the tuning options that gives can take a un roadworthy banger and turn it into an F-1 racer.

[Amoramor]

Thanks for helping. I know which I'm getting now, DiRT2.

 

I've played the demo a lot, because it's simply awesome. Compared to normal racing tracks, offroad tracks are much more interesting and the feeling when you get a perfect drift in a turn is great.

 

Regarding that, I was wondering if you had any tips for those really tight turns? The car sometimes goes into a heavy spin or a slide and usually crashes.

 

Thanks.

 

Oh right, kudos for you.

[Vindekarr]

Yeah, Utah is my favorite track, I just love blasting across the open desert in a howling buggy. Once you get the Allstars vehicle class, you'll love it even more. because the cars are all divided into three tiers, the rookie cars are fun, but when you get to Allstars tier, then the real fun begins. After all, who the heck says no to doing jumps in a 750 horsepower buggy?

 

OK:

 

When you're driving a rally car there are a number of solutions to really tight turns:

 

First, learn how to shift the car's weight and momentum. Unlike road race cars, offroad vehicles have tall, soft suspension. When you brake, the weight of the vehicle shifts onto the fornt wheels. When you accelerate, it shifts to the back. When you turn, centrifugal force rolls it to the side.

 

Learn how each car responds to how you drive, and instead of picking what goes fastest or has the most power, get the one that you feel most comfortable in. I use the Subaru WRX GRN, the old WRX, it's down on power, and not as fast, but I've driven WRX Subaru cars since I started playing world rally games in 1998-I know how they drive, how they handle terrain, and because the various crs are equal enough, my experience can put the older WRX at the top of time sheets against cars half it's age.

 

It's like that in all the other classes too, in trucks, buggies, whatever, find what handles the best for the way you drive and learn to drive that, it pays dividends to really understand how your car handles.

 

You can use this to your advantage: when you come to a particularly sharp hairpin, you can steer away from the corner, then sharply turn in, this is called a finland flick, it throws the car into a sharp drift. To give you an example, to tackle a right hand hairpin(a 180 degree switchback) turn the wheel rapidly about half a turn left, then to full lock right, you've got about a second or two after the left movement to make the right movement, it takes time and practice to learn this manuever, but once you pick it up, it's very useful.

 

You'll know it's time to turn right, when the car is leaning on it's right hand tyres, this is absolutely ideal for Rallycross and Landrush, and fairly useful in Rally.

 

Secondly, you'll need to learn how to use the clutch and handbrake. When you turn hard into a very sharp turn, tap the handbrale to throw the back end of the car into a wide drift, or "dragturn" by holding it down, this costs you speed, but it will perform an ultra tight turn.

 

You can clutchturn by engaging the clutch, building up the RPM to the about 1-3 X1000 RPm below the redline, the releasing it. This is a tricky turn to master, but it throws the car into an insane megadrift, ideal for very wide corners, particularly in Rallycross mode.

 

Finaly, and my absolute best advice to you: Watch some real racing on TV. Get to know the strong manufacturors and drivers, the diferent forms of the sports, and learn the tracks. Several key tracks feature across all racing games. Knowing Mugello or Suzuka for example will help you in literaly half of all racing games, they're world famous, and used in a myriad of diferent sports, so learning them will help you enormously: chances are one day you'll end up driving them.