Be Careful What You Wish For

You know, when I released "I Love Racing Games, They Suck!" I really thought I was late to the party. "The Decline of Racing Games" had already collected a million views on Youtube, and the infamous 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual happened weeks before I posted…

But now I think I was bang on schedule, because my wish for fun, original, and bespoke driving games has seemingly gone into overdrive, pun not intended.

Seriously, it's almost getting overwhelming.

Exo Rally Championship isn't Half Life + DIRT, but it is Mass Effect + DIRT, which is still rad!

One of my favorite things to feel when seeing a new game is when just a couple seconds of footage has me going "Why didn't I think of that?"

Not in the arrogant "it should've been me" sense, but the "it's such an obviously good idea sense."

In Mass Effect Andromeda, I was already maximizing the Nomad's off-road capabilities, flipping between its speed and climb modes over specific terrain, positioning the vehicle to bounce off the banked hills effectively, and of course timing its boost.

It was even assisted in development by members of the Need for Speed games.

An uncharted worlds rally game was already being prototyped in Mass Effect, just nobody had ever willed it into a fully focused product that will hopefully take the concept to all the places it should go.

Not could go, that'd take decades, and in many ways, that's kinda the problem we've had in racing games for many years, we're still side-stepping ideas that're over twenty years old, or worse, ripped from even more stagnant franchises in the sports genre that may be even older.

F1 but bad storymode, or Gran Turismo but Multiplayer, isn't a grand enough shakeup for the genre to evolve.

Exo Rally Championship by itself won't revolutionize it, but by being true to itself, it has potential to shake things up for the people invested in this genre.

RESISTOR only has a brief trailer and a couple gifs for now, but even so, its small developers is already pitching a grand concept of an RPG that's Burnout + Speed Racer…

A character driven narrative with fully voiced cutscenes, open-world exploration, stunt-mechanics, and Burnout takedowns; it all sounds like the kind of a game a major publisher would've funded prior to the 2008 financial crash.

Not only were Arcade racers at their creative and sales peak, they were all following a similar direction the rest of the industry was headed with a presentation push notable enough to effect gameplay, and the experience as a whole.

Need for Speed, R-Racing, even TOCA, were all experimenting with narrative and how to infuse it with a racing game.

To bring back that idea while also revising the core-gameplay of Burnout itself…

It's hard to keep my usual caution.

Rev to Vertex does have me cautious, it's an Independent Early Access Racing Simulator made by a team of racing nerds with no game design background…

Excuse me while I nurse through some PTSD flashbacks to the amount of games which fit that description perfectly.

What separates Rev to Vertex from say, Assetto Corsa, rFactor, or Rennsport, is that unlike the PC hardcore sims, which try to do everything on a budget of $10, and unlike console sims which try to do everything with a budget of 10,000,000,000, and thus have to go beyond the genre's target audience…

Rev to Vertex is a "Sim" with only one goal. R2V doesn't do Rally, or GTs, or F1, or Motorbikes, or Track Racing, or Open-Worlds, or Vintage Leagues.

The only thing this game focuses on is racing in the Hong Kong Mountain Roads that've been inspiring racing games for 20+ years at all levels.

Capturing every bump in the road, each concrete divider, with tall sidewalks, and thousands of trees threatening to eat your vehicle like it was breakfast, Rev to Vertex is a game is the type of game I've wanted to see in this space for years.

Leave the jack of all trades master of none collectathons to Gran Turismo and Forza, and leave the endless modding platform to Assetto Corsa.

I want a game that doesn't play like anything else, and with just the little peak you can get of Rev to Vertex in its current demo, that's exactly what I'm experiencing, and it's beyond refreshing.

I just hope they can give it a distinct presentation too, because currently, anything outside of the core-gameplay itself is… uh…

Let's just end here to be polite.

P.S. Apologies for not uploading Friday, I had another Randomly Mine cooked up, but it's got information I'll need permission to air first, hopefully that'll be out next time.