Slashdot Mirror
Racing Games Too Fast, Furious For U.S.?
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad just posted an interesting article called 2 Fast 2 Furious For The U.S., discussing the Japanese releases of Gran Turismo Concept and World Rally Championship 2 Extreme for PS2. It's pretty interesting, since these are two games that haven't been scheduled for a U.S. release yet, despite having solid predecessors." Seems like we'll never see GT Concept in the States, despite a European release (wonder why?), and if WRC 2 Extreme can make it through the surfeit of rally titles currently clogging U.S. bargain bins, it should be a worthy buy.
"16-24 year olds in the US are much more likely to own, or at least have access to a reasonably fast car than are their counterparts in Asia and much of Europe."
Just to expand on this, this is why I'm not all that fond of racing video games to begin with. Being a USAian, I've been driving enough to know what it really feels like to operate a car under different conditions, and flashy graphics and a subwoofer alone will never be a substitute. Racing video games require you to pay much more attention to video and audio cues to keep track of your condition in an attempt to compensate for fact that you're not actually in the car, feeling its motion. For example, gamers need to pay attention to things like the speedometer and listen for screeching tires in a turn to make sure they don't try to go through it too fast. Drivers in a real car, on the other hand, would feel the drive wheels starting to break loose before even thinking to look at the speedometer (and away from other traffic). In many ways, driving in video games is harder than the real thing.