Since exiting high school eight years ago, I’ve had very little time to play games of any sort. My friends know that I dabble in various RPGs from time to time, but due to their inherent time-sink nature, and my innate workaholic mentality, I could never give them their appropriate due diligence. Well, this isn’t completely true. There is one game that I’ve enjoyed thoroughly, even though it’s received negative press over the last 6 months. This post isn’t about dungeon crawlers though, so I’ll quickly segue into a genre of gaming I haven’t touched since the 1997-1998 academic year (when I was 12 years old).
The title of this post clearly eludes to theracing genre. Specifically, I’d like to quickly chat about automobile and motorcycle racing games. Growing up, I had a Sega Genesis and an N64. The latter was the platform on which I played the most games. Two of the many games that I loved came out during the ‘97 winter holiday season. They were Automobili Lamborghini and Extreme-G. I fell in love with both games because they had futuristic looking vehicles and loud electronic music, a genre of music that I was only starting to get into (it was quite hard to hear EDM in the states in the 90s at the age of 12). Combined, I must of logged hundreds upon hundreds of hours on both games. I’m not 100% sure why I stopped, but a small inkling in the back of my head tells me it must have been due to my growing interest in the internet and programming (all of which started in the summer of ‘98).
I digress. The point I’d like to make is the following - until recently (e.g., the last few days), I hadn’t really touched a racing game since the ‘98. What happed over the last seven days? I came across a very cool Kickstarter campaign - Distance, a futuristic racer that brought me back to my teenage years racing vehicles on the N64. Distance absolutely blows my mind. It combines the sexiness of modern Italian cars, the atmosphere of Tron, and the four-to-the-floor beats that can truly be found and enjoyed in the EDM genre. The development team, Refract Studios, released a phenomenal pre-alpha video that speaks for itself. After spending a few days contemplating the decision of becoming a backer, I came to the decision that I was definitely interested, but only after I made the decision to try out a completely different racing game. Asphalt 7, a game made by Gameloft is a mobile-only racing game. I spent a few hours this weekend playing this game, and in doing so, I realized that even as an adult, I still love racers, even though I haven’t played them for half-of-my-life. In my opinion, Asphalt 7 is the perfect incarnation of classic racing games. It has everything one has come to expect from a racing game (e.g., plethora of cars, circuits, competition-styles, second-screen gameplay, global multiplayer, LAN multiplayer, etc…). With that being said, there is nothing more that can be done with this classic style of racing games. This is why I think Distance is the future of racing games. It takes everything from this genre, and brings it to the 21st century. Again, watch this pre-alpha video if you haven’t already. It speaks for itself.
Anyway, all I wanted to do in this post, besides publicly reminisce, was to bring people’s attention to two great games:
Now, back to work.
