I decided to do a series of reviews of racing sims for my blog. I have chose 8 titles so far. I just got a new desktop computer and I downloaded demos of these games yesterday. What do you guys think? Would you suggest that I review any more titles? Any comments on the games that I selected?

-LFS patch Z(simply brilliant, very detailed, I am going to compare it to Y)

-RACE 07(have not gotten around to playing this one)

-NetKar Pro(took me two hours to figure out how to start the car, but it is simply brilliant, I like the detail, but I think LFS is now catching up, and LFS is even better because of the multi-class selection)

-GPL(I am amazed at the feel of this 11 year old game, but you can not deny the fact that it is dated)

-GTR2(It feels okay, decent, but it's overtly forgiving and soft; I turned this off just after 10 minutes to play LFS)

-GTL(This feels like GTR but with road going sports cars)

-Richard Burns Rally(I didn't get to drive in this game because of a stupid controller misconfiguration, apparently, in this game, the Xbox triggers are at half axis when it is fully released.)

-Nascar Season 2003(papy, can't say more. I am pleased with this game, except for the fact that there is no road courses)

What about you get a license before doing anything else? You would be more credible than bashing games under a demo account or using cracked stuff.

You wont get a free license for saying nice stuff about the game neither... eh.

Oh, so basically, I am trying to just review the general feel of each game in the demos. I understand that some of these games became quite expensive. But anyways, if I get traffic on my blog I probably WILL have enough money to get a copy of S2. So essentially, it would be possible for me to get a "free copy of LFS" just by talking about it.

So do you think that I should add any more titles to my list? Anything comments about the titles I am already reviewing?

EDIT: I do not really like the feel of GTR2, but is F1 Challenge series by EA similar? or is it better?

GTL is brilliance... oh and the link to your blog is dead :/

Quote from Riders Motion :

What about you get a license before doing anything else? You would be more credible than bashing games under a demo account or using cracked stuff.

Does the S2 licence give you a right to be an ass?

Historix mod for rfactor>>>> GT Legends. Historix is great fun w/ a g25 or porsche 911 wheel.
I don't think reviewing sim games w/ an xbox controller is a good idea, but I guess you can try.

Quote from Richie Cahill :

GTL is brilliance... oh and the link to your blog is dead :/

Sorry about that, fixed it.

Quote from Gabkicks :

Historix mod for rfactor>>>> GT Legends. Historix is great fun w/ a g25 or porsche 911 wheel.

I might be trying that later, but for now, I am going to be trying the sims as themselves. I am quite impressed with the improved feel of the cars in LFS. When driving the FBM, the bumps and skids are so much more obvious then FBM in Patch Y. Though, I had an impression that LFS supporters feel that rFactor is not a sim of poor quality and is "half assed".

the default rfactor cars are garbage you can get rfactor lite from rfactorcentral , then download cars and tracks from www.rfactorcentral.com and review them. You can try out a bunch of mods for a limited amount of time.

yea, they are... I love the caterhams the C6 and the Epsilon Euskadi.. mightily polished work, and pretty flawless with the realfeel plugin!

Quote from Gabkicks :

the default rfactor cars are garbage you can get rfactor lite from rfactorcentral , then download cars and tracks from www.rfactorcentral.com and review them. You can try out a bunch of mods for a limited amount of time.

So far, my favorite sims out of the list are LFS Patch Z and NKP. GPL is legendary for it's age, but it can not compare to current simulators. GTR and GTL are both rubbish in my opinion. They both give a correct general feel, but they are not detailed enough, way too forgiving, and tries to take over your car when you go the wrong way or if you hit the other drivers to often.

But anyways, I thought that if the original game engine is rubish, then it will still be rubish even if you add more cars.

rFactor is a "shell", the real gems are the people who fixed the blatent physics issues and made wonderfully detailed cars (like Niels' C6) and used things like realFeel.

I never knew that they can just patch up physics flaws...

Because I scoffed when Polyphony Digital announced that they would add in wear and detailed damage system as a patch for when Gran Tourismo 5 finally comes out in full form.

Okay, cool, I will try Rfactor with those patches. Just, how do they compare to LFS?

Live For Speed and Richard Burns Rally > all

Quote from Gills4life :

Richard Burns Rally > all

Sure would be great if they made RBR open source!

Quote from Whitmore :

GT Legends >>>> Historix mod for rfactor.

Care to elaborate why you think so?

Quote from ssm :

-GTR2(It feels okay, decent, but it's overtly forgiving and soft; I turned this off just after 10 minutes to play LFS)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB6zRNOSyc0

Quote from Richie Cahill :

Sure would be great if they made RBR open source!

Well there is now Piddy's BTB which can be used to make tracks in RBR. I see lots of great stages in progress but only a small handful to download
Another thing that is a bit frustrating is that all the proper stages that have been made are tarmac, apart from that small section on pribram where it goes onto a very short and narrow gravel road where you have very little grip as you use tarmac tyres

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB6zRNOSyc0

Oh, wow, that is a really big, you can run over yourself? Well, anyways, I just don't like it because of the feel and the bad graphics. Live for Speed feels like a harsher ride and has better graphics. Same deal with NetKar Pro, just a bit more hardcore.

EDIT:So, Richard Burns Rally is better then Colin McRae Rally and the new Saga Rally? I know that DiRT is really unrealistic and was a waste of time for me to demo at the game shop.

no comparison.

RBR might be the only true rally sim out there.

Quote from ssm :

I decided to do a series of reviews of racing sims for my blog. I have chose 8 titles so far. I just got a new desktop computer and I downloaded demos of these games yesterday. What do you guys think? Would you suggest that I review any more titles? Any comments on the games that I selected?

-LFS patch Z(simply brilliant, very detailed, I am going to compare it to Y)

-RACE 07(have not gotten around to playing this one)

-NetKar Pro(took me two hours to figure out how to start the car, but it is simply brilliant, I like the detail, but I think LFS is now catching up, and LFS is even better because of the multi-class selection)

-GPL(I am amazed at the feel of this 11 year old game, but you can not deny the fact that it is dated)

-GTR2(It feels okay, decent, but it's overtly forgiving and soft; I turned this off just after 10 minutes to play LFS)

-GTL(This feels like GTR but with road going sports cars)

-Richard Burns Rally(I didn't get to drive in this game because of a stupid controller misconfiguration, apparently, in this game, the Xbox triggers are at half axis when it is fully released.)

-Nascar Season 2003(papy, can't say more. I am pleased with this game, except for the fact that there is no road courses)

you can download road courss for Nascar racing 2003

Quote from monsterrocks :

you can download road courss for Nascar racing 2003

Can I do that with a demo?

There is a Richard Burns Rally demo. Try that out and see just how realistic and god damn hard it is

Didn't find any mention of it in a search I did on the forums (using obvious keywords).

Has anyone given this a go? Looks like a promising indie sim. What caught my attention was the addition of tyre flex in a recent version and some screenshots of the in-game telemetry which looked pretty detailed - I'll probably d/l the demo and give it a spin sometime in the week.

@ssm
I had the same problem with RBR for a while, using the XBCD drivers. Turns out a little bit of fiddling with the actual Windows controller config fixed it all up. Now I can play it with my Xbox pad perfectly

Quote from Dajmin :

@ssm
I had the same problem with RBR for a while, using the XBCD drivers. Turns out a little bit of fiddling with the actual Windows controller config fixed it all up. Now I can play it with my Xbox pad perfectly

Thank you for the tip.