About the nomination

It would seem that the races as a genre are almost not evolved, but over the past ten years have changed and they. For example, if in the late 2000s to produce projects without a full-fledged meta-gimpler was a normal thing, and the Streeters were just going out of fashion, now it’s a shame to even remember such things. Some mechanics and traditions from hits of those years have finalized the past, and some, on the contrary, suddenly returned from there.

And here is what games are worth giving thanks for this ..

Tenth place – Mario Kart 8 (2014)

At first glance, a series Mario Kart – This is fun exclusively for children. She really looks uncommon: cartoon characters are driven on maps along the same cartoon routes, collect all sorts of bonuses, interfere with rivals and try to break out forward. But if you take a closer look at the franchise, it suddenly turns out that Nintendo For many years now I have been releasing one of the deepest races in the industry.

It seems to be easy to master the physics of cars at the initial level, but to understand all the subtleties and compete with truly serious rivals, you will have to kill a lot of time. The tracks are so thoughtful and intricate that for success you have to use every free meter, every cut and every opportunity to accelerate. And, of course, we must not forget about these same “bonuses” – thanks to them, a real battle unfolds on the tracks, sometimes even a tactical.

In the end, playing Mario Kart is just fun (especially if you do it in a good company). Of all the games in this list, Mario Kart 8, perhaps the most conservative, but without it this top would definitely be incomplete.

Ninth place – Project Cars 2 (2017)

This is a game – perhaps the most controversial title from the whole selection. To list all the sins of Project Cars 2, it will take a lot of time: here you have the strange behavior of the suspension, and races on ice, and a boring career regime. But at the same time, chasing Project Cars 2 is simply pleasant – what behind the wheel, what's on the gamepad. And most importantly, it occupies a niche, which has long been empty after the "restart" of the series Race Driver.

Project Cars 2 is probably the best way to look behind the scores of motorsport with one eye and drive the Indycar car, the world series Renault and other licensed championships. In details, imagine a full -fledged career of the rider, starting from the picture and ending with professional tracks.

And finally, the Project Cars 2 just looks great in VR. Even if you compare the two videos, the real record from the IndyCar and VR-gimple pilot helmet differs as minimal as possible. And get such emotions from racing on ovals now you can’t nowhere else.

Eighth place – Driver: San Francisco (2011)

The last part of the series at the moment Driver so knocked out of the rest of the top that there were even thoughts from here to remove. But still Driver: San Francisco deserves its place in the collection. She can boast of excellent arcade physics: it is pleasant for each car to drive, and when you let transport in a skid, you always know what you can expect from it. There is also a great fleet, which includes almost all cars characteristic of the American market. And most importantly, there was a place for the plot – and very entertaining.

The story unfolds around a policeman who has learned to move to the bodies of other drivers, changing cars literally on the fly. And he took advantage of this ability with the mind: he decided to catch the escaped criminal, his eternal visa. All this is presented for excellent music, with a competent production, an atmosphere of a sunny San Francisco and the mood of American comedies of category "B". As expected, with humor and a bunch of funny scenes.

Yes, the races and competitions themselves almost did not pay attention here, in places the game seems clumsy, and the “cheat” ability of the protagonist spoils the balance a little. But the chases and action in Driver: San Francisco work perfectly, and monitoring the detective plot is really interesting from beginning to end.

Seventh place – Forza Motorsport 7 (2017)

Forza Motorsport 7-still not a race for everyone. Physics is still able to bring to hysteria with its craving for drifts, the opponents of the opponents are excessively arrogant, and it should be plunged into real motorsport disciplines here. But of all the games that are on this list, she is perhaps the most expensive, licked and sparkling glossy.

Despite the fact that driving here is generally fun, there are several hundred luxurious cars, and the career mode is interesting to master, the seventh part is primarily aesthetic pleasure. Here is a luxurious picture and Forzavista mode, when you can literally “climb” into each car to study everything up to small seams on the dashboard. But how does the visual and sound design of driving-when you feel every puddle under the wheel in the rain, and the rear-view mirrors rattles when hitting the curb!

Finally, Forza has Drivatar – a system that borrows the habits of real players and teaches them bots. While she works somehow and rather annoys than merry, but in the context of technology and the development of the genre this is an important step. If at least a tenth of the developers will achieve that the "drivevatars" drive, like living people, feelings from virtual races can change a lot.

Sixth place – Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010)

Yes, over the past decade, the NFS series has changed a lot. A variety of games came out under a loud headline – there were bad and good among them. But only one can recall the excellent one: Hot Pursuit for authorship CRITERION Games.

True, many who say that the developers simply spied on themselves: they took physics from Burnout Paradise, They transferred the whole thing to the luxurious landscapes of the United States, “closed” the open world, got rid of destruction and replaced the nameless sinters with expensive cars. Ah, and yes, they added the police.

In a way, skeptics will be right. But this does not cancel the fact that even now the last Hot Pursuit is one of the best multiplayer races on the planet. The local physics allows you to conduct pursuit of drilling at crazy speeds, and on the tracks you have to memorize every meter, every small cut to overcome their friends in the struggle in the last ten seconds. And here it doesn’t even matter which mode is turned on: a regular race or a police pursuit. Skiing often come out so dense that they continue until the last turn, giving a storm of emotions.

Finally, if you play alone, Autolog comes into business – a built -in “social network”, which allows you to compare its records with the results of friends or random users and thereby forces to reproduce the same races purely from sports interest. Some of my friends have been looking at Hot Pursuit for almost ten years for almost ten years to check if their records have been beaten. And interrupt them over and over again. That this is not a sign of a great game?

Fifth place – Gran Turismo Sport (2017)

There could be both the fifth and sixth parts-also in their own way the great races in which there was a place, it seems, to everything. And dozens of tracks, and thousands of cars, and serious physics, and even full -fledged driving training, thanks to which some people were much easier to master and passed exams in real driving schools.

But the Gran Turismo series has always been something like that than just a game. Already in the context of the latest license plates, fans began to discuss things such as the incredible approach of Cazonori Yamouti to the details until the stars in the sky. Or his special relationship with the real automobile industry. Suffice it to say that especially for the Games of Yamauti, the largest car concerns and even the great racing designer Edrian Newi developed unique concepts of “Dream Car”. And if we consider the successes of the series from this side, then GT Sport will still be the leader in significance among all other parts.

Yes, many people in this game were upset by the lack of a career regime (later it was added in updates), a modest fleet and a binding to a chromium multipleor. Even with physics and sound, there were problems that migrated to Gran Turismo Sport from previous issues, but all these are trifles. In general, the game is still excellent – LTC Casino just not perfect. And most importantly, she managed something unimaginable: to become a full-fledged racing discipline under the auspices of FIA, the International Federation of Motorsport. The winner of the virtual championship of GT Sport Igor Frag received the award on a par with real athletes, and he was handed the cup at the same ceremony as the champion F1 Lewis Hamilton.

Thanks to the GT Sport, the series was fixed in history not just like a great race, but as an important step for all e -sports. But if you still disagree with the fact that this particular part should take the place in the top, then you can simply cover the word “Sport” and put in its place the numbers 5 or 6. Both previous games are also worthy of the place in the top – and with a probability of 99% would be here, not the front of their Gran Turismo Sport.

Fourth place – F1 2019 (2019)

Top could not do without a game dedicated to Formula 1. Moreover, the license projects were done in Codemasters , And they are really worthy of praise. The last part will act as a representative of the series in this top – it was she who actually became the pinnacle of its evolution.

Here and the most perfect (possibly, not only in the series, but in the genre in principle), the career mode with the removal of the car, negotiations on contracts, the transitions of rivals from the team to the team, interviews and other realistic activities. And also – a couple of dozens of historical cars, which can now be studied both on the highway and in the showroom, which debuted in the same part.

There are also licensed F2 and 2019 championships, where you can lead to the titles of Mick Schumacher (yes, the son of the great champion) or the tragically killed several months ago by Antoine Yuber. Yes, and for the bet at the Esports championship, which is gaining more and more popularity, the developers also want to praise.

Yes, many technical (and not only) problems wander from the game to the game, and it will be difficult for an ordinary player to understand the whole depth and beauty of travel in a circle, but some races in the local F1 are real works of art. Here you have to not only drive, but pilot accurately and without errors, take care of strategy, respond to unpredictable events on the highway and sometimes a confusion. So victories in some Grand Prix of Monaco here crash into memory much more than a typical arrival from NFS or Grid.

Third place – Assetto Corsa (2013)

Because IRACING I went out in the last decade, the title of the main car symbolic of recent years is the Assetto Corsa – an Italian game from people who know firsthand about how real cars work. Company Kunos Simulazioni Based next to the racing Autodrome of Wallung. For years, software for large car concerts have been developed there for years – and now they decided to create a game of their dreams between the case.

Yes, Assetto Corsa was not the most beautiful game in the world – she had an inconvenient interface and a weak single mode – but the feeling of riding ate everything. Some of the players swore that he was driving this simulator the same as behind the wheel of a real car. Assetto Corsa does not even need any competitions – it is interesting to just drive, drive, find out every new car and find more and more limits of its capabilities.

The developers have already corrected some shortcomings already in Assetto Corsa Competizione , released this year. Moreover, in this iteration of the game there was a place for real licensed championships. Fans of the Blancpain GT Series series and endurance races as a whole will be delighted.

Second place – Dirt Rally (2015)

At some point, Codemasters have ceased to believe, it seems, even their most devoted fans. Yes, the creators of the cult Colin Mcrae Rally And Toca Race Driver They still released excellent, bright games, only most of them were not particularly depth and seemed to be a pleasure at a time. It seems to be pleasant to play, but gets boring quickly. The rally series completely lost itself: the developers got rid of not only the legendary world champion in the title, but also from narrow, dangerous special stages, worked out physics and at least some hint of seriousness.

And now, when the studio also loomed financial problems on the horizon of the studio, Dirt Rally unexpectedly came out to early access – a game that returned the fashion to a real, hard rally at one point. The developers did not only refuse experiments with Jimkhana, the ability to rewind time and other casuals. They completely shoveled physics and again made the tracks narrow and dangerous: a stone can lie behind any bush, and a small bump will easily send you to a ditch. Dozens of legendary cars, special stages from the WRC calendar and even a small set of machines and tracks of the World Cup in Rallicros completes this luxurious picture.

It was sometimes really painful to play Dirt Rally: the car now flew into a ditch, it seemed unrealistic to catch it from a drift, and the departures and losses in just a couple of turns before the finish became normal for many fans of races. But in this risk there was its own charm – especially in those cases when you finally succeeded, you flew at a great speed past the trees, and pebbles knocked on the bottom of the car plausibly.

In addition, the success of Dirt Rally not only changed the development strategy of Codemasters, but also influenced a series of competitors – for example, official games in WRC. Over time, dangerous routes and a new approach to complexity migrated to the license games, so it was even pleasant to drive them in them.

First place – Forza Horizon (2012)

Since the release of the first Forza Horizon, several other top races have already been released – including Forza Horizon 2 , And Forza Horizon 3 , And, of course, Fourth. Each new game of the series added something new to its formula: destruction, the opportunity to control the festival, unusual activity like filming a film, a giant fleet, Australia, England and Europe, in the end.

But it was the first part that showed what the races in the open world can be and should be. That it turns out that the search for cars can be organized interestingly. That in addition to competitions on the map, you can logically and reasonably arrange dozens of various entertainments, and most importantly-it is not necessary for this to arrange cat-mouse with the police and sit the riders behind the steering of tuned monsters.

The developers of Forza Horizon came up with something better: they furnished what is happening in the game as a completely legal racing festival with awesome music, bright characters, hot competitions and djeas that discuss riders between songs. Only here they thought of making the players compete with a train or a balloon to make this show. In a word, Forza Horizon did not add stress to players, but on the contrary, fascinated by the atmosphere of a real holiday. As if some Sziget festival and races were connected together, taken out into nature and gave us all this to participate.

Gradually, this approach began to adopt other episodes, for example, Need for Speed. Only now anyone has been able to take the palm of the championship from Forza Horizon. And the first part is worth giving.

Guess what this genre will turn into another ten years is quite pointless. But I want to believe that in the best races of the 2020s there is a place and meticulous Assetto Corsa, and the risk of Dirt Rally, and side activities like those in the Forza or F1 series. Real racing championships are also slowly returning to the games, so perhaps we will see them in even larger quantities soon.

But what will surely happen in the coming years is a gradual rapprochement of e -sports disciplines with real motorsport. Already, game racers are supported by FIA, real F1 teams and large automakers, and some “virtual” racers are quite successfully competing with professional pilots. Just think: in one of the most expensive and elite sports on the planet, ordinary amateur gamers can break through-and then there will be only more of them.

And what race do you think the best over the past ten years? Be sure to share in the comments.