Over on Jalopnik, Adam Ismail put a list of the 10 most overrated racing games. After reading his list, I think he’s gone off of a game’s critical reception as opposed to its reception among fans of racing games. All the times I’ve been speaking to racing game fans, many things said, I admit I’ve never heard.

Who has actually rated Paradise that highly? Most hardcore racing fans regard Paradise as the worst, for the reason that going open world didn’t turn out well. It wasn’t a bad game, it was just a downgrade. Burnout 3 is regarded by most as the best one in the series. it was the only one that has ever had a tournament for it. Some people may say they like 2 or Revenge better, but absolutely no one has claimed Paradise is that good.

Bro Ridge Racer died out years ago. It was an arcade racer way past its prime. I never could say it was a top game to play, but I love racing. So I’ll play it until it gets boring. I can understand how this series could’ve been put on the shelf.

The PSP one was good for what it was. With a simple formula as Ridge Racer, you need to innovate or it gets stale..quick. This is also why it felt lifeless but if you played one, you played them all. You want this to return? Good luck because it seems it would be a perfect free to play phone game if it did.

Grid was an interesting one but I’ll agree it was very overrated. I had never run Spa or play a game with a day night cycle before. I remember being asked to stop yelling, I was shouting out the corner names. The physics were actually pretty bland. This was made up by the damage you could do to your car. They had demo derbies and drifting, but again it was just meh.

The most annoying thing about Grid was how much of a downgrade it was from TOCA 2 & 3. You go from having the DTM and V8 Supercars licenses to just GT cars? There was a massive decline in tracks from TOCA too. Plus TOCA actually had a bit of a story going on. While I liked the game’s real world tracks, the originals needed work. The DLC consisted of taking cars and putting wings on them and saying they’re race cars.

Seriously though, who rated this highly? I have never seen this on a best of or underrated list. Grid occupies that realm of racing games in the mid to late 2000s, where they had some cool parts but were meh as a whole. Other games in that category would be NFS Shift and Race Pro

I level with you on this one. Dirt as a series is very overrated. Since the demo of the first game I could never get the hype. Dirty Rally was probably the best of the bunch, though the co-driver is like 3 corners ahead with direction. I know you can change it but still that’s crazy for default. The physic felt great especially on the wheel. The game could get really hard, not like Richard Burns Rally but still hard. DR 2.0 wass a return of the best of the series. Sim racers really were into the game. I would say like the main series, there was a quick player drop off. Day 1 people would be playing by day 5 they’d be back on Forza.

Dirt 4 if I’m not mistaken did have team building aspect, from what I heard it was disappointing. The biggest thing that sounded cool but people got bummed at was that create your own stage feature. I believe it was described to me as all the tracks look the same. So it might be a good idea they didn’t bring those features back.

With WRC Generations and EA buying Codemasters, I don’t Rally is coming back. I’m sure the argument will be they’re too similar to one another. Then next year we’re going to start seeing more Rally stuff in WRC.

To the point of being a downgrade over the original Colin McRae, I didn’t play them but have a similar take. I’d say its a downgrade single player wise compared to Rallisport Challenge 2. Given that wasn’t a simulation.

Sir, who rated Test Drive Unlimited 2 that highly? It is regarded as the worst of the two. Primarily its map wasn’t as good as Hawaii’s. It still wasn’t bad. A lot of times people would go on 2 to play the upgraded version of the map from the first one. That came as DLC after it launched.

Admittedly, I actually never played CTR. Although according to the people I’ve talked to around the racing community two things have emerged. Some say its better that Mario Kart and others say it was just as good as Diddy Kong and Mario Kart.

I will agree I wasn’t the biggest fan of Most Wanted. I still prefer Underground 2 or Hot Pursuit 2. These two were the most memorable to me, however Most Wanted had the best world. I do miss those cheesy and greasy FMV cutscenes. I admit I got a bit bored of climbing up the Blacklist. The E46 is still a timeless treasure.

Now Hot Pursuit 2010 I never got to play but at the same time I wasn’t interested. It just looked like the slapped police lights on every car and said chase each other. Nothing that would have me going out and buying it day one. This was also in the era of NFS just being there year after year.

Gran Turismo 5? Who said it was good? It was undercooked and unfinished. There were some really cool parts to it. It had some great street circuits, the one in Rome was cool. It gave me Opera Paris vibes from GT4. GT6 had cool stuff like the Goodwood Hill Climb.

I personally think that 5 and 6 should’ve been combined into one package with premium cars only, then released as a launch PS4 title. Given there’s tracks. I wish would come back into GT7, both those games seemed more like a stop gap. When people saw those graphics at E3, they lost their minds and GT5 prologue showed they were real.

Then there was the nasty surprise of so few premium cars and so many upscaled cars from GT4. The engine sounded better, but there was still a bunch of muffled wind noise. The upgrades didn’t sound that good either, I had a friend who put the race car conversion on the Corvette and dear lord, it sounded terrible. Picture a V8 Ferrari, but with a muted wail.

I’d agree Horizon 4 is very overrated and in many ways a downgrade of 3. FH3 took the best map of the series and combined it with the best soundtrack, which made it a good game for cruising. Back to FH4, the best thing this had going for it was the whole seasons aspect, besides that it didn’t do much else. You could even hit the sheep.The UK is a much blander environment, but I feel they could’ve done so much more with it. Take it to London and crank up the fog.

Two things said I can’t agree with was they changed the physics for FH5, no they didn’t. Each Horizon game has felt virtually the same. Maybe it did a little on dirt but tarmac it’s the exact same. The series fatigue didn’t set in with FH4, it reemerged. The games have been very cookie cutter since the beginning. This is one of the reasons I didn’t buy the second one, after the demo, I was thinking this is the same but with a new map that’s ok. I wanted to say FH2, you still couldn’t drive off road. FH3 took the game the exotic route, which I appreciated as much as I wanted a game in Hong Kong or Japan

Does this mean FH5 is also overrated? That game is FH3 with newer cars, worse soundtrack, dust storms and sombreros. The half steps Microsoft takes in each of these games is what has held it back.