Racing games and car simulators are not only entertainment but also a useful imitation of driving real cars because not every person can afford an expensive car and even more legendary sports cars and hypercars. In addition, if the basis in the form of entertainment requires maximum simplicity and ease of control from games, not all players will like the realistic behavior of the car in the race.
Let’s figure out which version of the racing game would be the best choice: arcade or realistic. And as a starting point, we will take such a legendary type of race as drifting.
What are drifting games about?
Drift is a cornering technique and a type of motorsport characterized by the use of a controlled skid at the maximum possible to maintain speed and angle to the trajectory on the track. Competitions are held on dry pavement or track with a large number of turns.
Today, there is probably no player who does not know about the games of the Need For Speed series. Throughout its history, the series has become the benchmark for how racing games should be made. All thanks to the first parts, when drifting was a separate type of race, and it combined the balance of arcade and realism.
The principle of drifting was built on the rules:
- Clamping a turn puts the car into a skid;
- The higher the speed and angle of rotation, the more points are awarded;
- Hitting a wall, an obstacle, or a car of an opponent resets the points that you received for passing a section of the road;
- The longer the car is in the drift, the higher the multiplier.
In this way, the player requires little effort, but it allows him to focus on getting the best result in the race as much as possible.
Starting from the following series, drifting was developed for a long period, and after 2015, the game went full arcade racing, which brought a lot of convention to the drifting competition. Now, the car enters the skid much easier, and the collision does not stop the score. As a result, the community lost interest in drifting into this series.
Modern drifting games
A separate way to carry out drift racing is the Gymkhana mode. The main differences between these types of competition are the closed area of the track and the time limit. The player is required to make as many different elements as possible in a certain time.
If you are interested in this type of racing, you can pay attention to games such as Dirt and Forza Horizon. In these games, Gymkhana is implemented as close to reality as possible, and the cars of the famous American racer Ken Block are added.
Somehow, racing as a genre of games is now not very popular, and there have been no interesting releases for a long time, but this is a good reason to look at the classics. In addition, drift, as a type of racing competition, can be interestingly used both as one of the game mechanics and as a skeleton for the project around which the game will be built. And if some people want more realism, there will also be many people who will choose arcade races for an easier pastime.