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As someone who wants to approach car racing games, what would be the suggestion to start with? I remember I played need for speed undercover and shift many years ago and I enjoyed them (shift was one of my favorite) But I haven’t been in the scene for a long time. I just want to casually play, because I kinda like the genre and I was thinking about getting a steering wheel eventually.

Any recommendations?

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bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
My favorites are dirt rally 2 and assetto corsa. They are more sim like but still really fun and not too punishing.

Wheel makes the experience a million times better even if you just get a driving force gt for $60 (what i have used for 15 years)

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jedibob5@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I actually had a lot of fun at first with FH5 in the exact same position. The unlocks flow fast and there’s a ton of stuff to tinker around with and explore, and the racing itself is very beginner-friendly. The difficulty settings and assists are very granular and can be fine-tuned to suit your skill level.

I particularly appreciated that it avoided a linear progression system and didn’t make you start off on the slowest cars and slowly work your way up to the good ones, as it’ll give you some insane hypercars right off the bat. The upgrade system and vehicle tiering also ensures that the “slower” cars are never truly obsolete. You can drive what your like, and the game never punishes you for it (in singleplayer, at least).

However, once I got through most of the single player content available, I started to sour on it at a certain point. The constant drip feed of new content in the weekly challenges was fun at first, but felt like a chore after a while, and it definitely takes advantage of FOMO, as the new unlocks in a given week are exclusive to that week and can’t be obtained anywhere else, unless buying them from another player at often exorbitant rates. They do re-run previous exclusive vehicles in the secondary challenges sometimes, but there’s no telling how long you’ll have to wait for a particular car to come around again if you miss it the first time.

So yeah, your mileage may vary, so to speak, but I did put something like 300-400 hours into it before I dropped it for good, and I don’t regret most of that.

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- LievitoPadre@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah well 300h is a lot, it’s gonna be hard for me to reach that level. That’s a good option, I’ll definitely check it out. However, I don’t understand how the game works in terms of cars availability and if the base game is enough since there are thousands of dlc and in addition you, as well as others, always mention this weekly unlock thingy.
  
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  - jedibob5@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    The DLC car packs contain exclusive cars that cannot be obtained elsewhere. The weekly cars are often “hard-to-find” in that they are generally not available elsewhere until they re-run them, but apparently, now that the game is late in its content cycle, they’ve also added a “backstage pass” thing recently, which allows for easier acquisition of some previous “hard-to-find” vehicles.
    
    There are a ton of base-game vehicles that are not exclusive to any particular time or event. Many can be obtained in the Autoshow, which you spend in-game credits to buy cars outright, or in wheelspins, which are basically lootboxes, but they hand out free spins like candy, to the point where I never felt any pressure to buy more. Most spin reward cars are pretty cheap on the auction house anyway (which also uses in-game currency, no IRL money or anything).
    
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anyera@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Need for Speed Heat and Unbound are decent, usually go on sale for dirt cheap. They are much more arcadey (which isn’t a bad thing)

Forza Horizon is a great simcade experience imo. It’s a good blend of realism and arcade style driving mechanics.

Dirt Rally 2 if you want to try rally style racing.

Racing games cover such a large variety of styles and levels or realism so it really depends what you like in a racing game.

There are proper sim racers but they are much harder to get into if you are just getting started (Assetto Corsa, iRacing, Richard Burns Rally to name a few)

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- LievitoPadre@feddit.it ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thanks for the suggestions! If I’d go with a Forza horizon, which one should I pick? Do you know if there’s any Linux support for the game you mentioned?
  
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  - anyera@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I know both Forza Horizon 5 and Dirt Rally 2 work on SteamOS as I have played them on my steam deck
    
    It’s hard to say which Horizon I would recommend. Horizon 4 is better than Horizon 5 imo (I much prefer the setting of 4 vs 5) but with Horizon 6 coming out in May it could be worth waiting for it.
    
    Honestly check both 4 and 5 out and see which one looks more appealing as they play very similarly. 5 has more active players but if you just plan to play against AI then this is a non issue. Or go for whatever one is on sale if you just want to dip your toes in.
    
    I will warn that Horizon games aren’t very well structured and can honestly be overwhelming with all the content added over the years (think joining an MMO with years of content releases).
    
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