Why offline custom event/custom grids/free play creation features are important in racing games!

There are more to racing games than just pvp online play, and strict, single player campaign modes. This is the statement that I will be starting out with, and why we need this particular game feature to be the standard and on the forefront of modern racing games once again. Without further ado, let's hit the road.

I am a casual gamer with a love for action-packed scenarios, automobiles, and of course, car racing games, both arcade and simulation(leaning more towards arcade and simcade), it don't really matter, however I don't have that much time on my hands for long and hardcore play sessions due to real life responsibilities and scenarios, but my love for racing games has never faded away, so I'm always on the hunt for new experiences that are just like the old days of racing games when they have plenty of variety to go around, both old and new, on my downtime.

The sad thing about racing games these days, is that they move their focus way more towards online racing, online only features, leaving offline single player experiences very limited on replay value in terms of what you can do and the amount of freedom that you have to create something within a game to enjoy and fuel your automotive fantasies, all without internet connections, leaving you with little to do with the racing games you love after the online servers are shut down or if online exclusive games like the crew, bite the dust.

So here I am, making a proposition to all the game developers out there, regardless if they are in AAA companies, or indie, if they are creating original racing game projects on their own. I've always been a big fan of features for offline playing that allow you to create your own custom racing scenarios within the game using the car and track roster existing in those racing games to allow you to create whatever you wish, even better with mods, if you can dream it, then you can create it how you like, and race it how you like. You can choose which tracks and options to set up, set up a custom racing grid with vehicles that you want in a race, and what cosmetics they'll use, that means visual and aerodynamic upgrades they'll use. For example, if you have a vehicle in your garage that you customized yourself, you can allow the AI opponents to use it, that's even better, even though some games allow you to do that. This will all help to reduce visual repetition during racing so it would be fresh every single time.

This is what gamers call it, a custom race or custom event creator feature, this would allow you to choose any track to race on and what options to use, and you can pick any car and any cosmetics you like for you and all of your AI opponents that you are racing against freely, all without restrictions. When this kind of feature is implemented in a racing game and has a huge amount of freedom to allow players to create their races however they like, it would bring in an amazing amount of replay value, so gamers will never run out of reasons to go back and play for hours on end with different cars and levels they enjoy, even for gamers that already beat a single racing game from start to finish. People would be thinking "why would we care to need an offline custom event feature? it's all about online racing and campaign modes", well I do. We want to get more out of our favorite racing games, both old and new, and have the greatest replay value that one game can muster, and this is the place to start.

I am going to be providing a few examples why Solo vs AI custom race modes and cosmetic opponent variety is very important in offline experiences, I will be showcasing some racing games that have done this feature well, and some that have made it an afterthought.

Need For Speed

Let's get over to the most famous racing franchise by the now infamous Electronic Arts, an exceptional street racing games series all about exotic cars, beautiful music compositions, and cop chases all with your favorite sports cars in the world, ever since the release of underground, it was no longer the racing series it used to be, and trading exotic cars for fast and the furious styled street racing by taking American and Japanese everyday cars, and customizing them into colorful street racing machines, it was only then that later entries in the series started allowing exotic sports cars once again, but still keeping the deep customization that the series was known for. 

Let's start with the classic need for speed era and the short descriptions of every single game and what they're capable of, the first need for speed game and onward, it had opponent options, you cannot handpick individual vehicles and cosmetics, but you can select options for your AI racing grid, like mixed models for a single racing class, or identical vehicles for one make races, this has continued on until hot pursuit 2. The second need for speed introduced different colors, The PC version of Need for Speed 3 and high stakes introduced a custom color palette, but it was not available for the opponents, unless you have mods or even cheat engine that can remedy this so it can allow individual color modification for the AI opponents as well. Porsche unleashed on PC had the same thing, but it has a limited amount of Porsche models available for quick race, however there is a mod that gives you access to every single factory Porsche model, which i uploaded by the way, and will go into details down the road. Again, up until hot pursuit 2, no handpicking features unless you have mods or cheat engine, it has a great amount of replayability, however mods and cheat engine definitely make it better. For cosmetics, on the PlayStation version of 3 and high stakes, the AI opponents seem to use the same colors every time resulting in visual repetition, however this was fixed in the latter with opponent color modification codes, which I have, leaving the former without one yet.

NFS Underground Era

Underground up to Carbon does not have such options, but every time you race in quick race mode, the opponent vehicle models and customizations will randomize, so it will be a fresh experience every time, but you cannot set up a race where everyone is driving identical vehicles or identical paint jobs or customizations, the game does it for you, it isn't much, but since it doesn't have that much visual repetition, it gets the job done, but it will be so nice to have such features once again. Prostreet got rid of this by having AI presets which are not customizable, so there's a chance you're going to be seeing a bunch of cars that you recognize whenever you enter a grip race or a speed challenge on a race day for example, so there isn't much variety to go around, Undercover is the same as in underground to carbon, random vehicles and colors.

Gran Turismo

The Gran Turismo series is also another example, providing a huge amount of awesome cars to have fun with and brilliant racing entertainment with groundbreaking vehicle handling at the time, but still would have been cool if they did more than what they delivered. The first Gran Turismo was incredibly limited in terms of career mode events, sure you have the arcade mode, but you have a limited selection of vehicles to choose from, and is also for players that are looking for a more fast-paced approach to this game, and the opponents would just be vehicles that you see in career mode. What's more disappointing is the time trial section has all tracks available for solo driving, but spot races only give you five of the 20 courses available in the game, And is only limited to low powered vehicles like the Honda Civic, so there's no way that you'll be able to play a randomly generated race inside the spot race  section with a variety of vehicles according to your performance level, outside of the regular championships that require licenses, there could have been a whole lot more ways you get the most out of the racing in this game even when it's just starting out. Gran Turismo 2's event synthesizer is a big improvement allowing you to take any vehicle, but the track is randomly chosen for you, and sometimes the vehicle pool for AI opponents is very limited. A massive amount of codes for all versions of Gran Turismo 2 makes custom races possible with any vehicle that you want, codes that allow you to build your garage with any car and color you want with unlimited credits, and set up the 1st to 5th slots of vehicles from your garage as AI opponents on the grid, their performance won't carry over, but the cosmetics will, if you want performance, then you can choose an event with the appropriate performance level that you want and have at it. These experimental GameShark codes all help to give GT2 a massive amount of Replay value for all the motor heads out there, and with all the updates and expansion packs, such as the project A spec mod, you can expand your world of Gran Turismo 2 with your favorite, fan-made vehicles that fit in with the original games aesthetics.

Gran Turismo 3 is the same thing as 1, a grand career mode, but with limited amounts of freedom of setting up your races however you like, there is no way you'll have custom races in GT3, but if you play this game on the PCSX2 1.6.0 emulator, You get to have a table on cheat engine that lets you load specific vehicles onto the grid and race them, the only thing you need to have is the full car IDs to paste into specific addresses, so when the next race loads, you will be able to see that particular vehicle on the grid as an AI opponent. One day there will be external plugins and codes that allows you to play with the vehicles you want, both as player vehicles, and opponent vehicles. Gran Turismo 4 is a huge improvement, The arcade mode is the best we've seen in any GT game, giving you every single vehicle in the game without having to purchase them in career mode(you just need to drive it once, I think), couple that with the newly discovered secret menu, and you'll have lots of replay value waiting for you to play with your favorite vehicles in GT4 however you like, The secret menu will allow you to pick specific vehicles to be AI opponents on the grid, AI opponents will pick random vehicles and cosmetics from the favorites, but however, you cannot handpick them, it will be randomly chosen for you, so if that isn't for you, then cheat engine may be your best bet, mixed models and one make races are totally possible in GT4 thanks to the secret menu, you do not have a menu to handpick vehicles and colors for individual opponents, but this is good enough for me. This also works in the Gran Turismo 4 motorcycle spin-off, Tourist Trophy.  Now the world of Gran Turismo would be at your fingertips in terms of user made racing events, you just need to have the right codes and tools to have them replayable as heck!

Juiced

One of the two installments from juice games that I am highlighting is the second game in the series, hot import nights, when I first discovered this, this game has a lot more player freedom than I could ever imagine, and how I imagined custom events to be with a ton of options to choose from, the only thing that you need is a ton of money in career mode and it's a time consuming process, but it is insanely satisfying, if you have a vehicle from your career garage, you can also allow the AI opponents to use it as well, The likes of Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, Forza, GRID, and many others really needed to take notes on this particular thing and apply it to their offline experiences, only then will their old and newest games throughout the years will be a hundred times better than they ever were before, and you don't even need to be an online racer to enjoy it, this is why I hold Juiced 2 in the highest regard because of player freedom to create anything here, if you can dream it, you can create it and race it in juiced 2, all versions have this, yes even the previous generation ports like PS2 and PSP, so go give it a try if you haven't already.

Now here's a few examples of racing games gone to pot because of extremely limited single player experiences, and campaign-only games, these are the games that have delivered in terms of gameplay, but under delivered in terms of single player modes. Let's take a look.

Bizarre Creations

Let's start with Metropolis Street Racer as that incredibly solid Dreamcast racer have something for everyone for both casual and hardcore racers alike, The game itself does have a quick race feature, and you have the freedom to set up your race however you like, you have lots of vehicles and tracks to choose from, and you can customize every individual opponent, choose what vehicles they'll drive, what colors and options they'll sport, it's freaking awesome, if you want to get the most out of this 24-year-old Dreamcast racing gem, this is the place you'll want to be in, and I always thought this feature would be carried over into later games, but I was mistaken, I have not been able to see how much of a single player experience that the first Project Gotham had, due to me not having an Xbox console much longer and no ways to play it, so I couldn't give you my current experiences at the moment. Project Gotham 2 came out and they delivered in terms of gameplay, cars, and tracks, but when it came to the single player experience, they really have dropped the ball, you only have two campaign modes and time attack, that's it, no custom race mode, no free race, nothing, you're stuck with what you got and the only way you could get the most out of the game is to play online, but not everyone is an online racer, if you only cared about campaign mode in racing games, then you'd be in heaven. If Project Gotham 2 didn't have any of these problems, it would have been a slam dunk, but instead, it was a big swing and a miss. Also, this supposed free race mode called "quick battles" is actually fake and no such feature can be found in PGR2. At least the first Project Gotham Racing was very entertaining, and I had a hard time getting into the 2nd, maybe when the game received some meaningful modding, I'll give it another chance one day. Thankfully, Bizarre Creations has redeemed themselves by having some sort of custom race mode solo against AI outside of the campaign mode in both the third and the fourth game, which is absolutely awesome, but one of my complaints in the fourth game is that, the AI opponents cannot use custom colors and paint jobs that you created, using the games paint editor, hopefully one day, a patch can be created so AI opponents can finally use custom paint jobs instead of factory paint. True to their name, they served up very solid racing experiences with an irresistible charm to them, except blur(not a terrible game, but nothing special), however, they made many bizarre choices over the years, especially single player freedom.

Early 2010s Need For Speed and Beyond 

At the turn of the new decade, with the release of Criterion's first Need for Speed game, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, it has kicked off on what I like to call the "offline replay value crisis", where offline single player content as a whole is being sacrificed for the sake of their focus of online gaming, leaving all the other meaningful features to dust. I'm going to say this, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is a solid racing experience, bringing in a roster of awesome looking vehicles in the same vein as the classic Need for Speed legacy, with just enjoying exotic cars as they are without crazy aerodynamic customization, except customized paint jobs of course, and a big map of seacrest county to explore, it is indeed fantastic, but the single player experience is very disappointing, And even after you beat the game, you need other things to do in the world of seacrest county, but no. The game offers career mode events and free roam, that's it, no single race modes, no arcade mode, no custom events set up feature, not even split screen, it is incredibly barebones, And the fixed career mode and events is the same regardless of what car you pick, you will facing the exact same opposition on and on and on, if that doesn't get repetitive, I don't know what does. The only way you'll be able to get the most out of hot pursuit is the online multiplayer, but not all of us play the game online, there also isn't even ai bots in online multiplayer as well, we want seacrest county to be the ultimate playground for exciting automobile racing and cop chases all without an internet connection, but nope. They have re-released the game, via remastered, they brought in all the DLC that they released for the game, however the same problems that I had with the original release, was still here, it makes you wonder what the heck EA and criterion was thinking, a solid racing game with a huge amount of restrictions in the solo experience, it is always a recipe for disaster, most wanted is the same thing, with events tied to certain vehicles, some cosmetic customization, with random colors when you drive through paint shots, and things like that. I believe that black box's last NFS title, The Run, is the biggest offender in that regard, meaning the worst when it comes to single player experiences. They only have a campaign mode, and challenge series, which is extremely restricted in terms of opponent vehicle and environment variety, and that's the entire run experience in a nutshell, there is a cheat engine procedure on the PC that lets you change the opponent cars you race against as well as yourself, same race, just with different cars and that is very much about it. Without the games online servers, and magical modding to extend the game beyond its restrictions, The single player replay value feels dead, like it ran out of gas or something. It's really a shame, need for speed the run has put out a huge list of the most iconic sports cars ever made in some thrilling racing locations, and the developers don't give players enough freedom to do what they like with the cars and levels, Heck, even the shift games have more replay value than this. This has continued on throughout the course of the series and it has showed no signs of improving, even the ghost NFS games, including unbound, if those games had similar features like Forza horizons event lab with Juiced 2's vehicle selection freedom, then I would absolutely play those games for hours on end! Wake up EA, and consider THIS, for future NFS games!!!

GRID 

I'm mentioning this famous series from Codemasters because the series suffers from several flaws throughout the series, one that bothers me much is the lack of cosmetic variety for your AI opponents when you're playing by yourself, especially the likes of GRID legends, where AI opponents will always have the same exact paint job no matter what car you pick with no way to customize them, this induces a lot of visual repetition if the racing opponents lack cosmetic variety and the only way to not have this problem is to play online, but still, online isn't everything, that is the point, if you can have as much fun playing offline as you do online, then the replay value would be close to infinite. Now the TOCA race driver series, which is before GRID, is fine, the only problem is preset cars and tracks exclusivity via championships, so there's no way you could pick any course with any car, besides the first race driver, race driver 2 and 3 is the same way, but at least there's a good variety to go around, and there's a feature where you can customize your competition by choosing what vehicles and teams are on the track. Now for a quick examination of all five of the GRID games and how they can be better is an example of how they should continue to add to the game and not subtracting, they all include a single race feature or you can sit up your own races with lots of options how do you like, but not having any way to handpick vehicles and teams for the grid or even customize them like you would the player car or team is a big disappointment, I feel this should be standard in any offline racing game content if there is customization, the least they could do is have paint jobs randomly chosen for AI competitors instead of only presets as you already saw in the games. GRID 1, 2, Autosport, 2019, Legends, All five games suffer this problem of lack of cosmetic variety for AI opponents, it gets old racing the same familiar opponents that you know repeatedly, even with different cars. GRID 1 has a good amount of options to set up for a quick, fun race, but I feel that this thing would have been much better with custom grid features and opponent vehicle or paint, GRID 2 is the same thing. I have not played autosport or 2019 yet, so I don't know how deep it goes. And Legends, one of my favorite games in the series, suffers from this problem very much the most out of my hundreds of races I have done there, they have a ton of vehicles and livery customization, yet you cannot apply the latter to your AI opponents when you're playing by yourself, it was exclusive to online players only, which is just a bummer, and being that the development team of this game has already been shut down, it was already too late for the developers of this game to consider such a thing, and that could have been the feature that would allow me to play this game even more for many hours on end, And I know I am not the only one. If they could have at least added a feature to the game where you can create your own AI drivers with custom paint, custom livery, and custom ai behavior, among others, an app into the track, that would have been perfect, it would have been randomized, or handpicked options by the player, And you could create at least 100 or 200 custom AI drivers for the opponent seed, And it would open up a new world of possibilities for you to create the ultimate Motorsport event that you have in mind, the GRID series, including legends, deserved so much better than this, I still love GRID legends quite a lot, but the visual repetition on the AI opponents bums me out big time. Project CARS 3, another racing game like GRID, also suffers from this problem, even though the cars have plenty of paint jobs and liveries for the opponents to use, but the AI opponents cannot use custom jobs created in the "my styles", section.

Milestone racing games

MotoGP, SBK, MXGP, Monster Energy, Hot Wheels, these are also held back by this problem as well, as well as a major plague of online-only features that prevents offline players from getting the most out of these games, the gameplay is good enough, however, this has to be discussed because this has plagued milestones catalog of racing games for a very long time. The motorcycle and motocross racing games would allow you to customize your rider and bikes gear with a lot of options, it's really good customization, but it would be so awesome to race against your custom created riders and bikes as AI opponents, all made by the player, this would allow players to create their own custom scenarios and even motorcycle leagues within those games, so it would give those racing games that haven't got that much mainstream respect and attention even more value than they have, at least in Ride 5, it was a step in the right direction with its race creator mode, and it would allow you to customize your AI opponents however you like, from the name, all the way to the motorcycle and gear, like you would the player, I do not know however if you're playing this game exclusively offline via a real copy or other means that you could allow to use custom liveries for players and opponents, it would have been awesome if this was applied to the previous games before this. The worst thing about Milestone, is that their livery editors are online only, and you cannot equip custom liveries when you are exclusively offline, ever. The Hot Wheels Unleashed games are the worst offenders at that, the game had incredible gameplay, production values, and a variety of vehicles to choose from, however not having a lot of alternate paint jobs for each vehicle to choose from, as well as custom liveries unavailable to equip without relying on online sharing is BS! The obtainable vehicles exclusive only in seasons online is also BS. I don't know what they were thinking with this, but it ain't working, any problems that I had with the first game, I thought they would be fixed in the sequel called turbocharged, but I was wrong. This online-only nonsense that has been plaguing the games for quite a while now needs to go, it's worse than micro transactions, believe me. The least they could have done is allow offline only players to create their own paint jobs in the game, then when they are finished, they get to equip it in a race, and boom, ALL WITHOUT INTERNET! The earliest NFS and Forza games before 5 allowed this, so why can't these? I enjoy Milestone's racing games, but never have I thought in many years do I need to say this, Milestone needs to get their crap together, until it's too late! In later articles of the blog, I'll go into more details about these.

Conclusion

So that's it. You might not think this isn't much to you, but now if you think about it, it serves a lot more value than you would eventually realize, racing games are cool and still will be regardless if it's the old days or today, but since offline replay value has taken a back seat nowadays, it would be awesome if it had more importance again. This proposition is perfect for players who still want to get the most out of the games today and back then, but have very limited time in their lives and have responsibilities, including myself, however my love for racing games have never faded away, and playing our favorite racing games both old and new like they are sandbox-like with all the content they created inside a game is epic to me, that and they need to recreate gameplay and physics from classic racing games into new projects. The sooner that these problems are fixed, the better of a future we will have for offline content and player freedom without the excessive need of online play and community sharing. If you don't care much for this stuff and just only focus on rich single player campaign modes and online racing, then God bless you, these stuff is only secondary to me, with the most important thing to me was customizable experiences and modding all without internet. I am playing the new and old games, I think that there was something missing, and this was it, showing off favorites and legends in the genre in a variety of different ways, like for example you customize your own vehicle, but you want to apply the same customization to your AI opponents, so racing game AI opponents will have better cosmetic variety, even team-based motorsports games like F1 or Moto GP. It's all up to us, this can be the chance to make single player content, modes, and freedom become great and meaningful again and extinguish online only nonsense for the simplest and deep of features that serves a lot of value!

I'm going also be doing articles that analyzes the replay value of racing games by looking into what you can do with it for casual players, look out for those down the road, thank you for reading.