GTPlanet's 2017 Racing Game Predictions

Forza 7 needs more gameplay videos outside the demo races. I feel like the other titles have done more in terms of showing gameplay and features of the game. Not saying it'll be any less of a game because of that I just wish they would've shown more to the public. But I feel Project Cars 2 has the complete package in every category. My money is on PC2.

 

I'd also like to mention that the fact Project Cars has Ferrari now is a big push for me to buy it (assuming big problems are fixed) Hopefully multi-class racing encompasses everything and anything you want racing against each other.

(I want the 458 as DLC though, disappointed it's not in day-1...)

 

PCARS 2 doesn't seem like a big enough step up from the original to warrant a day one purchase for me. GTSport I'll pre-order later (the beta convinced me). If I had an Xbox I'd buy F7 in a heart beat but I couldn't care less for that system.

 

I have pre-ordered all three games and so I will be playing each of them. That being said, based on what I have read, seen and to some extent played, here is how I rank the titles based on level of anticipation and expected play time.

1. Forza 7 - I have been playing Forza religiously since the original Forza 1 launched in 2005 on the original Xbox. It has never disappointed me. I have been playing Forza games with a wheel and pedal set since Forza 2 and Forza 7 will continue that tradition, but the experience will reach new heights. Thanks to my Arduino adapter and GIMX software, I will be able to play Forza 7 on my PC with my Accuforce wheel, Main Performance PC Simpedals and dual Thrustmaster THR8S shifters, one in sequential mode, the other in H pattern mode. I have been playing Forza Horizon 3 and Forza 6 Apex with this set up for almost a year and it works quite nicely. Moreover, Forza 7 will be available on PC and will work with my triple screen set up just like Forza Horizon 3. I just upgraded to a GTX 1080ti GPU and so I should see 60 FPS+ even at 7680 X 1440 resolution with Ultra settings. Forza 7, like FH 3 and Forza 6 Apex will use Turn 10's Dynamic settings system, which allows the games to run very smoothly. Turn 10 has created an excellent graphics engine on Xbox and PC. Coupled with the 700 cars and excellent track selection, and a deep career mode and drop-in friendly online system, Forza 7 should be the sim racing title that gets the most play time from me starting later this month and so I am anticipating it the most by far.

2. Project CARS 2 - Steam says I have spent over 150 hours playing the original Project CARS on my PC and so that should tell you something. The key differentiator for me with Project CARS 2 is the superb VR support they are including from Day 1. GamerMuscle has already done several videos touting the excellent VR support and so I am looking forward to it very much. I will be using my Oculus Rift to play Project CARS 2. I also am certain that Project CARS 2 will be supported by Simxperience's superb Sim Commander software and so I will have full use of my four Buttkicker amps and transducers, as well as my Accuforce wheel.

3. GT Sport - I love the GT games but they definitely have lost their lustre compared to more recent sim racing titles including iRacing, Assetto Corsa, Project CARS, Forza and Raceroom Experience. I played the beta and it was good fun, but it did not look great on my center 1440p monitor, which is what I will need to play it on in order to use my Accuforce wheel, MPPC pedals, etc. Otherwise, to play it at 4K on my 40 inch 4K TV, I will need to use a controller. The game looks amazing at 4K with HDR, but I prefer the buttery smooth look of Forza on my 1440p Gsync compatible monitors. Because I can only play GT Sport on my PS4 Pro, however, I cannot take advantage of those features and will be relegated to 1080p. Looks aside, the game plays nicely, but I prefer Forza 6 Apex and the original Project CARS. My guess is that the gap between GT Sport on the one hand and Forza 7 and Project CARS 2 will be even wider. In summary, I will play GT Sport, I just don't know whether I will want to play it as much as Forza 7 and Project CARS 2.

 

Luckily i have both consoles, so I've preordered Project Cars 2, Forza Motorsport 7, and GT Sport is on my Christmas list (my wife tells me I need to leave something for my mother in law to give me).

While we all make our predictions, truthfully it's just a great time to be car-focused gamer and nothing I experienced at PAX changed that.

 

Great article that brings the community together regardless of preference.

 

My predictions
1. Forza
2. pCars
3. GT Sport

By the Numbers... ( on the consoles only )
Forza Motorsport 7 will take Racing Game of the Year.
It's what racing gamer's enjoy the most. Not too much Sim and just enough Arcade to be easy and Fun.
So the masses will lock this in as the Game of the Year. It might not be tops with the SIM drivers, but it will
be very popular for it's fun and easy drive ability.

Next I believe for the serious Sim drivers, pCars2 will be the go to title for on-line Sim events.
Compared to the Other two, pCars2 will be More of a SIM title.
And that will win over the serious racers.

And Gran Turismo Sport will appeal and attract the all the GT fans.
And even may have a few converts.
"I never played GT before, but I have to say it's pretty darn good. why didn't I try it before?"
It will feel just like coming home to a long time friend.
Familiar, yet New and Exciting.


There will be no looser in the Genre.

Something there for every taste and level of fun.

Being on the PS4, I will have 2 out of the 3 titles.
I may even get an Xbox, just to have some fun in Forza..
Or I may have a gaming PC and experience it there.

 

This is such a great year if you're into racing games. As long they deliver then i think we'll all be pretty happy. I got project cars 2 and GT Sport pre ordered. I wasn't gonna pre order gt Sport but when they showed off that livery Editor i was sold. That plus the online is the main reasons why im buying it. As for pcars2, it just has everything. I enjoyed the heck out of pcars1. Over 600 hours played on there. I look forward to pcars2 and i hope this time it has a smooth release.

 

Pre Ordered GT Sport. will play for online racing and seasonals etc. And ill wait for bargain basement project cars 2 unless it exceeds the hype which i very much doubt due to PC1's lack of polish at release. And I will fulfill GT's traditional offline/car collecting mode with the crew 2 coming out next March. Looks like a good controller based button mashing arcade style racing game to fill the void.

 

Great article and fun to read.

FM7 is not showing me enough of anything to warrant a day one purchase. Yes, the game will play smooth and have tons of cars, and will probably grab the best racing game award- but there is not enough new on offer to sway me. I am having heaps of fun with FM6 and will continue to play that while I wait to see which direction they head with patches/dlc.

The only new game I will grab will be PC2. Fingers crossed it has a smooth release. Things could get nasty otherwise, lol. I like that it has heaps of new manufacturers, dynamic weather, real time lighting, career with practice and qualifying, far better tire wear/petrol and pit stops.

Yes please!

 

I've had the PS4 Pro since January after seeing a trailer for GT Sport and thought it looked fantastic, people are saying theirs no single player side to the game only learning how to race the track better, as I mainly play online with my friends I'm not too bothered about that.
I've played the first Project Cars on the PS4 and wasn't to impressed with the handling on the controller as I don't have a steering wheel, I've read that in Project Cars 2 the handling on the controller is a lot better.
As for Forza Motorsport 7, I bought myself the Xbox One s a couple of months ago because I'd been watching Forza Horizon 3 videos on YouTube and that game looked so much fun, I'm hoping Forza Motorsport 7 will look as good as Horizon 3 or better, I've pre ordered all three of them, god knows where I'll find the time to play them as I'm playing F1 2017 at the moment and can't put that down.

 

I feel the same way. I'm hoping they release the 458 Speciale and 488 GTB road cars myself. They could've kept that old Enzo not a Ferrari I've ever cared for, but I respect it though.

 

But seriously in Pcars2 I want to be able to race nascars with LMPs if I want to. I've heard things about multi-class event creating in that game but I'm not sure how restricted it will be.

 

I don't quite understand this multiclass racing thing. Why would you want that? Doesn't it only happen in real life for convenience and cost saving and whatnot?

 

From my understanding you can create any kind of race. NASCAR on a rallycross track, NASCAR on the Nurburgring ring, and etc.

 

Mixing up the pace of the field means you're more likely to have to navigate traffic, which gives you something to do when you're not actively fighting for position in your own class.

 

You can set up a multi-class race up to any 4 classes you like. So if you want to do a multiclass race with LMP2 and stockcars you can.

The fun about multi-class racing is that you have several races together at once. And the fact that both slower cars and faster cars (from different classes) are on the same track means that you get some extra spectacle because there will be a lot of overtaking. The 24h of Le Mans is the most famous multi-class race of the year, there you have (from fast to slow) LMP1, LMP2 and GTE combined on track. It's really fun to watch a GTE battle between 2-3 cars and then a faster LMP1 is approaching so they need to make way for that LMP1 (blue flag) whilst battling it out. Or 2 LMP1 cars are in battle and they approach the slower traffic so it brings some extra excitement how well they pass that slow traffic.

I wrote an article on the PCARS 2 website with info about real life multi-class races and how we can reproduce them in PCARS 2:
http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...ecreating-real-life-multi-class-championships

 

How's that pC review comi'g along?
I'm eagerly lookinf forward to it

 

I personally love the idea of multiclass races and am looking forward to it. The idea of running LMP1, LMP 2, LMP 900, and GT1 classes together on the 24 hour LeMans circuit is awesome. Or even rallycross, stock cars, and Indy cars together the combinations are endless. Some realistic and some very fictional. But the ability to do so either way is going to be very very entertaining. It's the same as the "ABC" races in Forza, which on my opinion were the best races in multiplayer.

 

Why does Pcars2 look best for sim racing? The cars are really bouncy in SMS games, always have. If anything, GT sport is the sim racing fans pick. FIA regulated, the most realistic graphics and handling.

 

The FIA tie in doesn't change what it's simulating. At this point, the FIA tie-in doesn't amount to much other than the possibility to get license, that you'd still have to work towards on your own anyways. Graphics also don't make it a better simulator, but I'd have to say that the handling isn't the most realistic. From the past and the changes that happened to the beta that I've read, it still sounds very much along the lines of Forza. They're both not at the same level as Pcars when it comes to simulation, I feel.

 

Shift 2 Unleashed, yes. Project CARS, no.

PCARS isn't without its own flaws, but overall, it's like night and day compared to the Shift titles. Taking into account the somewhat rocky development of PCARS1 and the fact that PCARS2 is building off of its predecessor's progress with the benefit of better funding, collaboration with industry professionals, and a deliberately focused effort on the specific shortcomings of the first game -- primarily oversteer simulation, which has been tackled with the assistance of tire manufacturer data and the input of professional drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. -- there's no reason to expect it to be anything like S2U, and several reasons to expect it to be a full step forward from PCARS1, which was a leap ahead of S2U.

 

I was actually playing Shift 2 yesterday and was thinking that it was such a beautiful game with a lot of great detail for it's time. The same for Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends. Their biggest downfall was the car handling as well as the horrible drifting system in the Shift games. I wish they could go back in time and apply what they know and do now to those 3 titles; or even back compat them with a major update. But that's just wishful thinking.

What I'm getting at is that it's good to see the studio realize their past shortcomings from the first title and make the improvements for the second to make it a better game. I can appreciate that.

 

My predictions based off experiences from previous game releases.

Hype and excitement will be at its highest in the days leading up to each release.
Nothing but praise for each game during the first week or two of playing. Each game will be "awesome" , "best ever" and everyone will be loving them.
A month after playing them the hype will lessen a little. Complaints will start to appear for each.
Most of the community will once again split into 3 groups of hardcore fans while the rest will be left unsatisfied.

Eventually the gloss of each game will wear off for everyone. Hopes will then rest on patches, updates and dlcs.

Then we reach full circle as rumours of PC3, FM8 and GTS2 start to emerge and we all look forward to the perfect racing game FINALLY being released.....(my predictions for those games, start back at the top of my comment!)

 

@GT Kelv -- I enjoyed S2U in spite of itself, at least until I progressed to the fastest classes and gave up on the squirrely handling. Though I didn't invest a ton of time into S2U or PCARS1, I'm glad I played both to have a sense of how far SMS has come along.

 

Still looks like the springs are too soft from this video. I hope the errors are out of the handling, but I doubt it.

The FIA tie in gives more drive to competitive racing than in the other two games. Pcars has a lot of different leagues to race in, but when the racing in a game is sanctioned in collaboration with the FIA, the biggest motorsport authority whom are heavily involved with the worlds biggest racing classes (WRC, WEC, F1), that means something to me.

I should have separated the words Sim and Racing in my post.

 

Which still does nothing for simulation, which your point was about.

Yes, but the FIA seems to be adding very little to the actual game from what we've seen so far. It's there, but it's not going to make me race any different, or more competitively on GTS compared to any other game. From what I remember, all it's doing is giving you access to a license that you'd still have to purchase and work with all on your own. I'm not entirely sure how it works exactly, and I'm not sure anyone else does either. The only thing sanctioned is the name itself, but there doesn't seem to be much other tie-in within the game other than what I noted.

 

I wish I had the myopic world view you did.

I'm fairly certain that by this point, the FIA license has become a silver bullet in which GT fans can use willy-nilly, forgetting, as you said, that we don't know much about it, and more importantly: What are the chances of this thing not getting off the ground in terms of exposure? Both FRC and PCARS's eSports championships are laughable in terms of the viewers they get in comparison to stuff like The International, EVO and others, even though racing games, especially sims, pretty much are tailored made for the experience of eSports. So what is the FIA going to do with eSports, especially dealing with a developer that is notoriously glacial for it's pace of work?

 

My point was on the one hand about sim (the handling aspect), and on the other hand about racing (the FIA tie in). That's why I said in my previous post that I should have separated my points from eachother regarding Sim and Racing. The FIA involvement will do something for the racing aspect of the game. I didn't mean the sim part.

It might make the feeling of a race different for you when you get into the highest levels, the FIA sanctioning the race officially and other people watching the race like with e-sports. I'm pretty sure it will feel different mentally to a race online where noone outside of the racers pay attention to it. It's a feeling that there's more at stake. This is what I was getting at with my point about racing.

 

At this point, it doesn't look to be doing anything for either aspect of the game.

Yeah, but what does racing while people watching you have to do with the FIA and GTS? That can very much happen in pretty much any game, especially with those that have their feet on the ground already.