I was playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with my kid the other day and it was a blast. Nintendo have really nailed this game, especially in the balance of accessible enough for beginners to have fun but hard enough for people to have a challenge too.

My other favourite game (although I haven't played it for a while) is Sega Rally Championship on Sega Saturn. This game has 4 tracks (one of which needs to be unlocked) and 3 cars (and again, one of these needs to be unlocked). The tiny number of cars and tracks means that you get to do the same corners over and over. This might sound tedious, but when you hit the corner just right you know it. You can get a sense of mastery over it. I've spent many hours playing games in the Gran Turismo series, and I really enjoy them, but fair play some of the tracks and cars are just shovelled into the game and you don't spend much time with them

In the first Gran Turismo the licensing tests were properly hard. They weren't messing around. Getting bronze requires people to read the manual and understand what the point of the test is. Getting all gold is an actual challenge for experienced players. I feel like the tests (at least, the bronze levels) got easier in later games. The UK soundtrack was small but pretty good.

My final mention is the Burnout series. I loved the crash junctions. I'm not sure the open world of Paradise was fun - it meant spending a lot of time driving across a map to get to the start line of various events. I feel the same way about many games - I'd rather just have a menu of levels and what I need to do to complete them (GoldenEye, SNES PilotWings, BlastCorps are all good examples) than have this stuff obscured by the open world. Burnout on the Nintendo DS was a genuinely awful game. I think Burnout Dominator was my favourite in the series.

So, what do driving games get right? What do they miss? What interesting game mechanics do you enjoy?

I’ve always enjoyed rally games but only recently decided to buy a wheel (just a used Logitech G29) and also decided to give F1 22 a shot. I feel like I’m okay-ish at DiRT Rally 2.0 and WRC 10 but atrocious at F1 22. How do I actually learn to be better instead of constantly making mistakes?

After our discussion about Tempest-like games, I looked at what else could at least scratch a similar fast-paced space-theme racing, with optional shooting itch on Switch.

To kick off the discussion, these are the games I already tried that I kinda like. I‘ll update this list, once people suggest other entries. I realise it’s a bit of a mish-mash, but it’s more about the feel than a specific genre.

Fast RMX is a very fast-paced pod-racer, with a similar feel to Wipeout, if you take away the weapons, and add a boost mechanic where you need to switch your booster’s code with the speed lane. I prefer playing it with motion/gyro controls, which admittedly makes it harder to play, but with that actually feels a lot more like you’re travelling at massive speed where every unintentional jerk of the steering wheel can cause you to wipe out.

Velocity 2X is a very successful mix of a vertical shooter where time matters with added platforming levels in between. Boosting for speed and warping/teleporting to solve puzzles is a huge part of the game.

The Next Penelope is a top-down 2D (pod?) racing game with weapons, where the acceleration happens automatically, but is influenced by boost, boost markers on the track and bumping into stuff. I haven’t played it for a long time yet, but once you learn the controls it seems to be a very good game.

VSR is a pure zero-gravity, zero-friction 3D space racer. Which makes mastering the controls very hard for anyone who is not used to it. To be honest, I haven’t mastered them yet either, but haven’t given up, as I really liked RPGs and shooters with such a mechanic. It just gives a specific type of zennish “in the zone” feeling, once you get into it.

Fast RMX
price: 20 € 14 € until 2019-07-25
reviews: 81 % on MetaCritic
length: 3½ h main game (57 h completionist) on HowLongToBeart

Velocity 2X
price: 20 € 8 € until 2019-07-18
reviews: 87 % on MetaCritic
length: 5 h main game (26 h completionist) on HowLongToBeat

The Next Penelope: Race to Odysseus
price: 13 € 2 € until 2019-07-11
reviews: 79 % on MetaCritic
length: 2½ h main game (5½ h completionist) on HowLongToBeat

VSR: Void Space Racing
price: 5 €
reviews: 66 % on MetaCritic
length: (no HowLongToBeat entry yet)