Mechanically, this represents the moment the core gameplay of the THPS franchise was perfected. THPS 1's general trick structure, THPS 2's manual to link together big combos, and now with THPS 3 the introduction of the revert finally allows the addition of vert tricks into these combos without ending the chain.

This is the PS1 version though, and I'd still rank it below the other two simply because you can tell it's cut-down from the original. The maps are still good, but 1 and 2's are much better.

A fantastic remaster of WipEout HD/Fury and WipEout 2048, all combined in a single package that's pretty much impossible to beat in terms of value. An absolute must have for anyone remotely interested in racing games.

To make things better, if you own a PlayStation VR, then it finally feels like the vision of WipEout as a franchise is fully realized as they're fully VR compatible. It's a miracle that a franchise like WipEout managed to get the stars aligning in such a way that made this possible, but I'll always be greatful that it happened that way.

Wreckfest has become a bit of a modern classic, and for good reason. It didn't exactly come out of nowhere, with Bugbear being responsible for the fairly similar Flatout series, but it was a genuine surprise on my first contact with the game to discover how polished and satisfying its driving model was.

Of course, the appeal of the game is being a dirty racing game where you're trying to wreck your opponents at any chance, but if you want to treat it more seriously there's a surprising amount of depth in here.

rFactor 2 is a bizarre game. It's widely praised for its physics and force feedback, and those praises are totally warranted.

The core issue, is that this excellent driving model is locked behind what's the single most annoying and confusing piece of software I've ever operated in my life.

This will be your experience when you first install rFactor2.

1- The game downloads and installs as you would expect.
2- You boot it up, it immediately takes you through the wheel setup (ironically given everything else, it's probably the least annoying wheel setup of any sim if you consider the quality of the FFB)
3- You reach the main menu, try to start a race and... there's no content installed.

For some bizarre reason, even the game's official content must be installed through Steam Workshop. At least there's a nicely labeled "here's all the free official stuff pack available", so downloading the content is as easy as clicking on subscribe on that bundle.

4- You boot up the game again after downloading the content
5- You thought the content was already downloaded and installed? Because it is not. Every single car and track has a relatively lengthy install process, and with the hundreds of items you just downloaded from the workshop, this process can take an hour or two to finish.
6- You finally make it to the race setup screen again. It's not exactly straightforwards, but nothing you can't get your head around within an hour of playing. The most annoying aspect here are the visual inconsistencies, like some cars having thumbnails on the menu and others lacking it, or a lack of details regarding what the cars actually are if you don't happen to recognize the name of one.
7- Finally, after another lengthy one-time-per-track loading process, you are racing.

Except it's not over. The free official content is plentiful, but fairly old, so you'll soon want to purchase anything to spice it up (and to their credit, there's some pretty cool stuff you can get). Here you will discover two things:

1) The game doesn't sell its DLC as... DLC, as far as Steam is concerned at least. All is sold through its item store, which is still done through Steam so it's not a giant issue, but you'll need to access it in-game or from a web browser.
2) They are very expensive. A single track can cost as much as an entire DLC Pack from ACC or AMS2, and if you want to save some money you have to buy these $40-$60 bundles of content.

Anyways, enough ranting. There is something in here for sure, but it's just covered in annoying bullshit to deal with and with the breadth of sims available, it's just not worth it.

PACER is a game about unfulfilled potential. When it comes to AG Racers, it's really about as big as it comes - beautiful visuals, over a dozen tracks with night / day variations, ship customization, a lot of gamemodes including a career, and a massive OST of more than 80 songs featuring new songs from the original WipEout's composer CoLD SToRAGE.

The unfortunate reality though, is that it just doesn't come together nicely. The controls and physics are far too twitchy, the track design is inconsistent, the weird item pickup system does more harm than good, and just an overall lack of polish make it difficult to appreciate at times.

It's hard to ignore the elephant in the room, which is that PACER is in reality "just" a huge patch of Formula Fusion (which was not the strongest of bases to start with) with a new direction, and that's where its issues with consistency arise from.

Still, if you like WipEout it's a game that's still worth a playthrough of. It's the closest an AG Racer has come to the production values of WipEout HD, and even if it can't get close to it, it's nice to play a game in this genre that feels like it had a bit of budget put into it.

Nitro Fueled is, at least to me, the single best kart racer of all time. The original CTR was already a pretty special game, all due to its very unique mix of racing and platforming and the sheer mechanical depth it has; all while delivering on being a celebration of Crash. This made me very worried when its remake got announced, and especially when it was revealed that Beenox, an Activision studio which had done nothing remarkable before, would be the main developers of the game.

Those worries quickly faded as soon as I started my first lap in Crash Cove and immediately realized that not only had they managed to replicate Crash Team Racing - they'd made it better.

From a content standpoint, the improvements are obvious. The 18 character roster from the original game was expanded to a massive 56 playable characters, putting back into the spotlight completely obscure characters nobody expected to ever see again. Tracks is a similar story, as the game has every CTR track remade, plus all the Crash Nitro Kart tracks remade, plus 8 original tracks that were delivered with updates.

In terms of mechanics, they have also been expanded. The core of CTR is still there in a more polished form, while adding to them by turning some lesser known techniques from the original game into more explicit game mechanics. There's also the character and kart customization, alongside being able to choose any playstyle for any character so that all of them were competitively viable.

The only real shame about this game is that it's looking like it'll forever be stuck to 30FPS, as it never received a PC port. It's a rock-solid 30FPS with very good motion blur to mask it, but it's undeniable a higher framerate would've made the experience even better.