Whether it’s need for speed, gran turismo or forza, there wasn’t much in the way of big name racing games in 2020. 2021 will be given again really gas. Five big racing games are lined up to be released at the same time.
Need for speed 2021 – arcade area
The most popular racing game series in the world hasn’t brought that many really good games to the light of day in the last few years.
Need for speed heat in 2019 was even the nail in the coffin for a whole development studio! Ghost games has been relieved from the task of developing new need for speed games.
the studio has even been renamed EA gothenburg and will only be involved in the development of the frostbyte engine and support other teams. Ouch.
Criterion games will be responsible for the 2021 installment of the series and probably the years to come as well. Let’s just hope we don’t get another need for speed: burnout hybrid like we did with NFS: rivals in 2013.
Need for speed clearly needs a good spin-off again. This should be clear to everyone at least since NFS: payback.
by the way, the video we have inserted above shows the alpha gameplay of the new need for speed game by criterion.
Forza horizon 5 – arcade area
horizon festival is a huge music event that is held regularly in the world of forza.
The last time it was held in the UK was à la 2020.
according to rumors, the fifth part of the extremely popular forza-derivative will be released in spring 2021 and thus even before forza motorsport 8.
All fans of the series will not have to wait much longer and will soon get two games of a good racing game.
Horizon moves a bit more into the arcade realm of racing games. The choice of cars and settings is still amazing.
best example to explain the difference between horizon and motorsport is the hot wheels DLC of forza horizon 3.
there you could drive your cars on an oversized hot wheels track through loopings, boosters and over jumps.
This is exactly the kind of gameplay we are hoping to see in forza horizon 5.
Gran turismo 7 – simulation
A proud 22 years of history is now in the gran turismo racing games series, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.
If you are looking for a real racing sim, then gran turismo is your game.
the subtitle of the gran turismo series is not "the real driving simulator" for nothing. so it’s like the flight simulator for cars.
the big highlight of gran turismo is the garage you can build with hundreds of cars.
For the collector in you, a gran turismo game is probably just the thing. It is also much more cost effective than buying a garage with real cars.
Gran turismo 7 will be exclusive to PS5. Players with an old generation console will be left out in the cold.
In fact, it is a good decision of the developer to make the leap to the new generation of consoles immediately. This not only does the graphics of the game a lot of good, but also does not unnecessarily prolong the change from one generation to the next.
With cyberpunk 2077 we have all seen what can happen when a developer wants to play on the old consoles.
Forza motorsport 8 – simulation
from all sorts of sources, we’ve heard that forza motorsport 8, or just forza 8, will be released exclusively for the xbox series X.
But we guess that this will also mean the series S. If the game will run on the PC is not yet known.
But we are confident that microsoft will not split their ecosystem unnecessarily and forza 8 will also be released for windows.
according to a leak, forza 8 will get a reinterpretation of the series and a proper story mode à la need for speed.
Turn 10, the developer of the forza games, says it focuses on quality over quantity. More leaks say forza 8 is making a return to the series’ SIM roots.
so you’ll have a much more realistic experience than with arcade racing games like need for speed or the forza horizon series.
Graphics are a big issue, especially in racing games. Forza 8 will run on xbox series X at 4K with 120 FPS and raytracing enabled.
So just like gran turismo 7, it’s a good decision to leave the old console generation in the rearview mirror.