Get Your Racing Game Outta my Open World!

I hate racing games. I love open world games. Mash the two together and I can guarantee I will hate parts of something I love - kinda like my children. But it can’t be that bad, right? Surely the mash-up only occurs once in a while, right?

Wrong! I can’t play an open world title without being forced to race around town in something souped-up and going faster than vindaloo out of a nun. I’ve got to do a street race to ‘prove myself’, or perhaps catch someone - occasionally both, and sometimes on foot!

But the character I’m playing isn’t a racer, a driver or a runner, yet I’m supposed to be able to beat five, maybe eight other people who have been practicing how to race, potentially for many years! Don’t get in first? Fail mission - restart!

Vroom, vroom, whether you want to or not!

I don’t play racing games for the same reason I hate playing online with strangers. I don’t like to compete. I’ll lose and feel bad, or they’ll lose and I’ll feel guilty for making them feel bad. And because I don’t play racing games: I don’t have any practice with racing! So guess which parts of open world games I’m absolutely terrible at?

Racing! Yes, it’s great that you have an entire state in your game, and it’s fantastic that you can race, but that doesn’t mean you have to enforce it! Make them optional and I just won’t play them. Better yet, make them have no set route or opponents! Some of the most fun driving I’ve had is when the race has had a timer and a finish line on the other side of town - but no checkpoints.

Racing was removed by Sly Cooper 2...

I admit, I’ve had fun with the open world driving game Need for Speed Most Wanted, which features some non-linear courses, but when it came time to hit checkpoints and overtake people around 90° corners at 180mph… Utter chaos. Unlike me, my wife doesn’t drive, yet in open world games she has far fewer crashes and goes through far fewer cars than I do - but despite all of my crashes, smashes, 180s, 360s and 1080s, I wind up having to do races for her, as she can’t win them.

So not only do I have to do races in every open world I get drawn into - I have to do them again when my other half gets pulled in too! So please, I’m begging you developers - stop it with the racing!