Title edited as it has been pointed out to me that the sale has actually ended

I picked up Descenders and Absolute Drift. Only tried the latter so far, but it’s great fun. Feels like there’s an extremely high skill ceiling to it that I am unlikely to reach. It only cost me £1 too!

I normally go for sim racers like Assetto Corsa and Automobilista, but I have a real soft spot for the old Wipeout games and the similarly-aged N-Gen. Pacer (a touch light on tracks but a perfect spiritual successor to Wipeout) and Jetborne Racing (basically a tech demo and extremely demanding with a gamepad, but worth checking out) have been fun releases in somewhat more recent years

  • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    4 days ago

    Redout is a weird one. It got a lot of comparisons to F-Zero because of the speed but it plays a lot more like Wipeout, or like an F-Zero/Wipeout hybrid. It’s very fast, and the steering mechanics are interesting as it requires using both joysticks to steer through a lot of turns. I like it, but find it pretty difficult. The ships tend to be a bit floaty and the main thing is controlling well to not hit walls as they utterly kill your momentum.

    With BallisticNG, it does ape on Wipeout a lot (by design) but it’s an absolute love letter to the series and is extremely polished. It also has workshop support for all kinds of custom tracks and ships.

    There are things BallisticNG does though that are really interesting, like solo races where your goal is to go as far as possible without exploding from damage. You can’t use the brakes and it gets faster every few sections. Those are probably my favorite races.

    • Skua@kbin.earthOP
      3·
      4 days ago

      Watching a couple of videos just now, I do think that Redout has managed to develop a far stronger visual and musical language than most of its competitors outside of Wipeout (and Pacer, to a lesser degree). The long high-precision aerial segments look difficult, but in the kind of way that would be really satisfying to get right

      There are things BallisticNG does though that are really interesting, like solo races where your goal is to go as far as possible without exploding from damage. You can’t use the brakes and it gets faster every few sections. Those are probably my favorite races.

      That’s actually something Wipeout did, it’s one of the few things from Fusion that people liked enough for it to be brought back. But it’s a lot of fun, so seeing it in in BallisticNG is a selling point for me

      • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        That’s actually something Wipeout did, it’s one of the few things from Fusion that people liked enough for it to be brought back.

        Ah, I didn’t know that, I’ve never played the series past 3 and XL.

        Just a heads up to, BNG has a 2097 mode as well, with entirely different physics/control. It’s still in dev builds but it seems like the goal is to integrate both styles from OG Wipeout (2085 and 2097) within the game as separate campaigns.

        • Skua@kbin.earthOP
          2·
          4 days ago

          You didn’t miss out on much with Fusion. I enjoyed the post-Fusion games on the PSP a lot though

          Thanks for all the information on BNG!