Going. Going. Head's Gone.
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00:00 Hello all of you little demons, Jules here for WhatCulture.com, and yes, you have read the title,
00:05 I am back for another Not List, aka an episode of These Things Suck, a format where I and my
00:12 neck vein Jeremy decide to take a screeching whistle-stop tour around the video game industry,
00:18 find things that make us feel so goddamn angry inside, that make us just wanna curl up into the
00:22 fetal position and cry a little bit, and then make videos about them for your entertainment. You are
00:27 very, very welcome. And today, we are talking about an absolute skidmark of a topic, because
00:33 we're discussing racing video games, that yes, absolutely suck. Because while our real lives
00:39 might be filled with traffic queues, spiralling fuel prices, and of course the fact that most of
00:43 us own something far less impressive than a supercar, when it comes to video games,
00:47 we're piloting such beasts that even the rev of their engines would make our rides leak oil.
00:52 And I ride a bike, so that's very weird. But yes, you know the format by now, we're not talking
00:56 about the Forzas, the crashed Nitro Karts, or even the F-Zeroes, no, we're talking about the
01:01 absolute stinkers that crashed and burned straight into a brick wall as soon as they started.
01:06 Fantastic. So let's get on with it, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
01:10 and yes, these racing video games suck.
01:12 [Sonic Adventure Intro]
01:17 Ugghhh, I tell you, Sonic, seriously mate, how are you a mascot for this gotta-go-fast mentality,
01:24 yet have been in so many absolute skip-fire racing games? In fact, outside of the genuinely
01:30 brilliant Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed and maybe one or two surprisingly okay racing
01:35 titles, his other racetrack endeavours have been less burning rubber and more absolute skids,
01:40 and right in the utter pits of this are the likes of Sonic R and Sonic Free Riders.
01:46 Now, to begin, Sonic Free Riders for the Xbox 360 feels exactly like that, a free ride that
01:52 coasted on the goodwill generated from prior Sonic Riders titles that crashed and burned right out
01:56 of the gate. For you see, dear friends, in yet another of their "well, let's have a cheeky bump
02:01 first before we do anything", the devs decided to pivot this entire game around the Xbox 360's
02:06 Kinect. Which, uh, hoo hoo, lest we not forget, is about as responsive as the Grim Reaper's
02:13 non-existent genitals, and was such a taint on this game, in equal measures.
02:18 Using naught but their own flabulous and pale goblin-like bodies, players were then asked to
02:23 use motion controls to gracefully glide around tracks, except seeing as the Kinect barely wanted
02:29 to register its own existence in our reality, ended up with us flailing around as Sonic slammed
02:33 his face into walls and then ground his mush along at a snail's pace. Now at this point in time,
02:38 I thought that maybe this was the most pain that Sonic could put me through when it came to racing
02:42 titles, but then I remembered that darkest of clouds that loomed over the franchise. Sonic R
02:48 was here, and it was bringing the thunder. And by that I mean that it made an absolutely arse-wobbling
02:54 squelch when it landed on the Sega Saturn. This game, ooh, my sweet prince, this game, it is so
03:01 ineffably bad that it warrants a hazardous waste warning symbol on the box. The way that it
03:07 approaches its very controls scream of a design team looking to reinvent the wheel, but only
03:11 developing a new way to eat bloody pot noodles, as the sludgy turning circles combined with
03:16 blistering speed is like the team was out to lunch every waking moment. Plus, for some ungodly reason,
03:23 they've decided to include platforming elements in their racing games, meaning that you have to
03:27 jump over obstacles as they present themselves to you. And sometimes you just have to stop.
03:32 You just have to stop racing. And that's what people want, right? That's what people want to
03:36 do in a racing game. Is stop. So I ask you, do you want to play a game with controls that
03:41 feel as effective as trying to get your cat not to sit on your keyboard? Do you want to play a
03:46 game with graphics so sharp that you could cut f***ing beef on them? Do you want to play a game
03:50 with a camera so disgustingly rigid that it clips through every single wall it can? Now, if you
03:55 answered yes to any of these, then I can only assume that that's a cry for bloody help, and I
03:59 hope that you get the attention that you need, my friend. But it is a cry that unfortunately will be
04:03 drowned out in the mire of just sheer, utter horror. And also, admittedly, some pretty good
04:10 soundtracks. That was the one game saving feature that it had. Pretty bop-filled. But anyway,
04:14 explosion. So I know what you're thinking to yourself. Oh, baby, it sure is nice to live in
04:20 the world of 2022, where borders are kind of opening up again, and now travel across the
04:25 world is finally accessible. Sometimes when we feel like it, assuming that there's not another
04:30 massive catastrophe going on. Still, we have a little bit more freedom is what I'm trying to say.
04:33 But wait, my friend, before you pack your string vest and pairs of socks that come with sandals
04:38 stitched to them, how about we look around to see if video games can save you a bit of cash and a
04:43 bit of jet lag, as there is actually a game on the market that apparently lets you experience
04:47 North Korea in all of its mysterious glory. That's right, North Korea! Wow! Woo! Wee! Wow!
04:56 Yes, that's right, thanks to the likes of Pyongyang Racer, we can experience the actual streets of
05:04 Pyongyang. Or should that be Hollywood set cutouts, because those houses and buildings that you're
05:09 driving past really are looking pretty flat, my friend. And where are the bloody people? And why
05:14 are there only like two or three cars on the road at a single time? And why is that rather
05:17 stern police officer here telling me what to do with every waking second of my life?
05:21 Okay, so beyond all of these very weird gameplay elements, this game absolutely stinks like rotten
05:30 eggs. For some reason, your car burns through oil at a rate that would make even America itself
05:34 sweat, and thus you're constantly having to collect random oil drums that have been scattered
05:38 around the very, very bland streets. In fact, going out of your way to collect these drums is
05:44 the only challenge presented to the player, as there's not even enough traffic to require extreme
05:48 drifting, nor any incentive to drive quickly lest the officer on duty chews me out again.
05:53 In fact, she's kind of like creeping me out a little bit here. Joe, can you do something about
05:56 this? Can you just like, can you put yourself in as the police officer? That would actually calm me
06:00 down immensely, alright? So for the rest of this, just put yourself over the footage, right? Awesome.
06:04 So all that's left to do is bumble around collecting postcards of famous Pyongyang
06:08 landmarks, which is highly ironic, seeing as the country itself would likely count these images as
06:12 evidence of you being a spy, and are so utterly grainy that it fills your eyes with sand just by
06:18 looking at them. In short, it is a bizarre game from an even more bizarre place.
06:24 21. 21. No, that is not the number of seconds it takes Vin Diesel to make any
06:31 reporter he finds attractive feel uncomfortable after an interview has started, but the max,
06:36 the max player count on the week of launch for Fast and Furious Crossroads, which didn't land
06:44 with a squelch on the market, no no no my friend, it smashed through the marketplace,
06:48 it destroyed everything, and then puked on the dashboard while giving us thumbs up.
06:53 Car crash. The peak player count on its week of launch, 21, I genuinely think that I could muster
06:59 up more people to lick electrical fences than that by just yelling out my front door, and remember,
07:04 my neighbours hate me. I mean, could you imagine living next door to this? That being said,
07:08 for those unlucky few, they had to contest with a game so unbearably ugly through and through,
07:13 that 21 likely came to reflect the number of minutes they could stomach before deleting this
07:17 from Steam. Whereas most racetracks are designed with some thought and care for the player's
07:22 enjoyment, Fast and Furious Crossroads looked like it based its entire course creation mentality
07:26 on the emotional investment of its lead voice actors, as the resulting flatline makes for an
07:31 experience akin to falling asleep at the wheel. Seriously Vin, what were you doing in between
07:35 takes for this? Tranquilizers and tequilas? Not that you'll have to worry about driving headfirst
07:40 into oncoming traffic, because while these cars may look like they're made out of tinfoil draped
07:44 over the graphics engine from Lego racers, each is secretly a tank and therefore can crash its way
07:50 through with narrier worry. I know that the film franchise is one to take the laws of physics over
07:55 its knee from time to time and give it a nutter spanking, but here it feels so lazy and slapdash
08:00 to the point that it's utterly aggravating. If we were being kind to the game, we could describe
08:05 its gameplay moments as "cinematic" in the way that it tries to tie all of the action set pieces
08:10 together with dynamic cutscenes and stuff like that, but if we're being honest, this is less
08:15 "cinematic" and more "ropey VHS that you recorded off of ITV with all the ad breaks included",
08:21 because I tell you this, for f***ing none, Dr. Frankenstein himself would have a hard time
08:26 trying to breathe life into this f***ing corpse. This burnout clone with a popular IP stapled to
08:32 its mug was about as low as video game tie-ins can stoop, and thankfully audiences around the
08:37 world voted with their wallets and turned Crossroads into simply being crossed off
08:41 any future wish lists. I tell you what Joe, I'm getting so sick and tired of talking about these
08:46 bad games, man, I feel like I'm just wearing myself thin. Can we just talk about some good
08:50 racing games, like Micro Machines on the Mega Drive? That was like the epitome of brilliance,
08:55 right? Oh bollocks.
08:56 Yeah, hello? Yeah, look, we've got quite a serious problem. Jules is going massively off script and
09:08 I'm going to need you to step in here. Yeah, oh, we're doing racing games? Well,
09:12 that's, yeah, that's why I called you. Yeah, great, okay, cool. Oh, thank you so much,
09:17 great. Oh, nice, well, hey, good to speak- oh, oh, he's gone.
09:21 Hello, Dial-a-Dick-Ed, Jules speaking.
09:25 Wait, there's actually somebody else on the other end of the phone this time.
09:30 Right then, Jules, you smelly egg sundae, it's me! Back on the channel because you're talking
09:34 about racing games and that's what I do now, so I'm going to step in. Seriously though,
09:39 how is my hand getting signal? It's a hand! You mentioned Mega Drive Micro Machines like
09:44 it's the best thing since sliced, not wet, bread, because it was! And when it came to the most
09:49 recent Micro Machines game, all Codemasters had to do was take Toybox Turbos, a game they made
09:53 three years prior that was really good, just do it again, put the licensed stuff in it,
09:58 and they'd be golden. But they didn't. They started with that idea and then thought,
10:02 no, let's strip out everything that actually makes the game fun. No single player whatsoever,
10:07 loot boxes galore, product placement that would make even Wayne's World jokes feel toned down,
10:11 and more focus on weird deathmatch modes over actual racing. It's astonishing to see them
10:16 make a Micro Machines spiritual successor so right and then make an actual Micro Machines game
10:22 so wrong. This idiot pre-ordered it and played it for about 22 minutes. I'm still salty about it,
10:28 it's been five years, I'm still salty about it. Anyway, it's good to see you, I'm really glad
10:34 the series is still going. Kisses! Thanks for calling in, Rich. Still don't know how you did
10:39 that. Bye! Good to see you. Okay, let's talk about Big Rigs Over the Road Racing. You knew
10:48 that it was going to be on this not list, so let's just talk about it now. And here's the thing,
10:52 I actually feel kind of bad for this game. I really, really do. Because while it is,
10:58 on every conceivable level, absolutely, technically, awful, there is a story behind
11:04 it that is kind of heartwarming, that will maybe make you see this game in a different light.
11:08 Because yeah, it's a game that is so unbelievably broken that it's almost impossible to hate it with
11:13 any real intent. Sure, the title Through the F***ing Floor Racing would be more appropriate,
11:18 sure the AI is so incompetent that you can't actually lose the race as they aren't programmed
11:23 to cross the finish line, and yes, the ability to reverse at speeds faster than light itself
11:27 exists because nobody bothered to put a limiter on this feature will definitely break your brain,
11:31 but it's so wonky that it will reduce you to fits of laughter over fits of anger. Plus,
11:36 when you read into the title's development story, you'll find a tale of a small dev team
11:40 with minimal budgets forced to release the game in a pre-alpha state by their publisher.
11:45 But here's the thing, I'm actually glad that this game was released in the state that it was.
11:49 I know it sounds really weird, it should never be encouraged that a publisher forces a game out
11:53 onto the market when it clearly isn't ready, but here, because of the state that it was in,
11:58 that's why it achieved such a level of infamy that allowed it to become a cult classic
12:02 within some circles. If it came out as a polished or a more realised version of this game,
12:08 you know what it would be? F***ing boring. Here though, it's so insane, off the wall,
12:14 that you cannot deny its presence. Because of the fact that it sold so well, because people
12:19 were so drawn to its utter weirdness, it's getting a sequel. It would not have got a sequel
12:25 had it come out as a better game. It basically got to live again because it died so very,
12:31 very hard. So what we're gonna do right now is give this game a little smack on the wrist,
12:36 acknowledge that it is, on paper, literally the worst, and look forward to the insanity
12:40 that is sure to come down the line. So yeah, this game sucks, but I'm kind of glad that it does.
12:47 Oh Christ, okay, so we're gonna be talking about a game now.
12:50 Talking about a game now called Cosmic Race. Now I want you, if you've got a dual screen,
12:56 it'd be a lot easier. If you've got a triple screen, you rich bastard, stop rubbing it in.
12:59 Go over to Wikipedia and type in Cosmic Race PS1. Go down there and you tell me,
13:06 what are the first things that you see when you look at its Wikipedia page? I'll tell you,
13:10 for those who can't be bothered to check. Cosmic Race is a spaceship racing game. That's it. That's
13:16 all you get when it comes to its gameplay. Seven words, or six and a half, you're gonna be technical
13:20 about it, to sum up its entire essence. And that sort of thing shakes me to my very core. What is
13:26 so bad here that people couldn't even begin to try and comprehend writing what it is on Wikipedia?
13:32 Well, let's find out. Because yes, that should have been a warning not to open this Pandora's
13:38 box of pain, and was definitely ignored by yours truly as I loaded up a copy and witnessed
13:43 something akin to an intense acid trip and a three day festival come down all at once.
13:49 Because Cosmic Race is more than a spaceship racing game. It is a waking nightmare.
13:55 So after you've selected your Sonic OC Do Not Steal DeviantArt Post-It Note Pilot,
14:01 and let's face it, we all chose the Giga Chad Leo, you then get to select from a series of
14:05 courses that looks as if you stared directly into the sun but also had pink eye at the same time.
14:10 Like literally, this is bacteria, right? This is not a course. Well if you thought that was sick,
14:15 well you're about to come down with a case of what the f*** fever, as suddenly the game
14:20 throws you into utter chaos. Cars race the opposite way through the track, there's an
14:24 arrow constantly pointing to absolutely nothing, there's a mini-map in the top right that looks
14:29 like a game of centipede is being played out by itself, and then of course there's the graphics,
14:33 which clip in and out of reality so much that you think the bloody Doctor Strange
14:37 had been messing with the code. This is, without a shred of hyperbole,
14:41 the worst racing game I have ever played. The actual worst.
14:47 But you know what makes it somehow even more stinky?
14:52 You accelerate by pressing R1. Case f***ing closed. Burn this sick film.
15:00 And there we go my friends, another not-list from yours truly. Thank you very much Joe for
15:06 editing today, you've shown some love his way as well, and if you want to catch us on the social
15:10 medias then you can do so by following us over on Twitter @RetroJay, but the O is a zero and
15:15 Joe has put his handle up right here as well, so go follow him to my friends.
15:20 Now, before I go and try and calm down from the sweaty mess that I have become after filming this,
15:25 I just want you to know one thing. This series is filmed with hyperbole, with over-the-top anger,
15:31 and I encourage you not to try and take anger forward into your real lives, because it's not
15:35 healthy. It's a draining experience and you will come out the other side of it actually learning
15:40 nothing from it. Sometimes anger will crop up in our life, but I urge you, if you can,
15:45 have the ability to step away from situations that are causing you anger, or people that are
15:48 doing that, then I encourage you to do so, because it's not a pleasant experience to
15:52 hang onto and can manifest in some pretty bad ways. Big love to you, go out there with love
15:57 in your hearts instead, build bridges instead of burning them, and remember, you deserve love,
16:01 and so does your neighbor. If you can carry that mentality forward, you will live a healthier and
16:06 happier life. And trust me, that's all I want for you, all right? Now go out there and smash it
16:11 with kindness. As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that,
16:15 and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.