tudsworth

- ̗̀ 🏳️‍⚧️Tuddy🏳️‍⚧️ ̖́-

@tudsworth

- ̗̀ new ̖́- trash mammal

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33, kuso anime boy who likes video games, definitely not a skunk in real life.

Switch friend Code : [SW-1872-7002-1339]
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tudsworth
@tudsworth
plumpan
@plumpan
plumpan
@plumpan

I kinda wish I was more qualified to write all of this out so I'm gonna make a super low effort version

If you're into racing games, 4 of the greatest of all time all came out in 19991 on the PS1.

Ridge Racer 4 You know it, you love it. Game with immaculate vibes, superb art style in both 2 and 3 dimensions, and a soundtrack that has held up arguably better than the game. The little storylines are sick, but in order to get everything in the game it gets ultra repetitive. Non completionists will have a much better time.

Wipeout 3 Easily on the same tier as R4 in every visual way, just taking a different approach. Much different gameplay and a hell of a lot harder. Has some big region/version differences in the details but none of them seem particularly bad. If R4 is the kind of game you chill out to, WO3 is the game you get completely zoned in during. All plot is relegated to the manual.

Gran Turismo 2 I'm not a big GT person so I can't say a lot about this but it's generally held in very high regard. Probably the most well known of the four?

Racing Lagoon Much different than the rest of these games but easily just as good. Trades off a bit in graphics quality in return for an amazing JRPG-esque story. One of those rare cases where somehow no one has really done anything like it before or since, and it was very good.

If you're into big PS1 aesthetics or old racing games, you're doing yourself a disservice not to try them all out.

Feel free to use this as a basis for a very longform explanation and justification as to why they're all some of the best of all time. I do genuinely believe they're all up there and the fact that they all happened on the same console at around the same time is incredible.

  1. R4 came out at the end of 1998 in japan but it got released everywhere else in 1999 so I'm calling that close enough.

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in reply to @plumpan's post:

Ryyudo
@Ryyudo

I recently learned about Racing Lagoon('s OST) and I've become very interested. I gotta experience it firsthand.

Also tried Ridge Racer 4 for the first time last month. I'm also intrigued, even as a non-racer, because the vibes are immaculate as you said.

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plumpan
@plumpan

I very strongly recommend Racing Lagoon to pretty much anyone. The only caveat is, if you're not very proficient at racing games, the early game can be pretty rough difficulty wise. There's an "easy mode" save with the patch that starts you out leveled up a bit for this exact reason, and no reason not to use it.

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tudsworth
@tudsworth

Type 4 is a game I got shortly after it launched with a Namco NegCon because it was cheaper with than without, and while that NegCon is long dead, R4 is a stone cold classic and might actually be the best arcade racer ever made. I'm still discovering new and interesting things about it 20 years in, and the developers considered it to be "the" game that pushes the PS1 to its absolute limits, a statement I'll always double down on because modern racers struggle to feel as satisfying to play as R4 does.

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plumpan
@plumpan

So like, while I love R4 and I think it's probably the most accessible out of all these games, I personally REALLY hate the grind for getting all cars. A common theme with all of these games is you can make the argument that they are, to some extent, unfinished. GT2 was notoriously a big crunch and had a few weirdo bugs in the earlier revisions. Wipeout 3 kept getting more content and tweaks with each new release and the prototype tracks may have literally been tracks they couldn't finish in time. Racing Lagoon probably could have done with a bit more polish in places and also has some weirdo bugs when you push it's limits.

R4 I feel like did things the other way around: The polish is there, everything present is damn near pristine, but I feel like it's lacking things in the progression methods that would have made it actually make sense to get all of the cars, or some other weird way of unlocking them. While I love the storylines, I feel like they also could have been SO much more, but perhaps that would have more been a target for a later game which never happened. It also has one of my biggest pet peeves; cool tech that the game never actually asks you to use to complete the game. That's probably the most subjective complaint I have though.

In short, I feel like it's overrated. Not by much, but when people give it a 10 I wanna knock it back to a 9.5 or so. It's SS rank, maybe even SSS, but it's not at the tippity top, it's just a hair back because of those few things. And again, it's probably the easiest to get into out of all these games because the casual play through doesn't have the difficulty (WO3) or time (GT2, Racing Lagoon) demands.

TL;DR R4 is like a 10/10 experience but maybe more like a 9/10 game to me.

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