My lad (aged ten) has a PS4 and wants a racing game. The first one that pops up on lots of lists is GT Sport. But I also see some reviews saying it’s only any good with PlayStation Plus and played online. Is this the case? I’m not overly keen to pay another fifty quid for that on top of the game, and I’d prefer it if he was playing offline. Is that game therefore a poor choice? What would be a good racing game for him?

I could do you a deal on a late nineties vintage original PlayStation complete with Micro Machines.

Best game ever.

Dirt Rally is supposed to be pretty good.

Micro Machines is back Perchy.

Pah! A pale imitation of a blocky 8-bit masterpiece

Micro Machines is back Perchy.

Second-hand information but I’m told it’s… not good.

There is offline content on GT sport, not loads.. but there’s talk of more coming, online racing is it’s main thing though. I believe it’s available for £20ish.

Oh, and the answer to the OPs question is obviously to buy an Xbox and Forza Horizon 3

Dirt Rally, cheers. He’s mentioned Forza but he isn’t getting an Xbox! Here you go pp, some old fashioned stuff developed by the husband of a friend of mine.

Cool.

Keepin’ it oldskool!

I believe so yes!

Racing games can be quite different, you have very sim like ones that can be unforgiving for casual players, and you can have more ‘arcade’ type one’s. And there’s many in between.

Read some game reviews is the only advice I can really give.

I bought Gt sport, played it once and not touched it since. It’s bobbins, total let down. Dirt 4 on the other hand is brilliant

There is Dirt 4 and Dirt Rally – is one better than the other for a kid?

What about the F1 game?

Played a lot of dirt rally and dirt 4 online doing rallycross on a pc though not a PS4, if I had to pick one for kid it would be dirt 4 as it seems a little more forgiving.

Ok cheers

Dirt rally is pretty good, but tricky to master. For a young lad, GT sport will be all the sim he needs, it’s a decent balance between arcade and sim, if he wants more realism, then project cars and assetto corsa.

F1 games I then to give a miss as you just drive a different coloured version of the same car (may as well be, my surname isn’t Vettel)

Drive club is a decent arcade racer too.

Thanks. I think he gets as much enjoyment out of building characters on his current games as he does playing the game, so I imagine that he’ll be the same with cars, if that’s a thing?

Need for speed might be up his alley then

get Gran Turismo Sport, I have people on my list that have put 50+ hours in and never done an online race

PS+ is a no brainer. 2 or 3 free games every month for what? £4ish? Generally one big(ish) title, a PSN title and a shared PS3/4/Vita title. it also gives you discounts and offers in the store, online storage and other member benefits.

GTSport is really really good. I wouldn’t ever trust the review of someone who played a game once. it’s a 72GB game. You barely skim the surface in one evening. Online racing is great and rewards good clean/fair racing. so helps if you already have a bunch of mates who also drive clean.
There’s a massive in game livery creator for the cars, race kit etc. and heaps of tuning options if customisation and creating is of interest. if not you can still customise everything using the designs others make “public”
The DLC is all also free and there’s a lot more coming.
10yr old sounds about right if he’s mature enough to play fair online. My 8yr old has just started playing and is 25% through the license challenges and still learning the ropes. She’s never played a driving game before so it’s a steep learning curve and is finding some of the technicality needed to get times down frustrating. She’s no way ready to race online yet.

Driveclub looks nice plays alright for an arcade racer but I found it fairly disappointing depth wise.

Wasn’t a fan of the DIRT series on PS3 so haven’t tried 4 or Dirt Rally on PS4.

If you’re after a great arcade (non clean) racing game GTAV is one of the best ever made IMO. not sure how you feel about that. But mute mics and it’s actually harmless. Campaign. not so much. 😉

tomhoward – Member
Need for speed might be up his alley then

Need for speed or forza horizon I would guess.

I’ve held off GT Sport because whilst there may be a good volume of offline content (I personally didn’t think there was), it’s all very shallow and superficial. There’s no progression, or career or anything, it’s overwhelmingly ‘bite-sized’ challenges rather than anything else. It seems they’ve massively invested in the online side of things, which is fair enough. No damage either, which annoys me.

Project Cars 2 is getting good press, but a lot of reviews say it’s buggy and not really out of beta, although I understand there was a patch on Friday which fixed loads of stuff (and broke others).

F1 2016 is very good indeed, and F1 2017 gets a good write up, although I’ve not tried it. It’s obviously very sim heavy though, and lacks the variety of GTS/PC2/Forza etc.

I’ve always enjoyed the Dirt games, again, Dirt 4 gets a great write up. Dirt Rally was tough, but really rewarding when you got it right.

As above, get him PS+, 2 free games a month and he can play games online with his friends.

GT Sport is very good, you can get it cheap, you can also get 12 month PS+ subscription for £35.

No damage either, which annoys me.

Have to agree there.

For me GT Sport feels like it’s designed to look amazing in replays. The gameplay isn’t all that, the cars look incredible, but the fact they sound like you’ve dropped a cardboard box when you make them collide at 200mph really grates. They’ve foregone comprehensive offline content.

I know there are series fanbois who will say it’s perfect, and I enjoyed GT5 (or whatever the last one was), but I don’t ‘get’ GT Sport at all.

Whilst incredible graphics are brilliant, I’d take a game that looked shit and played well versus the opposite, all day long!

Well for the same price as GT Sport I’ve ended up buying him Dirt Rally 4 and Street Fighter V. So hopefully he will like at least one of them!

I bought the first Project Cars today from Game, pre-owned, 12 quid for game of the year edition

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WZ8qG8QNOI[/video]

I read too many review of other games (probably by 12 year olds) complaining about most of the other games, this seemed to get the best review of them all so I may not surface until March now, but i’ll let you know what it’s like

Dirt Rally 4 is £12,49 digital on PlayStation Store

Not much of a gamer but F1 2017 is stunning on the ps4

Only game I’ve played for longer than 25 min stints.

Wanted GT but holding off

Also got dirt, project cars, ww2, and a few other shooter ups

F1 is that good I nearly bought a steering wheel for£200 the other day. Still might!

I went for Dirt Rally, had a quick go and I’m really bad at it.

Every Gran Turismo game over it’s 20 year history has had no damage and that “thunk”. This still being the case in GTSport shouldn’t surprise anyone.
You’re not wrong about the replays looking good. But you know what’s even better? When you take a break from racing and watch 12 of your mates race.
Why wouldn’t you want to race online though?

F1 is that good I nearly bought a steering wheel for£200 the other day. Still might!

Yeah, downloaded the demo the other day thinking “wonder if this is any good?”, now find myself a few quid lighter having purchased a wheel and a stand to use it on 😳 . In my defence, I get pain in my hand/wrist from using the triggers to accelerate in driving games for too long, so really it’s a medical necessity 😆

I went for Dirt Rally, had a quick go and I’m really bad at it.

I got banned from playing it by the missus as it made me so grumpy from getting almost to the end of a stage a second or two up and then binning it into the trees for the Nth time at the last minute.

F1 is that good I nearly bought a steering wheel for£200 the other day. Still might!

I compromised with a £70 non force feedback wheel, it’s still really good, much more immersive than a pad, not sure I’m actually any quicker though.

Every Gran Turismo game over it’s 20 year history has had no damage and that “thunk”. This still being the case in GTSport shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Except GT5. And the teaser videos of GT Sport.

Why wouldn’t you want to race online though?

I do, but don’t have time.

I compromised with a £70 non force feedback wheel, it’s still really good, much more immersive than a pad, not sure I’m actually any quicker though.

I find I’m a second quicker, per minute of lap time, down to being able to hold a smoother line through corners, rather that applying full lock in short bursts on a pad. (Force feedback wheel)

Yeah, that’s where I expected to find advantages. It’s definitely smoother, and possibly faster, but not massively, and actually it was a lot slower at first, took far more getting used to that I expected! Really wanted a G29, but couldn’t justify it now I barely play!

I played last night and tried quali laps with wheel in automatic , then controller automatic, then wheel with gears. The wheel made little difference to times. But Gears did.
Bought a non forcefeedback wheel a couple of years back and sent it back as I was quicker on controller.

H pattern or paddles? Clutch?

Not being a driver in real life, the h pattern gears are taking some getting used to…

Paddles. H patron is slower. I have one. Don’t use it.

you can also get 12 month PS+ subscription for £35

Where from?

I got a Logitech G27 wheel and pedals from eBay for £60, missing the gear lever, but still with flappy paddles and I have the playseat challenge seat which folds up nearly flat when not in use.
RallyX is pretty much the only thing I play in dirt, tracks are easy to learn, especially if you learn the Cuban circuits first, even the full tracks are only about 1000m.