The Problem with Driving Games

So Grid 2 will be released next year and i've been reading through the previews of it I thought I would share a bit of my thoughts on driving games in general.

AI - We hear a lot about how advances in AI will increase the enjoyment but none i can remember have come close to making it feel anything less than racing a pre-programmed system. In Grid 2 apparently the cars around you will make mistakes, but if it happens in the same place its just as bad as not being there at all as you will start to feel when its going to happen. Though at least it is something we can see rather than the talk of how improved AI is in racing games when it comes to new releases with no quantifiable evidence to see it for yourself.

Personally i am more interested in the competitiveness of the AI in comparison to the user, too many times do i buy these games and then have to give myself setup problems just to make the game a bit of a challenge. I can't do the perfect lap but a computer can. We should be able to keep moving the level of difficulty right up to that point. I don't want to stroll away from the start of a race knowing if i make a mistake that i can just push it and take seconds out of anyone. While its fun once it isn't doing it for a whole season in F1 say. Hence why my copy of F1 2011 sits on the shelf unused and ready for ebay.

I understand that making AI like a human is impossible, much the same as it is making a human like a computer. We just need to be able to adjust the challenge more than having to fit into easy, medium and difficult.

F1 2011 impressed me in that you had to work at the setup on the hardet level to make yourself competitive. But once you worked a few things out it became all too easy to come back into the pits seconds ahead of everyone.

Perhaps if online racing had taken up the lead then people like me wouldn't have so much of an issue. But online racing is ridiculous due to the fact 99% of people prefer to treat it as destruction derby. The argument would be that i am stuck in between organised leagues and the casual user, and they are right. But i don't have time to get together with a select bunch of people in an evening as for me life is not scheduled in advance. But on those odd moments i fancy a race with people i don't bother because i know it will end in frustration and annoyance. So maybe they need to pay attention to the way racing online takes place. I want to race not try and avoid the cars trying to take me out while they eat crisps and laugh with friends on headsets. But i fear this middle ground i'm looking for doesn't really exist.

Best start looking at some online simulators for the PC then i think. Goodbye codemasters.