2024 Was a Slow Year for Our Fastest Genre

Around this time last year I criticised The Game Awards for continually forcing racing games to share a common category with sports games, to compete for recognition at what’s described (by The Game Awards) as “gaming’s biggest night.”

Up until this year it was an award no traditional sports game had ever actually won. The category had been totally dominated by racing games, with the exception of 2015 (Rocket League, which still has cars in it) and 2020 (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, which is still… on wheels).

This year FC 25 got the gong. Just a single racing game made the shortlist: F1 24. A great racing game, no doubt, but one that’s hard to argue was an immediately essential upgrade for those who already owned F1 23, or F1 22, or so on. What else could’ve made it? Monster Jam Showdown? Good fun (which shouldn’t be surprising given the developer’s recent form with the Hot Wheels Unleashed series) but I wouldn’t fancy its chances at The Game Awards. Le Mans Ultimate? Well, that’s still ostensibly in Steam Early Access, even though they’re… already selling in-game DLC before the game’s officially “finished.” Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown? No chance.

The sad reality is there simply weren’t enough racing games released in 2024, full stop. For the first time I can remember in my nearly 14 years at IGN, we didn’t even hand out an award for the year’s best racer. There just weren’t enough of them to even pad out a list of finalists.

Sad stuff.

Now, for clarity, I have had a number of fresh reasons to slide behind a steering wheel this year, but the bulk of these opportunities have arrived as updates to existing racing games I already own. Most months of 2024 have seen an injection of new cars and content for Gran Turismo 7. As is usually the case with GT, not all those cars have had a solid racing pedigree, but I won’t pretend I’m not at least mildly interested in seeing how fast an eight-year-old Toyota Hiace can lap the Nordschleife.

A 2024 expansion to EA Sports WRC added several new cars and two new countries: Latvia and Poland. The new countries feature some excellent stages, and it makes a lot more sense for Codemasters to improve WRC this way than immediately put it on a yearly, F1-style cadence (if only the asking price for the DLC wasn’t as uncomfortably close to the cost of an entirely new game anyway).

On the flip side, The Crew Motorfest literally became 50% larger for free, with all players getting access to the entire island of Maui, added to Motorfest in November. Maui is not a bespoke area; it’s been seamlessly injected into the game’s existing world (and developer Ivory Tower has even added a fantasy connecting bridge, meaning you have a choice to either fly, boat, or drive to Maui from O’ahu without any loading screens. It admittedly hasn’t turned me into a Motorfest regular, but there are some satisfying stretches of road and some nice areas on Maui – which is obviously a lot quieter than the more densely-populated O’ahu.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has grown in a similar fashion with its Ibiza expansion (although don’t expect a bridge from Hong Kong to the Mediterranean). Solar Crown’s Ibiza map is a fairly small section of the island that may come as a nostalgic bonus for those players who recall blasting around the Spanish party paradise in 2011’s Test Drive Unlimited 2, but it’s hard to say whether it’ll turn around Solar Crown’s slow start. The map, after all, wasn’t Solar Crown’s main problem.

Mount Panorama has finally found its way back into Forza Motorsport in its most-recent update, but I have to admit I’m extremely disappointed with all the fake sponsors used throughout the track. It just makes it appear totally inauthentic compared to Bathurst in Assetto Corsa Competizione, Gran Turismo 7, and even Forza Motorsport 7 – all of which feature real sponsors. It feels like a bizarre step backwards for the series, but hopefully it can be redressed. The update arrived along with a bunch of antipodean automobiles that have largely been seen in the series before, but nonetheless appeal to me as a dedicated Australian meathead. There’s only one new car, but it is a great one: a 1991 HSV Commodore VN Group A SV. If there’s one thing I like more than Australian cars, it’s the 1990s, so this fills both of those criteria.

And speaking of the ’90s, Need for Speed Unbound just added a motorbike, which is a surprising and impressive first for a series that’s literally celebrating 30 years since its 1994 debut this month.

So, sure, there’s been plenty of tinkering still going on beneath the bonnets of most of the biggest racers in the business, but very little new blood in the genre in 2024.

That’s worrisome, particularly as younger generations continue to exhibit an increasing disinterest in cars in general, but I do think 2024 is probably just an aberration.

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