You hear that? It’s the sound of all of the racing games trying to catch up to first place, even though they’re only half way around the track while our winner stands on its podium with the gold trophy in hand. Here are the results of our first staff game of the year vote – chosen by the people regularly contributing to the site over the past year.
This year has been an odd one for racing games – although there have been more than last year, there hasn’t been that big Need for Speed release that we’re used to seeing towards the end of each year and there have been more quirky entries such as Toybox Turbos which, alongside GRID and F1 2014, only launched on last generation platforms – two of those didn’t even make the chart.
Although not entirely comparable, arguably the biggest racing face-off this year was the one between the Xbox One’s Forza Horizon 2 and the PlayStation 4’s Driveclub. Both of these were great games, with Forza building upon its predecessor and Driveclub being a new direction for former MotorStorm developers Evolution. Forza Horizon 2 managed to get third place in our vote.
Despite the online issues which plagued the launch of an otherwise very competent racer, Driveclub managed to grab the second spot in our voting and you can see how that makes sense now. With the dynamic weather effects in place, plenty of fixes, and an online system which isn’t broken, Driveclub is a stunning example of a racing game.
But throw all of that realism away – all of those scratches and dents on the cars, the handbrake turns, and the destructive collisions – and you’ll find our favourite racing game this year: Mario Kart 8. It’s a landslide victory to say the least, with the game grabbing 42.4% of the votes, a staggering 15% more than Driveclub’s 27.4%.
With stunning visuals at 60FPS, some incredible track design complete with anti-gravity sections, and plenty of wacky fun to be found, it’s perhaps the purest example of what a racing game should be – it’s a high speed romp that is an incredible amount of fun in multiplayer.
Mario Kart 8 is TheSixthAxis’ Racing Game of the Year 2014.
Don’t forget to vote for our Community Game of the Year – you have until Friday!
freezebug2
To be fair DriveClub kept me hooked until single player completion, and the online modes which work now albeit ‘intermittently still’ are novel but I don’t feel a great draw back to the game as I have with others over the gens.
That list just screams for Polyphony Digital to adorn us with their their next gen sequel quick-sharp!
RFC2007
Driveclub shouldnt have made this list at all. What a joke
evildurka
To be fair though you can’t vote for something you haven’t played and if drive club is all you have played and you actually enjoyed the single player or picked it up after most of online stuff was fixed then you may be inclined to vote for it. Also as pointed out this is a playstation-centric site, if you went on an xbox equivalent(if there is one?) Forza would more than likely have won or been second to mario kart with drive club getting slammed.