Obviously I'm not including burnout as the fun in that is trashing opponent cars while you're racing; for myself I enjoyed some of the earlier entries in need for speed (never played the later ones) cause I could crash into other cars and knock them off cliffs and beat them around to give myself an advantage; I just don't know what draws people to say for example Gran Turismo vs.....I don't know, I don't know any other racing games. Other than the 'crashing into other cars' factor, I don't know what the draw to one racing game vs another is.
Some games definitely have better, idk, road feel? Like the sense of being in control of the vehicle, and that the world behaves in ways you can predict and make sense of.
Like i've played games where the vehicles are very floaty, skidding and sliding is unpredictable and hard to control, and sometimes you'll bounce off terrain in weird directions. And then there's other games where the vehicle behaves exactly the way i expect it too and I am one with the road (or air, or whatever). In those games if something goes wrong I'mm be able to identify why and what mistake I made.
I was playing cyberpunk a while back and really didn't like the default car handling. Very floaty, terrible breaks, hard to control. A installed a mod that let me adjust the down forcen torque, weight, and braking response of the vehicle and it felt night and day better, turning moving around the city from a dreaded chore to an "i am cool cyber guy" experience. Well, cyber girl.
I think with the realistic games there's a lot of strategy in how you interact with other cars and the track. Like where to position yourself so you can accelerate and pull ahead in the next straight away, how you conserve speed in a turn, how you change your racing to account for different track conditions. I think that white nuckle, on the fly combination of skill and problem solving appeals to people.
Ah, fair; I've never been good enough at racing games to truly grasp the different feel of how cars handle, though I do also usually specifically choose cars with good 'handling' stats. I've been meaning to get to cyberpunk as well; if I find I hate how the driving works I'll keep in mind I can mod it to be better.
I've never been good at racing games though; I could never grasp the 'feel' of it like I do with FPSes and roleplaying games (also racing really wasn't for me).
Word. I'm no good at them, either. I never put enough time to really get it. I can do races in non-racing games with mandatory racing sections but i wouldn't know what to do with GT.