2024 in driving games: six things you missed

It can be hard to keep track of the constant torrent of driving game news unless you're plugged directly into the internet like Keanu Reeves in a tub full of pink goo. Let us save you the trouble of filling the bath with raspberry flavoured jelly by presenting you with some of the weirder revelations in the world of pretend videogame cars. Here are six of the stranger stories you almost certainly missed in 2024...

No doubt, like us, you've pounded several thousands of miles of digital tarmac in 2024, but probably given nary a thought to the upkeep of those pretend roads. Might we recommend karmically rebalancing with a couple of hours of Road Maintenance Simulator 2. You'll be dabbling in everything from pruning trees, to clearing snow, to placing road signs. There's even complete freedom to run wild with the line painter, if you've ever wanted to make a T junction look like a schoolboy's exercise book.

If you really think about it, the entire purpose of a videogame is to provide an escapist fantasy: in this case it's the unattainable dream of roads where the potholes have actually been repaired.

Fans have been begging for years for a new British Touring Cars simulation, remembering the glory days of wearing off their thumbprints playing the TOCA Touring Cars games on a PS1 controller. We've a sneaking suspicion, though, that people don't actually want to play a modern touring car game. What they want is to drive 90s touring cars and, quite possibly, do their own Murray Walker impression at the same time.

That's why the new Super Touring DLC, along with a classic Silverstone layout, for criminally underrated free-to-play sim RaceRoom Racing Experience was so warmly received. Containing the Honda Accord, BMW 320i, Audi A4 and not one but two Volvos from the mid-to-late 90s Super Touring era, it's immediately evocative of the BTCC's golden age. Thankfully by RaceRoom standards it's been wildly successful and it also provides brilliant online racing, so there's a good chance there'll be Renault Lagunas, Vauxhall Vectras and, fingers crossed, Nigel Mansell Ford Mondeos to follow.

If you spend any amount of time watching simracing content on YouTube you'll be familiar with Jimmy Broadbent, who went from playing videogames in his shed to tackling the formidable Nurburgring 24 hours in a BMW M4 GT4. Bilstein decided to take a punt on a team made up predominantly of simracers and influencers, including Jimmy, fellow Brit Steve 'SuperGT' Alvarez-Brown and YouTuber Misha Charoudin, and they only went and won their class at arguably the toughest endurance race on the planet on the first attempt.

Not only that but the squad has been picking up wins in the NLS series that runs regularly on the Nurburgring during the rest of the year. Next time your significant other has a pop at you for spending six hours straight in the sim rig, just say you're preparing for when you get the call up from a suspension company.

We can think of a very good reason why you might have missed this particular bit of news. Back in September Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown suffered the most catastrophic launch since Elon's Super Heavy rocket detonated on take-off and took half the launchpad with it. You likely either didn't buy the game at all based on the horror stories, or did buy it but uninstalled it after two solid weeks of connection problems.

But developer KT Racing is still beavering away on the game and recently added an entirely new location, Ibiza, to go along with its main Hong Kong Island playspace. It's a shame almost everyone has abandoned the game, because the new map, which currently encompasses Ibiza Town, is a welcome, summery change of scenery. Now that the early teething problems have been mostly ironed out and prices have dropped a bit, it might actually be worth taking another look at TDU: Solar Crown.

It was perhaps inevitable that the upcoming Assetto Corsa EVO would feature an open world map. After all, the custom road networks, complete with traffic, that were modded into the first Assetto Corsa have become something of a cult phenomenon in the simulation community.

We now know that the specific open world map in question will be 1,600 square kilometres of the Eifel region surrounding the Nurburgring, allowing you to transition from driving the surrounding roads to hitting the Nordschleife itself for some tourist laps. What's more, it's all been Lidar scanned, technology rarely applied to an area this big in a driving game, and should be one-to-one accurate unlike most open world racers which offer condensed versions of recognisable locales.

What we weren't expecting was the game will even include local businesses, including tuning shops, vehicle hire and other local firms that you'll be able to interact with. Not only that, but developer Kunos Simulazioni has put out an open call to local establishments to feature in the game. Frankly we won't be happy until the game allows us to stop off at a takeaway for a portion of intestine clogging Currywurst after a hard day's hot-lapping.

You might be able to dimly remember the brief NFT craze of a few years ago, where gullible folks were duped into spending thousands of dollars on an ugly picture of a chimp, before the market inevitably crashed and they lost a good chunk of their savings. You might expect, after how provably disastrous that was, never to have to think about it again.

Unfortunately, otherwise-promising early access drifting game Torque Drift 2 is still flogging the NFT horse and has built an in-game economy that will happily charge you $288 for a limited edition Nissan R34 Skyline Nismo S-Tune. The virtual car itself is the NFT, meaning artificial scarcity, limited edition colours unavailable to the wider player base and a general bad taste in the mouth of people who want to, you know, just play a videogame.

It's all the more galling because the game actually looks pretty fun, with detailed environments, great lighting and a clear understanding of real-world drift culture. Look, drifting fans are already spending vast amounts of money on replacement rear tyres, haven't they suffered enough?