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pablogener

a video game about driving, not racing

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I would like to play a video game where the objetctive is to just drive around, pointlessly, just laying back and enjoying the ride, but "not for real", like "in a virtual world". I wouldn't like to play a racing game because everything is about just driving faster than the bots/other players and reaching the finish line first. I want a game where you're given a car, and presented a virtual city and the "game" lets you just drive around for as long as you want. Is there anything like that, does anybody know?

tnanks in advance for your time and interest.
ps: pardon my dislexia.

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Euro Truck Simulator 2

Not exactly just a driving game, but there's not much stopping you from purely exploring Europe to your heart's content. You can get a decent amount form the demo, so it's not costly, either.

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I remember having endless fun with Midtown Madness. Sure, it was technically a racing game, but the game had the whole city of Chicago available to explore - even in races, there was rarely a predetermined path to the destination, and it had a free drive mode where you could just cruise around the city. Sometimes I'd even just drive around town trying to follow all the traffic laws - though when I got bored I'd go berzerk and try to create huge pileups on the freeway (lol it was great, I'd make a barricade of flipped cars so that no one could get through).

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Midtown Madness is ridiculously fun to play with friends too. You have to hamachi it up to play online, but it's worth it.

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gotta try that midtown madness thingy. can you gusy tell me if it accepts a wheel-and-pedals controller? that'd really blow my mind. and about GTA, you know eventually the game "makes" you run over somebody or accidentally crash a trooper and get involved in a pointless police chase and whatnot, ruining the 'really just drive around' kinda feeling Im looking for. thank you all for your responses, I feel I'm not the only "crazy mindfuck" about this...

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Membrain said:

Euro Truck Simulator 2

Not exactly just a driving game, but there's not much stopping you from purely exploring Europe to your heart's content. You can get a decent amount form the demo, so it's not costly, either.

I can vouch for this one. It's surprisingly fun and it's on sale on steam right now for $10.

You might be interested in Fuel:



EDIT: Currently $2.50 on steam, which is a good price for a fucking around in an massive world made with cool tech.

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Fuel might be primarily about racing, but I honestly had more fun going on road trips. The game world is absolutely MASSIVE and is procedurally generated (not randomized!), and going from one region to another will take 15-40 minutes in real time (a day or so passes in game time). While the world generation doesn't really ensure that you'll encounter any interesting landmarks, you're certain to come upon some nice scenery porn on the way, and it's always a fun challenge to see if you can hurl your bike/buggy/truck up to the top of a mountain.

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Rigs of Rods may be your cup of tea. Pure sandbox driving/flying/sailing simulation with realistic body physics, but demanding as fuck. To get it to run acceptably on a Core 2 T8300 and an nVidia 8600 laptop, I have to get the detail down to almost 1995 levels.

Membrain said:

Euro Truck Simulator 2

Not exactly just a driving game, but there's not much stopping you from purely exploring Europe to your heart's content. You can get a decent amount form the demo, so it's not costly, either.


I don't know about the sequel, but in the original you are, in fact restricted to how much of Europe you can explore: you can't drive to a country without an operating license for that country, which means either "working" (playing normally) or cheating your way into acquiring the necessary money.

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I like Sleeping Dogs for that. The city looks pretty good, with distinctive visuals for each district. As in GTA you might end up running over a pedestrian or bumping into other cars, but the game is lenient about that so unless you purposefully engage in a murder spree or there's a cop just about next to you, you can get away scot-free.

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It's not as open/endless as OP wants, but Out Run has been out since 1986. Any time I wanna drive around, it's that. Or any of the Out Run 2 variants, because they're fucking fantastic.

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4D Stunts Driving or Hard Runnin', if we're to go vintage.

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The best i would suggest:
"3D Driving School", it teaches you how to drive to get a license, but it's not for racing though.

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Battelfield 1942's vehicles were fun to drive around, if anything, because of the interesting scenery and situations (combat, glitches etc...)

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Burnout: Paradise can be played like this. Yes, it's a racing game, but it's an open world and you can just drive around without starting any races.

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pablogener said:

gotta try that midtown madness thingy. can you gusy tell me if it accepts a wheel-and-pedals controller? that'd really blow my mind. and about GTA, you know eventually the game "makes" you run over somebody or accidentally crash a trooper and get involved in a pointless police chase and whatnot, ruining the 'really just drive around' kinda feeling Im looking for. thank you all for your responses, I feel I'm not the only "crazy mindfuck" about this...

The game is a few years old, but I played it with a wheel-and-pedals controller. I actually bought a wheel-and-pedals controller specifically for that game. Of course, this was back in the day when joysticks were plugged in via the sound card and not USB. Come to think of it, that's kind of annoying nowadays. I'll go to Goodwill or something and see a cool joystick, only to see that it has a serial port plug. Shame to think you have entire shelves of joysticks rendered completely obsolete by modern hardware.

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that fuel game also looks very very interesting. I just wonder if it has any square-based small towns and cities to drive through? or is it just endless serpenting-on speedways? also, does anybody remember that 'midnight club' game from rockstar? I think it had a 'just drive around' mode...

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Far Cry 3, you can just drive around an island looking at beautiful environments and various wildlife. You can choose to have the radio on, change stations, turn lights on/off etc.

There are various other vehicles to drive such as buggies and trucks etc as well as some water vehicles! If you smash things up you can get out and fix it.

If you fancy company you can stop up next to some friendlies and they will jump in the seats OR you can even get out your self and sit in a different seat and let the AI drive you about :)

Yea sure sometimes you may get a tiger or something attack you along with the odd pirate, but just run it over....sorted!

I guess if you grabbed a saved game off somebody that has completed it so all pirates are dead you are totally free to do do whatever.....oh and there is also hand gliding.

I expect its nothing like you are after, but it does actually indeed allow you to do he things you want :)

EDIT: Sorry I Just read you said 'city'......yea you dont want Far Cry 3 lol

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geekmarine said:

I'll go to Goodwill or something and see a cool joystick, only to see that it has a serial port plug. Shame to think you have entire shelves of joysticks rendered completely obsolete by modern hardware.


Joysticks with actual serial ports (RS-232, not the more traditional 15-pin game port) were actually made, and even some more exotic parallel port ones. It's not so hard to get a gameport nowadays though: many add-on sound cards still provide one, usually color-coded yellow, but I don't know if they will still work with Vista/7 (there was some shit about gameports not being officially supported anymore at the driver level, but third-party drivers could be added).

Now, seeing how actual 9-pin and 25-pin RS-232 and parallel ports are becoming rare in modern mobos...well there are always addon cards, even for laptops, if you REALLY need to have one.

That being said, I never was too fond of the gameport: way too finnicky to calibrate, and as low-end as an "analog" controller could be made, with plenty of room for malfunctions.

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Maes said:

Joysticks with actual serial ports (RS-232, not the more traditional 15-pin game port) were actually made, and even some more exotic parallel port ones. It's not so hard to get a gameport nowadays though: many add-on sound cards still provide one, usually color-coded yellow, but I don't know if they will still work with Vista/7 (there was some shit about gameports not being officially supported anymore at the driver level, but third-party drivers could be added).

Now, seeing how actual 9-pin and 25-pin RS-232 and parallel ports are becoming rare in modern mobos...well there are always addon cards, even for laptops, if you REALLY need to have one.

That being said, I never was too fond of the gameport: way too finnicky to calibrate, and as low-end as an "analog" controller could be made, with plenty of room for malfunctions.


I used to use a Sound Blaster card for years that had a serial port for joysticks. Used it all the time for classics like Xwing. However, when I moved onto Windows XP and Windows 7, I could never get the port driver installed, even the 'official' sound card drivers for that card and OS stated they stopped supporting the gameport :(

It is sad, so much hardware still out there....collecting dust, especially when Xwing 'demands' a joystick. I have USB ones, but never found one I like as much as my old serial one.

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Carmageddon was always more about driving around killing people than racing.

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pablogener said:

GTA, you know eventually the game "makes" you run over somebody or accidentally crash a trooper and get involved in a pointless police chase and whatnot, ruining the 'really just drive around' kinda feeling Im looking for. thank you all for your responses, I feel I'm not the only "crazy mindfuck" about this...

If I recall, there's a cheat code you can put in GTA to eradicate any police presence showing up at all. Me and a friend used to plug it in and fuck around all the time because, well, all we wanted to do was drive like mad through the city, crashing into shit and driving at high speeds. I still recall this as being the one game (series) I did this with - as long as you put in the code you can do whatever you want for hours on end.

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