"Good question, I have a pretty specific take on this.

My philosophy with games which imitate reality-- racing games, sports games, even first-person shooters, among other genres-- is that they should focus on being a fun game first, while creating an illusion of reality, versus actual reality. They also need to have an appealing aesthetic. Here are some examples:

1. In the 80's and early 90's when I was a kid, I played a lot of classic DOS flight simulators. The best ones-- think 'Aces of the Pacific' or something-- exaggerated the aerodynamic differences between the planes, and made other 'unrealistic' alterations just to make the game fun to play: at the same time, you could stall, have blackouts and redouts, could manipulate all of the control surfaces, had dive brakes in some of the planes, etc. The games were like 70% sim, 30% arcade-- what we'd call today 'simcade'-- and they were a blast. It also had an amazing soundtrack, attractive menus, the solid-shaded 'Virtua Racing'-esque polygon look is still pretty, etc.


2. My favorite car racing game of all time is the original 'The Need for Speed' on the 3DO. While you're playing it, you really feel like you're weaving in and out of freeway traffic in an exotic car-- the cockpits are fully digitized, the car sounds are actually recorded (first game to do that?), and the whole illusion is extremely convincing, even today. But when you really break it down scientifically, you're sitting too high versus real life (because the game is more fun when you can see 10% better), the ordinary traffic cars are going a bit too fast versus you, etc. It also has a phenomenal soundtrack, I really like the corny X-man videos, etc.


3. In the original 'Halo', on many of the levels I really felt like I was part of some big war effort-- the way the game paces the missions, the chatter, and so forth was very convincing. But when you break it down mechanically, there are like three NPCs on the screen: again, it focuses on being a fun game first, while creating the illusion of reality. It also has a great art style, memorable music, etc.

So with that context and back to your original question: from a modern game, I basically want 'Aces of the Pacific'-style simcade design sensibilities, but with cutting edge graphics, or other technologies. The new 'Flight Simulator' is very good, in that you can swing the camera around outside your plane, turn down flight model stuff-- so it's very accessible and 'realistic'.

The 'Forza Motorsports' and 'Gran Turismo' games also fit the bill. I just play them with a controller (a $20 Logitech F310 on PC, for instance)-- they put a lot of emphasis into 'gamey' stuff like music, polished menus, driving lines, rewind, while also having sim-style driving models which pretty accurately emulate understeer, oversteer, and so forth which creates a convicing illusion of driving a real car (I drive a rear-wheel drive sports car in real life, and have some motorsports experience). I also played the original 'Project CARS' some years ago, and enjoyed that too.

What's your opinion about all of this? Do you have a different take? I always like to hear other people's views."