Beginner Friendly?

[WoojTheTall]

Is PC2 a good racing game for beginners? Or should I get a Need For Speed game?

[Hitman Braun]

Get Automobilista 2 and if you like Formula 1 get the new Codemaster F1 2020 out next week. Both great games.

[CBR JGWRR]

Define beginner friendly...

Project Cars 2 is a racing simulator. Need For Speed games are arcades.

Racing simulators try to match real life as best as possible within the constraints of mass market videogames, and are often benchmarked against real racing drivers. You could teach yourself to drive a real life car through games like Project Cars 2, Assetto Corsa, RFactor, iRacing etc. if you have a wheel and pedals setup. (console games like Gran Tourismo and Forza try to do the same, but they are more limited by the consoles than PC games are, and aren't quite as good because of the hardware they run on)

Most of them will start you off in beginner friendly cars, and then progress onto the much faster cars - in Project Cars 2 for example, you start off in career mode with your choice of go karts (the standard beginners format for racing drivers; very few professional racers didn't start with go karts) Ginetta Juniors (which are a beginner racing car for 14-17 year olds) and something effectively a Formula Ford level car with a different name and shape. (one of the slowest single seater racing cars going) By the end of the career mode you are racing in cars like Le Mans Prototypes, Indycar, World Rallycross and remakes of Formula One cars.

Need For Speed by contrast, is much less realistic. The cars look nice, but the underlying physics engine is designed for style and showing off more than accurately attempting to replicate a car's behaviour.

So, it matters a lot what you mean by beginner friendly.

[MaggaMelon]

If i were you i would get a Need For Speed game or Forza Horizon, or something like that.

[stondman18]

beginner friendly? yeah. sure. the best thing about discipline motorsport, is for you drivers to learn the car. the control are very tuneable af towards your liking. so yeah. better than ACC for beginners

[Nats]

Well you could get Forza or Need for Speed but then you would be missing a superb racing game and end up playing an arcade game instead.

I would say PC2 is the prefect game for beginners. The cars are well planted and stable, and there are loads of cars and tracks to try, and the career is wonderful. And its an extremely exciting game to play. Choose an LMP car or a good GT car (like the Mclaren GT) at Donnington or Oulton Park for your first few games, or choose the Ginetta Junior career, and work you way from there. Put the AI difficulty on 40% though and try to keep away from wet races as they are more challenging.

There are other racing game options but they are generally more simulator-like whereas PC2 is just a great racing game and very addictive not to mention incredible beautiful.

There is a demo so you could try that first.

[WoojTheTall]

Thank you all for all of the answers. And thank you especially CBR JGWRR for defining the differences between PC2 and Need For Speed. I downloaded the PC2 demo and am leaning toward PC2. I will be playing on gamepad not a wheel, I don't know if that will make a difference.

[CBR JGWRR]

Originally posted by flatversech1:

Thank you all for all of the answers. And thank you especially CBR JGWRR for defining the differences between PC2 and Need For Speed. I downloaded the PC2 demo and am leaning toward PC2. I will be playing on gamepad not a wheel, I don't know if that will make a difference.

It does make a difference - a wheel and pedal setup enables you to be much more precise with your inputs, and so the laptimes for wheel users are typically lower than pad users in the same car/conditions.

But as a new player, it will probably be quite some time before what stops you going quicker is the fact you are using a pad instead of a wheel.

[morgoth13]

The main thing is just to give it time. It's not immediately easy to drive(few sims are), especially if if you're used to more accessible games like NFS. You'll have to kind of re-learn the feel on your controller for how much gas/brake/steering is too much. Check out some of the different controller setups people have posted here, in other forums, and on youtube. A lot of people have settled on widely different options, hopefully one will work for you. But the biggest thing is just giving it a few days to get used to it yourself.


A few of the cars are quite difficult to drive, but most work just fine. If you do get the game and one is giving you problems, just try another car. The Ginetta Jr and GT5, as well as the vintage Escort are often recommended as good starter cars. Also, you'll learn really fast that when starting in practice mode your tires will be too cold to drive hard with for a couple laps. You'll get used to that, but Time Trial mode is good for learning since they will start all warmed up.

[Pharaoh]

Learning to drive a simulator is very similar to riding a bike you got to get used to how the car feels.

[Proxy]

Originally posted by flatversech1:

Is PC2 a good racing game for beginners? Or should I get a Need For Speed game?

PC2 is a driving sim, Need for Speed is a driving arcade. Sims ARE NOT beginning friendly.

[WoojTheTall]

Thanks for all the responses. I decided on PC2.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by flatversech1:

Is PC2 a good racing game for beginners? Or should I get a Need For Speed game?

In terms of simulation (or high physics simulation), Project Cars 2 is very beginner friendly, but PC2 is not an arcade (low physics simulation) game like NFS and if you try to drive at PC2 like you drive at NFS you will be driving on walls/dirt/grass and crashing all the time.

[Baba Bomba]

If you set the ai to it,s lowest level, then you can even win with your eyes closed :-)

So yes, it definiatly for beginners as well!

[Nats]

I certainly found PCars and PCars2 easy to learn but challenging to master in terms of getting a good time, I think that is the sign of a great game. But they both also have great careers, superb visuals (by far the best in any racing game to date) and really exciting racing.

Some slight improvements such as being able to save mid-race/mid weekend, adding pre-planned pitstops, maybe proper yellow flags and safety cars, and perhaps some Nascar staging rules for oval racing, and they would have been flipping perfect.

Such a shame PCars 3 will be a washout, but dont get me started :-(