A racing game is any game that involves competing in races through a
surrogate playing piece or vehicle, either getting it from one point to
another or completing a number of circuits in the shortest time.
The car hurtles down a rutted dirt road at 35 miles per hour somewhere
in the Mojave Desert, bucking and swerving, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Thrun, the youngest person ever to head Stanford's famed artificial
intelligence laboratory, clings to an armrest. Mike Montemerlo, a speed
coding computer programmer and postdoc, is wedged in the backseat
amid a tangle of wires and cables.
Reuters reports a study performed by German researchers that investigates
whether playing racing games can promote risk taking in actual road traffic
situations.
The researchers found that the frequency of playing racing games was
positively associated with competitive driving, obtrusive driving, and car
accidents; a negative association with cautious driving was also observed.
In video games, you can have your driving clean or dirty. In the clean lane,
games like Gran Turismo are fairly realistic racing simulators that punish
you if you abuse your car too badly. In the dirty lane, games like Twisted
Metal and Burnout reward you for creating the most spectacular vehicular
carnage imaginable. It can be quite a rush, and you don't have to worry
about getting your license revoked.
The new game features 35 vehicles that run the gamut from muscle cars to
high performance prototypes and 16 tracks that cover such racing
environments as city streets, exotic jungles and traditional raceways.
You start the game as a rookie tackling 34 different challenges, each of
which unlocks more cars and tracks once you’ve unlocked all of them,
you can mix and match cars, tracks and game types to create a unique
experience every time you play. If you’re good enough, you’ll even
uncover a few hidden goodies.
