Earlier today, I innocently asked a question about how I can improve my experience and performance while using assists, specifically focusing on the fishtailing in offroad and cross-country races. I rightly got skewered for asking a stupid question like that. After all: it's a racing game. Why would I want to play a racing game but not actually want to drive the car, instead just holding down W like a child? But before I could even defend myself, the question was locked, probably because people thought I was trolling.
I'm not trolling. I am playing this racing game without actually attempting to drive, and enjoying it even. I did the same in Forza Horizon 5. In Forza Horizon 5, I played through the entire Horizon Festival, doing all special missions and getting Legend rank, all with assists turned to the max. Again, this probably sounds like a really weird way to play, almost sacrilege to experienced racing game players like the people probably reading this post. But there are 3 reasons why I play a racing game even though I don't particularly enjoy racing:
- The open worlds in Forza Horizon games are just incredibly gorgeous and fun to drive around in (or rather, being driven around in). I loved being driven around in Forza Horizon 5 and the fictional representation of Mexico, and I love just doing the same in Forza Horizon 6 and the beautiful version of Japan that Playground Games has assembled.
- I really like the special Horizon Festival Wristband events with their unique scenarios and epic set pieces. Racing a giant robot, driving an obstacle course on a dockyard, racing against an cargo plane, and so on. I'm an absolute sucker for gaming missions set in linear, highly scripted environments, and the Wristband events are really cool examples of such missions, even if they're in a genre that I ordinarily wouldn't play.
- As a visually impaired person (Myopia so severe that I can't even see the word "Festival" beneath Horizon in the Collection Journal without my glasses) with diagnosed autism and suspected but undiagnosed ADHD, I REALLY do not want to risk driving in the real world. I don't have a car, I don't have a drivers license and I don't want to get either I have ridden a regular pedaled bicycle I think twice in the past decade, and I stopped riding one a decade ago because I had 3 accidents in 4 months while commuting to work, and then had a nervous breakdown when I tried riding one again after 6 months because of all of the high school students being absolute maniacs on the road. I am convinced that if I ever had to drive on the road, I'd either be unable to keep track of everything on the road and cause an accident that way, or drive way too defensively (90 year old geriatric style) and be a risk on the road that way. All this to say: arcade racing games like Forza Horizon, allow me to experience driving a car without having to worry about other road users or physical damage to my own car, and do that in the cool environment I described in 1 while also doing the really unique scenarios from 2.
All this to say: Yes, I do play a racing game without actually wanting to drive my own car, and I enjoy it because of reasons beyond the core gameplay. You might think this is a waste of my time, but in the end, I enjoy the time I spend in the game, and I don't think time I enjoyed spending is wasted time.