I just got my hands on a real-live Xbox One and played a pre-release Forza 5 for several minutes. It sure looks impressive, with all the annoying details of real driving — glare, reflections, crap on your car — and there's a whole new physics engine and radically new approaches to AI. But it still felt like Forza.

Unless you just stick to playing Super Nintendo ROMs on your laptop like I do, you know that video gaming isn't a cheap hobby. The system, the games, the peripherals, the downloadable content... it all adds up quickly. Take Grid 2: Mono Edition. It will put you out a whopping $190,000!

Everything is social these days. If you don't tweet and update your Facebook status every 40 minutes, you are an outcast and a pariah. If you don't Instagram your meals, your friends will pretend not to know you. And if you don't develop a social gaming experience, nobody will buy your latest game. And that's why Grid…

My tolerance for bad, primitive racing games is pretty high, as is my love for isolated Communist video games. So when I heard that a North Korean development house called Koryo Group made the first North Korean racing video game, Pyongyang Racer, I was delighted.

The co-owner of Desert Dingo racing, Jim Graham, sent us this great bit of video of Class 11 (mostly stock VW Beetles) desert racing, shot via a camera mounted on a remote-controlled helicopter.

We're on the precipice of the Forza Horizon launch and what will almost certainly become an obnoxious shitstorm perpetuated by people who wear racing shoes while playing console simulator racing games. They'll complain about the "physics" and how it isn't "real" enough for them.

Remember the very early '90s? It was like the late '80s, but for some reason everyone started thinking about Seattle. Many of us still had our Nintendo Entertainment Systems, and some of us may have been lured into playing the game based on the Tom Cruise NASCARvaganza, Days of Thunder. You know, Top Gun in…

After being at this year's E3 and seeing the new Forza Horizon game, I realized how much I take for granted the fact that modern racing games look pretty much like actual video of racing. From a distance you can't tell. But it wasn't always this way, and some nostalgic, idiotic part of me misses that.

I was able to slither into E3 this year, thanks to my friends at IndieCade, and, following all of your unconscious mindbeams, I made straight for the Forza Horizon booth. After waiting in a long, sweaty line I was finally able to try it out firsthand, and, even better, talk to the head of the studio about the game.

Chances are good that if you read yesterday's post about that racing simulator, you're a fan of racing games. And, chances are also good that the racing games you play and love so damn much are first-person — basically, where you're looking out of — or over — the windshield. Let's meet the unsung German engineer who,…