In terms of variety, the best driving games of 2004 skew decidedly towards simulation. Unlike last year, where the games were more evenly distributed between arcade games such as F-Zero GX, tweener titles such as Project Gotham Racing 2, and hardcore sims such as last year's winner MotoGP 2, 2004's list of best racing games catered more to the gear tweakers, with games like Colin McRae Rally 2005, TOCA Race Driver 2. Despite the bent on pragmatism, it took a title that threw realism out the window in favor of glass-shattering, tire-shredding speed to take the crown as best driving game of 2004. That game, of course, is Burnout 3: Takedown.

　　I loved Colin McRae Rally 2005--hell, I loved Colin McRae 4, which also came out this year. I even ran in a TOCA 2 online league with friends for months after the game was released in April. Still, within a few minutes of loading up Burnout 3 for the first time, I knew that the game did something that no other driving game did this year: innovate. As traditionally staid as the genre is, Burnout 3 took some of the most hackneyed conventions of the racing--the most obvious being car crashes--and turned them on their ear, with the ingenious Aftertouch technique.

　　It's plain to see that 2005's driving games will continue this year's trend of more realistic racing titles. Yesterday's preview of EA's NASCAR SimRacing, due in March, is just one example. In just a couple month, we should see two likely contenders for Driving Game of 2005--Forza Motorsport (now slated for an April release date) and the long-awaited Gran Turismo 4. Among all this realism, however, could we see another arcade racing phoenix rise from the simulation ashes in 2005? Stay tuned…