Is this the real life? New video games galore at E3

Fewer car and racing games this year, but still a lot of fun new stuff

Odds are you are a gamer. More than half of all Americans (59 percent) play video games, doing their part to sustain this $22 billion global industry. A full 20 percent of those games are car- or racing-related. And every year the entire industry gets together in Los Angeles, where it's already hard to tell where reality starts and stops, to celebrate and sim at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, called E3 for short.

This year there didn't seem to be as many car games on display, but that could just be because introductions are held year-round now, just like in the car industry. No one waits anymore for the paper to come off the windows at the dealership to see the new models.

For instance, the new "Mario Kart 8" debuted a whopping two weeks ago, it's ancient Egyptian history in gaming terms, so it wasn't on display at all at E3. At least as near as we could tell.

 

But Microsoft's Xbox made a big splash the day before E3 opened with introductions of "Forza Horizon 2" and a new simulation of the Nurburgring for "Forza Motorsport 5." And on the same day, the makers of "Grand Theft Auto V" announced their game would be available this fall for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PCs.

When E3 opened on June 10, there was still news to be made. Ubisoft showed off its new cross-country car game "The Crew," which allows you to drive like a complete, reckless maniac coast-to-coast.

“It takes you and your friends on a reckless ride inside a massive, open-world recreation of the United States,” Ubisoft described it in a statement.

And who doesn't want to do that? Programmers intricately mapped out 100 miles of city streets including highly recognizable locations in several major cities (The Strip!). There are also wildlands. We watched three guys race through Las Vegas, Yosemite and the sand dunes of western Michigan along the Great Lakes, forcing pedestrians and bears alike to dive for cover.

“It's a huge playground,” said Crew producer Ahmed Boukhelifa. “From illegal driving on the streets to competition on racing circuits.”

Before you start you choose your car and set it up for the terrain you plan to tackle. We watched gamers convert Camaros and Mustangs into off road racers, with massive tires and big rally lights. Turned out to be the right setup.

While a normal drive from New York to LA would take three days or longer, Boukhelifa said, in "The Crew" you do it in about three hours.

"The Crew" will be released Nov. 11 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PCs.

 

Next year's "Batman: Arkham Knight" is Warner Bros.' third and final installment in its "Arkham" trilogy. In it, the Caped Crusader takes on all his enemies, led this time by Scarecrow. The star of the show may be the game's new Batmobile, which includes high-tech gadgetry and a phalanx of weaponry to create a defensible space in Gotham City.

If all that's too exciting, may we suggest "Farm Simulator 15." New on this version: wood cutting!

“You have a farm, you raise crops, you sell them, you invest the money in new fields…” said the Farm Simulator guy.

 

With excitement like that, you'll want to sit down. Playseat Gaming had race seats with matching steering wheel and pedal combos ranging from $199 to $2,000. There was even a new "Top Gear"-labeled setup demonstrated by Tanner Foust himself. We tried out the "Top Gear" “office chair” and felt a little like Jeremy Whatsisname. Playseat sells about 50,000 gaming seats and controls a year but sees much bigger potential.

A couple booths away from that was another chair company, TV Game Chair. Their kiester cans were comfy, too. Maybe even more comfy than the "Top Gear" chairs. TV Game Chair offered various attachments ranging from swing-out iPad holders to a framework that supported a keypad. Prices ranged from $360 to $500. We liked TV Game Chair's “The Office Chair.”

The best gamer seat we saw at E3 was the Simcraft Apex 3, which incorporates a roll cage and actively adds pitch, yaw and roll to your gaming experience. We watched gleeful gamers banging and crashing through racing simulations while the seat bounced them up, down and sideways, depending on what they were doing on-track. The fully optioned Apex 3 demo rig on display at the show cost upwards of $45,000, but Simcraft seats start at $20,000 for just pitch and roll. There's a do-it-yourself kit for $3,500.

All of which left us craving real reality. So we left the show and headed back to the office on the Pasadena Freeway. Now that was terrifying. See you next year, same bat time, same bat convention center.