Gamer girl (12) - help!

[Friendsoftheearth]

I have a 12 year old girl who loves gaming! She really likes driving cars - real ones - the junior lessons, so I think driving games etc she would really enjoy in the winter.

So I am thinking to buy her some kind of gaming things for christmas, but I have NO IDEA where to start. She loves Roblox and that kind of thing too, was massively into Minecraft when she was younger. She likes building things. I was looking at the Nintendo Switch, but that is because everyone else talks about it.

Can anyone recommend the best ones?

I wouldn't recommend a switch for driving games. Probably a PlayStation due to gran turismo being one of their premier titles.

Surely if she is a gamer and loves gaming she already has a games console? What does she have at the moment? are you looking to upgrade it?

My DC like Rocket League - it's a cross platform game so it's available on switch / PlayStation / Xbox.

Get her an Xbox. They’re the best for games, especially real feel, and encourage good hand-eye co ordination. We have 3 and whilst my 6 year old is only minecraft and occasionally fortnite, myself and my husband play crash, halo, COD, uno, forza, need for speed, sonic racing, cars 2 (yes a race game based on the Disney film) and CTR. There’s loads of “cute” kids games for the Xbox that are racing themed too, so it’s not all too grown up, as well as hasbro family game night which is awesome for friday/Saturday nights.

Mario kart is also a classic if you went down the switch route

Xbox with Forza games - you can get a steering wheel gear box and pedals with it too

If she loves gaming what is she using?

And wouldn't a switch have Mario Kart which is the most fun driving game ever.

IMO the ps4 gran turismo games are very complicated to set up and nerdy to play, in that they are pretty hard. You'd also need a wheel which is very expensive.

At 12 I'd stick to Nintendo, so many good games.

Mario Kart is a great driving game
A great building game is Little Big Planet

She has a phone for school, and she currently plays all of her games on that. It is tiny and limited. Sometimes she uses my main computer.

None of my dc have been into computer games, she is the first, but she seems to love them!

It has been particularly helpful in the lockdown.

Xbox sounds good with the steering wheel etc, and she loves driving. It would be nice if we were able to play with her too. Is that possible?

I don't know anything about gaming!!!!!! Nothing!

If she wants to continue pc gaming, you could download steam and get a bunch of racing/building games on that too, steam normally has a sale end of October so you could get a bunch of games cheap as a virtual stocking filler type thing.

You can all play on the x box but you'd all need wheels. The one i bought my husband cost 200.

X-box is the best bet for driving games - the Forza Motorsport series has hundreds of real cars. There's also Forza Horizon for more arcadey open-world racing.

PlayStation has Gran Turismo and Drive Club, which aren't as good as Forza in my opinion, but many people like them.

Both consoles have F1 2020 (although you could save money by buying a previous year's game), World Rally Championship 5,6,7,8 and 9, Project Cars 1,2 and 3 (1 and 2 are quite simulation and difficult, 3 is more of an arcade racer), Grid, Nascar Heat, Gravel, Dirt 4 and a few other games.

The X-box One and PlayStation 4 are about to have successors released, so it isn't a good time to buy one. If you wait for a month, they will probably be cheaper and there will be many second-hand ones available, as people trade them in for the newer consoles.

The Switch is not a very good console if she wants to drive real cars. It has an earlier version of Grid (which came out on PS3), Gear Club Unimilted 1 and 2, and that's about it. Mario Kart 8 is an excellent game, but doesn't involve real cars.

My 11yr old is a gamer (as are me and my husband) and PC gaming is the only way to go in my opinion. Dd has her own laptop. The variety of games is huge and much cheaper than on consoles. Dd plays Roblox (adopt me is her obsession atm), stardew valley, Minecraft and games on Steam she wants to play often come up on sale for less than £5. It's also much easier to get the older driving games rather than the latest release for £50-£80 on console.

Also you can use Xbox controllers with a pc/laptop for games that are easier to play with one, such as driving games.

Thank you for your help with this, so Microsoft Xbox one for 249.00? Or should I wait for the latest one?

You will need a wheel as well if she wants to drive.

It might be worth finding out which consoles her friends have. Some games you can only play online with people on the same system, if all her friends have one, and she gets another she might not be able to join in online.

I would say this is none time where it does matter what her friends have, so she can play online with them.

youre better off getting a gaming PC so she can use it for schoolwork and other stuff too

I am hoping to keep this is as a surprise, so maybe I will text the parents of her friends.

Big gaming household here.

Agree with @Bunnybigears that she will want to play with her friends online so worth trying to find out what they play. Some games don’t allow cross platform so if she has an Xbox and her friend has a PS4 they might not be able to play together.

The switch is the least powered console and is years behind anything else graphically. Most games for switch you could play on a mobile phone. However it does have animal crossing which she will get hours of fun out of, particularly if she likes minecraft and building games. You can only get this on switch but there are other games like Mario Kart that are fun. However the downside to switch is the games are INSANELY expensive. One game I got for £5 on the PC is still £50 on switch, and the prices don’t really come down. It’s not worth it IMO.

I prefer PS4 and PC. Gaming PCs are extremely expensive though and the PS5 is coming out soon so I wouldn’t go down the PS route. However the PS4 does have a reasonably priced virtual reality system for a future present...

Xbox is probably a good fit. I’d recommend getting the Xbox game pass - you pay less than £10 a month for access to a huge number of games. It’s saved me a fortune over having to buy them individually! The game pass is also available for PC if you went down that route. Not sure if there’s anything like this for PS4 as I’ve largely ignored it lately lol.

DS loved all the driving games, Forza etc on the Xbox. Never needed a wheel though.

You could look on eBay for second hand driving games too or as a pp suggested, you can get Xbox game pass but you don’t actually own the games, if you cancel the pass your games will go with it.

DS also loved Burnout Paradise and Dirt Rally.

Google - best driving games for Xbox One and you’ll see a selection that come up. Check them out on YouTube to see if they’re suitable and then search eBay for bargains.

Heck, get her in to programming!

How do I get her into programming? She is very much into stuff like this, even with a mother like me.

She likes coding, and has tried it at school. I am sure she would love to make her own games etc, she is very creative like that.

She would like driving rather rather than racing, but maybe she will like racing as well! I am into hobbycraft and crafting, so this is all very confusing to me.

Many of the racing games just allow you to ‘free roam’ so you can just drive around the locations.