That’s a broad word that literally carries within it a wide variety of different experiences. Hardcore driving simulators with such precise handling models and sophisticated mechanics are at one end of the gamut used by actual racing game and drivers in their track training. Driver: San Francisco lies, on the other hand, a game about a comatose detective jumping between people’s minds. How can the argument be made by several different genres?
We favour newer versions of realism-focused sims and games with official licenses when compiling our recommendations since new ones count for a lot in those areas. However, with a more timeless quality, there is plenty of space for older games and some classics that deserve appreciation for their contribution to promoting the genre. Only as long as they are,
- A) still playable a still playable
- B) It’s still fun to drive.
This list also aims to strike a balance between high-fidelity racing sims, sim-lite racing games that balance usability with realism, and action-oriented arcade racers.
Forza Motorsport 7 (2017)
If the Top Trumps racing game had ever been invented, Forza Motorsport 7 would be the all-conquering card that you would covertly slip into your own hand while shuffling the deck. With the FM7 numbers, over 800 cars from 99 manufacturers, and 30 circuits to stretch their wings, you will absolutely not argue. If your favourites aren’t here, have you confirmed that you’re not horse racing?
As a game with a manufacturing budget that would equal a small country’s GDP, Forza 7 is also visually beautiful. This semi-sim pushes existing top-end Xbox hardware to its absolute limits. Its silky 60 frames per second movement and crisp 4K graphics. For your eyeballs, it’s like a spa weekend.
Blur (2010)
Blur, an ill-fated effort to combine Mario Kart with Project Gotham Racing, was purchased by about three individuals. But one of the most thrilling and underappreciated multiplayer racers of all time would have been treated to those three people.
Blur took real cars and real places but then packed them full of power-ups inspired by Mario Kart and more neon lighting than any ’80s themed nightclub. The outcome was a game with two key enjoyment sources: genuinely satisfying handling and the air-punching gratification of clattering your friend with the legally distinct equivalent of a red shell of the game. It shouldn’t have played, but like the chocolate-covered pretzel of racing games, it totally did.
Unlike that particular delicacy, it was also shamelessly British, so more conventional racing game areas like downtown San Francisco and Tokyo joined Shoreditch’s chicken shop-lined streets and Brighton’s beachfront. It was torrential, the only thing lacking.
Rocket League (2015)
Ernest Hemingway is known to say that there are only three sports, bullfighting, auto racing, and mountaineering and that only games” are the rest. We’d be interested in knowing what old Ernie might have made of the Rocket League, which is a bit like his loved motorsport but mixes kerosene-powered cars, giant football, and when you score, literal explosions. Possibly not enough dead bulls for him.
We’ll admit, Rocket League is just a driving game in the loosest sense of the word, in that you’re going to spend the right proportion of your airborne time. Still, we’re going to claim this awesome multiplayer sports game as our own, no matter what. As we have set up on TG TV several times, with the addition of wheels, football is infinitely better, not least because in Rocket League, we have never had a goal disallowed by VAR.
Also read, Most expensive car in every segment
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (2010)
The fictitious police force in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit’s Seacrest County spends their time agonizing about picking the Carrera GT, the Zonda Cinque, or the Reventón. At the same time, UK coppers are busy cutting around in BMW 3 Series Touring. While the perp is busy running free, probably.
Still, pursuing them down again as the fuzz was the most fun aspect of Hot Pursuit, filled with spike strips, EMPs, and remotely operated roadblocks with each unlikely costly ‘cruiser.’ Meanwhile, the racers have an extra boost and a defensive jammer, creating a perfectly balanced police chase.
This all played out on an open world’s breathtaking, sweeping roads and combined the garage of Need for Speed full of licensed exotica with the face of Burnout distorting speed and crunching takedowns. And don’t worry too much about where 5-0 will get the money for it all. Or, for that matter, how you fit a light bar into a Carrera GT.
F1 2019 (2019)
While the F1 championship at the end of this year served up some brilliant races, every time you press the start button, the official game dishes them up. F1 2019 may be the result of years of progressive changes, but that’s precisely why it’s one of the best racing games around as well.
At its core, the sorcery is that somehow F1 2019 manages to convert into meaningful, understandable gameplay all the baffling nerdery of top-level motorsport. This means that without feeling like you’re taking an Applied Engineering test, you can juggle tire tactics, pit windows, and hybrid boost speeds. It’s also got some of the smartest, racist AI in every game, ensuring every Grand Prix plays out like a highlight reel at the end of the season. The only difference is, for once, Lewis Hamilton does not necessarily win.
Dirt Rally 2.0 (2019)
Dirt Rally 2.0 may not be able to race with your Forzas and Gran Turismos budget. Still, the art of off-road handling in a way we’ve never seen before is excellent for what it does. Dirt Rally 2.0 is entirely compelling, whether you dance a modern R5 machine through a sequence of fast sweepers or muscle a Group B monster around a tight mountain hairpin, to the point that we now insist on getting speed notes to read to us during the daily commute, wear a bobble hat to bed and have modified our name to Juha by deed poll.
Drop a little more change on the DLC, and from the first game in the series, Dirt Rally 2.0 provides remastered versions of the levels, making it a complete rally package. That, by the way, is what individuals have begun to call us, too, just in somewhat ruder words.
Assetto Corsa (2014)
Assetto Corsa had become so much a part of the sim-racing furniture that it’s hard to recall a time when it existed. As all excellent racing sims, AC first and foremost nailed the basic handling and then set about adding cars and tracks to taste. Although there are plenty of race machines sitting in there on shiny tires, the nuance of the physics model is really rarely better than when you slither around on even less grippy road rubber in an E30 BMW M3. In a racing game, we were never more keen on getting less grip.
By the time the game’s Ultimate Edition swung around, there were more than 170 vehicles to sample and one of the Nordschleife’s first laser-scanned models to test them on. Now, if we can only pull ourselves out of the E30 M33 cockpit.
GT Sport (2017)
When GT Sport was released back in late 2017 with a small car list and only a vestigial single-player mode, everyone questioned whether Kazunori Yamauchi, founder of the Gran Turismo series, had finally lost his touch. However, it turns out it was his way of gently driving players into an online racing ecosystem that influenced real motorsport. Then he went and added more cars and a career mode to the wag until everyone was indoctrinated into the cult of everyday online races.
As it stands, with a handling model that is intuitive and persuasive and a layout that borrows the best bits from real-life racing, GT Sport is the pinnacle of console simulators and Gran Turismo 7 in all but name. The car list is also expanding on a month by monthly basis, for free, and new circuits are too popping up from time to time. If you’ve ever fallen out of love with Gran Turismo, it’s time to grab some flowers and rekindle the passion (from the gas station, natch).
Forza Horizon 4 (2018)
Then here it is, our pick for the best driving game of the decade and the one that captures our love of cars most accurately. Back in 2012, the Horizon series violently inserted fun back into the Forza franchise, taking the complete car list of the series and giving you an open world sandbox in which to enjoy them. Forza Horizon 4 was refined by the intoxicating drink, incorporated seasonal weather transitions, and was set in the British countryside’s compressed, greatest hits. In a McLaren Senna, it’s literally like ripping through the intro to Emmerdale.
Most notably, it doesn’t waste time wringing its hands over being believable as it features actual cars. Instead, it’s the kind of car experience you’re fantasizing about. Still, you’d never be able to do it in real life because dry stone walls are actually concrete, and landing a 1000ft leap in a Bugatti Chiron will launch a very costly pair of front shocks into a low earth orbit. But if this whole list proves one thing, it’s that truth is overrated anyway…
