Sim, arcade, simcade, anything. I'm kinda disconnected from the genre and want to know what is considered the GOATs of racing games to try them out.
Me personally, I'd say Dirt Rally 2, very addicting gameplay.
TrackMania -- I recommend Nations Forever if you're starting out; it's free and Nations was the "meta" environment (different environments have different physics) for a long time, so there's a fuckton of custom content for it.
As for what it is: it's like the racing genre's Quake equivalent. It's also like super hot wheels. And it's like Mario Maker. You make all kinds of crazy tracks with it, like Mario Maker. The tracks feature all kinds of wall rides, half-pipes, jumps, loops, and so on, with nothing more than inertia holding you to the track; like hot wheels. And finally, like Quake (and Mario Maker), the high-level players are bat shit insane.
This is the game where you get people who can hit a jump at just the right angle so they thread the needle through a series of holes barely larger than the car while travelling at speeds well above 300mph (welcome to TrackMania, I don't think there's a speed cap). They also do it using keyboards. Seriously. High-level TrackMania players use keyboards, not gamepads or, god forbid, racing wheels.
All of that said, no pressure because you're mainly racing yourself, even in multiplayer. You're trying to get the best time on a track, and multiplayer is basically the same, except your time is being compared with everyone else's. There isn't even any vehicle collision (strangely, there's an option for it, but it doesn't seem to do anything).
Play TrackMania. Is fun.
Seconding Trackmania, though I'd recommend playing the latest one released in 2020 rather than Nations Forever. A year's access to everything is $20 and you get tons of content to play.
For a game that is at its core can be played at the highest levels with just 4 buttons it is incredibly complex with an insane skill ceiling. I'm pretty good and the difference between me and the top players is absolutely insane. The game is a bit beginner unfriendly, mostly because you are going to suck against good players because there are tons of mechanics that the developer tells you nothing about and unless you watch a video you aren't likely to understand why players are leaving you in the dust.
This is the game where you get people who can hit a jump at just the right angle so they thread the needle through a series of holes barely larger than the car while travelling at speeds well above 300mph (welcome to TrackMania, I don’t think there’s a speed cap). They also do it using keyboards. Seriously. High-level TrackMania players use keyboards, not gamepads or, god forbid, racing wheels.
The max speed is 999 km/h, which is only acheivable with speed drifting, but speed in excess of 800km/h are not uncommon to hit in certain kinds of tracks. Your statement about controls also isn't correct, most of the top players play with controller, but there are some that are keyboard players, there is even a couple insane ones that play wheel (most notably Granady).
Huh, I was under the impression that high level players used keyboards and that gamepads were unusual. I was almost certain I'd read that keyboards were considered better because they were full-on/full-off instead of analog; the logic being that it let you respond faster. Where an analog stick would have some ramp-up time when you switch directions, a keyboard would register a full press the moment the key is pressed far enough to complete the circuit. Meanwhile, the physics of Nations were made with keyboards in mind, so analog controls wouldn't offer that much of an improvement.
At least, I was sure that's what I'd read.
Edit: that may have been before TrackMania 2, I'm not even sure if Nations supports analog controls. I haven't played any of the games after Nations/United.
I really enjoy open world racing games. Forza horizon and the crew being two of my favourites.
Forza Horizon 4 is my favourite, 5 is mostly meh.
Then we have Beamng, that is increadible
Speaking of Forza Horizon, they're really cheap on Steam currently. FH4 is only 4 dollars.
FH4 is only 4 dollars
What country do you live in? For me it's currently $/€14 in the regular version, 20 for the ~~deluxe~~ ultimate edition.
Also note that the game will be getting delisted in december, so now might be the last chance to get it at a discount.
It's 16 canuck bucks for me here. You must get some good pricing in your region.
Favourite racing game is always highly dependent on what I am looking for.
Forza Motorsport 4 (Not Horizon) was one of the best racing simcades i've enjoyed playing, it has solid sim-ish racing and it is very satisfying to build up a garage and take a car for a spin on some of the gorgeous original or real life racetracks. Unfortunately, it's an xbox 360 exclusive and not backwards compatible on xbox one or series x, so not really playable on current systems. I am stll looking for a similar experience on a modern pc.
I also enjoy "Project Cars" and it's sequel "Project Cars 2". I can easily play the games on my current PC or the Steam Deck, but the game can be challenging on a gamepad - not impossible, but managable. It does lack some beautiful original tracks as it only features real life circuits and it does lack the satisfaction of having to "earn" and build up a collection of cars and making them your own. Unfortunately, both games have been delisted on storefronts and can no longer officially be purchased, but if you can get your hands on a PC Key, you can still enjoy the games on a modern system.
If I want to enjoy some sim racing, I'll go with Assetto Corsa or Assetto Corsa Competizione. Great fun with a steering wheel, not really my thing with a gamepad. Modding possibilities for AC are basically endless on PC, but again, lacking some sort of progression system that will allow you to build up a car collection.
Forza Horizon 3 with its Hot-Wheels Expansion was probably my favourite open-world arcade racer, unfortunately it's also delisted, and while I still have the physical xbox one version, that means I can't play it on PC. Forza Horizon 4 (with the Lego expansion) is the next best thing (still far better than FH5) and is still available on PC, but will also be delisted in december (grab FH4 while you still can!)
I have also spent a lot of time playing Burnout Paradise, but I still prefer Burnout Revenge over it's younger open-world brother.
Wreckfest is a great spiritual succesor to the already great Flatout 1/2 and certainly the best banger racer you can currently get. The damage model is very convicing and it's good fun to wreck some CPU racers.
BLUR - an underrated battle racer, with a really fun 4 player splitscreen. Calling it "Mario Kart with real cars" is, imho a bit too simple, but it does get the point across quite well.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005) - early 2000s yellow/brown tinted aesthetics aside, the game still looks good today and police chases can go on forever. Great fun.
Not a racing game, but a honorable mention: American/Euro Truck Simulator 2, bought it as a joke back then, but it does feel cathartic at times.
I miss the arcade-y feel of older racing games. Everything these days tries too hard to be a simulator, that they end up stripping the fun out of it. I want sparks to fly out of my tires when I drift even though they're rubber and wouldn't actually do that, I want wacky announcers with color commentary, I don't want to shift gears.
I want games like Ridge Racer and Need for Speed to make a comeback.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit or Burnout: Paradise might be the closest to what you're looking for. They're both open-world games, but I don't think they really have that open-world filler that you see a lot of. They both got remastered releases in the last few years.
Hot pursuit is barely an open world game. There's never a point to find around in the open world, in fact most people might even miss that you can do that.
Not a "racing" game but you can race in BeamNG (and even do multi-player with a mod.) After trying it, other games feel underwhelming to me.
At the moment Assetto Corsa and Wreckfest.
Assetto Corsa because it's a simracing sandbox. I've modded it to hell with Content Manager and CSP. I also have a lot of paid mods for mainly formula cars like the RSS Formula 1/2/3/4 cars and the VRC Formula E cars. The AI is the perfect level of silly to cause absolute mayhem with the right settings, but also pretty interesting races when you want them to behave.
Wreckfest is a joy on the Steam deck and for casual mayhem. It still has a nice driving model imo, while remaining casual. The maps are optimized for crashing into others which means you're never safe.
Assetto Corsa Competizione (Sim), if you like GT track racing.
Dirt (series) - because I love rally racing.
Motorstorm (series) - because racing across an active volcano is fun as fuck.
Carmageddon (series) - because it’s insane and hilarious.
Twisted Metal 2 - not really a racing game, but close enough.
Art of Rally mixes fun arcadey accessibility with realistic handling for a fun stylish experience imo.
I love Dirt Rally 2. Oddly enough I’m not too good at it but it becomes a sort of groundhog day simulator as I continue to comically fuck up a run and reset to try and hit tight timing windows and optimize, resulting in a wave of excitement when it all culminates to eventually pushing me over the finish line
I’m a huge fan of Burnout Paradise. The crash physics and cameras are so addicting that I’ll drive up and down the same street just flipping my car on its roof using the same split ramp just to see the carnage. The driving is a wonderful arcadey feel that makes insane turns easy to pull off, and the crashes make those insane turns addicting to completely fail.
Many people say the early Burnout games are better, but I’ve never played them and Paradise has remained entertaining for 17 years
There a quite a few favourites over the years.
Crash Team Racing is the pinnacle of kart racing games. The driving is more skill-based than the leading brand name, and it doesn't have shitty rubber-band AI.
Star Wars Episode 1 Racer is still great fun, easy to learn but hard to be good at.
Nothing compares to F-Zero GX. The abandonment of the franchise is a travesty, and should be considered abuse of the gaming community.
Need For Speed Underground 2 I would list as a solid GOAT for the genre of open world arcade racing.
Ridge Racer Type 4 was a game that absolutely ooze with style in every aspect. The graphics were up there with the best of them at the time, cars ranged from simple to utter batshit in design and performance. UI both in and out of races is iconic, holding a motif that is both a racing aesthetic and minimal design, keeping the details only where they’re needed. The music moving from the 90s rave of the older games, over to house was a bold move but it works perfectly. It fits exactly how it needs with the course settings, gameplay and overall aesthetic.
Wip3out while the previous games may be more iconic due to the groundwork laid out by the Designers Republic. Even though they gave the series its icon graphic design style, the third game is the most definitive entry in the series (imo). It continues the design and refines that groundwork brought by tDR. The gameplay is fast and can be intense. Visually the graphics were incredible at the time with track designs that influenced the few later games with new elements and environments. The music was the perfect mix of future trance and techno that still lives in my head today.
Forza Horizon 5. Why 5? Because unlike 4, it doesn't crash to desktop a lot... although 4 has more to do and a more interesting season system (the tropics has "seasons" but not the snow and scorch temprature swings like people in temperate latitudes are used to), 5 just has a bit more polish, and bold move with taking it to Mexico.
I also am watching the progression of Forza Motorsport 7, because the FM series is basically not-Gran-Turismo and I can play it on my gaming PC (no consoles here).
I used to be all about Gran Turismo back in the day, as well as the DiRT series and even Race Driver. Codemasters games, though, tended to be very arcadey. I need to get Dirt Rally 2, as I played a bit of 1 and it was pretty good.
I also remember Spintires and its spiritual successors Mudrunner and Snowrunner. Fun off-roading sandbox games with mud physics... because no offroading game has even attempted that in the level of detail ST/MR has. Also, the original publisher of ST is the worst, and they've broken the original game, just get Mudrunner or Snowrunner for a better experience.
Also, I am on the lookout for spacecraft racecraft games. I want to use my 4 axis stick for something other than Airbus landing challenges.
Also the 1-2 combination of Automation (car company simulator) and BeamNG.drive. You can build a car in Automation and export it to BeamNG to drive around in. Bonus props to BeamNG being the only car sim I know of that has decided to actually model the physics of an automatic transmission. This is something I wished other games like Forza Horizon and Gran Turismo would do, as a lot of modern cars are Automatic only and in every case they just turn the auto into a stick... and it's terrible, as automatic gear ratios don't work for manual transmission driving. If we can upgrade the transmission, then we can have a better incentive to replace the slushbox with a crashbox if it's worth the upgrade, considering that torque converter transmissions are used in offroad racing due to having better resilience against the shock forces from bumps and jumps.
Shoutout to Live For Speed, the surprisingly detailed car racing sim by three bros that even takes clutch temperatures into account. Their latest updates added workshop-style modded cars into the game.
Forza Horizon 4. I fricking love the British countryside!
Forza 3 was peak racing in my world. Forza 4 killed my interest in the genre.
I have a work-in-progress list here, strictly games I would consider "must play" in the genre. Notably missing the Ridge Racer and Tokyo Xtreme Racer games because I haven't played enough of them to have an opinion.
https://howlongtobeat.com/user/atmur/lists/40754/Peak-Racing-Games
Mostly arcade and simcade racers though. If you're interested in sims:
For modding, Assetto Corsa is basically the modern rFactor.
For offline racing, Automobilista and Raceroom have pretty solid AI. Note: Raceroom's pricing model is dumb, kind of like iRacing just without the subscription.
For career mode, Project CARS 2 (not 3) is basically the only sim that even tries.
For online racing, ACC and iRacing are unmatched.
For rally, you're already playing DR2. Richard Burns Rally is also shockingly good for its age.
My all-time favorite was the first Test Drive Unlimited. Beautiful racing across Hawaii, absolutely no story lines which got in the way.
I have really fond memories of the first Grid game from 2008. That's alongside NFS: Most Wanted from around that time, like most people it seems, haha! I also spent an inordinate amount of time playing Gran Turismo 3: A-spec. I loved the career mode so much.
My favorite cars are the Lotus Espirit and Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR, to this day, because of Gran Turismo 3 and Most Wanted, respectively.
There haven't been many recently that have piqued my interest, other than the gang all wanting to get Forza Horizon. I don't play it much on my own, though.
If there were another track game where you work up from the bottom with a shit car in different classes of races, earning money and unlocking new parts and stuff along the way, I'd be into it. It seems most newer racing games just have generic "Engine Upgrade 1"-type options, or full-blown sim where you're picking extremely particular individual pieces and tuning everything to an overwhelming degree.
I’ve been really into Arcade Racers lately. Played the following recently:
-Blur
-Split/Second
-Ridge Racer 6
-Outrun 2
-Inertial Drift
-Burnout: Revenge
-Dirt 5
-Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
-Neodash
I’m looking forward to Parking Garage Rally Circuit coming out later this year. If anyone has any recommendations I’m all ears.
Metropolis Street Racer / Project Gotham Racing.
"It's not about how fast you drive, it's how you drive fast."
Although I haven't played a lot of them, my favorite is Colin McRae Rally 2.0, which is predecessor to the DIRT series.
I used to watch my uncle play on his computer in the 2000s.
Project cars 3 in VR is pretty slick. I still think the gran Turismo franchise is tops. I wish there was a pc version or anything similar.
I've been playing beam ng drive on my steam deck recently. Haven't got any experience with other driving games but I'm having a lot of fun with it.
When my logitech g27 racing wheel was still working i USED to play the living hell out of modded richard burns rally it was fun playing a racing sim with almost life like physics.
It's amazing that it's still the best rally sim to this day. This game is old enough to drink in the States.
Gran Turismo and Forza. I love the simulation aspect, ain't no way on Earth I want to drive a sports car. Too irresponsible.
Mario Kart for the social aspect.
Dirt Rally 1 and 2 are both very fun.
Assetto Corsa is a fantastic simulator that me and my race team has used to learn a track before we take our race car there so we know all the turns. It really feels like you're there and the game runs well and looks good low end hardware.
The absolute best arcade racer to me was always NFS Hot Pursuit 2 for PS2. The physics were so much fun and the cars were a curated selection of cool.
Always loved the Project Gotham Racing series, especially 3. Tons of fun to drift in those games. The Kudos system was definitely a unique feature.
Been playing through the Ridge Racer games most recently. Damn these are just fun to play.
Sega Rally Championship will always stand out as some of the best driving physics early on.
Art of Rally and Art of drift are hella fun "zen" games with a unique art style.
I was always a sucker for some of the cash-in Fast and Furious era car fad games. Juiced, Tokyo Extreme Racer (out before all of it) Street Racing Syndicate, NFS Underground, Midnight Club 3. They're all fun but driving is always just ok.
My short list though: Gran Turismo 4 Forza Motorsport 4 or 6 (4 is less grindy I feel) NFS Most Wanted 2
I think Forza Motorsport 2 or 3. That was the peak of the series right there. I also enjoyed Dirt 3 and PGR4.
While I still ppayed all the later forza and GT games, they lacked a good campaign mode.
Anyone know which Gran Turismo has a good campaign?
Need for Speed Porsche to be honest. The campaign of going through the Porsche eras is iconic. Buying new cars and tuning them up is really fun and you really feel the difference between the cars.
F-Zero GX - As far as pure racing goes, GX is perfection.
Kirby Air Ride - The actual racing mode is... mid, honestly. But City Trial? One of the most interesting and unique game modes ever conceived. Sad this game never got any kind of successor.
Art of Rally mixes fun arcadey accessibility with realistic handling for a fun stylish experience imo.
I love Dirt Rally 2. Oddly enough I’m not too good at it but it becomes a sort of groundhog day simulator as I continue to comically fuck up a run and reset to try and hit tight timing windows and optimize, resulting in a wave of excitement when it all culminates to eventually pushing me over the finish line
Gran Turismo 4
Dirt Rally 2
Forza Horizons 4
And the godking itself, Burnout 4 Revenge and its understudy Burnout 3.
Bonus point to Extreme-G and G2.
I’m also going to mention Generally. It was a tiny game with a small dedicated community but gods damn if it wasn’t just super fun to make maps and play community created events/maps/contests.
iRacing in the streets, Mario Kart in the sheets
Probably DiRT 2… Overall just did everything right for me, no complaints at all.
I really enjoy Gran Turismo 7 even if it lacks a proper career mode and the AI isn’t good.
Looking forward to Asseto Corsa 2 as people were really happy with the first one and I haven’t played it.
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