Vroom vroom. That is the sound of 11 rivals revving their engines as they blink the sweat out of their eyes and exhale years of self-doubt from their lungs. Today is their day. We have lined up these racing games on a starting grid and are interested to see how things shake out. Will the realism-obsessed driving sims take the lead with their sublime physics engines? Might the futuristic combat racers simply destroy the opposition with explosive rockets? Or perhaps a nippy arcade crowd-pleaser will soar to the finish line, propelled by the sound of roaring cheers. It’s all to play for here at our incredibly messed-up grand prix with a worrying lack of rules or regulation. Start your engines, everyone, these are the 11 best racing games on PC. 3! 2! 1! …
WAIT. False start, false start. Let’s briefly explain our reasoning. There are some guidelines after all. For this list, we wanted to focus on racing games, as distinct from driving games, so no American Truck Simulator here. But we still wanted a nice spread. So, like I say, you’ll find sci-fi speed freakery alongside more realistic racers (and at least one game without any motor vehicles at all).
Remember: if you love a particular racing game and find it absent in our list, that’s okay. We forgot it. Please correct that for us by taking to the comments and telling us why you love to zip around in that specific speeding sim.
Okay, for real this time… 3, 2, 1… GO!
The best racing games on PC
Here’s a quick breakdown in alphabetical order. If you hate scrolling for some reason, that’s okay. Just click a title to head straight to that game.
11. Star Wars Episode I Racer
Podracing was always cool. The Phantom Menace may or may not deserve its place in the dungheap of the Star Wars universe as far as storytelling goes. But for sheer spectacle, the podracing scene is a blast, not only in terms of being an entertaining splurge of special effects and cool sci-fi machinery, but also in that it establishes a fresh cultural phenomenon within a oft-recycled universe. Star Wars Episode I Racer, originally released in 1999, let you fling yourself down the canyons of Tatooine and a bunch of other planets that, no, I have never heard of before. Baroonda? Ando Prime? Oovo IV? Okay, strictly speaking the game did not do anything particularly new when it comes to racing games. But there are times when theme trumps novelty, when you can put your shiny-obsessed magpie brain to one side and simply enjoy a safe high-speed chase between the oil derricks of… [checks notes] Mon Gazza.
10. Night-Runners Prologue
What’s this coming up the outside lane? A demo for a game not even fully released? That’s unorthodox. But look, what Night-Runners Prologue lacks in final polish, it makes up for with tonnes of atmosphere. You buy your ride at a dodgy used car auction in the dead of night. You spy some notes in the paper documents accompanying each vehicle, from innocuous observations such as “low oil pressure” or “nearly empty tank” to the slightly concerning “previous driver reported as missing” or the openly dubious “licence plate linked with local crime organisations”. Soon, you too are deeply embedded in Japan’s racing underworld, forced into debt by a facelss gangster. Everything you do here is bathed in old-school street racing subculture, you can almost smell the petrol.
The actual racing involves exploring an urban nightscape of highways and rest stops to find like-minded racers to bet your money against, then blasting down huge straights and gently curving lanes at horrendous speed hoping not to miss the right exit or slam headfirst into an oncoming lorry, every win bringing a boost to your rep. As a game it’s full of idiosyncrasies that will drive casual racers mad. The navigation map is tough to make out, the street lights often eye-squintingly dim. But then there are little sparks of personality. Blasting off from the starting line before the “go” signal will costs you a chunk of reputation. Win, and you’ll not only earn cash, but your legally distinct 2000s era Nokia phone will light up with a text message that whiffs of begrudging respect: “dont let it get to ur head,” says your newest rival. With its quirks and sometimes-quirky design, Night-Runners won’t be for everyone (I crave the roads to be better lit) yet it has such a strong flavour some car tire cultists are bound to fall in love.
9. BallisticNG
I told my brother we were writing a “best racing games” list on RPS, and he dutifully listed every racing game ever released on the PlayStation 1, starting with Wipeout. I can’t include those games on our PC-only site, and yet I cannot fault his approach. So I offer him this. BallisticNG is in love with the sci-fi racer of yesteryonks, recreating its hovercraft combat zooms in a way that remains somehow deeply futuristic despite the low-poly art style. Even the development studio’s name – Neognosis – is a loving reference to Liverpool-based developer Psygnosis, the original makers of the Hackers’ favourite racer.
Trance fans of a certain age will mostly know what they’re getting, but there are some modern amenities. A “smart assist” can aid players who struggle with the anti-gravity controls, and you can play in VR (if you can stomach such speeds with a road that close to your eyeballs). It has also been “built for modding”, say the developers, letting folks build tracks using a spline-based editor. Even so, this is as close to Wipeout as you will get on PC today, outside of emulating the classic itself. I hope this satisfies my brother, who was disappointed when I said we could not include the PlayStation games he had mentioned. He said he understood, then he suggested Diddy Kong Racing and left the room.
8. Horizon Chase Turbo
If you pause Horizon Chase Turbo, you’ll discover that when you unpause the game it gives you an extra “3, 2, 1” countdown, to prep you for the big speeds you’re about to get launched back into. That is good game design, my friends. Much of this throwback road rager is as cleverly and loyally crafted. The way the racetrack and its oncoming environs “grow” into existence as the road rises to meet you, the 80s synth guitar rock that pushes you forward almost as much as the nitro in your gas tank. Its simplified Out Run feel means hardcore sim likers may want to avoid it. The car leans into the curves and bends of the road, correcting itself almost automatically, leaving it to you to control things at a more instantaneous level. This is not about accurately recreating car physics, just about accurately recreating a brief era of arcade playfulness and making the racing feel as good as you (wrongly) recall.
7. BeamNG.drive
If you have been scrolling through this list with your driving aviators, tutting at each entry with the furious professionalism of a motoring maniac, then perhaps you will find some catharsis with BeamNG.drive. It leans heavily into an accurate simulation of “soft-body physics” which roughly translates to “rally car go bounce good”. It also means crumpling car bonnets and particles of glass when the police cruiser chasing you down finally catches up. While not strictly a racing game per se, the time trials and free roaming allow for a kind of vehicular liberty. In any case, you’re not here to race. You’re here to drive off a cliff and steeple your fingers with a very serious expression as you scrutinise each dent and crunch with monstrously high standards. I am deathly afraid of you.
6. Grip: Combat Racing
Where we’re going we don’t need roads. Hang on, sorry. I’ve just been informed that actually we need extra roads. Roads on the ceiling, roads on the walls… With vehicles like those in Grip, you need all the road you can get. Fashioned after the PlayStation classic Rollcage, this arcadey combat racer sees you sticking to the underside of whatever tubular tunnel you’ve just entered, or sliding up the curved sides of rollercoaster-like racetracks suspended high above the surface of alien planets. The competition is a bit murdery. You are kitted out with tire-shredding miniguns, HUD-disrupting EMP blasts, and missiles that vindictively target the contestant in first place. Yes, this is very much sci-fi Mario Kart with those old double-sided RC cars that were massive in the 1990s. Nothing wrong with that.
5. Descenders
“Bicycles!?” I hear you yell. “But those don’t have motors!” Please, be reasonable. There is space for all sorts of racing in this world. Descenders is about barrelling down a mountainside on the saddle of a two-wheeled rumbler while trying not to fly over the handlebars and ragdoll violently into a tree. As a professional mud commuter you will be backflipping over trains and looping-the-proverbial-loop all while navigating a branching cascade of levels and investing in “mutators” that change your abilities with each run. The roguelike stuff sometimes seems a little superfluous but the feeling of the bike’s handling itself is a thumb-pleasing blend of challenge and intuition. And, god, is it ever funny when you take a tumble.
4. Trackmania
In Trackmania, the cars take second place. Here it’s all about the tracks players can cobble together from premade assets using an in-game level editor, channelling the Hot Wheels child in all of us. There have been a few Trackmanias, good heavens, but the most recent incarnation is the plainly named Trackmania of 2020. It has the benefit (and curse) of being free-to-play, so you can race on a bunch of curated and official tracks for free. But to get a decent version of the track editor, you will have to fork out some cash. The same goes if you want to see the full range of wild creations players have uploaded, such as the absurdly difficult maps Deep Dip and Deep Dip 2, the latter of which took dedicated players over a month of constant racing to finally conquer.
3. Wreckfest
Get bashed hard enough in this destructive derby and a red message will pop up, labelling the aggressive driver who hit you as a “rival”. You can then earn extra points by ramming this rival, leading to silly situations like getting completely distracted from securing your place at the front of the pack, just so you can hang back and harass the off-brand VW Beatle who tried to punt you off the road. There is something innately hilarious about building an entire driving game around old bangers. The station wagons, minis, and legally distinct Fiat 500s will spin out with delightful glee as you fishtail them on a bend, messing everything up for the tightly packed stack of competitors behind you (this is especially soaked in schadenfreude during online multiplayer). Wreckfest has a lot of the usual extras under the hood – car upgrades, suspension tuning, customisable paint jobs – but no matter how nicely you dress up your beastly bangmobile, it’s the aggression and craziness that counts. Don’t be afraid to shunt that bargain bucket Ford Escort into a stack of tires at the side of the road.
2. Burnout Paradise Remastered
PC gamers sadly never got to feel the metallic intensity of Burnout 3: Takedown, but they did finally experience true joy in 2008 with Burnout Paradise. Ten years later, the Remastered version didn’t change much at all about the game, but it did make it easier to play (uh, a bit – more on that in a sec). There are many simple pleasures to Burnout’s crashy careening: you spin your tires at traffic lights to start a race, you can dip into repair shops during a contest to refill your boost meter on the fly. And when you spot a big billboard you will often take a last-second detour to fling yourself through said advert with wild abandon, like a sumo wrestler belly-flopping through a paper door in a rural Japanese house. It is a hefty, powerful, generously fun-loving game. The cars are slightly less fragile than in previous Burnouts, letting you sometimes “driveaway” from a hairy fender bender. But the destructive silliness remains intact, with the crossroads and hilly outskirts of Paradise City inviting you to hurtle headfirst into traffic.
The Remastered version has its issues, be warned. In the absence of official updates, it has fallen to god’s own IT department to list fixes for many of those technical annoyances. But even taking this into consideration, Paradise remains a paradise. Even the fictional DJ Atomika, the obnoxious voice of the game’s tutorials and universally reviled radio “personality”, cannot diminish the game’s place among open world racers. And anyway, you can mod that jackass right out.
1. Forza Horizon 4
When it comes to “game feel” for a racer, there is perhaps a sweet spot somewhere between arcade wackiness and glove-adjusting simulation. I don’t know where that sweet spot is, but the creators of Forza Horizon 4 probably do. “This game isn’t going to bother simulating tyre wear or brake temperature,” wrote Stirling in our review, “it’s just going to assume that your car is working as intended.” Aside from the slick, low-stakes drifting, there’s a variety of loony events to take part in as you roam the British countryside in continually changing seasons. Snow will change your car’s handling as it tries to desperately keep up with a steam train. Rain will have a similarly slick effect as you pursue a hovercraft over muddy country roads. Don’t worry though, the game is set in Britain. It probably won’t rain often.
Forza is well respected round these parts. Resident RPS racing game knower Graham has called it “better than Burnout Paradise”. Some of us in the RPS treehouse take exception to such wild statements, yet both Ed and Matthew seem to agree that Playground Games are today’s pacemaker when it comes to perfect game openings and riotous hovercraft racing. In the face of such overwhelming enjoyment, perhaps we Burnout loyalists can finally lay off the gas and pull up for a rest. Forza Horizon 4 has overtaken; there is no catching up.
Yet there is a sad catch to all this praise. You’ll need to get Fourza while you can, because it’ll be getting delisted from Steam in December 2024 (if you read this after that date, sorrrrrry). There is always the follow-up, Forza Horizon 5, set in Mexico with a recognisably smooth feel. It’s not the autumnal Yorkshire Moors though, is it?
The day is over. A champion has been crowned and the losers must go home. But wait, psst! What if I told you a secret? There are no losers. All competition is an illusion, “better” and “worse” do not exist, and we only rank these lists in any order because the human brain is screwed up and hates acknowledging that the world is really a big soup. It’s true! All these racing games are equally fine! And so are the ones you love, missing from this list. Please, enter the wise realm of internet comments and sing some praise for your favourite racing game. Give it a ranking if you like, but know that it means nothing, every car is sacred and loved.