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notthenameiwant [he/him] @hexbear.net
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What are the best Racing games ever made?

Decades:

70s , 80s , 90s , 00s , 10s

Genres:

2D Platformers

Bullet Hell / 2D Shooters

First Person Shooters

Flash

Real Time Strategy

Roguelikes

Visual Novels

Welcome back. This part of the series will be primarily focusing on genres. So far I have [Turn based RPG, Action RPG, Board Game, tabletop RPG, Arcade Game, Third person shooter, MMO, Action, 4X (Civilization-like), 3D Platformer, Dungeon Crawler, Card Game, Point and click, Indie, Text dungeon, Souls-like, Stealth, Rhythm, Horror, Metroidvania, Survival, Sandbox, shoot/beat 'em up, City Builder, Adventure, Simulation, Puzzle, Fighting, MOBA, Real Time Tactics, Grand Strategy, Walking simulator, Tower Defense, Sports, Idle, Trivia, miscellaneous, and Casual] as available genres. Let me know if I missed something, and I will try to get it added.

This is eventually all going to get compiled into one megathread for people who want gaming recommendations from Chapos specifically. Other consoles and genres will come in sporadic subsequent threads. Please contribute to previous threads if you missed them. This is meant to be an exhaustive list.

Expanding on your choice(s) is definitely a plus. Not everyone knows about or has played non-mainstream titles.

27 comments

  • Gran Turismo 4 is probably the best for a realistic racing game. The car list, amount of events, endurance races with tyre degradation and pit stops and realism was unparalleled by anything else at the time in 2004, at least on console. So much to do on that game with great physics for the time. Still more fun than most racing games released in the 17 years since.

    As far as arcade racers go, it has to be the original Need for Speed Most Wanted. That was the first arcade racer to combine a open world, a police chase system, car upgrades and even a plot/story together. Almost every arcade car racing game since then, including most need for speed games, has been based on that formula or uses aspects from it. There's a reason why the Burnout franchise changed to the open world format with Burnout Paradise and why the Forza Horizon and The Crew games are open world, and it's because of the standard set by Need for Speed Most Wanted and Underground 2.

    If you don't like the open world format in arcade racing games, Burnout 3 Takedown is just perfection. The tracks, cars, gameplay and soundtrack are some of the best in any arcade racer. There's even an Xbox 360 version with improved graphics.

  • Yakuza 0/Kiwami are excellent slot car racing simulators. It is quite frustrating that they keep interrupting the otherwise excellent racing with some side plot about organized crime. Personally, I think Kazzy-Kun's backstory as a member of the Yakuza should just be scrapped or not constantly brought up because it really detracts from the main focus of the game

  • A few of my favorites:

    MarioKart Wii — probably the best party game racer. it's great to play splitscreen and the motion controls add another layer of fun over other mariokart titles.

    Dirt Rally — a great rally driving game that's realistic without being unapproachable. tons of good tracks mapped from real-world ones.

  • Gran Turismo 2 and 4 are personal favorites, 4 is a decent mix between some "realism" (You can actually feel cars have some weight) and arcade gameplay, it's a great great game for people who like to collect things.

    On the simulation side, rFactor 1 is great to me, it's a classic, it works well, it has a realistic physics model despite it's age and there are some good mods for it, plus it's ridiculously easy to set up a server and race with a friend. The AI is a bit op imo, loves to crash into you for some reason. Assetto Corsa is a favorite of mine, I don't like it for the driving against the AI but for the content it has, I fucking LOVE playing the Mazda 787B, the Audi Quattro S1, Porsche 917K and so on, it has a good number of fun cars to drive around in hotlaps. I haven't played iRacing, don't know if I ever will... it's expensive and you must be really good at simracing to dedicate enough time for it, I'm more of a casual sim driver.

  • Test Drive Unlimited was the last racing game I ever got into. You're on an open world island and you can drive around to do specific tasks for money that eventually turns into more cars. There was a setting to change how realistic the handling was too. The collision was somewhat weird and the pc port had an issue with invisible cars so it was hard to get back into when I tried it two years ago. If you use headphones the sound design is ridiculously good.

27 comments