The 20 Best PC Racing Games

Kicking off with one of the best racing simulators ever made, Assetto Corsa Competizione focuses on the details that have likely never crossed most people’s minds while playing a racing game. The aerodynamics of your car will make a difference to its performance, as well as weather conditions and the kind of tyres you have on. Also taken into account by the developers are things like the mechanics of windshield wipers and incredible day and night cycles that make endurance races immersive.

The Burnout games were the pinnacle of arcade racers for a long while. This remastered edition of Burnout Paradise captures much of the magic from the original release way back in 2008. The graphics might seem a little worse than you remember, but the focus of the remaster was bringing the game and most of its DLC to this new era of gaming and it does that well.

Dirt racing isn’t everyone’s thing and it requires a vastly different to regular racing, but if it’s right up your alley, DiRT Rally 2.0 is one of the best ways to possibly experience it. The game offers you the chance to feel the intense action in some of the best, most powerful off-road vehicles out there on iconic dirt tracks. The learning curve might seem steep at first and the game is unforgiving and will see you spin out a hell of a lot, but it’s a lot of fun sharpening your tools and trying to master the dirt roads here.

This is an arcade sim from 2011 that has held up pretty well. The game has an atmosphere that a few have tried to replicate and even fewer have succeeded at. It has a cool x-factor that’s hard to describe. The 1970 Dodge Challenger that protagonist John Tanner radiates California energy and it’s a lot of fun switching to different cars with the Shift ability, which is still unique in racers to this day. The game’s not without its problems and it’s a little rough around the edges, but it earns its place here. Unfortunately, this game lost its license a few years ago and while there’s a petition for Ubisoft to make it available once again, it’s hard to get a copy at all, especially for PC.

Sure, there have been a few F1 games released since this one came out, but for many gamers’ money, this is still the gold standard. F1 2020 is the kind of game that comes along and revamps a series, making it the foundation that all future games within the series should be built on. The career mode takes into consideration your relationships with teammates, which you can nurture or neglect as you wish. Of course, that’s all on top of great driving.

Horizon 5 is set in a fictional version of Mexico, whose open world makes for a great backdrop to its stunning features like the weather system which makes the gameplay feel so dynamic. The visuals are hard to ignore here and rival that of any simulation racer, which is what makes Forza Horizon 5 such a great arcade game. If you’re a fan of the foundations here but like a little more realism in your life…

…then try Forza Motorsport 7. Motorsport is Forza’s dedication to replicating the driving experience like few can do and this game from 2017 does just that. It’s not without its flaws, namely the progression system and its insistence on loot boxes, but the game is a treat for any gamers that enjoy driving. The next edition of the Motorsport series is due for a release next month.

Released in 2000, Grand Prix 3 was widely considered to be the best racing sim game available at the time, letting players experience tyre wear, wet conditions and setup tweaks at a time when that wasn’t necessarily readily available. Of course since then, the advancements of the genre mean that nearly a quarter of a century later, it lacks in a few departments, but it more than makes up for that in its retro feel, capturing a moment in time with the 1998 Formula One season.

GRID Autosport is developed by Codemasters, who are responsible for a slew of great racing games, as early as in 1986 with BMX Simulator. GRID Autosport was their attempt at shifting the focus back to a more authentic racing experience and it’s an accessible one at the same time. This game blurs the lines between a sim and an arcade a little, which is a welcome addition in a world that’s often one or the other.

For hardcore racers that are serious about simulation racing in gaming, iRacing is about as serious as it gets. For starters, it’s a minimum requirement that players have a racing wheel. There’s also a subscription fee to pay and strict tournament scheduling to stick to. That kind of thing might seem like overkill to your average casual gamer, but for the 1% of gaming racers out there, it’s a dream.

Alternatively, for those on the complete opposite end of the spectrum who couldn’t care less about mundane realism at all, LEGO 2K Drive offers an imaginative, chaotic and fun experience which boasts customisation and hectic gameplay as its top priority. Racing against friends is a lot of fun here.

While racing games are often thought of as games with a wide collection of cars, of course there are other fun ways to race. MotoGP 23 was released a few months ago and sees a few key changes from the last game, namely a couple of extra tracks and a weather system that means strategy with pit stops plays a bigger part than ever.

Admittedly, racing and driving in general is a smaller part of My Summer Car than it is with most of the games on this list, but it still remains a game where racing is key and one of the more unique experiences on this list. The game’s premise is that your parents ask you to rebuild an old, beaten car in the garage and the relationship between you and it is truly magical and as close as you can get to caring for a car in real life.

Released last year, Unbound is the latest in the classic Need For Speed series that is a staple, if not the most iconic in all of gaming when it comes to this genre. Featured here is that same sense of speed and chaos that makes fans love the series so much and while there’s no truly great campaign to tie it together, driving is fun ever.

Project CARS 2 is a game that tries a lot in the racing space and does an impeccable job of executing most of them incredibly well. The game lets you try racing on ice, dirty, racing in karts and a whole lot more. The game boasts a whopping 140 track layouts across five dozen locations, with nearly 200 vehicles to choose from. It’s both a refined and broader version of its predecessor that improves where it matters.

For fans of the old school RACE 07, this game has everything that brought to the table, plus a bunch of its newer expansion packs. If you’ve been a fan of any game in this series, this might be worth getting as it’s the series’ swan song.

The first NFS: Shift game felt like a new bar for a certain type of racing and this sequel hold up to that. Something that hardcore racing game fans will appreciate about Shift 2 is its helmet-camera, which is one of the more immersive camera views outside of straight up VR. It’ll see your driver’s head shaking about on certain corners and jolting forward when a car comes to a stop abruptly. 

Split/Second was getting any Game of the Year nods when it was released, but those that played it know that it was a fairly unique premise that was executed pretty well. The game was set around a show where racers would compete against each other, but the gameplay is based around not just driving faster than the next driver, but detonating parts of the environment and taking opponents out like that. It’s a lot of fun to make an entire building collapse on someone before you overtake them.

A racing game where the tracks are the focus is… kinda genius. The mechanics of driving can be as fun as you want, but if all you have are speedways to drive on, things are going to get boring real quick. TrackMania 2 solves this problem and then some, offering layouts that require luck, precision and more. It’s not unnatural to come across a massive jump or platforms that float in the middle of the air here and it truly brings the game to life in a way that few racing games do.

As its name suggests, Wreckfest is all about causing destruction and as much of it as possible, as well as placing high in races. The great thing is you can often choose if you want to focus on driving or damaging other cars to win, so it should suit a few different types of players. There are also fun modes like one where you have to be the last person remaining, which is enthralling as it sounds.