Gran Tursimo 7, but if i’m feeling nostalgic Ridge Racer.

Cruisin USA baby!

But seriously, nothing compared to Forza 4 for me. The detail of the cars, the Top Gear commentary, and it was my first game I got with my Xbox 360. Just amazing.

Honorable mention for POD Planet of Death on Windows 95. Its super old but at the time it looked amazing and has a super cool aesthetic and rad soundtrack.

Mario Kart for Arcade/Family/Multiplayer/Party is pretty good.

Assetto Corsa is the best sim ever, very realistic, lots of variety from Fiat 500 to F1, loads of tracks and tons of mods.

Now I’m playing F1 23 and they really did fix the traction, it’s early but so far I like it

Beamng drive, I’m a huge sucker for soft body physics sims. Also the devs have been actively updating and adding content for over a decade now

Partially because I don’t see it mentioned, Destruction Derby Arenas

Racing games are by far my favorite genre, I don’t think I could pick an absolute favorite, so I’m just gonna ramble for a bit.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 through Carbon are fondly remembered for a reason, they still stand up so well today. Outside of the golden era of NFS, Hot Pursuit (2010), The Run, Most Wanted (2012), Heat, and Unbound (absolute trash update today, nevermind on Unbound) are very good as well. Other games in the series are good too (I’m a strong defender of Rivals despite it being objectively subpar), but I’d consider these to be the highlights.

The Burnout series is excellent, especially Takedown, Revenge, and Paradise.

Forza Motorsport 4 and Forza Horizon 1 are the absolute peak of that franchise, absolutely beautiful games, I love the atmosphere and career pacing.

The PGR series is great as well, and only got better with every title. PGR4 (the last one) is amazing. This team also developed Blur before shutting down, basically Mario Kart with real cars, which is massively underrated.

The Flatout games (1 and 2, we don’t talk about 3 and 4 is eh) are great. Bugbear also developed Wreckfest, which is a spiritual successor that improves on the original in almost every way.

Driver: San Francisco is one of the greatest games ever made, and I’ll never forgive Ubisoft for abandoning the series.

The Motorstorm games are great, and Evolution Studios also worked on the excellent Driveclub before being bought and merged into Codemasters (and later EA…)

Enthusia is another super underrated one, really unique progression system that encourages you to drive interesting cars instead of the fastest.

The DiRT and GRID franchises have some great entries as well, especially DiRT 2/3 and GRID 1/2. Codemasters also developed FUEL, which I think held the title of biggest video game world for a long time (it might still if you don’t count stuff like Flight Simulator).

Split/Second is excellent despite its shitty PC port.

There’s a bunch of great indies as well, Distance, Redout, Inertial Drift, Horizon Chase Turbo.

There are lots more, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo, Test Drive, but this comment is way too long as-is… It is also fairly depressing that most of these are dead franchises, and/or aren’t available to purchase anymore due to licensing expiration.

Gonna go a different direction here and say The Simpsons Hit and Run. Haven’t played it since the PS2 days but I was obsessed with it. Looking back, some of those levels were legitimately hard.

Rock N’ Roll Racing on SNES Uniracers is also up there, but it’s less of a racing game imo.

Wipeout, ssx, burnout, wreckfest

Does Mario Kart count? It’s probably the best game to play with friends of different skill levels.

Also the older need for speed games up to undercover.

TrackMania, give me those Eurobeats on a high speed modded track playlist with my buddies and I’ll be a happy guy

Gmod, there’s a certain satisfaction in putting together the most dubious car in existence and rolling through maps.

FH3>FH5>FH4

Forza horizon 4 was the most fun I’ve ever had in a racing game. Binge played it with a friend and then when horizon 5 came out we did the same. Although something about horizon 4 was slightly more fun

I’m not as into car games as I used to be, but I have very fond memories of live for speed and richard burns rally.