Any self-respecting racing fan not restricted to a PlayStation knows Forza Motorsport 7 rolls out on Xbox One and Windows 10 on October 3rd. Though the wait has been made bearable by entertaining ad videos featuring Ken Block, Adam Carolla, and other surprise celebrities, some racing gamers feel like launch day will never get here. To help ease the burden, here are 7 unique console and computer racing games to hold you over until Forza 7 arrives.
The Crew
Most players first heard about The Crew when videos emerged on social media showing reviewers racing between destinations on epic journeys taking between 30 and 45 minutes. While the racing action is solid and the story is good enough to follow with interest, The Crew’s crown jewel is its open world map, based on an abbreviated version of the United States, and featuring some superb recreations of major cities. It may not be among the top PC racing games, but it may be the only one that shows your neighborhood.
While The Crew can be had on the cheap, Xbox One players received this title for free in a previous collection of Xbox Live Games With Gold.
Hydro Thunder: Hurricane
The Hydro Thunder series has already delighted arcade-goers for nearly two decades, and home console versions have captured all that magic and more. Games with Gold subscribers had the opportunity to download the most recent installment, Hydro Thunder: Hurricane, in early September. It may not be a recent game, but Hurricane plays like new with smooth controls, interesting game modes, and very clever track design. When combined with the smart system of progressive challenges and unlocks, this one has surprising depth for an XBL Arcade title. It’s also built for the Xbox 360, which is great if you don’t exactly maintain a dedicated racing game online PC.
Forza Horizon 3
If you don’t know the difference, the Forza brand is divided between its two major series: Motorsport, focused on pure racing simulation with real cars on detailed recreations of the most famous tracks around the globe, and Horizon, a series devoted to open-world arcade racing with unusual focus on realism, thanks to the influence of its simulation counterpart. Whether you’re most interested in car selection, world design, controls, or volume of content, Forza Horizon 3 is an absolute must-play. For added fun, check out Mattel’s new Hot Wheels DLC. It’s also perfect if you enjoy playing car racing games for PC online.
Split/Second
Sadly, Split/Second is a Disney product, meaning it has always been too expensive and it apparently always will be. Seven years after its release, the 7ish-out-of-10 arcade racer is still sitting at a full $20 on Steam. So, not many people have this one sitting around, but the game is one of a kind. The premise puts you in a “Reality TV” competition—I don’t understand this writing choice, it could have just been a league—in which racers trigger major course demolition from their cars. Many racing games dabble in toppling scaffolding and traffic cones that bounce off windshields to comedic effect, Split/Second will let you trigger a plane crash or knock over a building, all in an effort to slow (by killing?) the racers behind you (and everyone else involved?). If you run into it for $10 or less, jump on it.
Need for Speed (2015)
I love EA’s Need for Speed reboot for all the wrong reasons. It uses classic EA live-action cut scenes, meaning you will spend the game watching a feature film’s worth of footage of real actors in between arcade races where you’ll drive 200mph with flames shooting out the back of your Mustang for two blocks, rolling the vehicle at least 10 times every half hour, and hearing from real people how awesome you are. The experience is bizarre.
The other fun activity is trying to figure out how this is different from absolutely any other Need for Speed title.
Nonetheless, this one is available via the EA Access service—and although frequently comical—the NFS series has given us a very consistent, fun experience for many years.
Stuntman: Ignition
I like driving games that dabble in the unusual, and the Stuntman series fits the bill.
Ignition went out in the Games with Gold offerings earlier this year. If you have some patience, it’s a unique and fun video game to play with friends. Who wouldn’t want to eliminate the real-life risk for a day and swap lives with a Hollywood stunt driver? Ignition lets you do just that, splitting up races and stunts among environments grouped as movies you’ll work on, which is a nice design touch. For this reason, you never deal with characters or locations for an unbearable length of time, and you can focus on the finicky timing and collision systems that will eventually drive you away from this one for good.
DiRT Rally
In stark contrast to Stuntman, DiRT Rally is challenging, simply because you probably won’t be good at it when you start out, and this is the best kind of problem. This is the Dark Souls of racing games: it would rather run over your hand than hold it. If you can rise to the challenge, you’ll be rewarded with the best rally racing simulation ever. Period. Codemasters makes incredibly fun racing games, so this recommendation can easily be extended to as many games in the DiRT series as you can get your hands on. Rally is currently available with an Xbox Game Pass subscription.
In all likelihood, Forza 7 will arrive right on time and in impeccable shape, but releases can be unpredictable. Luckily for racing fans, we are in a golden age. Racers draw big crowds on YouTube and Twitch, MLG seeks us out for tournaments, and the online gaming community has grown strong. Most importantly, there is a giant catalogue of phenomenal racing titles, well worth exploring. Share a great racing experience that we missed!
