Updated on July 11, 2023, by Ritwik Mitra: Racing games have a rich history of delivering excellent gameplay loops as players complete tough circuits and challenges while trying to reach and maintain the highest speeds possible. The following open-world racing games on this list all struck gold with excellent driving mechanics, interesting events, and tantalizing maps that are begging to be explored. Although these genres do indeed dominate the open-world market, there have also been a handful of fantastic racing games over the years taking take place in enormous game worlds that players are free to drive around and explore. When people think of open-world gaming, they tend to imagine action-adventure games and RPGs. RELATED: The Most Realistic Racing Games Ever Still, when an open-world game is done right, it can create a fantastic gameplay experience for the player that is hard to top.
Unfortunately, this has led to numerous lackluster releases that shoehorn in an underwhelming open world for marketing and advertising purposes. Open-world gaming has become a powerful commercial force in the industry today, with many iconic IPs ditching their tried and tested gameplay formulas to try and get a piece of the success, including famously linear franchises like Sonic.
