The best racing game features

Used car dealer (Gran Turismo)

Gran Turismo was always the archetype of a racing game that just had that little bit extra, beyond simply plonking cars on a track and having them duke it out. It’s a celebration of car enthusiasm and car culture and the first innovative feature in the series to really prove that was the used car garage. 

Rifling through the listings for rare machinery not necessarily available in the brand new selection was a joy, and frankly a preview of what many young players would end up spending a lot of their time doing in real life. How GT doesn’t have an Auto Trader, eBay or Facebook Marketplace partnership today is beyond us, but thankfully the used dealer lives on in the latest iteration, Gran Turismo 7.

Dealerships and car speccing (Test Drive Unlimited)

No game highlighted how it’s not all about the racing more than Test Drive Unlimited. It’s about the enjoyment of cars, from the social aspect and the customisation, all the way back to simply buying the things. On top of also having a used dealer, TDU introduced a full network of new car dealers you could look around, and configure a car live with real-life options. Different trim colours, different wheels, different paints – it’s the supercar dream made digital and therefore accessible.

TDU2 then introduced the ability to walk around these dealers in first person. Glorious. We can’t wait for this stuff to return in Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown, because no other game has done it since. 

First-person walk-arounds (Project Gotham Racing 2)

But when it came to first-person views, Project Gotham Racing got there first. Throughout the sequels the off-track interactions with the cars were next-level, with the ability to walk around and view your cars and the cars you wanted in real time. 

PGR 3 and PGR 4 added garages that you could then put your cars in and walk around. It was an advancement that heightened the immersion enormously and brought players closer to the cars they loved.

ForzaVista (Forza Motorsport 5)

Forza is not a racing brand synonymous with innovation in terms of the experience. By and large, you’re driving on a small open-world map or you’re driving around tracks… and that’s it. But Turn 10 brought an incredible feature into the fold with the release of Forza Motorsport 5 in 2013, with ForzaVista. 

This feature took detail to the next level, with you able to move around a car, open everything, turn the lights on and off, climb aboard, fire up the engine and more. A great feature that, in typical Forza style, has evolved very little in 11 years. It was great then, though.

Scapes (Gran Turismo Sport)

In terms of other ways to appreciate your cars in a static way, Polyphony introduced a massively cool feature in 2017 with the release of Gran Turismo Sport. Called Scapes, this alt photo mode allowed you to place your cars in thousands of high-definition scenes photographed in real life. 

And it looks absolutely amazing (when done right). Granted, if done poorly, your cars can look weirdly lit, or weird in terms of scale. Done correctly and it can genuinely look photoreal. It’s a feature countless GT players have lost countless joyous hours to.

Houses (Test Drive Unlimited 1)

In terms of non-driving environments in which to enjoy your cars, though, nothing tops the garages (and dealers as mentioned above) of Test Drive Unlimited. Quite simply it gives us, people who are not owners of hundreds of wonderful exotic cars, the power to have those cars arranged in a stunning garage, next to a stunning house, in a stunning location. 

In TDU1, you could scroll around them, in TDU2, you could walk around your house and garage in first person. In other words, you can live the dream. As above, TDU needs to return soon.

Autosculpt (Need for Speed: Carbon)

On to modifications, and you can’t talk modding cars in games without talking about Need For Speed. Debuting in 2006’s Need For Speed: Carbon, autosculpt allowed you to manipulate the OEM styling and shapes on cars, or aftermarket parts, to precisely tailor the look. Want a bigger chin on your E92 M3? You can drag it down. Want a very specific sized wing on your Corvette Z06? You can add it and tinker to your heart’s content. 

We haven’t seen such specifics in visual modifications since in any racing games. There’s nothing like autosculpt in real life even, unless you commission custom parts…

Electrification (Project Cars 3)

This is a new one. Not adding power as such, but how it’s added. Adding electric power isn’t exactly something you would think is cool to do in a game, but the option itself, the fact it’s been thought about, is very cool. Plus, any way of augmenting a car’s performance is interesting, we think. 

In-game it certainly proved interesting, with the low-down delivery of the electric power pairing best with high-revving engines for a broad power band. There was, however, as there would be in real life, a weight penalty to think about. Project Cars 3 isn’t exactly remembered fondly. Its transformation from sim to simcade basically killed the franchise, but we reckon it’s underrated.

Team management (Race Driver: Grid)

From drivers, to liveries, to cars, the idea of your team was shot through the centre of the original Race Driver: Grid of 2008 and it was all the more interesting and memorable for it. Yes the physics were a bit doughy and yes the aesthetic was very ‘Zack Snyder’ but this was a genuinely compelling game. So few since have dared to do things as differently as this.

Touristfarhten (Assetto Corsa)

Now in terms of more traditional features, circuits. Only Assetto Corsa, in the pursuit of a bit of real world authenticity, gave us something we’d not yet seen in a game. The Nordschleife as tourist drivers see it, in one-lap, coned-off, Touristfarhten format. Appear in a lobby in your parking spots, bumble round to the toll gate, swerve the cones and get on your way, just like in real life! 

We’ve spent hours here just chatting nonsense with fellow players and going for the occasional lap. It really is like the real thing, only in your living room.  

A properly massive open world (The Crew)

Honestly you could give this one to TDU1 as well, but that game has had quite enough mentions in this list. In fairness, while the Oahu map was expansive, it had nothing on the massive depiction of the US in The Crew. Granted, large amounts of the real United States were omitted, frankly, because they’re not very interesting. This carefully curated, very well-judged but still massive version in the game gave us sprawling motorways, incredible mountain roads and loads of famous cities and landmarks. 

It was (and still is on TC2 at least, now TC1 is dead. A debate for another time...) a fabulous place in which to lose yourself driving for a few hours. If only this game got the cars, physics, sounds and graphics of Motorfest as an update, it’d be a damn-near perfect open-world game. 

Isolation (Test Drive Unlimited 1)

For the open world online drivers among us, nothing is the bane of our lives more than moronic strangers in hideous spec cars torpedoing your nice drive, honking their horn, revving their engine and crashing into you. Back on Test Drive Unlimited 1, that was not a problem, thanks to the Isolation feature. Get you and your friends into a group on a server, hit isolate and if everyone hits agree, you get put in your own private server. No harassment. No morons. Just you, your friends, your cars and Oahu. Bliss… and I sorely miss it.

So those are our favourite features in car games. Many are quite old now, which says a worrying amount about how innovative the racing games of today are. Look and learn, developers. It’s not all about graphics. It’s not all about having your own ‘battle royale’ mode. Quite the opposite, in fact. We just want to do what a lot of us can’t afford to do in real life: own and drive our dream cars.