20 Best PS3 Racing Games

Test Drive Unlimited 2 is an open world racing game from Eden Games, released on 8 February 2011. It brings back the island of Oʻahu from the first game and adds Ibiza. To get from one island to the other, you drive to the airport and watch your character take off as a passenger on a plane. The story opens with a woman named Tess telling you off for arriving late, which is a very relatable way to start a new job.

Reviews were split. One critic called it "fantastic escapism", while IGN gave it 5.5 out of 10 and said it was "riddled with problems". Players who love it recommend it as an open world driving game first and a racer second. It was the last game Eden Games released before Atari shut the studio down in 2013.

The Run is one long race across the United States. It came out on November 15, 2011, and it was the last Need for Speed from Black Box before the studio closed in April 2013. There are over 300 kilometres of road, three times more than Hot Pursuit, which made it the biggest Need for Speed game on release. Most events ask you to overtake opponents to win.

Critics gave it mixed reviews. Its executive producer promised "explosive racing that will have players flirting with disaster at 200-miles an hour", and that part it delivers. The plot is forgettable. The road trip is the reason to play, since few racing games let you watch the country change from one coast to the other.

Dirt 3 came out on 24 May 2011, and it is the first game in the series without the Colin McRae name. Its events take you across Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Trailblazers are its version of hillclimbing races. Gymkhana is new to the series, a skill mode where you pull off tricks to score as many points as you can.

A Complete Edition with the extra tracks and cars followed in 2012. Players recommend it as a fun pick, even the ones who could live without the Gymkhana. It is the easier Dirt to love if all you want is to slide a car through the mud for an evening.

Dirt 2 is the first game in the series since Colin McRae died in 2007, and the last with his name in the title. It runs on an updated version of the EGO engine, the same engine behind Race Driver: Grid. The events travel across Asia, Europe, Africa and North America, and the rallycross races run through cities like London and Los Angeles. Online, ranked matches are much stricter: only the prescribed cars may be used on a track.

Rally fans hold it up as one of the best Dirt games. It sits one spot above Dirt 3 here, and the two are close enough that the real choice is how much you want the stunts. Dirt 2 is the more serious of the pair.

LittleBigPlanet Karting is a spin-off of the LittleBigPlanet series, and the third LittleBigPlanet game on the PS3. It came out between 6 and 8 November 2012. Sackboy drives a kart, and the weapons fire both forwards and backwards. A shot fired in reverse can even cancel out a seeker missile coming up behind you.

The creation tools are the big draw. You can build your own tracks and design your own power-ups, and the game asks if you "Want to race a boxing glove through a land made of cheese?" Critics gave it mixed-to-positive reviews. Players still recommend it, and it is an easy pick for a kid who already knows Sackboy.

Criterion Games, the Burnout studio, made Hot Pursuit, and it came out on 16 November 2010. It is set in Seacrest County, a made-up place based on California and its neighbours to the north. You can race as a street racer or chase them as a cop, and both sides have their own ranks to climb. It also introduced Autolog, the system that compares your times with your friends' times.

The game has 7.1 channel surround sound and an original score for the police chases. Players keep it on their short lists of the best racers on the console. A remastered version came to the PS4 in 2020, but the PS3 original is where it started.

Carbon's new idea is the Canyon event, a race styled after Japanese tōge racing on canyon roads outside the city. When you start Career mode you choose a class, and it is permanent for the whole playthrough. It also decides which district you begin in. The story takes place during a fixed period at night, so the city is always lit by neon.

Critics liked it, though some missed the police chases of its predecessor. The Tuner side of the soundtrack is mostly electronica, from artists like Gary Numan and Ladytron. It is a very 2006 game. One of the singers on the soundtrack is also in the cast: Melody plays Yumi, a member of the Bushido crew. Players put it just above Hot Pursuit.

Apocalypse is the first MotorStorm with an urban setting, after two games out in nature. It adds supercars, superbikes, hot hatches, muscle cars and choppers to the garage. In Pacific Rift, water cooled your engine. Here, letting go of the accelerator over a big jump makes the boost temperature drop faster. After a delay it came out on 3 May in North America.

Its title sequence was made by VooDooDog, a studio doing a game title sequence for the first time, and it plays like a music video. The multiplayer servers closed on 27 August 2018, so the campaign is what is left. Fans of the series recommend it next to the first two games.

Bizarre Creations made Blur as a spiritual successor to its own Project Gotham Racing series. It was the studio's second to last game before Activision shut it down in February 2011. Blur puts licensed cars like the Dodge Viper and the Lotus Exige into a racer built around vehicular combat. The tracks are based on real places, such as the Los Angeles river canals and parts of London.

One critic complained about its "outdated rave-vibe", and the menus do look like a 2010 nightclub. Players do not mind. One player called it "basically Mario Kart but less childish, with real world cars", which is the best summary there is. Players also keep naming it in the same breath as Split/Second.

Criterion made this Most Wanted as well, and it borrows the gameplay style of the first Most Wanted, though this one has no story. It won Best Driving Game at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards and Racing Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards. Autolog recommendations now show up in the game world instead of sitting in a menu.

Its team said they built it "multiplayer first". The soundtrack includes two remixes of songs by The Who, from Who's Next. A Complete Edition with all the extra content came out later on the PS3. Players still recommend it. It plays a lot like Burnout Paradise with licensed cars, and Criterion made both, so that is no accident.

Ridge Racer 7 was a PS3 launch game, an enhanced version of the Xbox 360's Ridge Racer 6 with more content. It has around 40 cars and 22 courses, and each course is also there in reverse and mirror mode. It runs at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Like many games in the series, it opens with a full motion video starring Reiko Nagase.

A patch in October 2010 even let you play it in 3D. Famitsu gave it 36 out of 40. Players recommend it for pure arcade racing. It is the kind of game where you drift through a corner at a speed no real car would survive, and the game cheers you on for it.

Split/Second is set inside a reality television show, in a made-for-TV city rigged to blow. You fill a bar as you race, and spending it sets off events on the track. With a full bar you can bring down huge structures and towering TV set pieces, which changes the track or opens entirely new routes. It was the last game from Black Rock Studio, which Disney closed in 2011.

Players love it. It is an action movie where you are both the stunt driver and the person holding the detonator. Timing is the whole skill. Drop a building on the leader a second too early and you are the one under it.

Rockstar San Diego set this one in a recreation of Los Angeles. The open map is the size of all three cities from Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition combined. It came out in October 2008 after several delays. The team put great emphasis on getting rid of load screens, and said you could jump from career mode to an online race in under ten seconds.

There are 43 cars and 3 motorcycles before the extra content. Speeding can set the police on you, and when they catch you, you can pull over or run. Players still recommend it. It is a big, loud city that you can drive around for hours without starting a single race.

Wipeout HD was the first Wipeout on the PS3. It came out as a download on the PlayStation Network in September 2008, and Studio Liverpool wanted it to show that downloadable games did not have to be small. It takes tracks from the PSP games Wipeout Pure and Wipeout Pulse and runs them in 1080p at 60 frames per second, with stereoscopic 3D. It was delayed for a few months after reports that it failed epilepsy tests, which tells you something about the light show.

The Wipeout HD Fury expansion came in July 2009. Critics praised the 1080p visuals and the techno soundtrack. Players recommend it with Fury included. The Fury version was later remastered for the PS4 in Wipeout Omega Collection in 2017.

The sequel leaves the desert for a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean. It adds monster trucks and four-player split-screen. Water now matters: it cools your engine down, but deep water slows you down. Fifty of the 51 vehicles from the first game return, and the Patriot 85 rally car is the only one left behind.

The first teaser trailer used the Pendulum song "Tarantula", which sets the mood well. It is a player favourite, and the jungle and volcano tracks still look good on a big TV. A small 3D re-release called MotorStorm: 3D Rift came out on the PlayStation Network in August 2010, with 10 tracks and no trophies.

ModNation Racers is a kart racer built around making things. The style of the cars and characters is based on vinyl art and collectors' toys, and you can change their look as much as you want. Track Studio lets you build your own courses, with obstacles like the Devastator, which drops a crusher from the sky. When it was first announced, people compared it to LittleBigPlanet.

In the story you play Tag, a racer who never says a word. When he gets popular, his mother reopens her paint shop as a body shop garage, which might be the most supportive thing a parent has done in a kart game. Players still recommend it. A sequel, ModNation Racers: Road Trip, was a PS Vita launch game in February 2012.

Burnout Paradise took the series off its fixed tracks and into an open world called Paradise City. You start events by pulling up to an intersection, and you choose your own route to the finish line. Director Alex Ward got the idea from open world games like Crackdown and Mercenaries. Crashes still matter. If your car keeps all four wheels, you can drive out of a crash, and the game calls that a "driveaway".

It scored 88 out of 100 on Metacritic, and GameSpot was one of several outlets that named it Best Driving Game. Players still recommend it as open world fun. A remastered version with the downloadable content came to the PS4 in 2018.

Gran Turismo 6 came out worldwide on December 6, 2013, and it was a financial success. It adds the hill climb course from the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The game also has partnerships with the Ayrton Senna Institute and NASA. Polyphony even helped design Toyota's FT-1 concept car by modelling it in Gran Turismo 5 and then in Gran Turismo 6.

The game supports up to six views across six or more PS3 consoles, for anyone with a very understanding family. A track editor app came out for phones in 2015 and was removed from the App Store when the online servers shut down. Many players rank it as one of the best racing games on the console.

MotorStorm was announced at E3 2005 and came out in Japan in December 2006, then worldwide in March 2007. It is set at the MotorStorm Festival in Monument Valley. You pick from seven vehicle types, from dirt bikes to big rigs, and the ground gets torn up by every car that passes, so each lap is different. Boost heats your engine. Hold it too long and the engine explodes.

It was first developed under the title Stampede. It sold well and led to Pacific Rift a year later. Players still recommend the whole series, and the first game is the one they rank highest. For a lot of people it was the game that showed what the new console could do.

Gran Turismo 5 came out on November 24, 2010, in Europe and North America, and it was the first main Gran Turismo on the PS3. It has 1,089 cars, split into premium and standard, and around 25% of them are premium. Ferrari and Bugatti made their first main appearance in the series here. It is also the first in the series with online races for up to 16 players.

It has licensed Formula One cars for the first time, the Ferrari F2007 and F10, and NASCAR and Super GT licences joined in. Night racing returns, and a Track Pack later added Spa-Francorchamps with changing weather. Players point to it when someone asks for a realistic racer. They recommend it more than any other PS3 racing game.