20 Best PS4 Racing Games

Dirt 4 came out on PS4 on 6 June 2017 in North America, and its big idea is a feature called Your Stage. You pick a setting and a few parameters, and the game builds a rally stage for you on the spot. The rally mode has no licensed content, so every stage you drive in career mode comes from Your Stage. There are also five real rallycross circuits, and the tutorial is a recreation of the DirtFish rally school.

GameSpot gave it a 9/10 and pointed to its commitment to accessibility after the punishing Dirt Rally. Players recommend it whenever someone wants to scratch a rally itch, and it is the easier of the two Dirt games on PS4.

Trials Rising came out on February 26, 2019, the first mainline Trials since Trials Fusion in 2014. It was also the first game in the series on a Nintendo console. Ubisoft announced it at its E3 2018 press conference. In its two-player mode, each player controls a part of the balance and power of the same bike, which is a great way to find out who your real friends are.

The formula is the one Trials fans know, a motorbike on a track full of ramps. Players recommend Fusion far more often, so start there. If you finish it and still want more, this is the next one to play.

Horizon Chase started on phones in 2015, and the enhanced Turbo version reached PS4 on May 15, 2018. It is a 3D game inspired by 16-bit racers like Top Gear and Out Run, and it plays like one. The music leans the same way. Brazilian fans loved it so much that a remix contest followed, and a cover of the Las Vegas track from Top Gear is hidden in the game as an easter egg.

The PS Vita version was one of the last physical releases for that handheld, which is a fun bit of trivia for a game this retro. Players recommend it as pick-up-and-play racing in the old style. If Top Gear was your game as a kid, this one was made for you.

Payback came out on November 10, 2017, as the 23rd game in the Need for Speed series. Critics welcomed the return of offline modes, but they came down hard on its loot boxes and microtransactions, and the reviews ended up mixed. An update made the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor playable, the first police car you could drive since Need for Speed Rivals. The soundtrack has 47 tracks, from alternative rock to hip hop.

It is the lowest of the three Need for Speed games on this list. The next game, Heat, dropped the loot boxes from its upgrade system after the criticism Payback got, and that tells you most of the story. Payback is still a big open world full of fast cars.

Project CARS 2 came out on 22 September 2017, with new classes like Rallycross, IndyCar and Oval. Like the first game, it was paid for in part by fans: donors got access to development builds and could give feedback while it was made. Its LiveTrack 3.0 system changes track conditions across a race weekend. The team also worked with IndyCar, so the Indy 500 is in there, and the game supports VR.

Players call it one of the best sims on the console, and the most complete if you have a steering wheel. Expect to spend some time in the menus before you get it feeling right, because this game wants you to care about tyre pressure.

Team Sonic Racing came out in May 2019 from Sumo Digital, the studio behind the two Sonic All-Stars racing games. This time the roster is Sonic characters only. You race in teams, share power-ups with your teammates, and win on points for how well the team did, not just who crossed the line first. Jun Senoue, back on a major Sonic game for the first time since Generations, wrote the soundtrack.

Critics gave it mixed reviews, and many thought it was not as good as the All-Stars games. Players are much kinder. They call it great fun, and it plays well in split screen.

Nitro-Fueled is a remaster of Crash Team Racing, the 1999 kart racer Naughty Dog made for the original PlayStation. It also adds content from Crash Nitro Kart. Beenox kept it close to the original experience and remastered the soundtrack, while tightening the controls for new players. The post-release microtransactions got criticism, but the game still sold 10 million copies by June 2025.

Players name it as one of the two kart racers to get on PS4, next to Team Sonic Racing. It looks like Mario Kart at first glance. Then you learn to drift properly, and suddenly you are a lot faster than the friend who only holds the accelerator.

Burnout Paradise Remastered came out on 16 March 2018 with all the downloadable content except the Time Savers Pack, plus support for higher resolutions. The original was the first Burnout with an open world, and it scored 88 out of 100 on Metacritic. The idea came from director Alex Ward playing open world games like Crackdown. If your car keeps all four wheels after a crash, you can drive away and carry on.

Players still send people to it when they want an arcade racer on PS4. The open world still feels great to drive around. If you skipped it on PS3, this is the best way to play it now.

Rivals is the twentieth Need for Speed and the first game from Ghost Games. It won Best Racing Game at the Game Critics Awards after E3 2013, and the PS4 version got 80/100 on Metacritic. You can play as a street racer or a cop, and each side equips two of its six weapons. Cops pick one of three car specifications, and most of the story plays out in cutscenes. GamesRadar called the visuals "absolutely gorgeous".

Players still recommend it. Being a cop is the best part. It is the oldest game on this list, and it still holds up.

TrackMania Turbo was announced at E3 2015, and it was the first TrackMania on consoles since TrackMania: Build to Race on the Wii in 2009. The track editor can now generate random tracks for you, and the music changes with how you drive, getting more intense as the run heats up. It is the kind of racing where one bad corner sends you straight back to the start.

Players recommend it as a fun arcade racer, and it is just as good on your own as it is with other people. One way to put it: if you like Burnout more than Gran Turismo, this is your kind of game.

Heat has 127 cars from 33 manufacturers, and Ferrari is back after being left out of Payback. You can swap engines between cars, and upgrades come from earning REP and winning races instead of loot boxes. Reviews were mixed, but critics mostly found it an improvement over the 2015 reboot and Payback. It was the last one from Ghost Games before EA moved the series back to Criterion Games.

One reviewer called Heat "a good all-around representation of the franchise", and that is the best way to think of it. It is the highest Need for Speed on this list. If you want one modern Need for Speed on PS4, make it this one.

The Crew 2 was made by Ubisoft Ivory Tower, and it built on feedback from the first game. Players liked the off-road racing in the Wild Run expansion, so the studio put more of it in. The world is so big that you can explore it by plane, and the engine had to be changed to push the draw distance much further. Like the first game, it is built around playing in groups called crews.

Players call it the open world racer to get on PS4, and the closest the console comes to Forza Horizon. It is not the most serious game here, but that was never the plan.

Wreckfest is about banger racing and demolition derby, which means the crashes are the point. It got generally positive reviews and was nominated for a lot of awards, including "Game, Original Racing" at the NAVGTR Awards. A sequel, Wreckfest 2, was announced in August 2024.

Players say it is about as much fun as racing gets, especially if you like crashing cars. It flew under the radar for a lot of people, and you can see why: it has no big licence and no famous series name behind it. What it has is a car falling apart in front of you while you try to finish third.

Dirt Rally came out on PS4 on 5 April 2016, after its PC release. It is all about rallying and rallycross, with 17 cars and 36 stages at launch. The physics were rebuilt from zero, and the team recorded nearly fifty real rally cars, with up to ten microphones in each one. One review said the co-driver audio was "some of the best we’ve heard in a racing game".

This is not an arcade game, and it does not pretend to be. Players hold it up as one of the best racing games on PS4, and the ones who want a sim keep naming it next to Project CARS. Expect it to take a while before you finish a stage clean.

Trials Fusion uses 3D graphics, but you ride on a 2D plane, so the bike can only go forwards and backwards. That sounds simple until you hit the first loop. It has a futuristic setting, with two AI voices, SynDI and George, talking to your rider through the game. Online, up to 8 players can race on PS4, and it sold over 1.7 million units by February 2015.

Critics praised the level design and the controls. Players still recommend it. It is the rare racing game you can hand to someone who has never played one and still have a good evening.

Gran Turismo 7 is the eighth main game in the series, and it came out for both PS4 and PS5. The team recorded cars on hub dynamometers, with microphones at the intake, the engine, the exhaust and the cabin. Critics praised the graphics and the gameplay. Players were more negative, mostly about the microtransactions and the grinding. Eurogamer liked the GT Cafe and called the visual novel "the most surprising yet".

It came very late in the PS4's life, but players who want a sim say this is the one to get. If you have the patience for the grind, there is nothing more complete on the console.

The Crew came out for PS4 in 2014 with an open world based on the whole United States. Critics praised the world design and criticized the always-online setup, which caused glitches. Two expansions followed, Wild Run in 2015 and Calling All Units in 2016. Ubisoft shut down the servers in 2024, and the game became unplayable. A European Citizens' Initiative about it got 1,294,188 verified signatures, and fans built a server emulator called The Crew Unlimited.

Players remember it as a huge open world with real cars that you could drive across with friends. It is a shame that the official version cannot be played today, because that road trip was the best part.

Project CARS came out in May 2015, and the name stands for Community Assisted Racing Simulator. It was made for about $5 million, raised by the community and the developers without a traditional publisher. Players could buy Tool Packs and help with things like testing and media. Next to the real circuits, it has two fictional point-to-point roads inspired by the Côte d'Azur and the California Pacific Coast.

Players recommend it to anyone who wants a proper sim. It is at its best with a steering wheel. It is a serious game, and that is why the sim fans love it.

Gran Turismo Sport was built around online races approved by the FIA. Every player gets a Driver Rating and a Sportsmanship Rating, and the second one drops if you drive like a battering ram. It launched with 17 locations and 40 circuit layouts, and free updates added more single-player content later. One review called it "possibly the most focused, directly enjoyable game Polyphony Digital has put out since the heady days of Gran Turismo 3".

Many players call it the best racing game on PS4. The online services shut down on January 31, 2024, so the big online side is gone now. It is still a beautiful game.

Driveclub was announced at the PS4 press conference in February 2013 and, after several delays, came out in October 2014. The launch was rough: critics praised the photorealistic visuals and the sound, but criticized the online play and the AI. Evolution Studios kept going with 18 months of free updates, and GamesRadar re-reviewed it and raised its score to 4.5/5. The music is off by default so you can hear the cars.

Players recommend it more than any other PS4 racer, more than twice as often as the game in second place. It is easy to pick up and lovely to look at. With the season pass, it has a huge amount of single-player content, and players point out that it is cheap now.