An open world setting can be a tricky thing to pull off for a racing game. For a genre that’s so focused on constant speed and forward momentum, the absolute freedom of a vast open world can be a tough thing to reconcile, and it can be just as tough to actually populate that world with interesting and varied activities that all fit within the framework of a racing game. Even so, there have been more than a few excellent open world racers that have managed to do just that, and here, we’re going to highlight some of the best of the best, as we rank the ten games that we feel stand the tallest in the genre.
#10. TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED 2
Test Drive Unlimited 2 may not have been the perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, with everything from its inconsistent world design and forgettable and threadbare attempts at telling a story to the bevy of technical issues the game launched with dragging the experience down in some pretty significant ways. But there’s a lot of fun to be found here nonetheless. Large chunks of its open world are absolutely gorgeous, and as such, a joy to simply drive around in, while there’s also no shortage of excellent racing events and activities scattered throughout all of that real estate. Sure, you have to cut through some less-than-stellar stuff to get to the good stuff, but when you do get to it, it’s really, really good.
