The best racing games of all time, part 2

Box Score is a weekly column that offers a look at sports games and the athletic side of the industry from the perspective of veteran reviewer and sports fan Richard Grisham.

If you missed Part 1 of our 2-part series with Greg Sewart, click here.

It takes a lot to make a great racing game. There have been so many racers throughout the years – some wonderful, others disastrous, many in the middle – that it can seem virtually impossible to nail down what makes one stand out from the others. Unless you’re racing expert Greg Sewart, that is. He knows that at least one of three pillars (or, preferably, all of them) needs to be present to vault a game into the pantheon of greats.

Above: 2000's NASCAR Heat for the PSOne, another old-school Sewart favorite

The first pillar: immerse the player into the world of the driver, which precious few titles have ever done.

“As a racing fan, you’re buying the game because you relate to those personalities, you root for those personalities every weekend,” says Sewart. “When the game’s doing that much to put you in the driver’s shoes and they’re describing to you how they felt and what they did and that sort of thing, it’s just a great feature. It brings you closer.”

Among the best series to do that were the NASCAR Heat and Thunder franchises on the PlayStation platforms, longtime favorites of Greg’s. “They punctuated it by interviewing the drivers and getting them to describe the situations,” he recalls. “I was just so happy to see them finally use that in another racing game, something a little more mainstream than a Formula 1 game.”

Above: Heat looked a lot better once it made it onto the PS2 in 2002

Speaking of Formula 1, Sewart recalls how one particular game convinced him to buy the original PlayStation.

“The game that sold me on the PlayStation was Formula 1 by Bizarre Creations,” he remembers. “It was kind of like reliving the Monaco GP series all over again, except now it was like truly 3D graphics. You had elevation changes and you really did need to worry about taking the best line around the turn, and things like that.”

Perhaps the best one of all, though, was NASCAR Dirt to Daytona on the PS2 and GameCube, which was built upon the Heat foundation.

“That game spoke to someone like me, grassroots, local race tracks, where I spent most of my childhood,” Sewart says. “That game really emulated it really well, where you start off driving this junker on local dirt tracks, little bull rings, then working your way up the ladder to the big leagues on two-and-a-half-mile superspeedways with cars that have 800 horsepower. It was so great to see a game do that where you could start at the bottom working your way up. It was great.”

“Infogrames/Atari ended up doing a whole series of games like that,” he continues. “None of them had the NASCAR license anymore, but they did World of Outlaw Sprint Cars, which was a very similar situation. You were still running the same type of car through your whole career, and you would be running the lowest tier of those types of cars, racing on local dirt tracks. They even incorporated being able to have the money to get your car to the track. They did a whole series – stock-car racing, sprint cars, that sort of thing – but a lot of them were budget titles that were released much later.”

The second pillar is a great online experience, another area where so many series fall short – but the great ones stand out.

“(When) I jumped into computers, I got crazy into the NASCAR racing series by Papyrus, the main reason being because I found a great online league to play in,” Sewart remembers. “One of the main issues with online gaming today is you’re just surrounded by jerks. You get into an online game and there are people who are just more interested in wrecking you or running the wrong way; it really drives me nuts. So when I found this league where there are actually rules governing this sort of thing, and they were more interested in helping each other go fast and the whole ‘race craft’ side of it, I just had a blast with it.”

Above: Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2002 Season looks pretty good for a decade-old game

“I played that for a few years nonstop,” Sewart recalls with a laugh. “I think I actually won once or twice, which was pretty rare. There’s no better feeling to me when you’re playing a racing game, especially online, where you can pull up beside somebody and actually race them. You don’t have to worry about them swerving into you or anything like that. It’s 'may the best man win.'"

The third pillar, as racing games advanced with console generations, has become realism. That’s where Gran Turismo took over.

“Gran Turismo was what really grabbed me. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” remembers Sewart. “Not only all the real cars - and obviously the graphics were really amazing for the time – but the fact that you could get into the car and realize it was taking things into account like weight transfer and traction on the different wheels and the suspension. The kind of stuff I love about racing in general, and of course about racing games, is the sense of speed and momentum and the way that you work with the car; the way that the car works on the ground as far as the contact with the tires. The aerodynamics, the weight transfer; that was the first game that I played a lot of that really got it right.”

Above: Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec was seen as the definitive racing sim for years

The kings of the current generation are Forza and Gran Turismo 5. Greg admits that to him, there’s one clear winner – although there’s a long sigh before the answer is revealed.

“I prefer Gran Turismo 5,” he finally admits. “When that game came out, the front end was so obtuse that it made it very difficult to get into. It was still really good when the rubber hit the road, but to get there was such a pain in the ass. Now, it’s been fixed. It’s just given so much, and they keep adding new events. Here we are, two years since it was released, and I still play it daily. It feels so good when you’re actually driving it.”

He loves Forza, too, but it doesn’t quite measure up to GT5. “Forza, on the other hand, is kind of like the flip side. It’s really easy to be super-impressed by that game when you turn it on. The front end is so slick, and it makes it so easy to just get in and drive, everything’s beautiful. But I find that when you get on the track, it feels great – but it’s not quite as good as GT5.”

Above: Gran Turismo 5 set a high bar for realistic visuals

“With GT, you feel more attached to the road,” he continues. “I don’t want to say it in a negative way that makes it sound like Forza is horrible, it’s not, it’s really good. To me, it’s just a preference thing, I’m sure you would find loads of people who would say the exact opposite. Forza 4 gets a lot of playtime but it doesn’t get as much as GT5.”

What are your favorite racers between the PlayStation era and today? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to check out the epic two-part Box Score Racing Retrospective podcast featuring Greg.

Richard Grisham has been obsessed with sports and video games since childhood, when he'd routinely create and track MicroLeague Baseball seasons on paper. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and four-year old son, who he'll soon be training to be an NFL placekicker. As a freelance journalist and writer, his work has appeared in GamesRadar, NGamer, and 1UP.