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The greatest open-world racers of all-time (so far)
To celebrate the forthcoming release of open-world driving game The Crew Motorfest, we're remembering some of the greatest free-roaming racers of years gone by.
The Crew Motorfest is shaping up to be the next great open-world racer. It boasts a driver’s dream recreation of the Hawaiian island of O'ahu, over 600 different vehicles including a number of unique Red Bull rides, and a series of thematic campaigns offering unique and exciting car culture experiences.
With its release just around the corner, now is a perfect time to look into the rearview mirror as we explore, in no particular order, five of the best open-world racers to date.
01
Need for Speed: Underground 2
By far the oldest game on this list – released in 2004 – Need for Speed: Underground 2 was the first entry in the long-running series to include the option to free roam. The game’s setting was the fictional city of Bayview, which took inspiration from San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The game featured more import/sport compacts, American muscle cars, and SUVs than its predecessor and really tapped into the Tuning Culture that kicked off after the release of The Fast and the Furious in 2001.
Need for Speed: Underground 2 holds a special place in the hearts of many racing game fans because of how it perfectly captured a certain era of car culture and how cool it made them feel to be driving around the streets at night in a tricked-out Honda Civic.
02
Test Drive Unlimited 2
Test Drive Unlimited 2 was ahead of the curve with its immersive nature
© Atari
Another oldie, but a goodie, is Test Drive Unlimited 2. The game gave the player not one, but two islands to drive around – the Spanish island of Ibiza and the Hawaiian one of O’ahu. Both were modelled using satellite data, resulting in over 3,000km of road. The game also included a day and night cycle and dynamic weather effects – not bad for a 2011 release.
What made Test Drive Unlimited 2 special was that it presented itself as an immersive lifestyle game. There were 60 levels of progression through the game and racing consisted of only one of the ways to earn XP for leveling up. Discovering roads, making friends in-game, and buying stuff could all contribute. When in buying mode, the camera would switch to first-person so you could really give a new car a good look before deciding to buy it.
03
Burnout Paradise
The Burnout series was the definition of over-the-top arcade driving action. Races would always be point-to-point white knuckle affairs complete with dramatic near misses, sparks flying as you shunted into other racers, and a rock soundtrack to really get the adrenaline pumping. Burnout Paradise took all those things but let the player roam free to cause havoc in the fictional Paradise City.
Burning rubber in the 2018 remaster of Burnout Paradise.
© EA
In Burnout Paradise, there was no longer a set course you had to take, you were told where the finish line was and it was up to you how you got there. This gave the player the opportunity to try out different routes and possibly discover nifty shortcuts. This could involve driving at break-neck speeds through narrow alleys, up a hidden ramp, flying over the road where all your opponents are merrily racing, and then crashing through a billboard to land on a new road a crucial few seconds ahead of the pack.
04
The Crew 2
It would be remiss to think about the upcoming The Crew Motorfest without mentioning The Crew 2. The sequel has two very big reasons to be included on this list. The first is its map, which features a fully free-roaming scaled-down recreation of the contiguous United States. Containing over 1,000 real-world landmarks and over 10,000km of winding roads.
The Crew 2 offered offroad racing in a variety of diverse locations.
© Ubisoft
The second is that the game lets you switch between cars, airplanes, and boats instantly. If you want to get from New York to San Francisco a little quicker than your Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse will allow, you can just instantly pop into a Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing biplane and fly the rest of the way. More than just a gimmick, this freedom of vehicle choice made exploring such a large map exhilarating.
05
Forza Horizon 5
When Microsoft’s flagship racing sim series Forza Motorsport spun off into the more casual open-world Horizon series, it received critical acclaim and could be argued to have thoroughly overtaken its originator, and the 2021 release of Forza Horizon 5 is by far the best in this series.
Casual racing fans will have a blast in Forza Horizon 5.
© Microsoft
Set in a fictionalized representation of Mexico, Forza Horizon 5 boasts a map 50 percent larger than the previous game and a wide diversity of locations which include an active caldera volcano, jungles and beaches, ancient Mayan temples, and towns and cities such as Guanajuato.
Forza Horizon 5 also catered to all audiences, giving players many different control and accessibility options; one could go full sim and turn off all driving assists, or make it super arcadey and drift until the sun goes down.
We hope that this drive down racing’s memory lane has stoked some memories and got you excited for the future of the genre. You can find out if The Crew Motorfest joins the greats on this list when it’s released on September 11.
