Best Open-World Driving Games Of All Time, Ranked

To kick things off, what are driving games exactly, and how are they different from racing? Well, it’s rather simple, actually. While both involve mostly cars and steering mechanics, racing games are defined by their competitive aspect, requiring players to win races or set lap records, while driving games often focus on other things, such as exploration, simulation, or anything in between. Given this separation, open-world driving games can’t be all racing by definition.

In reality, most open-world driving games blend both these components together, offering huge explorable maps (often based on real-world locations) to drive at your own leisure, and separate sets of main and optional missions, races, or other side objectives to complete whenever players feel like it. With all that out of the way, let’s take a look at the best open-world driving games ever made and how they’ve evolved the genre.

As usual in such cases, only one entry per series is listed for a greater variety.

10 Midnight Club: Los Angeles

We Still Talk About You

The now-forgotten Midnight Club series made quite the splash back in its time, rivaling the best street racing titles of the era and serving as a direct competitor to Need for Speed. For some fans, Midnight Club: Los Angeles even takes the leading spot, thanks to offering a much wider vehicle and tuning parts selection, as well as the relatively realistic and huge open world of L.A. to roam around.

Even though Rockstar Games abandoned its popular driving series at its peak, unlike many similar titles more than 15 years old, Midnight Club: Los Angeles can still be purchased and enjoyed with no issues, at least on Xbox.

9 Driver: San Francisco

Simply Brilliant Driving Concept

Once known as the closest competitor to the GTA series, Driver: San Francisco changed the rules of the franchise, abandoning out-of-vehicle sections completely, and building the entire game around the simple yet brilliant idea of an ethereal driver. Players can inhabit the body (and car) of anyone in the open world of San Francisco, resulting in a very special take on the genre.

Needless to say, Ubisoft Reflections squeezed everything out of such a creative concept, delivering a set of standout missions and objectives to leverage the transition mechanics while making the driving process engaging and satisfying. With all that, Driver: San Francisco definitely earns its place among the most unique and unforgettable open-world driving games.

8 The Crew Motorfest

Learning From the Best

The Crew Motorfest is Ubisoft’s version of the Forza Horizon series, taking the setting from Test Drive Unlimited after sticking with the entirety of the USA for the first two games (some players still miss it). The best thing that can be said about Motorfest is probably the variety, as the game essentially covers almost every vehicle category imaginable — from bikes, cars, F1 bolides, and off-roading monsters to boats, planes, and helicopters — in a vibrant, festive-like environment recreated with impressive scale and detail.

With dozens of playlists to cover the disciplines the players are interested in the most, an incredible array of challenges and activities across two huge Hawaii isles, and one of the biggest vehicle selections in the genre ever, The Crew Motorfest is a sprawling modern destination for vehicle enthusiasts, although the most important aspect, the driving itself, often feels somewhat unnatural, falling short of the latest Forza Horizon games.

7 SnowRunner

It’s Like Death Stranding, but Vehicle-Focused (and No Kojima)

Carving their own path rather than sticking to the trodden roads (both literally and figuratively), MudRunner, SnowRunner, and the recent Expeditions represent a unique niche of traversal driving experiences. Instead of intense racing or relaxed driving like the rest of this list, SnowRunner is all about surviving tough conditions, smartly blazing trails amid challenging odds, with realistic off-road physics and tough terrain simulation.

SnowRunner’s harsh maps like Alaska, Taymyr, Yukon, or Amur, its variety of all-terrain vehicles, and its set of various traversal tools like winching already set the game apart from anything else. In a way, SnowRunner is less of a driving game and more of a logistics and management sim, which is why it might hook even players usually indifferent to vehicle-focused games.

6 Test Drive Unlimited

Finally Free

Back in its day, Test Drive Unlimited felt like an open-world driving game from the future, with unmatched scope and an unparalleled sense of freedom. Players were entrusted with a colossal, detailed recreation of the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu, featuring over 1,000 miles of roads and highways and over a hundred luxurious vehicles to try.

The game’s extra lifestyle sim features, like choosing and dressing up the playable character, as well as buying and customizing property like elite mansions, were also ahead of their time, granting the game a rare “next-gen” feel of something more than just a driving game. It’s a shame that Test Drive Unlimited was the series’s peak, unreachable by its modern successor, Solar Crown.

5 Burnout Paradise

Take Me Down to the Paradise City

Burnout Paradise is a really special game, one that dared to take the iconic car mayhem series into a seamless open world and did it spectacularly in every regard, outmatching all possible competition of the time. Extreme stunts, breakneck speeds, free-form dynamic chases to unlock new rides, and, naturally, slo-mo wrecking every minute or so — all set in one of the most pleasant cities in the genre to explore, complete with a banger soundtrack. Yeah, those were the days.

Without any doubt, Burnout Paradise is a near-perfect arcade racing open-world title, featuring endlessly addictive roaming and engaging couch co-op options to compete in various challenges (Party mode). One of the last truly fun, chaotic, and destructive arcade racing games of its kind that we don’t get anymore.

4 Euro Truck Simulator 2

On the Road Again

Based on the sheer scale of the map and the roads to ride, probably nothing beats Euro Truck Simulator 2 — one of the most relaxing and authentic driving experiences ever. Coupled with years of post-launch updates and expansions, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is also one of the most expensive driving games to own, adding new countries, vehicles, and customization options, but that never stops the true driving fans.

Alternatively, American Truck Simulator definitely deserves a mention as well, providing essentially the same experience, with the only differences in vehicle selection and a map covering 19 western and central US states. Both games are still supported with extensive content updates, representing some of the most engrossing driving sims ever made.

3 Need for Speed: Underground 2

Riders on the Storm

Picking the single best open-world entry in the sprawling Need for Speed series is not an easy task, with standouts like Most Wanted (2005), Carbon, or Heat, but nothing can probably touch the iconic legacy left by Need for Speed: Underground 2. Among the first of its kind, offering a seamless modern city to freely explore while introducing the whole world of street culture, Underground 2 was a smashing hit that changed the genre forever, raising the bar across the board, from visuals and music to vehicle customization and racing modes.

For many years after the game’s launch, every new open-world title has been compared to NFSU2, while thousands of fans are still craving a true remake today, left unsatisfied by each new attempt by EA to produce its spiritual successor.

2 BeamNG.drive

Flexible Car-Centered Toolbox

The king of driving sandbox gameplay, soft physics-based destruction, and modding, BeamNG.drive is the modern vehicle-focused toolbox capable of satisfying the needs of any driver, regardless of their preferences. Especially popular on social media with its insane video challenges and fun clips, BeamNG.drive has constantly attracted new players for over a decade, while still being labeled as an early access title.

BeamNG.drive’s real strength lies in its experimental tracks, but the game also features extensive free-roam maps that can be called open-world, sort of. Even if the maps feel quite empty, the game more than makes up for it with its driving physics and realism. All in all, it’s a dynamic vehicle simulator where players are capable of doing almost anything, and there’s nothing else quite like it.

1 Forza Horizon 5

Just the Spirit of Horizon, Isn’t It?

The Forza Horizon series has been the undisputed king of open-world driving games for more than a decade now. While the core community often has issues with each new entry and praises its predecessor as the better game, the cycle continues every time a new one arrives. It’ll be interesting to see how opinions on Forza Horizon 5 shift after Forza Horizon 6 starts its engine in just a month.

Nevertheless, even if Forza Horizon 5’s Mexico map can’t quite match FH4’s Britain and its seasonal dynamism, in every other area, Forza Horizon 5 is simply the better game — with superior driving feel, more events, game modes, vehicles, and rich user-made track capabilities. Endlessly beautiful and constantly fun to drive, anything from hypercars to century-old museum automobiles, Forza Horizon 5 still takes the crown.