Best PS Plus Racing Games for PS5 & PS4

Why it's here: A racer that frames its whole career as a festival on a faithfully rebuilt Oahu, sorting cars into themed Playlists: Japanese street tuners one night, vintage muscle the next. For a PS Plus subscriber who wants the open-world Forza Horizon formula without an Xbox, the real question is whether leaning so hard on that blueprint counts against it.

Why it's here: Not arcade racing dressed up: a genuine GT3 simulator built on the real GT World Challenge grid, modelling tyre pressures, aero balance and brake temperatures down to the telemetry. For sim fans and wheel owners on PS Plus, it is the hardest, most rewarding driver on the list. Whether a controller can keep up with it is the open question.

Why it's here: Switch from a street car to a seaplane to a powerboat mid-race, no loading screen, across a shrunk-down model of the whole continental USA. Where its sequel Motorfest narrows to one Hawaiian island, this one chases breadth: coast to coast, three elements. Whether that scope holds up as a PS Plus racer is the question worth weighing.

Why it's here: A racer with no rivals to bump and no laps to grind, only a single absurd stunt track and a restart button that fires instantly, ghost car waiting. Memorise the loops, the drifts, the jumps, then shave hundredths off your own best. For a couch that wants four-player split-screen and a competition sitting right beside it, the only question is whether the difficulty pulls you in or pushes back.

Why it's here: On paper a motorbike racer, in practice a physics balancing puzzle: the rider leans, the throttle twitches, and one heavy thumb flips you off a ramp into the abyss. Every booby-trapped 2.5D course is a memorization test built on the rage-and-retry loop, the most precision-demanding stunt machine among these PS Plus racers.

Why it's here: A deliberate throwback to the era of Daytona and Virtua Racing, built from low-poly polygons, sun-bleached tracks, and a drift-and-slipstream system that feeds one boost meter. For nostalgic drivers and couch crews chasing four-player split-screen, it is the most faithful arcade racer on PS Plus. Whether its slim track count holds up past the first night is the open question.

Why it's here: A mobile-born arcade racer that treats every straight as a launch ramp: barrel rolls, wall rides and nitro chains stitched into one long stunt run across real and invented cities. For a PS Plus player who wants instant speed with no subscription and no purchase, the open question is whether its free-to-play DNA enhances the rush or meters it out.

Why it's here: Lean and throttle is the vocabulary, a physics motorbike threading obstacle courses past the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wall instead of the science-fiction settings of Trials Fusion. The newer, content-heavier sibling on this PS Plus racing list adds Tandem, two riders splitting one bike between shared triumph and shared faceplant. Whether the polish outruns the grind is the question.

Why it's here: A free arcade racer built on one obsession: shaving hundredths off a clean lap until the global leaderboard finally shifts. Where Trackmania Turbo offers fixed campaigns, this 2020 reboot lives on tracks the community keeps building. Its tiered subscription is the catch, and whether that gates the part worth staying for is the open question.

Why it's here: The blueprint the whole vehicular-combat genre traced over: armed cars dueling across global arenas wrung from early PlayStation hardware, Paris to a floating Antarctic base, with a roster of unhinged drivers fighting for a wish. For anyone chasing the ancestor of modern car-combat on PS Plus Premium's classics catalog, the question is whether its mid-nineties controls still steer.

Why it's here: A beloved platformer series that detoured into weaponised combat racing: Jak and Daxter trade their power cells for cars armed to the teeth, racing a poison antidote out of a crime lord across story-driven cups. For Jak fans curious where the trilogy turned darker, and for combat-racer fans, it sits on PS Plus Premium.

Why it's here: A late-90s arcade racer built on flow rather than friction: lean a car into a powerslide and let momentum carry the corner, scored by an acid-jazz soundtrack still cited as one of gaming's finest. For connoisseurs of the PS1 era curious whether a 1998 Namco classic holds up on PS Plus Premium.

Why it's here: Racers strap into Kinetic Suits with wheels on their hands and feet, then ride the walls and ceilings of looping tracks at terminal velocity. It is the first game from the studio that would later make God of War, a Wipeout-adjacent curio kept alive on PS Plus Premium. Whether that speed rush survives its early-PS2 roots is the question.