Racing Game Tier List
S Tier
Forza Horizon 4
Pros: Amazing graphics, expansive and immersive open world, tons of licensed cars, extremely customizable including multiple settings, car tuning, and how to design the car, amazing sense of speed and driving, lots of single player content, great soundtrack, option to play events cooperatively with friends
Cons: Integrated online features such as requiring a Microsoft account, defaulting to seeing others online who break immersion, the wheelspin, can be prone to crashing, not moddable
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
Pros: Airplane flying, boat driving, Danica Patrick/Total War/Company of Heroes character playable, amazing, memorable courses, decent single player, challenging, great sense of speed, great variety of items, most single player content can also be played cooperatively in multiplayer
Cons: Buggy, very difficult and potentially frustrating AI, cars cannot be customized other than very basic under-the-hood upgrades, not moddable
Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart
Pros: Extremely moddable, practically any character you like can be playable as you can sprite them yourself plus having an extensive modding community, diverse amount of tracks, great battle mode, great sense of speed, free, decently customizable settings such as item swaps, racing laps, and how many balloons you start with in battle mode
Cons: Incomplete game as it lacks AI without mods with barren single player content and content is subject to the quality of the community and authors designing it.
Mario Kart 8/Deluxe
Pros: Easy driving with great controls, decent customization with enough car parts, Baby Luigi playable, memorable tracks, great and addicting battle modes of the racing games especially balloon battle, decently moddable, decent graphics, decent soundtrack, grand prix being able to play with multiple players
Cons: Lackluster sense of speed if driven in anything lower than 200cc, barren if practically nonexistent settings customizations, barebones singleplayer content, karts are not as customizable as i like them as there are no paint jobs, anti-gravity does not add much to the game
Burnout Paradise
Pros: Exhilarating sense of speed, hugely varied soundtrack, loading screen free, many cars to unlock, dazzling car wreck animations
Cons: Whacked up menu navigation, is published by EA, open world mission structure starts to get repetitive after a while
A Tier
Beetle Adventure Racing
Pros: Highly detailed tracks, great sense of speed, great graphics for the N64 era, Beetle is decently customizable
Cons: Only a few tracks, lackluster single player content, and its age is a culprit of many limited content such as beetle customization being limited to body jobs and paint (still better than Mario Kart 64 though!)
Blur
Pros: Great integration of Mario Kart-like items into licensed cars, amazing sense of speed, decent single player content, good number of playable cars
Cons: Haven't played enough of it...some cars aren't customizable, it's published by Activision who killed the studio, its commercials, unavailable on most platforms including Steam, GOG, etc so it's considered abandonware, not moddable
Mario Kart Wii
Pros: Baby Luigi playable, extremely moddable with an expansive community behind it, bikes
Cons: Outdated, severely unbalanced, barren single player content, practically uncustomizable, terrible battle mode, terrible graphics, no multiplayer grand prix the mode you play to unlock stuff to begin with
Diddy Kong Racing
Pros: Robust single player content, fun overworld playground, planes and hovercrafts, customization in the form of magic codes (though unwieldly), amazing soundtrack, moddable to an extent
Cons: Lots of it attributed to its age, every race feels the same, single player can feel repetitive
B Tier
Kirby Air Ride
Pros: City Trial is addicting and fun and unique to the genre, legendary machines!, intuitive and amazing unique controls, great soundtrack, and robust single player content
Cons: Racing is fairly subpar for the genre despite being unique, Air Ride and Top Ride are grossly overshadowed by City Trial, extremely unbalanced vehicles, customization is just passable with settings and changing Kirby color
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
Pros: Nice sense of speed for a Mario Kart game if played on 150cc, physics unique to the series, special items, Baby Luigi playable, emulation expands upon customization options with its rich library of cheat codes, customization is much better than prior Mario Kart titles
Cons: Bad graphics, annoying AI decisions, barren single player content, the two-characters-per-kart mechanic adds very little to the game and less than advertised, somewhat slippery controls, battle mode restricted to multiplayer
Team Sonic Racing
Pros: Same great sense of speed and racing as with other Sumo Digital games, decently challenging, decently passable single player content, team mechanics are very well-integrated, expanded customization compared to Transformed
Cons: Very limited roster, dropped support early, and is only fun when playing with friends as the game is dependent on your team's positions and AI is not reliable
Sonic & All-Stars Racing
Pros: First Sonic racing game developed by Sumo, still the same fun racing mechanics
Cons: Overshadowed by Transformed, for the most part, aside from a few content specific to this game, not playable in multiplayer
SpeedRunners
Pros: Indie 2D platformer racing game, good variety of characters to pick from, moddable, items are fun and very Mario Kart-like, game is fast-paced, fun swinging mechanic
Cons: Some annoying online integration, game is indie so it's smaller scaled than other titles and thus has less content
Mario Kart Arcade GP DX
Pros: Good Mario Kart experience on a cabinet, fun co-op elements, good car and track designs, playable Baby Mario
Cons: Expensive, requires to find an arcade cabinet to play it, car selection is randomized, no playable Baby Luigi which is insulting considering Baby Mario is playable
C Tier
Mario Kart 7
Pros: Best handheld Mario Kart, addicting battle mode, introduced further kart customization such as ability to change tires, moddable, decently designed tracks
Cons: Horrendous single player content, especially axing versus mode, terrible experience in local multiplayer with inability to pause, timers everywhere and requiring to own a second copy of the game to enjoy all its content, glider/underwater driving doesn't really add much to the game
Mario Kart DS
Pros: Great battle mode, expanded customization, emblem creation, attempt to expand on single player content through mission mode, decent soundtrack, cheats expand on customization, moddable to an extent
Cons: Bad local multiplayer unless you own a second cartridge, bad sense of speed, snaking is a terrible mechanic, graphics are laughably bad, customization is still lacking compared to Diddy Kong Racing DS
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
Pros: Many great track designs, first handheld Mario Kart, still fun and satisfying to play through today, decent graphics that has aged okay
Cons: Everything bad about it can be attributed to its age, including its sloppy controls, GBA soundchip soundtrack, and lack of single player content
D Tier
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled
Pros: Fun game with great racing mechanics, has a higher skill curve than Mario Kart, hugely expansive roster of characters, well-designed tracks, very customizable cars
Cons: The only reason it's D-tier is the predatory microtransaction system the game is built around, hugely restricting your customization choices and forcing users to grind, unless they want to pay money, additionally forcing users to be online and forcing users to constantly check the shop if it has something they want. Published by Activision, scummiest company in the industry. Is also 30 fps.
Diddy Kong Racing DS
Pros: Handheld remake of a beloved racing game, expanded customization options, racing is still good and holds up, good multiplayer support
Cons: Hugely watered down and botched remake in general, with worse music, worse character voices, unbalanced customization, and terribly integrated obnoxious touch controls. Track creator is barren
Super Mario Kart
Pros: Pioneered the genre, item combat and track design still hold up, good music
Cons: Woefully, woefully, woefully outdated and outclassed in every way, there's no reason to be playing this today, especially with repetitive single player content, repetitive track design, and outdated sound.
Mario Kart 64
Pros: Character voices are satisfying, sound design is good, track designs are fun such as Choco Mountain, pretty good soundtrack
Cons: Many bad things about it attributed to it can be to its age such as terrible graphics and sloppy controls, though horrendous single player content, lackluster customization, unskippable cutscenes, some terrible track designs and the worst AI in the series is not fun to play regardless of what time period you live in.
F Tier
Pokemon Dash
Pros: On-foot racing, which isn't common........that's the only pro I can think of....???
Cons: Strong tech demo vibes, only Pikachu is playable, very lazy content to the point of near nonexistence, woefully generic track designs, bad graphics, hugely repetitive gameplay, annoying and repetitive touch-based gameplay
Mario Kart Tour
Pros: Baby Luigi playable, lots of assets to mine from
Cons: Everything that is ugly and wrong with mobile gaming is in this one, from microtransactions, multiple currencies, season passes, three rating star system, grindy as hell, loot boxes (aka actual gambling mechanics) which makes it hazardous to play and it's grotesque because the franchise is aimed at kids, which is predatory. It also plays and controls like shit and the track designs are bastardized beyond all belief and watered down to accommodate. Its free price on a mobile platform does not justify the grossly predatory model strings attached to it, get Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart instead if you want an actual good and free racing game.
Unranked Racing Games Tier
Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 (I played this, but only through emulation, which isn't really how it's intended to be played)
Rocket League (I mean, it has cars and you can drive in it which is why I even mentioned it but it's not a racing game)
Rayman Arena (Not strictly a racing game, but it does have an on-foot 3D racing mode which I found pretty fun)
Racing Games I Have Yet To Play Tier
(most of them of course but these are ones that seem interesting to me)
Cars 2
Cars 3: Driven to Win
Cruisin' Blast (this is up on the next racing game I'll play)
Any F-Zero title (I apologize to Blocky and 3K for the lack of any F-Zero titles on my tier list!!!!!)
A Need for Speed game, perhaps Most Wanted.
A Midnight Club game
Maybe some of the vehicle combat games only Glowsquid seems to know about????
Chocobo GP
Hotwheels Unleashed
Snowboard Kids
Lego Racers
ModNation Racers
LittleBigPlanet Karting
Initial D arcade games
Stunt Race FX
Sonic Riders (erring on the "maybe" part rather than I must play this)
Racing Games I Don't Have Any Interest in Playing
All Racing Sim games such as Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, Assetto Corsa, Project CARS, etc
Mediocre licensed cartoon kart racers such as Nickelodeon Kart Racers, Mickey's Speedway USA, Cartoon Network Racing
Bad Racing Games such as Garfield Kart, Hello Kitty Kruisers, M&M's Kart Racing, Sonic R, Big Rigs etc. They might be memed online, but it's not for me.
There is a racing game called "Ray Tracers"!?