I really liked Midnight Club back on the PS2. Would be cool to find similar for the Deck.
Any racing games that the community finds good on the Deck? Is it arcadey or realistic in the mechanics?
Motortown has by far the most realistic and fun driving mechanics of any game that will run on the deck besides beamng, and the fun thing about Motortown is all the different jobs like taxi, trucking, pizza delivery and many others. It has racetracks and a custom racemaker but it isn’t strictly a racing game though I almost exclusively play it as such (timed taxi rides). I basically play Motortown like Midnight Club: Please Help My Taxi Driver Has A Deathwish -edition
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/
Offroad Mania is a rockcrawling quasi-racer. It has superb handling and softbody tire physics. Of note is the infinite obstacle course mode.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222040/Offroad_Mania/
Don’t sleep on the open source (with splitscreen) Stunt Rally 3, it is on the Discover app store in desktop mode. Don’t pass over the game just cus it at times has a silly theme, the tire grip mechanics are great and highspeed gravel driving feels great. In particular the rewind button is very nicely integrated too.
https://github.com/stuntrally/stuntrally3
There is also the venerable open source physics vehicle sandbox Rigs of Rods . Yeah it is old but it is still in development and the aged graphics = lots of battery life
If you want just a damn good rally game that does what it says on the tin and feels good mechanically check out Rush Rally 3.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2020860/Rush_Rally_3
If you want more combat driving than racing checkout:
Endgame Road To Salvation
it has splitscreen, and it is awesome! The most apocalyptic caravan simulator you can imagine
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1264920/Endgame_Road_To_Salvation/
Chaos On Wheels
splitscreen, this one is a really good car combat game like twisted metal or vigilante 8. It isn’t really a racer I suppose.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623120/Chaos_on_Wheels/
Ashes Of The Union
roguelite monster fighting car combat game
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3091390/Ashes_of_the_Union/#app_reviews_hash
If you want to tool around (splitscreen) in arcadey cars in a family friendly humans fall flat crossed with gta game checkout Wobbly Life
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1211020/Wobbly_Life
The all time best racing game on the deck is most certainly Bunny Hill however (of course it is splitscreen!).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1424350/Bunny_Hill/
One final odd suggestion, you can definitely fly drones in a drone simulator with onboard steam deck controls I don’t care what quadcopter people say. Liftoff is a blast, has a racing community and the freestyle maps are a joy to swoop around.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/410340/Liftoff_FPV_Drone_Racing
I came here to say motor town and here I find its the top comment! I only just got it a day or two ago and I love it so much I already have 20 hours logged
I accidentally put myself on the top 10 board for highest level taxi driver for a bit (I am like top 20-30 currently) just because the driving feels THAT dialed and I can treat it like a chill open world point to point racer on my steam deck that I can pause or put into autopilot whenever I want.
I don’t really care enough to pursue getting back on the leaderboard, the driving just feels so good my ADHD brain was actually able to focus on something repetitive and incremental enough to be competitive and it briefly made me feel like a wizard.
Have you tried powersliding the box van yet? Put the biggest engine you can into it, load it up with fragile vases and other delicate delivery items, slam it into drift mode and then start ripping the most massive, nearly industrial sized powerslides you have ever seen.
… or get a garbage truck and get into the zen of being chill and collecting trash, you do you, that is another reason I love Motortown, it is about giving you complete agency in the driving vibes you want while being challenging and rewarding.
This is my go to racer, the handling leans realistic but the damage model is very gamey in just the right way. It’s a ton of fun dragging across the finish line in a car that’s missing a wheel and most of its crumple zone.
A bit, but more sim racer steering and no boosting. Shoving other racers off the road or into obstacles is still viable and satisfying but it works a bit differently. In burnout any significant impact will wreck the car and force a respawn. Wreckfest cars can take a lot of abuse but damage accumulates until the car is undriveable and gets DNF’d.
Fun little arcade/cart racer, leans heavy on drift mechanics if you are into that.
Circuit Superstars runs beautifully on the deck. Do not be fooled by its top down point of view, it actually leans towards simulation rather than arcade (aka “simcade”).
On the other side of that coin, BlazeRush is full on arcade mayhem. It is also top down PoV, which I find lends itself very well to portable gaming.
I mainly use my Deck for racing games and actually played a lot of MC3 using PCSX2.
Pretty much every PS2 era racing game can be emulated flawlessly nowadays.
A lot of them also got PC ports but getting them and running them takes some manual tinkering. But for the older Need for Speed games the PC version is the best way to go with all the community made fixes and mods.
I’ve also recently played through the PSP version of Midnight Club LA and it was pretty great, felt closer to MC3 than the main HD console version.
Was coming here to mention emulation as well. I don’t own a Deck, so not sure how it does with PS2 emulation, but if it’s good then OP could just play the MC games instead of alternatives.
