Huge Open world

Need For Speed World features Palmont, the city from Need For Speed Carbon, and also Rockport from Most Wanted, which combine to make a huge world to explore. There's a night/day rotation, which makes it feel more dynamic. There are no pedestrians, and little traffic. This means you won't be interrupted too often when racing, but does make Need For Speed World feel a bit lifeless.

Car Shopping

Choose a car from a small range of not very exciting cars to start with, liek the Toyota Corolla or Mitsubishi Eclipse, then roam the huge Need For Speed World looking for races. These can be multi or single player, and get into chases with the cops. Evading the police and ranking in races gives you experience points and money, which in turn unlock better cars that you can buy in the Need For Speed World showroom.

Mods

Your cars can be modified with stickers, paint and decals, and power-ups can be chosen and purchased with in game money. Need For Speed World seems pretty stable, even with loads of players online. When you enter the open world you can't crash into other players, only the environment and other traffic. Online players can only push you around if you enter a race. The cars in Need For Speed World have the forgiving, arcade style handling that makes the franchise such fun to play.

There is online chat alongside the racing, and you can add friends and meet up to race them. Graphically Need For Speed World is ok, but looks a few years old. However, this means you don't need a super computer to play the game!

Overall

Need For Speed World is an impressive massively multiplayer online racing game, and although it looks a bit basic it's really playable.

Download Need For Speed World 1.8.40.1166 in Softonic

Do you love racing cars on your computer? Then get ready for Need For Speed Underground!

Need For Speed Underground is a fast-paced street racing game. Speed around Olympic City with a variety of different tuner cars. This game features three new play modes - Drag, Drift and Sprint. It also has a bit of a back story for gamers who want more than just a frenzied race around a virtual landscape.

If the car designs look familiar, that might just be because Need For Speed Underground features aspects of the import tuner culture made popular in movies and subsequent games like The Fast & the Furious. There's also a huge variety of tuning options in Need For Speed Underground, sure to satisfy any true race car fan. Some of these include widebody kits, spoilers, rims, window tints and decals. You can also upgrade your car's performance when it comes to the engine to make street racing through Olympic City even more nail-biting.

The only real criticism fans of this game might have is that there are no cops features in Need For Speed Underground. Slower computers might also have difficulties running the game without a few hiccups in gameplay.

With great graphics and lots of action though, there's a lot to love about Need For Speed Underground.

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Continental Truckers

This driving simulator puts you behind the wheel of a powerful truck and entrusts you with several different missions. Euro Truck Simulator's activities consist on taking cargo from one place to another and getting paid for the delivery. Saving enough money you will eventually be able to buy better and faster trucks to be able to work more and earn more money.

I find the main idea in Euro Truck Simulator is quite original. We're used to car, motorbike and even airplane driving simulators, but not that much to trucks. Also, the game features excellent, highly realistic graphics.

Need for sleep?

So far, so good. The problem is that Euro Truck Simulator becomes a boring game quite easily. I don't know if it was due to the repetitive sound of the engine, the slowness of my driving or the lack of real action, I started feeling sleepy shortly after starting to play. Maybe if you could play your own music on the truck's radio, or get into some more action by delivering illegal stuff and occasionally being chased by the cops, Euro Truck Simulator would be more exciting. Also, I didn't like the fact that I can't choose the UK as the starting country for my career as truck driver! It is extremely similar to German Truck Simulator and UK Truck Simulator

Euro Truck Simulator is a pretty original game, with especially outstanding graphics, but which gets boring quite easily.

Download Euro Truck Simulator 1.3 in Softonic

There are many truck simulators out there, but ETS is one of the most famous and best loved. That is sure to continue with Euro Truck Simulator 2. Trucks look great, and are all licensed from companies like Scania, Renault and MAN. You'll be able to customize the performance and look of your trucks too.

There are over 60 cities in Euro Truck Simulator 2, in UK, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and more. Your task is to build a successful freight company, making deliveries across the continent in good time.

From what we've seen, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is easily the best looking truck sim on the market. It will be essential for any truck fan.

Download Euro Truck Simulator 2 1.3.1 in Softonic

There are three cars to choose from, a 430 Scuderia, 599 Fiorano and 612 Scaglietti. They all handle differently, and you can race them in a mixed field of cars, or just against the same type. Ferrari Virtual Race has the usual options like manual or automatic, various camera modes and so on.

Ferrari Virtual Race's driving is pretty pleasing, not oversensitive like many simulators, and Mugelo is a goood track (it is a shame there's only one!). Opponents are good, and the three difficulty modes should suit everyone, although driving experts will no doubt have no trouble beating the hardest setting.

The sound is disappointing, but the graphics are good, with a nice motion effect at the edge of the screen, good car models and nice dust effects. There is an option in Ferrari Virtual Race to set up your own Ferrari online and race it in the game, but this is only available to people with a paid membership of the Ferrari website.

Ferrari Virtual Race may only have one track, but it's still one of the most impressive free PC racing games to date.

Download Ferrari Virtual Race in Softonic

Bus Driver is a surprisingly fun simulator where your job is to transport passengers around an urban environment. Your mission is to stick to a timetable while obeying traffic rules and making sure you don't upset or injure passengers. Bus Driver is supposed to be all about realism. However, there's no game as such, although there are five different levels of ability, and you get bonuses for obeying rules of the road and sticking to your timetable etc.

There are five buses to drive in a huge city environment with various districts, 30 routes, and varying weather conditions set at differing times of day. There are different bus types that go along with Bus Driver such as school bus, tourist bus, sight-seeing tour bus and even a prisoner transportation bus. The entire driving environment in Bus Driver is made even more realistic courtesy of an AI system which 'learns' from your driving habits.

The vector graphics are a bit blocky and basic and the gameplay can get quite dull at times but for anyone who is a fan buses or just driving sims in general, Bus Driver is a lot of fun.

Download Bus Driver 1.5.2 in Softonic

Driving in Bus Simulator not as easy as it seems at first sight: not only you have to find your way in an unknown city (note you can open the map with the M key) but you also have to stop at every single bus stop in your route, open and close the doors and follow your way to the next one. Also, don't forget to respect road signs: I didn't stop for any red lights (too much GTA IV is seriously affecting my driving style, luckily only the virtual one) and got fired in about 5 minutes.

Graphics in Bus Simulator are just fine; quite realistic, but certainly not the best ones I've seen. Physics is not very elaborate, especially when it comes to crashing against objects or other cars (hey, don't laugh at me: I'm not that bad at driving, I just have to test everything!). Other than that, Bus Simulator just an original game that seems as exciting as driving a bus in real life.

The main feature in Bus Simulator is undoubtedly its originality; apart from that, it's just a standard driving simulator with some business management tools that may entertain you for a short while.

Download Bus Simulator 2008 Demo in Softonic

You begin City Racing with a wrecked car being taken to a garage, and are introduced to a mechanic who gives you a little introduction to the game. Like other sandbox racers, you can drive freely around the city, and find various events to win to increase your ranking, and win credits to upgrade your car, or buy a better one.

Visually, City Racing is quite odd. The city is fairly generic, although it's quite big. The vehicles look vaguely futuristic, but not beautiful, and the pedestrians walking the streets are pretty outdated. The gameplay is spoiled by really wooden physics - you feel like you're driving a bumper car, and there is no real sense of speed.

The language in the game will amuse anyone who likes bad English, as the text throughout is very badly translated. The best thing about City Racing is that it's free.

A free sandbox racing game sounds great, but City Racing is a disappointing experience.

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This demo of Farming Simulator allows you to experience two missions: a time trial and hay bailing. The first is just a one-lap, one-man race around an obstacle course, and in the second you have to carefully pull a hay baler over cut wheat, to make bails of hay. There are medals for fast times, although it's not too hard to get gold.

The physics of Farming Simulator feel pretty basic. The tractors don't move very subtly, and the models don't move with suspension, so they look quite old fashioned. The graphics overall are functional, but won't worry the Need For Speeds of this world. The sound, similarly, is acceptable but nothing more. The slow-paced action is based on a sparsely populated and quiet island.

Farming Simulator is pretty basic in terms of what it offers. There is no attempt to make any of the farming fun, so if you don't enjoy tractor driving, Farming Simulator won't change your mind. For farming fans, it's a fairly varied game, but spoiled by it's outdated presentation.

Farming Simulator is just what it says it is, as long as you think farming is all done in a tractor!

Download Farming Simulator 2011 in Softonic

If you're tired of following the rules of the road and sticking to the 90km/h as you drive around Europe, this mod will give you the freedom you desire. While your truck will have no limits, the police and speed cameras will still follow the law, so you have to be careful to avoid penalties.

To install the Euro Truck Simulator 2 No Speed ??Limit mod, download the mod file, then open it using your file compression app. Once the file has been extracted, open another file window, and paste in this address:
Documents\Euro Truck Simulator 2\mod

For more information, check out our article
How to install mods for Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Download Euro Truck Simulator 2 No Speed Limit mod in Softonic

German Truck Simulator has 18 German cities, spread right across the country, connected by autobahns and major roads. The game has a long career mode, while this demo is only an hour long. That's long enough to get a feel for the hugeness of the game! The distances in German Truck Simulator are impressive, and deliveries will take a long time as you travel the length and breadth of the country.

Like other truck simulators, this one is very much for truck fans. If you like the idea of driving a truck realistically, German Truck Simulator is for you. Driving on highways is unlike normal driving games, as you have to constantly keep an eye in your mirrors to avoid overtaking traffic. You'll be overtaken a lot! Controls are effective, and detailed enough to keep aficionados happy, while being easy enough for beginners.

The graphics in German Truck Simulator are a bit lifeless, but they do look quite good, and the countryside you'll roll through is very pretty. The sound isn't outstanding, but it's functional at least.

Enjoying German Truck Simulator means enjoying driving, fairly slowly, over long distances. There is something attractive about it, as it's so much more relaxed than most games. The career, of collecting and upgrading trucks is very much second to the experience of actual truck driving.

It's won't be for everyone, but German Truck Simulator is a solid trucking game with a huge area to explore as you make your deliveries.

Download German Truck Simulator 1.04 in Softonic

18 Wheels of Steel American Long Haul lets you drive one of those huge American trucks all over the United States, either in campaign mode or doing single missions. The first game mode involves being able to run your own truck company, whereas the second one puts you behind the wheel as a truck driver in charge of the most varied deliveries across the country.

I must admit I expected more from this game. The graphics are nice, but not brilliant. The music is only on while on menus and disappears during the game. However, what I didn't really like was the gameplay itself. The trucks are quite difficult to control (maybe due to the fact that I've never driven a truck in my whole life). I spent 10 minutes moving around the garage just to get my cargo trailer attached. Plus, campaign mode doesn't tell you what your missions or your aims are - or at least I wasn't able to find them in my notebook. In all, a somewhat disappointing title. You may as well give it a try and let us know what you think about it.

Become an American truck driver and take deliveries all across the United States.

Download 18 Wheels of Steel American Long Haul in Softonic

The half an hour limit is an issue, as this is a huge download, coming in at 3 gigabytes! If you have a slow internet connection, you could easily be downloading for longer than you can play. The second issue is the format of introducing you to the game - which pauses your driving to explain something - can be irritating if you really just want to drive, see the city, and crash into stuff.

These criticisms can't detract from what is an absolutely fantastic arcade racing game. If you demand realistic handling and simulation from your racing games, Burnout Paradise is not for you. The physics are convincing while the handling of the cars is forgiving enough to permit long drifts and ridiculous jumps and crashes. Crashes, as fans of Burnout will tell you, are not done better anywhere else, and they are well integrated into races (after a big crash you have a running start!). This is all about adrenalin fueled, over the top, and psychotically dangerous racing.

There are numerous challenges from straight races to Road Rage, where the objectives is to takedown a number of other racers before you destroy your vehicle and Marked Man, where you have to reach a destination before pursuers destroy you. Alternatively, you can just drive around the enormous open world of Paradise City. Some people may find the lack of defined structure a pain - you are never told to do anything, just enter competitions at your leisure, but you soon get into the rhythm of the game.

Visually, the cars look great, the damage modeling is just what you would want, and the city is wonderful to look at, at night or day. The advantage of this fictional city is that it's been custom built to drive in, and the corners, ramps, short cuts and so on that are littered liberally around mean it's always a fun place to be.

As long as realism isn't your thing, Burnout Paradise City is the perfect driving playground.

Download Burnout Paradise The Ultimate Box in Softonic

This simulator comes from SCS Software, veterans of thre truck simulator world. UK Truck Simulator plays pretty much identically to German and Euro Truck Simulator. In Career mode, you are given a series of lengthy delivery missions around a large if uncomplicated map. Controls are relatively simple, and in game instructions are good. There are plenty of camera views, useful when you're hooking up a trailer and also to keep things interesting on long highways.

In terms of driving physics, UK Truck Simulator is pretty basic. It's difficult to really go wrong when driving, and no matter how much you weave and twist at speed, you will not jacknife! Everything about UK Truck Simulator is dry and calm. There isn't really any character to the scenery or truck design, and the gameplay is both simple and relaxed in pace.

If you're a big haulage fan, you'll enjoy UK Truck Simulator, but it's hard to escape the dull, repetitive scenery and simplified physics. The large map is also too limited - more side roads and complexity would go a long way to make exploring more interesting as you make deliveries.

UK Truck Simulator is another average entry into the mass of truck simulators available.

Download UK Truck Simulator 1.32 in Softonic

If you live for racing video games, Need for Speed is probably on the top of your list. Available on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PSP, as well as your PC, the game's undeniably a highly addictive adrenaline rush.

Need for Speed Shift marks a turn away from the game's roots of street racing and challenges players to race their favorite vehicles on an actual race track. The graphics are superb, making players feel as though they're right in the thick of the action. Need for Speed Shift also has a great presentation, and two tracks to enjoy.

In this demo version of Need for Speed Shift, a new ride is included. As the demo's name suggests, users can try out the Falken Porsche GT3 RSR. It's definitely an experience.

Unfortunately, Need for Speed Shift's sound quality isn't the greatest. It's a small nitpick, but might be an irritation for people who want the most realistic experience possible.

Need for Speed Shift's Falken Demo doesn't add a whole lot to the original game, but for diehard fans it's an opportunity to try another new ride.

Download Need for Speed Shift Falken Demo in Softonic

To be someone in drag racing, your ride needs to pack power and show some style.

Choose your car among more than 20 different constructors and customize it completely from the steering wheel to the seats and exhaust pipes.

You can add wings and decals and give it a paint job. Win performance points to improve your ride in different categories like suspension, turbo, engine or ignition.

Drag Racer is certainly not your traditional racing game and you’ll have to get used to the way you drive. Use the space bar to accelerate and the up and down arrows to shift gears.

The difficult part is accelerating correctly at the start. Too late or too early and your engine will jam, giving your opponent a sufficient edge to win the race.

If you manage to start off correctly you then need to worry about shifting gears correctly. If you change gears too slowly your engine will blow up.

If you shift too quickly, there’s a risk that your opponent gains enough power and speed to ultimately surpass you. The difficulty is in the dosage and in the power of the car you have.

The customization part in Drag Racer is extensive but unfortunately, apart from the paint job and exterior add-ons like wings, you’ll never get to see and enjoy your interior tune ups like the fuzzy steering wheel or gold pedals.

Drag Racer has an impressive number of vehicles to choose from, but the limited graphics are a bit of a disappointment as the joy of tuning is all about admiring your newly sexed up vehicle.

Drag Racer will probably really appeal to the tuning community but if you want to try out a different type of racing game, you should check it out.

Download Drag Racer 3.01 in Softonic

To begin with, Trackmania Nations Forever is completely free. No trial periods, no disabled functions, no nagging windows. It's for you to play and enjoy for free, as long as you want, as much as you feel like it. Also, Trackmania Nations Forever is not that much about arriving first to the finish line, but rather about having fun along the way; hence the extensive social component of the game and the incredible jumps and spins you'll be able to perform. Last, but not least, it also enables you to customize the game, featuring a complete editor with which you can create not only tracks, but also design your very own car.

Trackmania Nations Forever includes three different gaming modes (Solo, Online and Party play) which give you a different approach to the game: you can either play against the PC and try to break your personal records, play with friends on the same computer or in a local area network or play against other Trackmania drivers from all over the world with its superb online multiplayer mode. The Solo mode works with a system based on medals (the best your racing times are, the more medals you get and the more tracks you unlock) while the Online mode uses a worldwide ranking to measure players's achievements.

In a way, we could say that the most important element in Trackmania Nations Forever is gameplay. Everything has been carefully planned and designed to be as easy for the player as possible: for example, you can register your profile by simple filling in a two-field form, or control the car with just the arrow keys. This simplicity is what makes the game so much fun and so wickedly addictive.

Despite this apparent simplicity, however, you'll find a very elaborate game. Track and car design are simple, but realistic and very accurate. An excellent soundtrack adds the final touch to a game that, in my opinion, sets a turning point in online racing games.

Trackmania Nations Forever is probably one of the greatest online racing games you'll ever see: fun races, customizable elements, an extensive user community and excellent gameplay.

Download Trackmania Nations Forever 2.11.26 in Softonic