I know what you’re thinking. There are no good racing games for your phone. The controls are always oversensitive, the graphics are stuck in the Space Invaders era (not that Space Invaders isn’t eternally awesome but, well, we can do better) and the cool cars always require you to reach level gazillion or pay a disproportionately large amount of money. But there are a few that stand out from the crowd and if you don’t have a wheel/joystick for your games console/laptop, a phone makes steering 100% easier…

The top four Android racing games

1. Real Racing 3 is by far the best of the racing games currently available for Android. It has a great list of cars and a massive race career with nearly 6000 events. The graphics are clear, modern and relatively realistic, and the controls are smooth and adjustable – simply turn your device to steer and choose to switch assists on or off. Once you’ve mastered cornering and finding racing lines, it doesn’t take long to level up and get access to some seriously cool cars. The only real downside is that although they recently added NASCAR and Formula E to the mix, there still isn’t the greatest variety of tracks to choose from.

2. Need for Speed: No Limits is arguably better than the console games in the same series. Unlike Real Racing 3, Need for Speed has a decent storyline and characters: if you liked the original games and the movie, then you’ll love this. It’s fun and a little bit addictive to play, and the graphics are great. The only real issues are the time is takes for the gas to recharge (while the game predictably tries to convince you to part with your money in exchange for quicker refueling) and the inexplicable lack of variety in engine noise. A Lamborghini and a Corvette have completely different engine sounds in real life; how hard can it be to replicate that in the game!?

3. Hot Wheels: Race Off is a serious nostalgia trip. The design is clean and beautiful, and it’ll take you right back to those days of building increasingly complicated Hot Wheels tracks in your front room with the single goal of wrecking the cars in ever more spectacular ways. Once you’ve figured out how the power and steering works, you’re good to go!

4. CSR Racing 2 is currently the top grossing game on Google Play and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a vast improvement on the original and although it’s not my personal favorite, it receives consistently positive views across the board. If you don’t want to part with your money, it takes a lot of time to get to the cars that you’re really going to want and the loading times are… not great. But the graphics are excellent (hence, one suspects, the loading time issue) and they’re not lying when they claim to be the number one drag racing series out there.

What are your favourite racing games to play?