A decent improvement over 2005, but ea leaves out good content that can make the game a lot more fun.

User Rating: 7.8 | NASCAR 06: Total Team Control XBOX
Everybody knows since EA bought exclusive rights to NASCAR, their games have gone to crap. NASCAR 2004 was pretty good, but NASCAR 2005 was just bad. So, is NASCAR 2006 an improvement over 2005? The answer is yes, but EA still needs to make some changes to make the game more enjoyable.

NASCAR 2006 has brought back some features that were missing in 2005 and made the game more fun. The most noticable feature that was brought back is the cockpit view. It upset many people that you could not drive in the cockpit view in 2005. Also Pocono raceway is back. If you recall it wasn't in 2005 and the Nextel Cup schedule was only 34 races instead of 36. Now that it is 36 it feels much more like you are in Nextel Cup. As well as bringing back missing features NASCAR 2006 brought back some of the more annoying features that were in 2005. The most annoying thing in the game, the cellphone, is back and more annoying than ever. Not only does it have the voice messages but it also has text messages and fantasy racing. It may seem neat at first but over time it gets really annoying. Another thing brough back from 2005, as well as 2004, is the friends and rivals system. While it is enjoying to have a rival on the track the little movie clips at the end of races are sort of cartoonish, and should be left out of the game. Now lets talk about new stuff. Now the whole focus on the game is teamwork. You can command teammates to do things like draft, block, fall back, etc. The coolest new feature is the car-swapping feature. Say if you are in the front 3 seconds ahead of second place, it can get boring just driving around by yourself. With the car swapping you can swap with a teammate and control their car. So if they are in 30th you can bring them to the front. Whats really cool is that not all of the cars handle the same. You can go to one teammate's car and it will be very loose, and the next one will be very tight. Its very interesting to feel the differences. The game physics have also been redone. Cars crash a bit more realistic and its cool to watch a car go airborne. But, that means the cars also handle differently. If you don't have a steering wheel then expect to hit the wall and other cars a lot, they are that hard to control.

Now what needs to be changed, a lot. First, the replays are annoying. The most clips that are shown now are down to 3 if i am correct, and the camera angles are horrible. In the replays, do they show you making a cool pass? Do they show you potentially wrecking? Hardly, they mostly show you making a random pass on some car. They need to have one of those whole race replays where you can view what parts you want. Also the crappy star rating system is back. Instead of showing you in-deph details about your car, they just give it a certain number of stars. 1 star for being horrible, and 5 stars for being awesome. Its also like that for crew members and teammates. Its always between 1 and 10 stars. They also need to change the draft, or git rid of that draft bar. On some tracks the draft is too strong, and the cars stay clumped together, and onothers its not strong enough.

Hopefully NASCAR 2006 paves away for some better games in the future. Its also annoying to see the #1 Best Seller logo on the game cases when EA is the only one that can make NASCAR games. Maybe if EA actually took the time to make the game better, then it would be #1 Best Selling.