One of the best and worst NASCAR games ever.
So, for years I have complained and complained on the EA forum for a realistic NASCAR game from EA. They needed to give us more set up options, make restrictor plate racing realistic, fix the framerate issues, and make the A.I. a little bit harder to beat. NASCAR 08 actually includes a lot of fixes for the problems that have riddled EA games. For example, they re-designed Talladega to make it more realistic and now the racing is usually 2 wide for the majority of the race. Also, there are tons of car set up options and the driving is much more realistic, so much so that even the temperature of your tires will affect how the car handles. Plus, it seems the A.I. is a bit more aggressive but not too aggressive.
Unfortunately, where the game excels there are also big failures. For example, EA gave us a TON of new set up options but didn't tell us what settings do what. So, instead of them telling us to lower the wedge to make the car loose, they tell you to just change one thing and then test it out to see if that helps. The problem here is that this will force you to practice for HOURS before you might even begin to feel remotely comfortable driving the car. Even worse is the fact that usually once you find a good set up it ends up not being competitive against the A.I. Of course you could put the game on easier difficulties but the game shouldn't be harder than Gran Turismo. Ultimately, finding the right set up and getting the car to handle properly is so difficult there's an extremely good chance you'll be sick and tired of dealing with it and want to stop playing the game or trade it in for something else.
Another big downfall of the game is the fact that the create a car is horrible. There are less paint schemes available, you can't have metallic, flat, pearlescent, color change, or chrome paint. You are very limited on number styles, and the placement of decals is limited to what the game chooses for you. EA needs to make create a car much more unique and give users more freedom to make create a car more of an experience instead of just an option. Plus, I think EA needs to let users upload their own created cars to share with other gamers.
Online mode is also incredibly painful to play. Usually connecting to a game is next to impossible, and there are frequent hang ups during gameplay. Plus, it is very common for cars to switch positions on the track when a caution comes out, and sometimes you will run 95% of the race under caution because of other players spinning each other out due to incredible lag on the EA servers. EA should look at F1 Championship Edition on the PS3 to see how online racing should be done.
Also, one thing that is slightly annoying is when caution flags come out. If an A.I. car spins in front of you, and the caution comes out, usually the game takes control of your car just seconds after the yellow flag flies. This means you will not have any chance of driving through the big on at Talladega or a pile up at Bristol. Unfortunately EA needs to give gamers the freedom of controlling the cars under the caution or at least until we get back to the start finish line. They could then give us the option to skip the caution laps or just drive the car ourselves. I don't believe we need to be able to drive down pit road since I can only see how the game could be messed up by one tiny accident.
Last but not least, career mode was much better in previous games. To start off in a lower series and then work your way up to the trucks and nationwide series was a lot of fun. This time, you are actually stuck doings tons of tests to unlock particular cars for certain tracks. It just doesn't work out the way it should. Personally, I think EA needs to think about doing something on an even lower level than the modified cars. They should consider dirt late models or sprint cars. Not only is this how drivers like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart started out, but having a solid dirt game in a NASCAR game would make it incredibly addictive. It would give players the option of doing something different than just driving in circles on concrete.
To sum things up, I applaud EA for listening to NASCAR gamers. They tried a ton of new things and there are a lot of things in NASCAR 08 that are huge improvements of previous games. You can now watch replays of an entire race, the restrictor plate racing is a lot better (except for the fact that A.I. cars will pull down on the apron to let you by so usually it's a pain to try and bump draft), there are a ton of set up options present (you just won't know how to use them), and the graphics are actually very good. The lighting is a million times better than previous games, it is very true to how it happens in real life (past games usually had the sun in the wrong spot) and before you say the graphics look bad don't forget that there are 42 other cars on the track, whereas most racing games only offer 6-20 other cars. So, for being the first NASCAR outing on the PS3 I think the graphics are actually pretty good. They could be better, but they are much better than the first PS2 game EA did (NASCAR 2001).
EA could of made this game much better than it is. Because they made the game so hard when it came down to driving and setting up the cars, the game is for the most part more of a chore instead of fun to play. It's hard to find that balance between realistic and fun to play, but since EA does not tell gamers how to set up the car properly you will be wasting hours trying to play a game that has so much potential. Remember, people play games to have fun and relieve some stress from daily life, which is something I don't believe NASCAR 08 does.
This was the first time in a long time that I felt EA tried very hard to please angry fans, unfortunately they have fixed many problems yet created plenty of new ones. They really need to get some NASCAR gamers in, play early builds of the game, and go from there.