One of the best NASCAR experiences in years hampered by simple mistakes and errors.
Here are some things that make me very happy about this game:
1) The graphics are actually very good. Track textures are better than GT5, I haven't witnessed any framerate slowdown with 43 cars on the track, and the sense of speed is amazing. It really looks like you are doing 200mph at Atlanta or Dega! I also like seeing the detail in the interiors, seeing the walls get really dirty from cars scraping against them, and the attention to detail of the cars under the sheet metal. All of the cars and tracks look great.
2) The create-a-car is much better than NASCAR 09's when it's not acting buggy (I haven't had any created schemes get messed up or anything but sometimes decals you have placed will move around to other sides of the car). You have so much freedom that you can make nearly any paint scheme you want. I also like how we can change the color of the lug nuts, wheels, spoiler, splitter, and roof fin. If we just had a few more fonts, more sponsors, and an easy way to copy one decal to the other side of the car in a easy fashion I would be a very happy camper. Also, creating a special decal is a bit awkward and it would be nice if we could just group decals to make custom decals.
3) The replay mode features a rewind function and lets you watch the entire race or just highlights! Something sorely missed from GT5. You can select multiple camera angles, other cars, replay speed, and many other options. Too bad it doesn't record online races though.
4) The cars drive better than NASCAR 09 and NASCAR 08 in my opinion. I think this game strikes a good balance between realism and fun to where the game can be enjoyed but a variety of drivers. I haven't gotten into tuning the car but the default set-ups are fairly competitive.
5) The audio was done very well. The cars, the wrecks, everything sounds real good. The soundtrack is also somewhat decent but mainly forgettable. ZZ Top's LaGrange is the main theme song but it gets old after the 20th play through.
6) Although the online racing has issues, I'm happy to see that it saves special stats for each track which is something I can't say for GT5. I also like being able to see other driver's stats while I'm in the lobby waiting for the race to start up to see how good my competition is.
7) Details. The drivers are all accurately modeled, they move their feet when shifting/braking/hitting the gas and they cover their face with their hands/arms during a bad crash. The interiors of the cars are different from each other, the tracks have a lot of detail put into them, the safer barrier deforms as you run into it, the flaps behind the hood pop up when you car is spinning out of control, the list goes on. There's some things where you will appreciate how much attention was put into the game but then there's a few basic things that got overlooked which will we get into a bit later.
8 ) NASCAR trivia during loading screens is a nice addition since we see a lot of loading screens.
Here are some basic things that the game does well to include:
1) All of the tracks and drivers are in this game from what I can tell. Previous games would leave out a couple tracks or drivers which is unforgivable! There's also a decent amount of alternate paint schemes although Dale Jr. only has his 2 regular schemes.
2) Licensed cars! The cars are officially licensed so a Chevy looks like a Chevy and a Ford looks like a Ford. None of that generic car stuff we saw in NASCAR 08 and NASCAR 09 from EA.
3) Ty Norris does a good job being your spotter and I like how he gives you some vital race information on a regular basis. NASCAR 08 and NASCAR 09 seemed to have a lackluster spotter in my opinion.
4) The A.I. will allow you to bump draft them and they will bump draft you back. Sometimes they don't bump draft you enough but it's a million times better than NASCAR 09 was. Plus, the A.I. cars do a lot of passing so the races don't feel like a follow the leader match.
5) Split screen multiplayer! Not only can you race with someone else on the same screen but you have up to 19 A.I. players racing against you which is very impressive. Unfortunately no custom paint schemes can be used and you can only do single races, no co-op career mode.
Here are some things that the game does poorly:
1) Damage model is over the top visually. You can just barely scrape into a wall and the sheet metal tears off the front end (but somehow doesn't fall on the track for you to run over) exposing metal bumper bars underneath that stick out like thorns. This damage is amazingly detailed but doesn't happen in a realistic manner and therefore makes this feel like an arcade racer. The problem is the sheet metal tears instead of bending which means the metal just disappears when it should be caved in or deformed. The paint scrapes off and gets dirty in a fairly realistic manner though.
2) Damage model is not sensitive enough for high speed crashes. Eutechnyx claimed they would have a damage model that would be revolutionary but other than the visuals (such as the detail you see under the sheet metal) the game is pretty much like anything else. You can run into a wall at full speed, bounce off, and keep going regardless of difficulty level. Sometimes you can hit something hard enough to where the engine is damaged which pretty much ends your day but 95% of the time damage doesn't play any kind of role like it does in real life. If I go into a wall at 200 mph head on the front end of the car should be destroyed but this doesn't happen. Instead you can wreck badly and still compete for a top ten on the very hard difficulty.
3) This game is quite buggy too. Sometimes the paint editor will take your recently placed decal and just put it on a random part of the car while you are editing things. During a race, you could be 30th and right behind the top 5 cars after being lapped and when the caution comes out you'll restart right behind the top 5 although you should be restarting much further behind them. Online races can start with the A.I. controlling the cars and having them wreck into each other before the race even begins. Of course this stuff might be fixed with a patch, and it doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough to where the game feels like it wasn't tested enough.
4) The menus are clunky, poorly thought out, and there's too many loading screens that take too long. Why are the online leaderboards under the career mode section and not in the online multiplayer section too??? Why is there no option in the create a car menu to quickly switch car manufacturers? Why are some of the visual options only available when we pause during a race and not in the regular options menu in the garage? Why do I have to see long loading screens going from menu option to menu option? GT5's menu system was quite simple and easy to follow where finding something on this game takes a bit more searching.
5) The draft is at times too powerful and requires too much precision. When you get behind a car the draft will pull your car so hard that it's hard to keep the car stable. It feels like someone attached a rope to the front of your car, began to pull on it very hard, and you have to find a way to keep your car straight although it wants to be pulled in the direction of the car you are behind. In other words, if you are going to move up a lane to draft someone the car will keep on moving up the race track once the draft starts even though you haven't changed your position on the analog sticks. It's as if you hit the nitro button on Burnout Paradise when you get behind a car. Even worse is the fact that you have to be perfectly behind the car to get the draft going. Having half or 75% of your car behind them pretty much does nothing.
6) Online play is sketchy. Many people online don't know how to drive although plenty of them know how to go the wrong direction. Why the developers didn't take steps to boot people who purposefully ruin races by driving backwards is beyond me. Some races are fun and go very well but there's also some really weird bugs that can occur during the races which I explained in #3. I also don't understand why I can't refine my searches for which races or tracks to join online. No online qualifying or practice sessions makes the online play feel a bit stripped down. There's also very few options for race distances and tuning.
7) Although the paint editor is amazing, you only have like 6 fonts to choose from, no bold or outline font options, and a severe lack of sponsor decals. There's maybe 20 different sponsors to choose from, most of them contingency sponsors. EA had so many more than this it's a little embarrassing. You can't copy one side of the car to the other so your work is doubled, and as of right now there are no manufacturer decals to put on the cars. That means no headlights, tail lights, or brand logos. These decals will be released in May or June when the 2011 DLC is available but not being included with the game is unacceptable in my opinion. What is going to happen to our old paint schemes when the DLC is released is also worrying. Plus the controls for zooming and other functions are a bit wacky and the color palette should have a swatches menu so we don't have to depend on this odd color wheel to choose our colors. Oh, and they should have more color mixing options for the base paint such as gradients, stripes, etc. Right now you can only make the base paint one color so doing gradients or stripes has to be done by hand by the user. Also, I really really hate how they have you design the car in a garage that has odd lighting. It should be done in a plain white room.
8 ) When you un-pause the game it is ready to go immediately so be sure to hold the gas right before you hit resume. I wish it was more like GT5 where you have a second or two to get ready.
9) Season mode is only 1 year long and is basically just 36 races in a row. It doesn't feel like you have accomplished much. There's also no bud shootout or Daytona twin races. I really wish a system like the one in NASCAR Dirt to Daytona is used where you work your way up through the different series and at the same time purchase upgrades for your vehicle to make it more competitive. Without an engrossing season mode (such as the one in D2D or GT5) I can't see myself playing this game for more than a month or 2 before I get bored with it.
10) Speaking of series, there is no Nationwide or Truck series which is disappointing after seeing more than just the Cup series in EA's games.
Here are some things that are so frustrating you may not want to buy this game:
1) Cautions do NOT come out properly. In real life NASCAR racing if someone spins out, 99.9% of the time the caution flag is thrown. In this game you could spin out, stop on the track, sometimes crash a few other A.I. cars, and the race will continue to stay green. This is very absurd and something that even EA Sports knew better about. Plus, I have yet to see any computer created cautions even at tracks like Bristol or Martinsville which is very disappointing. I've seen them happen in other people's races but nothing for me yet.
2) Pit road entry is pathetic. If you speed onto pit road in real life you do your pit stop and then a pass through penalty. In this game, if you speed you do your pass through penalty FIRST, AND THEN you have to go back around to do your pit stop!!! This is a HUGE problem if you were pitting with .2 laps worth of gas left because now you aren't going to make it back around to fill up the car. This completely ruins your race and is very unrealistic.
3) Even worse than #2 is the fact that you could get spun, hit the very end of pit road, and then be given a message of an illegal pit road entry and have your car placed at the beginning of pit road so you can do a pass through penalty. So your car goes from the end of pit road magically to the beginning of pit road and you have to serve a penalty even though you got spun down there.
4) Even worse than #3 is the fact that if you run out of gas the game automatically forces you to quit the race! You could run out of gas coming out of turn 4 and be just yards from pit road and then have the game take control of your car, tell you that you are out of gas and now your race is over. I just don't get it.
5) The A.I. cars at Daytona will go from the outside lane next to the wall to the opposite side of the track regardless of the cars around them to enter the pits. They basically make a sharp 45 degree left hand turn at Daytona, cut across 2 lanes of traffic, and they will take you out if you are in their way JUST to enter the pits. This makes you wonder if the developers even played a race at Daytona where the A.I. has to pit because it happens so often.
6) No day to night transitions. Daytona night race, Charlotte races, Richmond races, the Atlanta night race, and who knows what others, actually take place when the sun is going down but the sun never goes down and the "night races" never take place at night. This is extremely frustrating because of all the things the developers paid close attention to they can't even get this one basic detail down. Even in the menu it will say "night race" but you do 40 laps at Daytona and the sun never moves or sets!!! The only race I have experienced so far at night is Bristol which looks great. I guess in the UK the word "night" means sunset.
7) No practice mode during race events for Single Player career, Race Now, and online races. Instead of practicing to see where you are stacking up against the competition you are immediately thrown into qualifying and then after that into the race. EA Sports knew better than this and this lack of practicing against the computer A.I. cars makes you feel like Eutechnyx doesn't go to the real races, doesn't watch the event all weekend on T.V., etc. I've NEVER played a NASCAR game that didn't have a practice option that involved other cars to practice with you. GT5 might not have it either but this game needs it very badly.
Overall this is a very bittersweet game. I think Eutechnyx put in a lot of effort into this and for their first game I believe they accomplished a lot. The game is "passable" but if it wasn't their first NASCAR game I would have been extremely upset with the final product. Unfortunately this game just isn't firing on all cylinders. Some things are done so well that your $60 purchase feels great, whereas other parts of the game will make you feel like you should have just spent your money on something else. Unlike Gran Turismo 5 where the game's quirks don't overshadow what the game does so well, this game has so many bugs, oddities, and mistakes that what is good about the game isn't enough to make this title the best thing since NASCAR Dirt to Daytona. I really hope a lot of the issues listed will be fixed with patches and that more attention will be payed to how the race events and races themselves actually happen.
Final Ratings:
Presentation -6/10 - Main menus are so so. I like the track menu but everything else doesn't feel new/innovative. You don't move much from the garage area, I wish it were more like Dirt or F1 2010. I also don't understand why there is so little information in the instruction manual as well as in the game itself. You won't see a tutorial until you start the single player career and it can be hard to find menu options if you don't know when to look for them. You're also on your own for learning how to create a car.
Graphics - 9/10 - Cars look great, drivers and tracks also look amazing. There are no framerate issues on the PS3 version even when there's a crash going on. I'm disappointed though that the tracks will not transition from day to night and every now and then you notice textures "popping" into the screen to load. Overall though this is a beautiful looking game.
Sound - 8/10 - The cars sound great but I wish they sounded a bit sexier when starting up. I'm not impressed with the soundtrack, I wish there were some higher tempo tunes going on to get the blood pumping.
Gameplay - 5/10 - The cars feel pretty good and the restrictor plate racing is much better than previous NASCAR titles. Unfortunately the pitting/pit road issues, inconsistent cautions, excessive visual damage, lack of physical damage, and some restart bugs make this title feel a bit too rough around the edges to make it feel much better than NASCAR 09. Adding split screen multiplayer was a great addition and the race replays are better than the ones in GT5 but it's still not enough to make up for the other shortcomings.
Lasting Appeal - 6/10 - With a short 1 year season mode and little to work for other than unlocking paint schemes and 19 mini challenges it's hard to tell whether or not this game will appeal to drivers for a long time, especially with the amount of online issues that are currently present. The create a car will take up hours of your time but that's not what we are here for.
Final Score - 7/10 - Overall the game is decent, better than NASCAR 09 and 08, but not by a margin that will make this a must-have NASCAR game. Some things are done extremely well while some things are done poorly. I hope the patches that the developer is already working on will turn things around so that we can have a game we are proud to have in our collection.