NASCAR SimRacing Updated Hands-On
We take a look at the stock-car sim's career mode in our latest hands-on preview.
Since the death of development studio Papyrus, the PC stock-car racing scene has shifted toward a more arcade-style approach to the sport. Indeed, because the most recent PC NASCAR games published by EA (which owns exclusive rights to the series) have been upgraded ports of the company's popular console titles, there hasn't been a game that was designed with the avid PC racing community in mind in a while. Enter EA's latest oval-racing effort, NASCAR SimRacing, a PC-only title that seeks to fill that sim-shaped hole in the PC stock-car racing market.
It's been nearly a month since we last sat down with NASCAR SimRacing. The first area we wanted to explore in our time with the latest version of the game was the career mode. Unlike the story-driven career mode found in last year's console NASCAR title, NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup, your career in SimRacing is thankfully free of melodramatic cutscenes and street races in Dodge Vipers. Instead, you'll be much more concerned with the only commodity more precious than speed in stock-car racing: money. While three NASCAR racing series are available in SimRacing's career mode--the Craftsman Truck Series, the National Series, and the Nextel Cup--you'll begin your career in the Truck Series, with a bare-bones vehicle you can repaint and rename as you see fit, and a team budget of around $1 million. And while that sounds like a lot of money, your expenses will quickly make it seem like chump change, especially if you aren't placing well in your races.
The two main departments begging for a slice of your budgetary pie include research and development and merchandising. With R&D you'll be investigating potential upgrades for your stock car (or truck) in areas such as power, torque, grip, and acceleration. Upgrades become more expensive the further into an attribute you progress, so a level-one power upgrade might run you only $30,000, while a level-four upgrade might cost many times more than that. In addition, all this research takes time to complete, measured in race events. The quicker the turnaround time for an upgrade, the more money it will cost you. If you're desperate for that level-three power upgrade in time for the Talladega race, for example, you'll need to ensure you either schedule enough time for a regular research cycle to complete, or prepare to have a much lighter wallet due to an expedited schedule. Also, to put your team's newfound upgrade knowledge to work, you'll need to construct a new car that will take advantage of the upgraded attributes discovered by the braniacs in your team's garage. As you might expect, a new car means more money out of your pocket. Finally, the R&D area will be where you repair any damage incurred by your car during the previous race weekend. Fail to repair your car to minimum specifications and you won't be eligible for the following week's race.
Merchandising is a double-edged sword, financially. NASCAR SimRacing allows you to create a number of different racing knickknacks that NASCAR fans love to purchase. These items include die-cast models, action figures, a line of clothing, and replica helmets, among other things. Each newly introduced line of merchandise requires an initial investment on your part to cover production costs. The good news is that the merchandise area features a "demand" graph that will keep track of fan demand for any of the products you can manufacture, making it simple to see where your money would be best spent. The bad news? Fan demand for your goods is tied to your performance on the track. Have a few bad finishes--or, worse, fail to finish a few events at all--and your merchandising ledgers might quickly go from black to red.
NASCAR SimRacing Quick Links
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- GameSpot Score8.5great
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NASCAR SimRacing Review
NASCAR SimRacing is approachable enough for newcomers and action racers yet challenging and believable enough for ardent sim buffs.
- Feb 16, 2005
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Related Unions
- EA Games
- EA Tiburon
- Stock Car Racing
- Release: Feb 15, 2005
- ESRB: Everyone
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