An accurate representation of open-wheel racing: Well-intentioned but not quite there.
User Rating: 5 | IndyCar Series PS2
Take heed, those of you weaned on GT3, Midnight Club, and Need for Speed (that includes me): This is a racing sim. But it's probably not worth your time. IndyCar Series comes to us from Codemasters and Brain in a Jar. It features some of the drivers and some of the tracks (more on the some in a minute) from IndyCar Series, an open-wheel racing league based here in the United States that runs ovals at speeds up to 230+ mph. The game can be played at lower difficulty levels, where the AI is less aggressive and you don't have to worry about such petty things as tire wear or fuel economy or damage. The game, however, at this setting, plays quite poorly. Races simply won by pushing other cars out of your way. They'll spin up the track into the wall (no yellow flag, since damage isn't enabled) and you can slip under and do it to the next pack. There is really no point in playing this game at the lower difficulty levels. Only when you start to get up to the higher difficulties does this game flex its muscles, but those muscles are certainly not a sight to behold. Yes, the cars in the game are modeled to be every bit as twitchy and fragile as real-life open-wheel racers. While a slight bump of the wall with your tires will do nothing more than scratch the wall and your tires, anything more could end your raceday. And sometimes, the game's modeling of damage can seem terribly inconsistent at times. So what is good about the game? Well, just like its real life counterparts, this game is FAST. There is an incredible sense of speed as you scream around the tracks. The game's damage modeling is effective, with parts flying off cars left and right in an accident, cars flipping, and tires producing plumes of white smoke. And the game never seems to stutter or slow even when there is mayhem on a 2.5 mile track (Indianapolis) with 33 cars turning laps. This is where the news gets bad, however. You'll quickly find that the actual pace of the race doesn't mimic an actual IndyCar event at all. Open-wheeled races, whether you like it or not, are typically marred by a bevy of caution flags thrown during the course of the race. The game, for what it's worth, eschews this common wisdom, usually dropping a yellow or two at the start of the race as the cars are packed tightly. Once the pack is thinned, however, you'll have non-stop green flag racing for the rest of the distance. This also leads to the issue of the difficulty setting. For one, computer controlled cars don't seem to be affected by tire heat and wear in the same manner as the player-controlled car. On restarts and pit stops, they'll be able to run you down like grass as you tiptoe through curves on cold tires. But don't fear, noble driver. Once you get your tires up to heat, you'll have a good stretch of laps in which it's almost criminal as to how fast you can catch and pass the computer drivers. Over the course of a race, you'll be able to build a lead with which the occasionally yellow flag (though one thrown after lap 10 is a rarity, as mentioned before) or pit stop won't even dent your lead. This makes the game a boring exercise in tuning, as a correctly set-up car will be able to win with multiple lap margins. Gearheads may claim that setup is key to racing; I'm making the point that if you can tune your car to run that good, why can't the AI? As for the technical aspects of the game, the graphics for the cars and track surface look great. However, the other graphics, such as walls, crowds, and your pit crew seem vintage 1998, and not in a Papyrus-nostalgia way. Long stretches of untextured walls contrast sharply with the carefully textured and sculpted racing surface. The music choice in the game is similarly terrible. GT3 had a soundtrack I could listen to outside the game; if I ever hear any of the limited number of uninteresting songs presented during your racing experience again, it will be too soon. And while the crowds are also vintage 1998, I will give kudos to Codemasters for changing the crowd size: There are less people in the stands during a qualification than on raceday. Peripheral support is also notably lacking. Most top-echelon racing games support third party add-ons, most notably Logitech's extremely popular GT Force Feedback wheel. This game, however, doesn't, so you had better enjoy "driving" with a pair of little analog sticks. In closing, the redeeming qualities of this game aren't quite enough to save it from its faults. Open-wheel racing hasn't gotten top billing in America for a long time, and this game is a microcosm of that attention. While we're cursed with an abundance of quality stock car games, we're stuck with a well-intentioned but poorly executed open-wheel game.
