Nearly 4 years after its initial release, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is still the best of its kind
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (NR2003 for short) has often been considered the Halo of simulation games. For die-hard NASCAR fans it is the one game to have in order to get the whole NASCAR experience. Also for people who play simulation games in the past sometimes say NR2003 is one of the best. Why is it? Because of how realistic this game really is. Every track has a personality of its own. When driving, the car responses will show everything. If you drive real aggressive the tires will wear out faster, or if you slow yourself down to conserve you will be passed by other cars but expect to pass them back when their tires wear out while yours are still good. When you are driving by yourself you will be faster than a pack of cars racing side by side. If you are in a pack, it will test your skill to be able to drive through it. Damage is very realistic, if you scrape the wall at Daytona or Michigan your car will not handle right anymore. It doesn’t take much to cause you or someone else to spin. This game is so realistic is that many NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers like Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, and Dale Jr. have referred to playing this game.
NR2003 has 4 different driving modes: Testing Session, Single Race, Championship, and Multiplayer. Testing session is really nothing more than to test car setups at a particular track. You will be by yourself without any of the AI cars on the track and there’s no time limit so you can spend as much time as needed. The car setups, you can build your own setup from scratch or adjust current setups that already exist in the game. You can copy setups from one track to another for tracks that are similar like Daytona and Talladega. When it comes to adjusting car setups, it is very detailed and very advanced, but hey do have help windows for those who are new to it. When you are making a setup you can adjust virtually everything on the car from the suspension, aerodynamics, etc. So now you are ready to race, there’s single race mode. You can choose from any track in the Nextel Cup series, also one fantasy track. Then you’re able to set the race mode (arcade or simulation), field size, race length, AI difficulty, pit frequency, damage mode (realistic, arcade, or none), and even the weather conditions. When you are at the track you can run through the whole practice sessions and qualifying, or skip directly to the race. So if you just want to qualify then race, you can do that. If you really want a challenge skip qualifying and start the race from last. During the race, or when the race is over you can go view the replays. You can view every car from virtually every type of camera you can think of, which game can offers. Such views include TV, in car, bumper, and helicopter views. So if a big wreck happened you can see what happened to every single car. Another cool feature is if you crash out of the race you can still sit back and watch the race progress to the end without you in it. So if you wanted you can see the race from beginning to end.
Ok now you’ve got some races under your belt, and you’re ready to race for a championship. When you create a new season you can configure it the same way you are able to configure a single race. What stands out the most are the detailed statistics for the end of each race and the whole season. When a race ends and you look back at the race results, it will tell you virtually everything. Such things as race time, cautions, leaders, lead changes, start and finishing position for every driver, laps led, and points earned. Then you can check the season standings which feature just as much details. Including starts, poles, wins, top 5’s, top 10’s, DNF’s, pointes earned, points behind the leader, total laps completed, and total laps led. For both the race results and season standings you can export the files and save them to your computer and show them off.
The multiplayer content is just as good in NR2003 as any other race modes. You can race in a full field of 43 cars online but you will most likely find yourself racing against about 20 guys. That being said connection rates are still good. Although like any other online game you will encounter people that will have issues and start to lag. Sometimes that can cause you to wreck even though you didn’t hit the other person. When you are in the server browser you can choose the type of race you want based off the track, race length, etc., and for creating a server the same options are available as they would be for a single race. The only difference is that some servers will have rating restrictions. You will have 4 different track ratings: road course, short track, speedway, and super speedway. All of them will start out at 0 and you can increase them up to 10. Another rating you will have is laps per incident, and you want to keep this number as high as you can. An incident can count as spinning yourself or another car, dropping debris, or a mechanical failure. Eventually you may find yourself joining a racing league. A racing league can be a lot more fun than just regular online because you will be able to race competitively against other people who are experienced online. All in all multiplayer for NR2003 is a lot of fun.
NR2003 is starting to look out of date. Thanks to the modding community, many people have made higher-resolution cars that are up to date. If you spend a little time researching to find these cars, you will be able to find the current Nextel Cup 2006 roster and drivers. So you will be able to race against Dodge Chargers, Chevy Monte Carlos, and Ford Fusions. Many people have also made updated track files. For example when the game was released Homestead was its old flat track style, now people have made the new Homestead with the increased banking. While you are racing the track and car details, such as shadows and reflections, look really good. When a crash happens, whether you are in front of it, behind it, or in it, it looks very real. The smoke will blind you and damage models also look pretty realistic. Also, have fun trying to drive a wrecked race car; especially when your crushed hood is blocking your view. So for a game that is almost 4 years old, NR2003 still looks really great today even though it is below today’s standards. NR2003 sounds just as great today as it did when it was first released. When racing you will not only hear your engine, but also hear the other cars around you, and sometimes the crowd in the stands. Your spotter and crew chief will play a big role while racing. While you are driving, you almost have tunnel vision. Therefore, you will need your spotter to tell you what is happing all around you; for the most part he does a good job. Your crew chief will radio back to you when you make a change to the car or tell you where the leaders are when you are pitting. Tires will squeal and bangs between hitting cars or the wall will sound real. Everything sounds different from each other, which is a good thing, and that makes NR2003 sound really great.
If you want to get the full experience of driving a stock car you’ll definitely have to buy a steering wheel for the game. You’ll probably find a good one at around 90 to100 dollars. To add to the expense, if you are just buying the game now your only source will be something like eBay or Amazon. Since this game has stopped being manufactured, expect to pay 75 to 100 dollars on the game. So if you are a die-hard NASCAR fan, expect to pay anywhere between 100 to 200 dollars on this game. Again that is if you are buying both the game and a steering wheel for the first time. It is still worth buying unless you are just a genuine fan and not needing the full experience. NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is almost 4 years old. Thanks to the modding community and NASCAR fans everywhere the game is still alive and is more valuable today that it was on its initial release. Since this game, only one other attempt has been made to give everybody a NASCAR simulation, and it did not fulfill everybody’s needs like this game did. Hopefully in the future we will see another NASCAR simulation like this game that could make better of where this game leaves off. Until then long live NASCAR Racing 2003 Season.