It’s been a few years since NASCAR has been featured in a dedicated game product for Xbox 360. Now, if you own a PlayStation 3, you got your dose of stock car fun between the spiffy racing game Gran Turismo 5 and the mostly forgettable Days of Thunder: NASCAR Edition. (At least it was better there than in unlicensed form on the Xbox 360 – talk about abysmal.) But Activision and development team Eutechynx are changing all that this week with the release of NASCAR 2011: The Game, the first officially licensed stock car racing sim since EA Sports held the licensing rights a few years ago. Everything you could possibly want out of a NASCAR experience is here. Your loyal pit crew and spotter/chief are by your side with each turn on the track, the competition is ready to eat you alive, and the crowd, stocked up in their trailer homes and in the stands, are ready to cheer you on to a moral victory. Most of the NASCAR world’s best drivers are here, including personal favorites like Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon among others.
You choose your driver and either head off into a quick racing event (such as Eliminator or cool Invitational Events) or tackle a full season Career Mode, where each move you make could earn you points – or take them away, if you’re choosing to be reckless. A NASCAR sim can be a tricky thing to make. Stray too far into arcade-land and you’re likely to alienate fans. Play it too far on the serious tilt and you’ll find casual players getting lost in what “bump drafting” is. For better or for worse, Eutechynx has chosen the simulation route. But it’s not without its cool perks. First off, there’s an interesting rewind feature, where, if you make a mistake and take a crash into the wall, you’re not necessarily out of the race. In true “cheater” fashion (yeah, someone had to say it), you can rewind a few seconds back and try to correct the mistake or perhaps even get ahead of someone before they can cause the crash. It’s one of those “what might have been” things that real NASCAR drivers have been clamoring for, we suppose. (We didn’t ask them.)
The other thing is the proximity radar. Too often in racing games (including the recently released Shift 2: Unleashed), you can’t really see opponents charging at you, resulting in a sudden crash you weren’t really expecting. With the radar turned on, you can keep an eye on what’s going on around you while not distracting yourself from seeing what’s happening on the road. It’s a neat idea. Speaking of neat ideas, the ability to earn experience points to unlock pins, trophies, coins and paint liveries is a nice touch, and will keep players going until they can design their dream car. There are other things to tweak as well, including difficulty, turning on track lines (so you can figure out what kind of route to take on each track), and plenty of personal rivalries to bring up in Career Mode. It wouldn’t be NASCAR if you couldn’t ruffle a few feathers.
This feature review concludes on the next page, please click Page 2 below to see our final thoughts on NASCAR The Game 2011.
