Underachieving. On race day, it can leave you dead last in a field of 43 cars, but what if you have no competition? What if you could simply “phone it in” and still be successful? Without any competition, you could be complacent and rest on your laurels without making any effort to improve. EA took the lazy route with bringing the NASCAR series to next gen consoles, leaving Xbox 360 owners with a game that looks and plays like the generic multi-system port that it is.
While EA has provided some welcome additions, such as more in-depth tuning options, a lot of the elements that set the NASCAR series apart from other racers are missing. Gamers have lost the “Intimidator” feature that allowed you to make the car in front of you “loose”, so that you could pass once your opponent once he found himself out of the racing groove. The “Friends and Rivals” feature that carried grudges and allies from race to race is also history. The Featherlight racing series is gone. Craftsman Truck and NASCAR National (Busch) series are still present, but these vehicles do not drive that much differently than their Nextel Cup counterparts.
EA’s NASCAR series always took an arcade-like approach with regard to tuning. Fortunately for many of us, the handful of tuning options that were available before have been expanded to 46. You are now free to tweak camber, front and rear toe-in, grille tape, fender flare, shock rebound and the like, in a fairly comprehensive tuning system. Wedge and Track-bar adjustments are given as a percentage, rather than “rounds”, which doesn’t jive to a NASCAR fan. I know exactly what adding a half round of wedge will do, but what does shifting cross-weight .3% to the left front wheel mean? Keep with the vernacular, please! EA realized that not every gamer wants to delve that deeply into tuning their vehicle, so they also provided 4 basic top-level adjustment sliders to tune gear ratios, downforce, loose/tight handling and suspension. Overall, the revamped tuning options have been done very well, and your car setups can be saved for later use and revision. Also, be prepared to made adjustments during the race. You’ll notice the changing track conditions in races such as the Coca Cola 600, which begins in daylight, but ends at night. You’ll need to adapt as the track cools, and your car’s handling is affected.
NASCAR 08’s graphics, more so than anything else, show that this game is simply a multi-platform port that was not fine-tuned to the Xbox 360. With the dreaded “jaggies” as far as the eye can see, the game looks like a polished PS2 game. Can’t you go the extra mile, EA? The tracks are modeled exceptionally well, as are the cars, but unfortunately; the gamer is very, very limited in custom paint schemes. The lighting system doesn’t seem to work as well as in previous editions. Light hitting the cars tends to be bland with little variation regardless of the conditions, while sun glare and shadows don’t seem to be as robust as they were in previous games. The blinding sun of turn 1 at Daytona doesn’t seem to have the same effect it used to. The frame rate handles 43 cars fairly well, and noticeable stutters are limited.
The collision and damage systems are not at all realistic, with wrecks being the worst culprits. Despite decades of NASCAR research to keep cars from going airborne, EA’s wrecks will have cars spinning nose over tail 30 feet in the air with great frequency. It may look “cool” to some people, but I found it to be off-putting, as I play racers like this for the physics. Your car’s sheet metal will convincingly crumple with contact, but the vehicle’s paint scrapes away far too easily and unrealistically.
