SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: NASCAR SimRacing

NASCAR SimRacing
SimHQ presents a week-long series on one of the most important simulations ever produced for the Motorsports genre. Part 1 covers the manual, GUI, installation, menus, replay studio, graphics and sound.

by Chunx and Jens "McGonigle" Lindblad

Introduction

NASCAR SimRacing (NSR) represents a benchmark event in the history of NASCAR motorsports simulation titles. Benchmark because it is EA's first attempt at a true "simulation" PC-only title since acquiring exclusive rights to NASCAR game titles, and benchmark because it represents the first NASCAR simulation title to emerge since the demise of revered NASCAR simulation developer Papyrus in 2004. As a result of EA's acquisition and Papy's demise, emotions will run high in the hearts of hard-core motorsports simulation fans as we explore this new title, to see if it is truly worthy of the title "simulation" and if it delivers on EA's promise — a promise built into the very title of the game.

Because this is such a landmark event for Motorsports fans, we wanted to do right by our readers when reviewing this title. So, we'll be looking long and hard at how this game works and feels and in the process try to give you a better understanding of just what this new title is all about and how it measures up to its predecessors — or redefines the genre. So, without further adieu, here goes Part I of SimHQ's in-depth review of NSR. As Darryl Waltrip would say, "Boogity boogity boogity, boys. Let's go (virtual) racin'!"

Background

The story made the news headlines at SimHQ and all the other Motorsport simulation web sites. It was the the "buzz" at a plethora of racing forums... At the 24 April, 2004 Busch series race in Talladega, Martin Truex Jr.'s Crew Chief let the cat out of the bag — that Dale Earnhart Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. used "a racing game" with the "Talladega-BR mod" (one of BrianRing's 3rd party track mods), to practice driving before race day. In fact, it was leaked that Dale Jr. and Truex Jr. used this racing game a lot and that to a certain extent Dale Jr. "discovered" Truex Jr's talents through that same, unnamed racing game. Similarly, Kurt Busch admitted while doing color commentary for a Busch race last year that, to a very limited extent, he too used that certain racing game to re-familiarize himself with a track's layout before arriving to start race week. That "racing game" had to remain unnamed on national TV because EA held the exclusive rights to NASCAR games — and the game was not an EA product. But the hard-core simmers around the world all knew that "game" was Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. While anyone familiar with simulators knows that there are obvious limits to how much value a simulator has in preparing someone for a real activity, the fact that some drivers used a PC simulation at all — specifically NR2003 (with some modifications) — added a lot of credibility to Papy's reputation, while taking the gloss out of EA's then current product, NASCAR Thunder 2004.

With all the hype from EA and the hiring of some former Papyrus team members, the Motorsports staff at SimHQ hoped that EA was hell-bent to increase the credibility of it's NASCAR titles by setting a new standard of realism with NSR — not just with the rank and file consumer in mind, but with the actual drivers themselves.

Jens and Chunx have put their personal lives on hold for the past few weeks in order to thoroughly wring out NSR and see how it stacks up as NASCAR's latest and greatest racing simulation.

NASCAR SimRacing's Packaging Product Packaging

Box Art and Contents

Nicely done, professional looking packaging art that fits within the theme of all EA Sports products. The box art features Ryan Newman's #12 Alltel Dodge Charger, which is something the game graphics can't claim. The box recommends 3GB of hard drive space to install game and the software comes contained on a 2 CD-ROM set.

Manual

A professionally produced game manual can add so much to the enjoyment, flavor and reputation of a simulation title. Of course, over the years we've seen game producers look for ways to maximize profits by cutting costs and one way to do that has been to trim the size of hard copy manuals and the research and production costs that go into making them. Possibly there's a pervasive stereotype in the game by marketing world that most gamers are not interested in reading. So it's not any surprise today when your hard-core simulation title ships with such a lackluster manual. While teenage console gamers might not care for a robust game manual, it is not so for hard-core simulation fans. We thoroughly enjoyed the 400 page manual for Falcon 4.0, the history filled manual for MiG Alley and found the strategy guide for GPL, "Four Wheel Drift" to be a very helpful and entertaining piece of literature in its own right. These publications were of such high quality that some of us brought them along on business travel or used them for bedtime reading, so we could still savor our hobby when away from the gaming PC. We also appreciate a hard copy manual because we don't like to read documents from a PC screen or print out reams of pages in PDF files. It can give you a headache and it's virtually impossible to quickly "flip pages" and scan around for facts when a manual is presented as a software document.

So, you could say our standards for hard-copy game manuals are pretty high. But we're also realistic about today's simulation marketplace and so we didn't expect a great manual from a new title like NSR. However, what we got was far below even our most meager expectations. The hard copy manual is, in a word, inadequate. Printed on low-weight paper stock in black and white, the skimpy 4½" x 7" manual is only 20 pages in length (including the front and back cover). Two of those pages are filled with fine print 'legalese' about the warranty. Pages 5-13 are filled with block charts barely explaining each configurable item in the Advanced Car Setup section of the game and how changing that setting may impact the handling of the car. This is the most helpful part of the manual since there are no "tool tips" in the game, allowing you to rest your mouse on (or right click on) an item to gain more information about it. The manual is the only way to know how the advanced setup process works. The remainder of the manual guides you through installation, key commands and basic operation of the game's various modules. However, like EA's other recent racing sims, some key commands are left out of the printed documentation. One of these commands is an important one to hard core simmers — how to display the game's frame rate on the screen (Ctrl F).

Incredibly, no mention is made to playing TCP/IP multiplayer in the manual. Only LAN multiplayer — and that comprises a mere half-page content. That probably explains why EA has posted a download PDF here called Online 101. But even it leaves a bit to be desired. More on the multiplayer aspect of NSR later.

The Bottom Line: NSR's "manual" -- or should we say pamphlet? -- has only the absolute basics to get you started in the game and only mentions features or views without describing them or how to use them, or where certain features can be accessed. Shame on EA for producing such a poor excuse for a manual.

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