SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: NASCAR SimRacing

NASCAR SimRacing - Part 4
In our final installment, Chunx and Jens look at Career Mode, The "Other" Racing Series in NSR and provide closing comments.

by Chunx and Jens "McGonigle" Lindblad

Career Mode

Despite EA's marketing hubris, NSR's "campaign" mode was first introduced in NASCAR Thunder 2004 and its clear to us that it has hardly been changed at all from the earlier EA title.

Chunx' Career Mode Impressions

I must admit that I am not a big "campaign" player regardless of simulation subject or title. In fact, I'd say that the only campaign that I was ever really impressed with was in the flight sim MiG Alley. And while many at SimHQ weren't very impressed with it, I think the "campaign" mode of NSR is somewhat neat and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't a hokey, "Dukes of Hazzard" affair like some other games have offered. In fact, if I had to compare NSR's career mode to another game, it might be called, "NASCAR Tycoon".

Getting started in career mode, you will begin your racing career in the very fun-to-drive Craftsman Truck Series. You'll start out with a modest $1 million bankroll and have to decide how you're going to use it to make your team more competitive through Research & Development programs, gaining team prestige and recognition with merchandise product lines and sales and obtaining new sponsors to help pay for your operation. I am quite a skeptic when it comes to racing "campaign" modes and while this is clearly a very simplified version of reality I think this one is a fairly entertaining distraction from the actual racing for a sim fan and at first blush it seems to be tastefully and professionally done.

Just to test how the career mode really works, I ran the first CTS race of the series, a night race at Daytona (which looks GORGEOUS) in the regular "Race Now" CTS module. I tweaked up a good setup that let me run pretty consistent laps in the low 49 second range, with laps in the low 48s in the draft. Then I went back to the Career mode and ran the same race, using my tweaked setup. I worked my way through the pack carefully and finished this race in 2nd place. All in all I wouldn't say it was a challenging race, but I do enjoy the way the CTS trucks drive — entertaining, but not too twitchy.

Then I moved back into Career mode to run the same race. I noted that nowhere in Career mode did I see any place to adjust the strength of the AI or their aggressiveness, as in the Race Now module. Regardless, having set my R&D priorities, secured sponsors and printed up some T-shirt merchandise for the race, I entered the night event at Daytona.

The first thing I noticed was that in qualifying the best I could muster was a 50.77 lap time, nearly 2 seconds slower than I ran with the same car, same setup, in the "Race Now" module (for comparison, the pole sitter in Career ran a low 48 sec lap). It would appear that there is some "software governor" on the cars in career mode that keeps you from running at full speed until you build some experience and gain points for your team's engineering skills. No problem with that, in my opinion. My lap time was only good for a 34th position on the grid, but at least I was in the race.

Once the race began, I shifted into 4th too early and watched the pack disappear in front of me. But, I had one car trapped behind me, so I blocked him until I could let him by in Turn 3 and then slip in on his bumper to form a small drafting team. My goal was merely to hang on and hopefully finish the race.

Well, as it turns out, the other AI cars suddenly seemed to get slower, despite having formed a nice 10 car, single file drafting pack of their own. I was surprised when we easily caught this larger drafting pack and then slowly worked our way through it, with me moving all the way up to 12th place in a matter of laps.

With 2 laps to go, the AI cars seemed to realize that I was now driving faster and their pace magically picked back up. I was now in a drafting pack and was able to trade spots back and forth, finally getting up to 10th place, but on the final lap the car immediately behind me was able to make a move to my outside in Turn 4 and pass me, leaving me just out of a top 10 finish. After the race, I was informed that my purse for the race was $105,000! Not bad for a rookie with limited sponsorship!

Although I could sense an "adaptive AI" feature was running in Career mode, still I found the racing to be exciting and challenging. It also seemed as if the AI aggressiveness was turned down for this race, because although I was bumped a lot, it wasn't too rough out on the track — actually it felt more like a real NASCAR event than I had experienced so far.

Strangely, when I observed my replay of the race, there were no sponsor decals on my truck! I guess my sponsors won't be happy about that when the race reruns on Speed Channel!

Over time I would imagine that you "grow" into the Busch series and when you've done well there, right on up to the big leagues — the NEXTEL Cup series. All in all I think the Career mode is a very well executed module of NSR.

Jens' Career Mode Counterpoint

You start out with a tired old Craftsman Truck, paint it up a bit and secure the sponsors who are blissfully unaware of whom they are giving their money to. You can initiate Research & Development, but only one focus item at a time. So, if you start R&D into engine power at one race event, you'll then have to wait until the next before being able to launch R&D efforts on other areas of the car.

You can order the manufacture of you own clothing line, die-cast models, helmet replicas and — wait for it — action figures! Imagine me as an action figure! I shall not be offended if you let out a roaring laugh...

Take care of your car and yourself out there on the track because if you get sloppy and wreck and then decide to restart your career, you'll have to repaint your car, resign all the sponsors, remanufacture the merchandise, etc. Doing that two or three times may be very well, but the fourth time gets very tedious.

If you stay with your career you get to watch how demand on your merchandise develops as you progress and will have to manage sponsor contracts.

Some have asked where the advertised paint shop is located in NSR and Jens has found it. The paint shop is available in the career mode and is of the variety that we saw in NASCAR Thunder 2004. You choose between a set of predetermined different patterns and then change a couple of primary and secondary colors. Sponsor decals are added as you sign new sponsors.

While it is not a fully fledged "paint shop" as seen in other NASCAR sims, it is quick and lets those of us who are challenged for painting skills create an individual and professional looking skin in literally 2 minutes.

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