NASCAR 25

i really enjoy this game, a lot. i really really do. the only reason i am not recommending this game is because there are so many issues with the game that the developers have refused to fix, months after the games release. it is so annoying that, on race starts or restarts, you are at a significant disadvantage to the ai, because most tracks have you starting in the wrong gear. you can go on to lead the whole race, then have an accident that causes a restart causing a GWC, and they just blow your doors off. its also annoying how they keep coming out with these monthly "patches" that fix about four issues with the game each time. if they ever decide to actually go back and fix some of these issues the players have been reporting, i will change my review. after months without these issues being fixed, i have no hope that it ever will

it's 2026 and this straight port from console actually requires that you use an XBOX controller to navigate the menus. Yes, I'm serious. You can't navigate menus with your mouse. Unreal.

If you don’t own any of the older NASCAR games and just want something to scratch that NASCAR itch, this game might do that for a little while. But the game will get boring VERY quickly. The career mode is where the biggest problems start for me. It’s severely lacking in depth, and the way WP and RP work makes progression feel like pure RNG. Crew members are just names you hire rather than people you actually build a team around, so there’s no real sense of growing an organization over time. Sponsors are also handled poorly. You only get one sponsor option per series, instead of choosing between different brands offering different deals. So if you were thinking "Yeah I want to sign Kubota as my main sponsor, Ally as my secondary, Snap-On as my tertiary." Well forget about it, its one sponsor and you don't get a say on who that sponsor is. It’s basically just the next random sponsor offering slightly more money than the last. If you didn’t buy the Deluxe Edition, the money grind can also get frustrating depending on how your season goes. At the same time, once you actually start making money, there’s nothing meaningful to spend it on. After four seasons in career mode, I’m sitting on over $10 million with barely anything to do with it other than one car part because the R&D system is so backwards. There’s no real way to invest in your team. You can’t grow your shop, upgrade facilities, or expand into multiple cars. There’s no option to drive for another team to save money before starting your own operation, and no ability to run a second, third, or fourth car as your organization grows. Shop upgrades, shop cosmetics, or even different shop locations would go a long way toward making the mode feel like you’re actually building something. Instead, you’re mostly just swapping out names and moving on. The gameplay itself doesn’t help either. The car physics and AI are both rough. I don’t expect full simulation physics from an arcade-style game, but I do expect fair racing. The AI can spin you out with ease, while you can barely move them if you make contact. They feel like immovable bricks, very similar to how the old Heat games handled collisions. Restarts are also completely broken. No matter what you try, you’ll always go backwards when the green flag drops. Then there are the superspeedways, the tracks that made me a fan of NASCAR in the first place. They’re incredibly frustrating to race on, especially if you’re trying to lead. You almost never get a push from behind unless you drop out of first place. If you sit in second, you can push the leader and create a two-car breakaway, but the AI is too dumb to work together behind you to run you back down. Trying to lead the race and control the pack — Like you're Dale Earnhardt or Jr. doesn't exist. Which I can see why its like that maybe, but it also just sucks the fun out knowing you'll either get swallowed up by the pack or have to potentially lose the lead to get a push. Just not a fan personally so take that how you will. What makes all of this more frustrating is that older NASCAR games handled these ideas better. NASCAR Thunder 2003 still has a deeper and more engaging career mode than this, and NASCAR Thunder 2004 introduced driver rivalries that developed based on how you raced each other on track. Somehow, more than 20 years later, ideas like that are completely absent here. For a game that was talked about as a successor to NR2003, it didn’t just drop a cylinder — it blew the entire motor. Even the presentation feels inconsistent. The graphics are probably the best part of the game, but they still have noticeable issues. Damage on a car’s rear bumper can disappear once they get about half a second ahead of you, and taillights often don’t render until roughly the same distance, something I’ve especially noticed on the Fords. Overall, the entire game just feels half-baked. It’s hard to see where the development time actually went, because nothing really stands out as being done particularly well. With how barebones everything feels, I honestly don’t see much reason to stick around for a 10+ season career. It’s disappointing, because NASCAR already has plenty of problems right now, and this game doesn’t help. The NASCAR games from the early 2000s are what got me into the sport as a kid, and I don’t see how something with this little depth or passion behind it is supposed to grab a new generation of fans. To be fair, it’s not as bad as NASCAR Ignition 21, but it still feels like a polished version of the same idea rather than a true step forward. Add to that the fact that multiplayer already feels nearly dead at launch, and it’s hard to justify the price. Maybe others have had better experiences finding lobbies. I haven't, then again I don't play games like this for the Multiplayer. So if they removed it altogether in favor of a Co-Op Career mode I wouldn't be mad. If you’re hoping for a deep career mode where you can start as a small one-car team and eventually build a powerhouse like Hendrick Motorsports, this unfortunately isn’t it. If you’re thinking about buying it, I’d strongly recommend waiting for a steep sale — something like 60% off or more. Honestly, I wish I had. After playing NR2003 and iRacing for the first time last year and seeing what this studio was capable of. They really dropped the ball on this IMO. That said, I almost forgot to mention one genuinely great thing about the game: the soundtrack. With the exception of maybe two songs, the soundtrack is absolutely bad to the bone.

Far from perfect, lacking many features but by far the best NASCAR game for years (I have a huge soft spot for Heat 5). The last game to feature Kyle Busch, Rest in Peace.

I'm a huge simracing junkie, and a gamer all the same. So when this dropped, I was ecstatic. I waited until my birthday to pick it up for myself and same day, I'm writing this review. I don't normally post reviews. But this game, this game is a huge disappointment. For me, I feel like this game is just lacking in features to justify it's AAA pricetag. The Good first... The AI race phenomenally, when they're working properly. They'll race you close, bump draft you, but the one criticism is that they're a little robotic and aren't keen on making moves against you on D ovals and short tracks. The driving is also pretty okay. Not brilliant, but okay. Honestly, I was expecting better from the iRacing devs. It's perfectly serviceable. There's no depth to it. It's very linear feeling, but if you leave the stability assist on it's passable. The bad... On the driving/physics subject, I have a sneaking suspicion they had monetary reasons for making sure this game had a lackluster driving model. As I said, it's perfectly okay, but that really isn't good enough for a dedicated racing game in 2025. They have the market cornered on oval racing simulation, and they could have very easily crafted an experience that was actually scalable in terms of realism. The cars basically drive like they're on a glorified stability control until they step out from under you. They could have literally just kept more in depth underlying physics and implemented the appropriate controller support and assists and had that stuff enabled by default. As is, the controller support is terrible... AND the physics are bland at best. They could have done better. The gameplay and career is nonexistent. Without compelling enough driving, not having a decent career is a major failure IMO. You own your own team, but you're a fresh rookie who's the only driver on the team? Make that make sense... You just trudge on, race to race, over and over. Is that the whole game? I honestly do not know for sure, because I immediately felt sickened by it and gave up on it. And on track... there isn't much there. No rivals, no distinct driver differences, just a down-tiered version of iRacing's oval AI. Excellent in it's own right, but that leaves nothing there in the end to compell you to keep playing. There's also no vanity features. Where are all of the little easter eggs, challenges, random messages, etc. that the old EA Nascar games had? Where is the livery editor (I mean even a primitive editor, I mean my god, it's 2025), where is the fun? I'm not saying this game is the worst thing ever, and it has it's merits, but I can't recommend it to anyone. It just doesn't hit the mark, and for a developer as money laden as iRacing, it is kind of depressing that this game is such a far cry from what their predecessors at Papyrus, and Nascar games of the past were. Also, I am not a person that writes reviews, so I'm certainly missing some of my thoughts and whatnot on this game, and I'm sure this is poorly written. Still, hope this guides people who may be as tight or tighter on money than me, and happy new year. 4/10 for lack of effort.

I really really want to love this game but there are so many things wrong with it. - you lose everytime on restarts, even when the game decides to start you in 2nd gear, you'll always lose positions and its infuriating. - when Ai crashes and the caution comes out, they dont pit and just restart in whatever position they were when the caution came out. It also seems that the damage they have doesnt have an impact on their speed. - Im in cup right now and even with lvl 10 equipment, i often get blasted on the straights on max difficulty and that doesnt seem fair. Even guys who are running 30th+ are running me down on the straights. - Short tracks are a big problem. Even with max equipment you will be lapped on max difficulty. Even on 100, with the equipment you have, you dont have the pace to compete for the win. - When you hit the wall, after contact you still lose 10mph and after a couple of seconds you'll regain speed. Thats super buggy and that doesnt concern the Ai. Ai can hit the wall and carry on like nothing happend. - Pit stops are also a big problem. When you take 4 tires, you see the car getting off the jack but it will remain idle for 3-4 seconds when your tires are already on. its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dumb. When you take 2 tires and 2 cans of fuel it'll only be 10 seconds. - The pit exit speed of the Ai cars are still a problem. When you exit the pits with Ai cars, they will blast away from you even when you are on the limit already. These are some of my biggest issues with the game and there is probably a lot more i forgot about. Im in my 4 season in career mode and I refuse to do a 2nd season in cup because of these issues. Winning a championship in Phoenix on max difficulty is impossible unless you get lucky. A big improvement however from the Heat games are the physics and overall handling of the car. It drives like it should and it feels amazing and refreshing honestly. Thats the only positive for this game and i hope they will build from this and deliver an amazing Nascar 26 I also love that when you are AFK in a session the crew chief tells you some silly things which I think is a nice touch.

The base game is good but what a disgrace of post launch support. What's the point of a season pass if you only add 3 months of content and either don’t add more or add another season pass? Where are the updates? Are you going to change the Xfinity series to the NOAPS series? Are you going to update career mode so drivers aren’t stuck in the lower series even if they win five titles in a row? Are you going to implement the real bushwhacking rules limiting how many NOAPS (10) and Truck series (8) races a full time cup driver can run while allowing the user to select what races to participate in? Are you going to update driver demotions, promotions, and new entries? I know other games had around the same support but this game is developed by iRacing and should be held to that standard. The only thing that this title could have had was best post launch support and because this title didn’t have that much it’s safe to say this game does nothing better than any previous NASCAR title other than graphics. I would say buy on sale but who knows if it will go back on sale before the next title (if they don't update this one) forces a delisting. Also on a final note why is the car customization so bad in career. They deliberately made this game hard to mod. The fact that NASCAR 09 had more freedom for custom paint schemes is a disgrace. Let me upload custom images or use layouts. If you're worried about what users will do just disable custom drivers in the online mode. Edit: As of writing Katherine Legge is about to attempt the double (Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600) and her inclusion not being added in a update reminds me about another problem. Driver statuses in each corresponding tier. If a driver is featured in say both Xfinity/NOAPS and Cup label what series they declare points for. Are they full time, part time, or bushwhacking? Justin Allgaier has appeared in more cup races in my career season then he did in the last 7 years combined in real life. The career mode has no rewards for milestones, goals, wins, and so on. On a final note driver a.i. gets crazy during the Chase in career to the point where their equipment seems to be beyond tier 11, unobtainable, and artificially unfair. Edit 2: This edit is being written after visting Dover for the 3 peat Truck, O'Reilly, All-Star Race, which ended up being a blessing to watch Kyle Busch's final career race win (Rest in Peace). There was a Cracker Barrel area outside the race with four instances of NASCAR 25, however there were also only four PS5 controllers, reminding me that this game doesn't have splitscreen multiplayer, which should be a must for the next game.

I love Nascar and driving games and was hyped to play this. It has the worst wheel support I've encountered next to Test Drive Unlimited. Nothing I changed fixed it. I have a G29 which is pefect in other games like AC, ACC, Raceroom, Forza Horizon, Dirt 2.0. It's not my wheel it's this game. On high settings I struggled to reach 60fps. Other racing games I play i get 100-130 fps on high settings. It's very poorly optimised. And it's average looking so it shouldn't be. The rearview mirror is a pixelated mess. There is no dlss support to try and help the ♥♥♥♥♥ fps. This game is under a year old, there's no excuse for that. I thought being made by Iracing this would be a quality product but it's rubbish. I have requested a refund

The game is just ok, not enough content and too many issues to be worth $60, maybe get it when its on sale for $25 if you don't have it already, otherwise save your money for NASCAR '26.