NASCAR 25

Me and my friends ended up buying this game after playing the PS2 version of NASCAR Thunder 2004 on an emulator. And I can say I've had an absolute blast playing it. I tend to not play single player modes very much but I do enjoy this game enough to play through carrier and quick races every so often. The game is pretty bare bones all things considered, but it has a good fundamental gameplay loop. I can say that this game alone got me back into NASCAR for the first time in a long time and is solid overall, I hope to see them improve on this formula with 26 and bring back old features (because apparently recycling ideas from 20 years ago is sooo hard to implement (-_-) this game def. lacks features such as airbrake panels popping up, burnouts and a lot of quality of life and immersion details that a game that came out 20 years ago had... but tbh its to be expected with any "mainstream" ish game Performance can be a little sluggish on super speedways or anything 2 miles or over sometimes. But overall im hopeful for the future and hope to see more games be made. RIP Rowdy

Great so far. Graphics are great. Driving is a bit loose but I think I can fix that with adjustments to both the car and settings. Just need to dig deeper. Enjoying thus far.

I do recommend this game, but there are some things to consider... Cameras during replays, very limited, especially the trackside cameras. I've seen much better replay options on much older games, more than a little disappointing if you have a close race and want to see all the action. The game appears to be very poorly optimised and heavily CPU-bound. As soon as the game started to boot, my liquid cooling stepped-up substantially and when the opening video started, my GPU fans joined the 'party'. There are some ways to help with this, which I did on my own system. I won't explain in-detail, but here's a rough idea: I set an FPS cap in my AMD Software (Radeon Chill)- 30 idle, 60 peak. I also added a script line to the engine.ini file to force the same in-game. These dramatically helped reduce the 'unnecessary' strain on my system (spec attached to this review). Not sure if the devs are working on either of the things mentioned above, but they both need some work. Despite all of that, the driving physics are outstanding. Definitely makes you feel immersed in the action and for those wondering, it works great with a gamepad (not tried my wheel yet). A thumbs-up from me, only tarnished by the above-mentioned issues.

Everything's good, I absolutely love playing this game, and I've enjoyed a lot of it. One thing I'd say is a negative and one thing I'd hope to see is something that allows you to skip races in career mode. If there's a course you absolutely hate and don't wanna play, you shouldn't be forced to play it in my opinion. But other than that, I absolutely love this game and would recommend it to any NASCAR fan.

Sadly a No from me. Its like racing against scalextric cars with no brakes when vs AI. Someone will bump draft you, knock you slightly, but as you are no longer going in the exact same direction as them, the bulldoze through you. you can go from 1st to last with minimal fault of your own. If you don;t know anything about Nascar, the rules and setups aren;t really explained to you in the game. I know a little, but i have no idea why i'm jumping up and down the grid when a flag is waved. Online is great fun. But i have only once had 15 real people to race with. Usually your are lucky to get 3 people in a race. Recovery... what recovery? its impossible tyo get back into the race quickly. You might as well just quit, as you need to wait for the pack to come round, speed up, and hope to join th eback of the pack.. Not an issue if you are racing 500 laps. but not so good with 8 laps. The game looks great, and feels ok when your not being bulldozed. But it all feels a bit... well.. fake.. But if this is not a good advert for the realism of iRacing to me.. If you are a big Nascar fan, you will probably enjoy this. Anything else, you will probably just get frustrated.

Yes, the game can be improved in many, many ways such as: deeper career mode with teams, team changes, and an evolving landscape of drivers, the cautions are absurd when set to strict, ai spins out and retains spot on caution, ai wrecks are always in sight of the player, ai hits the pit line with perfect deacceleration slope, everything feels disconnected as if you are running a series of exhibition races. However, I find the game's feel, especially on wheel, to be something that can be built on because I find it responsive and fun and had some great races against the AI. I am strictly speaking from single player only as I do not race online. Tweaking some AI settings, you can generally get the racing field shape to feel like the real thing. I think this is a great start for them and expect that each iteration to be better as we go on. I do recommend this game as a NASCAR racing fan.

TLDR: Solid casual racing game. I'm spoiled from playing iRacing and wanted to nitpick the AI. EDIT: Just ran Watkins Glen and it's fairly obvious they didn't test this track at all, which is a real shame because it was one of my favorite tracks on iRacing. The esses are a mess. Curbs send you spinning no matter how you hit them despite the fact that the AI can apparently hit them with impunity, meaning you lose several tenths through the esses every lap regardless of how you hit it. Everybody brakes almost immediately upon hitting the straightaway leading up to them, and nobody has any idea how to run them side by side. It's a major bummer for me because hitting the esses right in iRacing was one of my favorite things to do period, and with the way the track is here I just want to be done with it any time it comes up. It's pretty good. You aren't gonna get simulator quality racing out of it but it is a satisfying casual racing game that touches on the strategy and racecraft in NASCAR. The AI will sometimes just run through you (especially at Bristol) and the spotter appears to be the beneficiary of your life insurance policy, but other than that it races fairly well. My only real gripe with the game is the way that the AI treats the racing lines. The structure is there for you to search around and find different lines than the "preferred" line on track, but the AI seems to have no interest at all in running any line other than what it decides is preferred (unless they are lapped), which makes them feel a little static at times. It also means on tracks with multiple lines (like Kansas for instance) if you can get the line that isn't preferred to work (the high line in this case), you can basically just drive right through the field with minimal resistance, even in bad equipment in career mode (though it is worth noting that I have only ever played the ARCA series to this point, so maybe it's different in Cup?). The only real threat on these tracks are the lapped cars, who have trouble understanding which line you're running, and therefore have a tendency to go high and slam on the brakes right in front of your line. Honestly though this isn't a huge deal, and it most likely is just a limitation of the AI model used. I do enjoy the challenge of having to pick through cars that are much slower than you in the midgame career mode, and I have had some very good and challenging races against AI drivers on the same pace as me. Even at full length the races are very engaging and you won't be able to just drive through the field and win at most tracks (at least not at max difficulty) without putting in a lot of effort and trying multiple lines (or pitting for tires because the AI doesn't understand how important they are).