Nascar 09 Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 1st September 2008

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The Nascar series comes to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with this offering from EA.

Nascar 09 Details:

	Racing
	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360
	EA Sports
	EA Sports

Out Now

N/A

Nascar may not be the most followed racing discipline outside of the USA but this hasn’t stopped EA giving the game a worldwide release. So what kind of playing experience does Nascar 09 offer racing fans in comparison to games based on more familiar race disciplines?

Nascar 09 offers a comprehensive playing experience, allowing you to race individual seasons or progress through a Nascar career racing in a number of different championships. The game also offers two ways to play Normal and Pro, the “Normal” setting offers more of an arcade style whilst the “Pro” setting is basically a simulation setting with more realistic car handling and so on.

Playing a single race or playing through a Season allows you to race in Craftman Truck series, Nationwide series or Sprint Cup series whilst the games career modes requires you to compete in all of the series. The games season play allows you to play through a full, partial or custom season whilst the career mode or Chase for the Sprint Cup offers a much more complete playing experience.

As mentioned already, Career play requires you to play through three different series, earning a reputation for yourself. This is done by signing contracts with teams and sponsors. Contracts have specific goals in which you have to complete, with each contract usually lasting between three and five races. Once you have completed the specific conditions of a contract you are rewarded with reputation points which allow you to sign more rewarding contracts. Contracts also have other benefits such as improving the performance of your car in certain areas such as durability in one of the three racing series. Failing to meet the conditions of a contract also comes with a penalty and will often result in you losing reputation points.

Nascar 09 allows you to extensively customise your car with various different decal layers, sponsors logos and so on. The game also allows you to earn upgrades for your car by competing in Driver Challenges and gain performance points which can then in turn be spent to upgrade your car in a number of different areas such as the engine, chassis and so on. Performance points can also be gained with some sponsorship so it’s always worth noting what’s on offer when looking for new sponsors.

As mentioned already Nascar 09 offers two different styles of play, normal and pro. For me these offered a pretty similar playing experience to each other! The cars seemed to perform and handle in pretty much the same way with the only difference being that your car is more susceptible to damage when racing in the pro mode.

On the whole the game offers little real challenge, it’s very easy to gain the pole position in almost every race and then lead the race from the off and go on to win it. Catching and passing cars is also fairly easy and can be done without to much challenge, although you have to be careful not to make to much contact with other cars or you will find yourself getting black flagged.

Despite the lack of any real challenge one of the most frustrating aspects of Nascar 09 is when you’ve been leading for an entire race only to be taken out by an AI driver on the last lap resulting in you being knocked into last place. While this may sound like typical Nascar racing its extremely frustrating as it happens fairly often and AI drivers don’t seem to have to follow the same rules, as they go totally unpunished for such rough driving.

Nascar 09 supports online play for up to 13 live players on both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. The game includes custom races, quick races and leaderboards allowing players to take part in entire race weekends. Both versions of the game run smoothly online with only occasional lag when groups of players are bunched together but other then that the online aspect of Nascar 09 is problem free.

Visually Nascar 09 isn’t the best looking racing game available. The games graphics can be a little bland at times and whilst some cars feature a good level of detail others don’t. The game however, is filled with lots of nice special effects such as smoke from tyres when you spin out of control and the way the sun reflects off the track. The game also features a pretty good damage system the highlight of which is the way the paint gets dirty and scratches when making contact with other cars or walls, other damage is a little basic but serves its purpose.

The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version of the game look pretty much identical with very little difference between the two other then some colours appear slightly brighter on the 360 version.

Sound in the game is pretty good, but at times seems a little absent. The sound of the cars engine is fairly authentic and the radio communication from your pit team giving you updates on the race and advice throughout is a nice addition. Collision sound effects aren’t then best and usually consist of simple thuds, whilst music in the menus is largely forgettable.

Overall Nascar 09 offers a pretty extensive playing experience, however I doubt the game will appeal to fans of mainstream racing games as racing around in circles can quickly become tiresome and the lack of challenge in this game only adds to fuel the boredom of this. Fans of the Nascar series will find some enjoyment from the game but others may want to look else where for a fix of racing action.