Well, NASCAR 25 is out for XBSX and PS5, now. All my thoughts about holding out for the Steam release were shot when I had a few free minutes last night. So, my notes here reflect about 90 minutes or so of play on XBox Series X.
First off, it's easily the best NASCAR game in the past 2 decades. Now, that isn't as big a compliment as you'd think it is, because don't look now, but the last Papyrus NASCAR game is old enough to legally drink, even in the USA...
Overall, I'm not disappointed. I think it is a really strong base to work from.
The car physics strike a great balance between realism, fun, and manageable. It's definitely NOT the old Papyrus / iRacing physics. It is not has hardcore, either. But, outside a single odd glitch I got in the truck series, I thought it was really good. In some ways, it actually feels more advanced than the old school Papyrus. The cars have good weight to them. They don't low-speed skate like Papyrus was prone to, either. You don't get forced into accidentally wall-riding, either. You can get that little brush and spark on the wall or barrier without being stuck on it. It definitely knocks off a little speed when it happens, as it should. But you don't get glued there, anymore.
Setups have a simplified Loose vs Tight adjustment you can make. If you don't like that, you can dig into all the standard springs, dampers, wedge, tire pressures, etc. In the short amount of time I've played so far I didn't venture past the simplified Loose vs Tight adjustments. It looks like a pretty effective way to quickly tweak a car to your liking. The default setup for each track seemed to be a bit scatter-shot for my tastes, with some being a bit too tight, and others being looser than my preference. You really do need to mind your brake and throttle a lot more than previous NASCAR titles, and that affects how the cars react a lot, as it should. So maybe part of that scatter on setups is actually scatter in my driving style.
The AI drivers are best oval track AI I've seen since Papyrus. They're fast, clean, and predictable. They make smart decisions. They know when to hang back, when to work with you, and when to go and block. They're situationally aware and will even try to bail you out of your mistakes. They're almost courteous to a fault. So welcome over the Heat series.
I only spent about 10 minutes with the career mode (completed recruitment and ARCA Daytona) but it looked really promising, and a fairly big departure from the old NASCAR Heat management system that titles like the World of Outlaws games used, too.
It's not to say there aren't some things that need addressing, though. Hopefully those can come through in patches through the life of the game.
1) Controls. The actual handling and control on the standard XBox controller is pretty decent. I ended up using a slight bit of stability assist, but I'm not REALLY sure I needed even that. What I
HATE about the controls is they are absolutely dead-stick like we are rewinding it back to 1995 or something. No vibration. No vibration triggers. No feedback at all. That is really inexcusable. I tried two different controllers and two sets of batteries just to make sure it wasn't on my end. Not only is the vibration nice for immersion, but I'm so used to all the information coming from the controller between the general vibration suspension loading and the trigger vibration for traction and braking. The car feels so numb without it. The overall physics seems pretty good. But I can't help but wonder how much better would it FEEL with that information coming through clearer? Hopefully this is just a controller bug. I heard there were major FFB problems they tried addressing in the launch day update. Maybe something accidentally killed vibration? It is BADLY NEEDED.
2) Performance. I was playing on XBSX, so that should be the most powerful of the consoles. There were definitely times it was dropping well off 60 fps, though. To the point it was distracting at times, even. I get why. 40 cars is a big field, and the tracks are big. And unlike a lot of previous games, it doesn't hide anything. Full draw distance, and all cars visible. And it's the right choice for all of those. But I can't imagine how badly this would play on the Series S. Hopefully there are some optimizations to be found that don't affect the vital information needed for driving. (ie, Please continue NOT hiding the brake markers in the distance or the wreck that starts 30 cars ahead of you at Daytona. Unlike almost every other NASCAR game, ever!)
3) Pitting. This needs more refinement. I'm not really sure how I feel about the game pausing itself to allow you to set pit strategy changes. But that is just a stylistic gripe. If you're going to go full pause to let me choose tire and fuel strategies, why not also allow setup changes? I might want to loosen or tighten the car a bit?
4) Black Flags. No where does it say the pit entry speed limit. And the timing line isn't clear, either. My own anecdote, I got black flagged for pit speed at Watkins Glen. Then got black flagged again for pit speed while trying to clear the black flag for pit speed. And I still don't know what the speed limit is, or where the timing line is there. I'm sure I could research and find out. But it's an odd choice of a place to be hyper-realistic when the rest of the game is fairly relaxed. I'm tempted to just turn off black flags for now. (There is the option.)
5) Track cuts at road courses. WTF?? Why would you stop me dead on the track like we're suddenly in a full arcade game?? What is up with that? Just black flag or assess a time penalty on me if you didn't like my line through the bus stop when I missed my braking point! This seems really backward, particularly when compared to the pit speed limit hyper realism situation.
6) Fuel loads/wear times. This could be clearer. Give me a consumption graphic. (And let me increase size of information graphics I do have, so I can see them from my sofa, while we're at it.) I was at 4x wear. But it feels like wear and fuel are even faster than 4x. I wouldn't have expected needing two stops in a 20 lap race at Texas? Like computing back to 1x, a full tank of fuel would last less than 30 laps? What are we doing with all of it?
Still, it's an enjoyable game. And hopefully a number of these will be addressed to improve things going forward.
