The United States’ most popular racing series, NASCAR, has seen its long list of videogames throughout the years. After yet another license change, iRacing and 704Games are ready to show the world what they’ve got. This is the XboxEra review for NASCAR 25, tested on Xbox Series X!
NASCAR rights? But I thought they only turn left
As is often the case for licensed products, be it videogames based on books, movies, TV shows or real-life sports events, their rights are volatile. One game might be published by a certain publisher, only for their rights to expire and then being bought by a different entity altogether. This often means that, when the licensing agreement ends, the games even get delisted, nuked from the digital storefronts. And, indeed, the unfortunate reality with NASCAR games right now is that every single prior licensed videogame has been delisted by now.
The Heat series, 2021’s Ignition – everything’s gone, except for GameMill’s kid-friendly NASCAR Arcade Rush that has very little to do with the actual racing series. You can still hunt down some physical copies, but that’s about it. Proper NASCAR racing, especially on consoles, is now limited to one game. The brand new: NASCAR 25. Thus, there’s a big responsibility on the shoulders of 704Games. If that name sounds familiar to the NASCAR fans, good catch! They developed the NASCAR Heat series, all the way up to 2020’s NASCAR Heat 5. Let’s see what they learned in this half decade absence, and what sort of game NASCAR 25 is.
You spin me right round… or left round
The most important aspect of such a racer is obviously how it actually feels to roll down the asphalt in your car. And the feelings are very positive, I must say. The physics are of the simcade kind. They feel more or less right, if slightly simplified, when playing without many driving assists. Cars can turn very stable and easy to turn by cranking up the assistance level, though, allowing for a more arcade experience. Fully arcade this ain’t, though – don’t expect to be able to full gas every corner, with even speed penalties for wallriding. Sorry, Ross Chastain, you probably can’t pull your legendary move in this one.
It all feels quite similar to the Heat series, it being the same developer. Yet, it also feels a lot more refined, polished, with even the general presentation having improved. Graphics are not breathtaking, but they’re crisp and performant, at least on Xbox Series X. If you choose to play with damage models on, they are quite realistic. The various parts of the chassis can deteriorate, impacting the aerodynamics, with also mechanical damage in play. Slipstrams are powerful, as they should be, and there’s cautions, black flags and more. Naturally, tyre and fuel wear, with subsequent pit stop strategies, are in. It wouldn’t really be a NASCAR game without all that, would it?
Started from the bottom
There are, basically, 3 ways to enter the world of NASCAR (and its feeder series) in this game. One would be the free races. Here, in any of NASCAR’s current season, or in one of its accompanying events like Xfinity, ARCA and Truck Series, players can just go to track. Any driver, any car, any track, countless settings – race length, driving assists, AI difficulty, flag rules, much more. Probably a good way to get the hang of the game’s handling, and to figure out what sort of difficulty options would suit you best. After some single races, it’s time to dig into the second main way to play: the career.
Said mode is quite extensive in NASCAR 25, I must say. Starting from your shed all the way to the NASCAR title fights, it’s quite the packed experience. It may lack the more complex managerial experiences found for example in the latest Formula 1 games, but it’s quite a blast. Much of the enjoyment boils down to the deep customization level the game offers the player, in relation to the game experience. Individual sliders for opponent aggressivity, their skill level, and how much variety there is in it. Race rules, wear, frequency of AI mistakes and crashes. By playing around with the settings a bit, it’s easy to find the right settings to make any event exciting and fair. Speedways or road courses they may be, it’s always a blast.
3, 2, 1… Destruction
Lastly, it’s time to tackle the online portion of NASCAR 25. On paper, it’s quite simple but effective – anyone can host races on any track with whatever ruleset, for up to 40 players and any amount of AI drivers to fill the gaps. But in practice, it’s a bit limited, and the driving standards are quite abysmal in these launch weeks. While the netcode is sound, with the ghosting for lagging players reducing the glitchy crashes, the races are absolute mayhem. Non-stop pushing and shoving, countless crashes, caution galore if the yellow flags are present. Kinda like NASCAR, you could say, but it’s way worse, and there’s no real penalty system in place. Only riding the walls is really punished with a speed penalty, but that’s about it.
The game’s ranking system is built around skills and clean driving, supposedly. In practice, I’d say the opposite is true. The only way to receive a high rating is doing very fast laps, but you are most likely to do so via drafting. On superspeedways, doing fast enough laps for the highest ratings is simply impossible – the car is just not fast enough. So this system forces players to stay drafting and battling, rather than leading. There’s bonus points awarded for laps without incidents, but these only apply to big crashes. Players simply do not get any penalty for spinning off an opponent or shoving them into the wall, and the playerbase has noticed. It is entertaining to have 8 laps races turn into 27 laps caution-fests with 7 restarts, sure. Yet, some clean driving would help, and the game does nothing to encourage it.
The epic highs and lows of oval racing (and beyond)
NASCAR 25 is a great videogame of an entertaining racing series, offering all sorts of thrills online and offline alike. Solid graphics and presentation, satisfying handling, tons of settings to allow every kind of player to find the experience that suits them most. A gripping, if relatively safe career mode is the highlight, but the online leaves me wondering. It can be exhilarating, and the netcode is strong, but the game seems uninterested in punishing unsportsmanship. The result is the most chaotic online racing I’ve ever seen – at least in a game that isn’t supposed to be a destruction derby. It’s a safe, but a quite exhilarating title. Perhaps, with a few tweaks to the online racing, we could have one of the all-time greats for this sport. Definitely one to have for NASCAR fans.
NASCAR 25
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Great presentation
- Exciting career mode
- Highly customizable experience for all skill levels
- Great online netcode...
CONS
- ...but awful driving standards, due to faulty rating system
- No unique game modes or true innovations
