NASCAR 25 Review

NASCAR 25 is the official game of NASCAR brought to PC and console from iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations. iRacing is the current king of online competitive racing. They have built up an impressive player base since their launch back in 2008. With all those years of experience, they have built their first specific racing car simulation. Given the wide variety of racing cars they support in their online game, it’s a little surprising they did it based on NASCAR. But maybe not too much. Good NASCAR games are few and far between. Maybe iRacing saw this underserved racing category as an opportunity.

How well did they do? Let’s dive in.

First impressions of the game are very positive. The amount of content is somewhat staggering. NASCAR 25 features all four National Series, the ARCA Menards Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and NASCAR Cup Series. iRacing has brought laser scanned car models and tracks to the game for a level of authenticity that is previously unmatched. Across the four series, there are over 150 officially licensed drivers. From a track perspective, there are 30 unique tracks to test your skill on. On the negative side, there is no cross-platform support on launch. They hope to implement it in the future.

Equally impressive is the deep Career Mode. Not only can you work your way up the racing ranks, but there are also the management aspects. There are sponsor objectives, buying and developing new racing parts, hiring crew members to keep your rides intact, and building your reputation through on-track performance and PR opportunities. You can decide how to compete in all four series. Play as yourself or your favorite driver and/or custom car in everything from full schedules to special lineups of all short tracks or super speedways.

Making It Real

A big addition to the game is the ability to run simultaneous seasons from different series. If you want to, you can run two championships concurrently. Race weekends run like the real thing, so you can jump back and forth between series as you try to score two or more wins on the same track.

Keeping things real, the masters of each track type will lead the way in every race. Powered by the game’s Racing Insights, the stars of the sport have never performed more like their real-world counterparts in the offline mode. If it’s actual competition you want, NASCAR 25 supports an unheard of forty, yes that’s right forty, online racers in the multiplayer mode.

With the career mode, it’s all about choice. You can let the game automatically manage your career, or you can do so yourself. After each race, you will receive a summary of your progress. On the practical side of things, car damage needs to be repaired. Do it yourself or let your team engineers do it. This approach applies to all other activities too, such as hiring staff and taking on new sponsors. To get higher rewards from better sponsors, you must achieve higher race finishes.

At the end of each race, you will receive Reward Points. Reward Points are the game’s currency. The more Reward Points you gather, the sooner you can advance your career. Race finishes are important, but they are not the only metric tracked. The system also tracks your race craft. If you run clean races, lead a lap, attain a certain lap speed, and set qualifying and practice goals, you will get even more Reward Points .

Unique Physics of NASCAR

To further invest you in your career, there is the Dale Earnhardt Jr. Download. The feed presents your career’s Turning Points, both good and bad, as a social media feed. For further flavor, real-world NASCAR media members like Jeff Gluck, Kelly Crandall, and even NASCARCASM cover your on-track performance in the social media feed after every Career Mode race.

So there’s a lot under the hood in this game, but what about the actual racing? The game boasts a physics model tuned by the experts and based on real-world feedback from actual NASCAR drivers and race teams. How does that translate into real-world gameplay? From a physics perspective, the cars and trucks handle as expected. NASCAR cars handle differently than other race cars. The cars are designed to race straight ahead on tracks with high banked turns. Thus, they do not respond quickly to sudden steering changes.

These characteristics don’t lend themselves to very dynamic force feedback. When driving on straight sections, there is very little input. If you play the game with an FFB wheel, it’s an underwhelming experience. The wheel feels dead. However, once you enter a turn, the force feedback springs into life, and you can feel the push of the banking on the low side of the car. NASCAR racing is a unique brand of racing and results in a singular style of feedback. There is hardly any road force feedback on the straights. Maybe it’s more detailed on PC.

For the console version of the game, the feedback has to be tailored to support not only wheels but controllers too. Given the less precise nature of controllers and the looseness of NASCARs, this is a tough challenge. On the PS5, the DualSense allows for the best force feedback implementation thanks to its haptics and adaptive triggers. If you are used to racing with a wheel, there is a learning curve using the controller. You have to be less hands-on during straight sections and only really need to provide deft inputs for the banked turns.

Player Preferences

To accommodate a wide range of skill sets and player preferences, the game has a vast array of options. You can make the game as arcadey or realistic by changing the settings for gameplay, driving, AI, controls, advanced controls, and display and audio settings. The advanced controls are for the force feedback settings. There are a lot of settings to tweak, so it will take a bit of trial and error to find the ones that suit your needs.

AI is always a bugaboo in racing games for those who prefer to play offline. In NASCAR racing, given its close-quarter chariot style of nature, the need for good AI is the strongest. In a field of forty cars, AI has to handle so many other AI cars plus the player too. Minimizing contact is a top priority. So is drafting. Riding the bumper of the car in front of you is a vital racing component of oval racing. There is also pit strategy to handle too.

What I’ve experienced in my testing is that the AI is adequate. Mostly, the AI cars behave understandably. There are still improvements to be made, and to iRacing’s credit, they are addressing them. They have released nine patches as of October 18th. Many of them deal with AI-related issues. Hopefully, they will address most AI issues.

On the technical side of things, the game gets a checkered flag. On the console, the game runs smoothly. I encountered no stuttering or lag when playing. Pop-in exists, but it is not a problem because you will mostly pay attention to what is right in front of you. The cars and liveries look excellent, as do the tracks. The game also captures the sounds of a weekend-long NASCAR event, both on and off the track.

Impressive Debut

NASCAR 25 is impressive in its scope. From Quick Race, Championship, Multiplayer, or Career, the combinations of tracks, cars, and experiences will keep oval racing fans busy for quite a while. While not perfect, NASCAR 25 is an impressive debut entry in the series.

***PS5 Review Key provided by Game Publisher***

The Good

Impressive Scope
Highly Tunable
Great Career Mode

77

The Bad

AI needs tweaking
FFB needs tweaking
No cross platforum multiplayer at launch