MODES OF GAMEPLAY

BEAT THE HEAT

This type of play is a compilation of 36 plus three bonus scenarios, created by MGI, Hasbro and several NASCAR WC drivers in which each scenario gives you an task for you to completed in an amount of time or place of finish. As you start each scene, you are shown a video with Alan Beswick of the MRN fame and several NASCAR WC drivers explaining what is involved. Each challenge trains your driving abilities of what to expect in the overall product of NH. If you do well, you will be rewarded points and trophy. The better you do, the higher the points and trophy. As the points accumulate, you will see an overall ranking bar denoting your status in BTH. The highest ranking is "Championship", which can only be rewarded if one would be able to get the maximum points obtainable.

BTH is probably one of the best aspects of the NH as it is innovative and vastly original to what has come out in the past in the simulation-racing genre. After completing BTH, I usually find myself going to back and redoing several challenges trying to better my overall scores. The only problem I have with BTH is that you are stuck in the Normal mode, which is one of the driving models supported - I'll talk more about this mode later as this mode is a bit too easy to drive. It would've been grand to be able to play BTH with a more sophisticated driving mode. Also, you can't create your own challenge or scenario, which is probably due to the NASCAR licensing.

RACE THE PRO

During testing of NH, the Hasbro and MGI actually got some of the NASCAR WC drivers to sit down and drive or race in the game. After they played with the game, they recorded their best lap that in turn becomes a ghostlap. What you are suppose to do is race one of the several drivers using one of the driving models, Normal or Expert and your goal is to see if you can beat their best recorded laptime. As you get up to speed, WC driver will be shown as a faint image, like a ghost, and popup at the S/F line to race against you. As you run several laps, you will notice that the WC driver's car just seems to loop. You can try to hit them but it's not going to do you any good, as they are a transparent image. You might learn something from the lines they use. Each driver has several tracks for you to race against. If you chose to race in Expert mode, you can go into the Garage and play with your setup.

I like this mode since you can learn something from their lines and it's quite a blast to beat them!

SINGLE RACE

This mode of Gameplay lets you race a single race. As you go progress through the menus you have the ability to choose which car you would like to drive and the ability to paint your very own car. If you decide to use an AI's car, there will not be a duplicate of this car since you are using it. Also, there is really one chassis that is modeled and it's a Pontiac. So gone are the days of discrepancy of which chassis you should use. I like this idea since all don't have to question on what chassis was used during the setup creation. After choosing your car, you pick what track you would like to race. Majority of all the NASCAR WC tracks are in NH with the exception of Pocono and Indianapolis. Once you have decided which track and what event (some tracks have more than one event), you see the Practice, Qualify, Race, Setup and Garage. The latter will only show if you are not driving in Normal mode, which can be set in the Setup menu.

The Setup menu consists of setting the opponent strength, race length, amount of opponents, wear, auto pitting, and penalty flags. Let me not forget to mention the ability to turn the ghostlap so you can also race against your fastest lap on the track with the opponents if chose to do so.

By default, there are two driving modes in NH: Normal and Expert. In Normal mode, you don't have to worry about creating setup and basically just get in and drive. This mode is more akin to the arcade side has the driving model is a bit too easy to drive as the car feels as if it is driving on rails. It's practically identical to the Papyrus N1-3 driving model. The stopping power is very quick so can really go in deep into the turns. When trying to spin out it is very hard to do. This driving is very forgiving and more adapted to less experienced drivers.

Switching to Expert, gives you more of a less forgiving driving model as the realistic starts to almost completely show. Yet, there is a slight opposite lock correction in this model so you will have a tendency to catch a car spinning somewhat easily. The stopping power is greatly increased in distance as you get a sensation of the weight of the car. Locking up the brakes can be done but before that, there seems to be a slight introduction of ABS being used. Now for you hardcore drivers out there, I know this might sound like a disappointment but it's actually not. You see hidden in NH there is another driving model and this mode is called Hardcore. So in order for you to use it, you need to go into the options.cfg and look for "hardcore enabled" and set to yes. You will notice when you enter the Setup menu that there will be three listings for the driving mode. This is NH's most realistic driving model as it is the hardest to catch or safe a car and it feels as though the suspension moves a bit slower. This driving model is superb to what any stockcar sim to date as to offer.

When going into the Garage menu, you will see a plethora of adjustments that you can tweak for your particular driving style. There's more shown than any Papyrus NASCAR genre ever had and bit more defined than EA's version. What is missing is the lack of adjustment to the track bar, bending fenders out or in and toe in or out settings. Other than that, everything is practically there that adheres to the NASCAR WC 2000 rules. What's really nice is the limit of the rear spoiler at the restrictor plate tracks in which you can only go as low as 45s but on all the other tracks you can go as low as 40s. Tire pressures are broken down to .25 PSI increments and are modeled realistically, so gone are the days of 50-60 tire pressures. The screen also shows the tire temps and weights for each wheel or corner of the car. If you would like to do some testing by yourself in the Garage menu just by clicking, "Test". You can also save, delete and load setups. There are default and advance setups that can be used for a baseline setup though if you plan on just using the advance setup, it was really designed with the AI set at the medium setting. Overall, the setups are pretty good to handle a broad amount of driving styles.

The Auto Pit feature when enabled lets the game control your car as you enter pitroad. All pit adjustments are done prior entering your pitbox. The one problem I have with this during green flag pitstops is that you can practically go full speed onto pitroad without worrying about breaking the speed limit or wrecking. This makes the game a bit unrealistic and I hope they would the tone speeds down, as you get closer to pitroad instead of abruptly slowing down the car. In way you could use the Auto Pit feature as a nice way to gain some ground on your fellow competitors.

Using the Auto Pit feature disabled, you only have complete control when you first leave the pits during practice so no speed limit is governed and the ability to pull into your pitbox. Other than that each time you enter and exit pitroad your speed is kept in check automatically. What I hoped for is full control of pitroad speed by the human driver. There is another feature you can enable in the options.cfg file in which you have a certain amount of range you play between the timing mark segments (white lines that go across pitroad) so this will take the average speed between the two lines. You can enable this feature by looking for "force_legal_pitspeed no" and change the no to yes.

What NH doesn't list is the weather since all racers use this to change or base their setup. For those of you use to setting weather, you can't do that in NH and this doesn't really bother me since in real life you really can't control the weather. Now the weather in NH isn't dynamic but for some reason I have noticed the lighting of the Sun change by looking at the cockpit gauges each time I have entered the track.

CHAMPIONSHIP

This mode is basically identical the Single Race mode with the exception of racing in a championship with varying amount of races. You also get the opportunity to create up to four seasons.