Nascar SimRacing has surely enjoyed its fair share of hype in the past few months. Hype can be a good thing, creating buzz that gets the buying public primed for the release of their almighty dollar. EA Sports certainly got people talking with claims that NSR was going to be the best Sim-racing title ever produced. However, the energy contained in the buzz can turn into a riot if what is promised is not delivered. There is a distinct line between commercialism and fact. I have been in business long enough to have developed a fair sense of cautious cynicism coupled with knowing the difference between advertised promotion and reality. For those that cannot tell the difference, I have some gorgeous oceanfront property in Eastern Kansas that I need to sell. :-) EA Sports made some grandiose promotional statements and there are people that took these declarations as gospel. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but companies like EA are very perceptive in the media blitz category. You do not sell a million copies of each of 27 titles in a year’s time without doing a little work on the marketing end of your business. That success also does not come from narrowing your audience to 25 % of a targeted market and 25% is a generous calculation. Sim-Racers of the hardcore variety are not the mainstream regardless of what we might think. In case you missed it the first time I will say it again. We are not the majority when it comes to PC computer games that involve racing. Generally a writer ( and I use that term loosely !) will put his disclaimer at the end of his article. In this case, I felt compelled to place it nearer the beginning. I am forced by my own integrity and my respect for the community to be as honest and objective as possible. My neutrality has been tainted somewhat by the negativity of items written about EA Sports and NASCAR SimRacing before I got the chance to experience the game. I have a subjective opinion, but not because I chose to judge this title against any other nor will I hold EA Sports in contempt for their marketing strategies.

Nascar SimRacing is a good solid game built on a proven platform that has worked for many titles in the past and will continue to do so in the future. This title is far from what a hardcore sim-racer would call perfect but there is tremendous potential for this series to become another mainstream product enjoyed by many. NSR is neither the worst nor the best sim-racing title out there. This title contains some classic game elements that can be developed further, and it contains some totally inexcusable oversights that should have never made it out the door. EA Sports is not an upstart company straining to stay afloat in the sea of computer gaming. The opportunity to seize the NASCAR faithful was not going to die off after SpeedWeeks. The mindset to release an unpolished product that they themselves touted to employ the best of everything, escapes me.

The Graphics Engine's multiple textured tasks coupled with the latest version of DirectX 9c has certainly upped the ante as far as processing power and texture loading. As the old saying goes: ‘Good software sells good hardware’ and the requirements for the game are certainly prohibitive for the casual computer user. The minimum system requires a 1Ghz or better CPU, a 32Mb or better AGP graphics card with at least 256Mb of RAM---not a state-of-the-art computer system by today’s standards, but definitely lofty. From my perspective, I would hate to think what the gaming experience would be on a system with only the minimum requirements. My gaming system is about a year old and much above the stated minimum, but I cannot begin to run all of the graphical enhancements on ‘full’. I can see a few of these CD’s are going back to the store due to poor user experience derived from an insufficient computer system. It will not be because the end user was displeased with the action itself, but disappointed simply for the reason that their system met the stated requirements, yet fell way short of being playable. I believe this underestimation of required hardware has initiated some of the negative reaction to NSR. Either the code needs optimization to run well on the least possible required system specs or the box needs to indicate the true requirements for the expected level of enjoyment. Ideally one would expect to view the “recommended system requirements” from the label on the box and not the readme file. The consumer must be better informed from the outset of the purchase. As a software consumer, if my system tops the recommended system requirements, in my mind that means that I should be able to run the program with all enhancements. In NSR, this is not the reality. However if you have the power to turn on all of the eye-candy, you are in for a treat. The dynamic lighting effects and pixel shading are very well done.

Some pleasant features in NSR that do not require an enormous amount of processing power are the mixture of menus and options screens within the game. I have always been impressed by the controller interface in the ISI based games. The various dead-zone and sensitivity settings are extremely useful and they provide the user an opportunity to be well connected. It is disappointing that the instructions for the controller settings are missing from the manual and the readme file. For the majority familiar to sim-racing, it is not a task that is foreign. However, too often the users are left to fend for themselves in the abyss of trial and error. I probably harp on developers about controllers too often but it is a crucial adjustment that should not be left to chance. This is the only physical interface linking the user to the game and if the correlation is not absolutely perfect, everything that happens after that suffers from that missed connection. Producers of all games need to take a long hard look at this issue. Take the time required to include a controller document that explains each and every aspect of the settings available to the user. With the enormous number of different controllers available, it is truly a miracle that any of them work at all. If gaming producers would divulge just a little bit of information, they would be miles ahead in achieving customer satisfaction.