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Stuck in neutral
NASCAR 2005 is all revved up with nowhere to go
BY MITCH KRPATA

A wiser man than I once said, "You can't polish a turd." While this sage certainly was not referring to NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup, how else can one describe EA's valiant attempt to translate to game consoles that dullest of American spectator sports, competitive stock car racing?

Certainly, this game has a huge potential audience. NASCAR fans are estimated to number 75 million, which just proves my theory that Americans love to watch cars drive in circles for several hours. That's what I've always perceived the NASCAR experience to be, and this game does nothing to dissuade me.

Though the game offers several game modes, the central is called "Fight to the Top." In fighting to the top, you create a driver (I named mine "Awesome McCoolman") and work your way from the dregs of NASCAR's Featherlite Modified series, up through the Craftsman truck series, and all the way to the big daddy of 'em all, the Nextel (née Winston) Cup.

Along the way, you gain fans and prestige, and, depending on how you drive, a reputation either as a hero or as a villain. If you drive clean and share draft with other drivers, you'll gain hero points. If you fight your way to the front of the pack by battering aside other cars and occasionally, oh, instigating a six-car pileup (It was an accident! I swear!), you'll accrue villain points. The hero/villain system does affect the way other drivers react to your presence on the track, but it's mostly a novelty. The best part is when you make an enemy during a race – afterwards, you're treated to a cutscene of the offended party trying to throw down with your driver.

Accoutrements like those may be good for a diversion, but the game's bread-and-butter is in the racing itself; it's here that NASCAR 2005 falls flat. Thrill as you practice such advanced automotive maneuvers as … uh, steering! Accelerating! Braking – actually, you don't need to brake too much in this game; you only need to ease off the accelerator around the tougher turns.

Because EA went to such great lengths to re-create every aspect of the NASCAR experience, it's baffling why the cars control like those in Ridge Racer. There's no sense of weight or inertia in the vehicles. Merely banging the analog stick in the right direction (which is left, by the way, always left) is usually sufficient to put you on the inside line and pass your competitors. Even sideswiping another car causes minimal tailspin. Gran Turismo-style realism should have been the order of the day here.

Instead, you have cars that control like hovercraft zipping around truly boring tracks. The variation in these courses ranges from elliptical all the way to circular. The exceptions are the handful of street races sprinkled throughout the game. Early in my NASCAR 2005 experience, Jeff Gordon called me up and challenged me to a mano à mano duel through the city streets. I schooled him, naturally, but was struck by how much more fun it was to be racing these cars on real streets, having to turn in more than one direction, and even occasionally braking.

Still, EA is to be commended for the more than thorough job they did on this title. The graphics are solid, though at times I experienced some slowdown when several cars raced through more graphically intense portions of track. Dozens of real NASCAR drivers are represented (sadly, Dick Trickle is nowhere to be found), along with countless vehicles and tracks. There's also a team owner mode, in which you buy and manage a racing team rather than drive yourself, which must be aimed at people for whom NASCAR races just aren't boring enough. And throughout, there's endless audio correspondence via your cell phone and over your headset during races.

Even this cuts both ways. The crew chief is the most talkative video-game character I've come across since Liquid Snake delivered his stirring filibuster atop the charred carcass of Metal Gear Rex. The chief is on the horn constantly during races, telling you not to bump into other drivers, to dig in, and to stop scraping the wall. On the list of things I don't need, a garrulous Southerner with a penchant for calling me "buddy" criticizing my driving ranks somewhere between a bullet in the head and Ebola.

For hardcore fans of NASCAR, Chase for the Cup is likely a dream come true. For the rest of us, there are both more realistic driving sims and much more fun arcade-style racing games available. NASCAR 2005 falls into the nether realm in-between, and simply isn't worth our attention.

Score: 4.5 (out of 10)


Issue Date: September 17 - 23, 2004
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