NASCAR Racing 2003 Season

"Legendary Authenticity, Unparalleled Racing."

Overview:

Lets face the fact. Papyrus Racing has officially ended its NASCAR Racing franchise with the release of its latest game, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. Even though this game is at least 1 1/2 years old, it still sets the standard for all racing games to follow.

Gameplay: 10/10

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is unlike any other NASCAR game you have played. Papyrus Racing has teamed up with Jasper Motor-sports and Goodyear to give you a physics model so real, its scary. These 750 horsepower rear-wheel drive stock cars have been modeled to behave as realistic as possible. Racing these cars around an oval track isn't as easy as it seems. At high speeds, these cars are very prone to crashing. You'll need the skill and reflexes of a Formula 1 driver. A slight degree off or violent jerking of your steering wheel will cause your car to spin.

Even though this game is tough for new players to master, you cannot forget the fact that it is extremely enjoyable once mastered. Because of its perfect handling and controls, its surprisingly easy to get in-between a pack of cars going 3 wide. The AI cars themselves will go 3 wide most of the time, making some highly exciting racing action at big tracks such as Talladega. Often, the AI drivers will make realistic mistakes, there was once they tried to pull 5 wide at Talladega with my drafting help, one guy got loose, spun around and took out almost 3/4 of the field. Trust me, after seeing that, you won't want to go back to your old game again.

There are a total of 5 views to choose from during racing. They are changed using the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys. You'll have the "Bumper view", "Close chase", "Far chase", "Roof", and "1st person". Many players with controllers or joysticks might want to choose the "Close chase" view, while the hardcore player with a steering wheel will go for the "1st person view". The "1st person view" gives the player significant challenges because of its blind spots to the left and right sides. Thankfully, there is a button configuration which you can set to make the driver look towards the left or right. One of the nice features includes the build-up of oil and dust on your windshield after some time of driving.

All of NASCAR's official tracks are presented in this game. One thing to note though. The Homestead track seen here is the "old" Homestead track during the 2002 season. This game was programmed before the track was reconstructed later that year. Dover International Speedway seen in the game was also constructed before the addition of the second sky bridge at the start of turn 3. Those minor missing features isn't going to affect much of the gameplay though.

The chassis damage seen in this game is also pretty decent. Although I wouldn't say that this is the best damage model ever created, it just average looking when compared to the more advanced driving games today. If you spin your car and come tail first into the wall, your whole rear-end gets crushed. Tires will blow just within a few seconds of brake lock-up. One thing I'll like to bring up is that when your car gets damaged, certain damaged areas will somehow "flash" occasionally. I believe its some sort of a graphic glitch.

The car setup / garage is one of the most detailed in a racing game. You can adjust almost every expect of your car. For those who are not familiar with these things, there is a good variety of preset setups. Most drivers will find the "Jasper" setups pretty decent.

You have 4 racing modes to choose from. Testing session, Single race, Championship and Multi-player. You won't find those polished career modes such as "Fight to the top" found in EA Sports NASCAR 2005 Chase For The Cup. In Testing session, there are no rules. You just run infinite testing laps on your selected track. In Single race, you pick your favourite track and race. you can adjust the number of opponents, their difficulty, weather, number of laps and so on. In Championship, you race the full season. In Multi-player, you can race either on a LAN or over the Internet. This game supports a full field of 43 living players online! Do expect some sort of lag though.

As for the paint shop, this game gives you the ability to paint and take full control of your car's bodywork. If that sounds too complicated for you, then just simply go to the web and download the latest paint schemes build by third party programmers. Most of them comes as a .zip file. unzipping is easy and idiot friendly. But do take note that for some strange reason, certain video cards have problems displaying third party work.

For the opponent manager feature, you can create, edit or customise your racing field. By default, the game comes with a racing roster named "cup2003" with both real and fantasy drivers to fill up the 43 car field. As stated above, you can download cars and create your own racing roster with all real drivers or create a fantasy league with a full field of fantasy cars.

This is one good thing about PC games. Online updates! Yep. There are many third party programmers making patches for this. One good example would be http://www.brianring.net/. These guys really make good track and AI configuration. Talladega finally looks and feels like Talladega with their updates.

One of the most powerful features in NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is the replay feature. If you have a huge amount of RAM like 1024 MB (1GB), you could probably replay an entire 100% lap race all the way from the practice session. The replay feature also gives you a wide variety of track-side and on-board cameras. You can even view a replay from any car on the track. You can also save a replay and keep a collection of your most exciting races. Nothing is better than showing off your dramatic, white-knuckle races to your cousins, family members and friends.

For controller calibration, this game supports almost any controller, joystick or wheel that is calibrated and recognized in Windows "Game Controllers". Please take note that this game requires an "Axis" or a button for steering. A second calibration is also required to be done inside the game. Also, you will find a host of controller options that smooth-ens your analog inputs. The highly detailed instruction booklet will state clearly how.

Sound: 9/10

Papyrus Racing really did a great job at capturing the sounds of a 750 horsepower stock car. The roar of the engines sounded very accurate. When you are in between a pack of cars, it gets really loud. In addition, your crew chief and race spotter sounded great too. They will warn you when there are cars running around you. Veteran drivers might want to reduce the race spotter and crew chief's message frequency as sometimes, they tend to repeat the same messages over at unreal rates, which can get slightly irritating. The only reason the sounds didn't get 10/10 is because for some reasons, they seem to be played at 22 KHz frequencies, which is actually a "medium" sound setting for other games. At higher volumes and with a good set of speakers, the sounds sounded pretty low quality. Also, there isn't any setting for you to increase the sound quality. This minor flaw isn't going to affect much of the gameplay though.

Graphics: 9/10

This game looks great. The tracks and cars are very well detailed. If you have a good computer with a minimum of 512 MB RAM, 2.0 GHz processor, and at least a 256 MB video card, you should be able to run this game with everything maxed out. Main slowdowns only occur at bigger tracks with lots of cars in front. You can hit the "F" key to bring up the FPS counter on the top-right corner of the screen. As long as it don't drop below 25 FPS, the game will still be playable.

Overall: 10/10

This game is a NASCAR's fan dream come true. You certainly won't find another NASCAR game as realistic as this, well, at least for some time now. Also to add, many retailers are selling this game at pretty low prices. Believe me, you are going to love this. See you in victory lane!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/22/04, Updated 12/13/04