Perhaps the worst NASCAR game I have ever played.
The Bad: Everything else; jagged edged visuals; stripped down “career” mode; other modes are short; no unlockable content; no fantasy tracks or legend drivers; bad controls and physics; poor AI; little car customization; terrible presentation; missing features; feels unfinished.
I waited two years of my life for a next-gen NASCAR game, and this is what I get? I’m a huge NASCAR fan, and this game is not only an insult to me, but also to NASCAR. Nearly everything about this game feels either unfinished, or stripped down. A lot of people had similar complaints about Madden 06. It must be EA’s goal to make sure the first next-gen game in a franchise sucks.
GAMEPLAY
God, where to begin? I’ll start with the good because there’s not much here. The racing is intense, but that’s more the nature of the sport than because of anything EA did. NASCAR is all about 43 cars racing side-by-side at speeds close to 200 mph, and that intensity translates well into NASCAR 08.
Now on to the bad. The biggest problem here is that there’s no career mode. Instead, EA replaced it with a mode called “The Chase.” This is basically a training mode consisting of several mini-games. The end result being that you get to own your team. This clearly has the feel of being a training mode to show new players how NASCAR works. This is unacceptable. To have a sports game without a career mode is like having a RPG without a story.
The Craftsman Truck and Busch National series are present, but aren’t included in this mode. This makes them purely optional via season or race now modes. In past games you had to start in the modified series, and if you did well enough you’d be offered contracts in the higher racing series. Bottom line is that there’s no sense of accomplishment for “The Chase.” It feels hollow and incomplete.
There are a wide variety of Nextel Cup drivers to choose from, but few in the other series and no legend drivers. All the tracks from the Nextel Cup are included, but no fantasy tracks, or other tracks exclusive to the Truck or Busch racing series.
Although there are a lot of options to adjust on the car, they have little impact on the actual gameplay. This is mostly because the controls are so finicky, that any change you make to these setting is either going to be small, or non-existent. To compound the bad controls is the stupid AI. The other drivers on the track act like you don’t even exist. They will frequently run into you instead of avoiding you. They all tend to race the same style, and aren’t any better on some tracks than others. And for the most part, they stick to the racing line.
The physics are also odd, and clearly skewed to make crashes more dramatic. For example, I’ve never flipped my car at Daytona going 190mph. Yet I’ve flipped the car dozens of times at both Bristol and Martinsville going about 70mph. You figure that one out.
GRAPHICS
Some areas of the graphics look great. For example, the damage modeling is perhaps the most realistic it’s ever been. There are also nice lighting and reflection effects on the cars, and a fantastic sense of realism and speed when using the cockpit view. And the slow transition from day to night at certain tracks is a wonder to watch. The spark and smoke effects look very realistic too.
But the game is in some serious need of some anti-aliasing. There are also serious clipping problems. If a car flips near the wall, there’s a good chance it will flip through the fence and get stuck. This happened to me about half a dozen times. I also flipped over on my roof, only to have the car disappear through the ground before magically reappearing on the track. If you turn on the preferred driving line assist, it will actually clip through the car in the exterior cameras angles.
SOUND
Oddly enough, this is probably NASCAR 08’s strongest point. The music in this game is probably the best is has ever been for the series. A dozen or so tracks are used while in the menus, and you can also add your own MP3’s. All the songs are southern rock/country songs that fit the theme of the game well.
The roar of the engines and the crowd is fantastic. Your crew chief and spotter will give you vital information, but the spotter is often too late when giving you info about a car being next to you. The only lacking area for sound effects is the crashes. EA went out of their way to make them overly dramatic, but when your car actually flips it’s oddly silent.
VALUE
There are a lot of different play modes within NASCAR 08, but none of them are well fleshed out. Online play is very basic, and you can’t setup clans or leagues to do season or career races. The Chase mode can easily be beaten in a couple hours, and then all you have left to do is boring mini-games, and season mode.
The presentation is also terrible. NASCAR 08 uses the ESPN license, but there are no announcers of any kind. When you enter a track for a race you’ve only given the most basic of menus to practice, qualify, or race. No driver intros. No national anthem or military flyover. No feeling that this is an exciting NASCAR race. The achievements are highly unbalanced. You can unlock 50% of the achievements in your first 2 hours of play, and 6 of the achievements give 100 points each.
On top of all this, is the fact the PS2 version of the game contains a lot of missing features from the 360 and PS3 versions. Things like Total Team Control and Driver Rivalries are present on the PS2, but not next-gen systems. So what do the next-gen versions have that the PS2 version doesn’t? The Virtual Telemetry Visor, which is just a fancy GUI that gives you a lot of information like oil pressure. Information that might have been more important if this game didn’t suck.
The box says that NASCAR 08 is the #1 selling NASCAR game. Probably because there is no other game for them to compete with. EA holds an exclusive contract with NASCAR. Which means they can put out crappy games like this, and no one else can take away from their profits. Bottom line: NASCAR 08 is perhaps the worst NASCAR gave I have ever played. EA took a major step backwards with this title, and no fan should devote their money to this complete waste of a game. I regret buying this game for $60, and wouldn’t have taken it if I were paid $60 to play it.