BoondockMAH

Have over 100 hours into the game, generally enjoying it bit crashing every hour or so got annoying. Bethesda claims to have released a patch, it downloaded and installed on my PS5, with exactly zero noticeable changes to anything. Today I have spent the last half hour sending crash reports to Sony because the game won’t even load. Last Bethesda game for me.

Same game EA has released for years. The team lineups aren’t even right for the teams at the beginning of the season even if you download the “latest rosters”. The gameplay is the same as it has been for years despite them throwing these fancy name at it, this year it’s “ice-q”but it’s the same game. Then there’s the bugs. You’d think a dev with this many years development on the game would have fixed most of the bugs, particularly the game breaking ones. A season and a half into my pro career and I can’t play games because the game freezes on the loading screen between periods. Only way I will play NHL 26, and the only reason I am playing 25, is that I got it for free. Won’t pay for EA to release the same game year after year with the same issues and bugs.

For iRacing Studios first game like this it’s not a bad outing. It’s a little thin in features, the career mode is more of a my team mode rather than a career mode as you don’t get the opportunity to drive for any of the real life NASCAR teams, rather a new independent team. There are a few things within the game that are hurting it however. Firstly, and most frustratingly, there is an issue with the AI being OP on starts and restarts, losing two to three seconds on a start is annoying. Yellow flags have a big issue in that if a single car spins to bring out the caution and doesn’t pit they keep their position from immediately before the spin rather than going to the back. There is also no retirements from the race, either player or AI. The FFB on PS5 is terrible. It’s great when you are going through a long, or tight corner, but on the straights and in low input corners like the esses at Watkins Glen there is almost zero FFB. I have changed the settings all over the place with no improvement in this. Very disappointing from iRacing when this hasn’t been an issue in any other PS5 racing game I have played. The corner cutting penalty is absolutely stupid and I sincerely hope it at least ghosts the cars in online racing. When you cut a corner the game brings your car to a complete stop even if you are back on the racing line. Stopping on the racing line is an absolute no-no in any racing series. Again iRacing should be doing far better than this. As for accessibility, this game is extremely unfriendly to people who are picking this up as their first ever sim racing experience. There is absolutely zero option for visual driver aids. No racing line options at all, no options for clear braking markers like in GT7, nothing. You better be able figure out your road courses without any sort of assistance with where the racing line or braking zones are. Again, an area where iRacing has tons of other content to look at as far as features sim racing games require but they have chosen to ignore. There are some decent features, the career mode isn’t perfect, far from it, but it does have some interesting aspects. Overall it’s a fun game and for their first real attempt at this type of game they’ve done a decent, albeit flawed, job. A few improvements to this game with updates, and learning some lessons from its shortcomings and I think their upcoming Indycar title could improve on what they have given us here.

The penalty system is so broken in Sport Mode that it’s like playing Wreckfest without all the really cool damage animation. No one in this game knows what the brake pedal is, instead they would rather use you so you end up getting a track limits penalty while they get nothing. I truly can’t wait for some other actual sim racing games to come to Playstation because the “Real Driving Simulator” is garbage for online racing.

Worst F1 game in a very long time. The career mode changes are nice, makes it feel like there is some sort of career progression. That’s about all the good things I can say for the game. The updated handling model is terrible, you have no rear grip on starts or out of medium-slow corners while the AI has perfect grip and rockets away from you. The AI straight line speed is ridiculous, I can lose nearly a second down the straights even to my teammate, the DRS and ERS effects are way too powerful. This straight line craziness has resulted in NASCAR racing in F1 cars and that’s certainly not what I want from an F1 game. EA needs to sit their developers down and have them watch some F1 races to get an idea of what the sport is about, or better yet the FIA needs to give the license to a developer who is actually going to care about making a good F1 game. Terrible racing game and even worse F1 game.

A thoroughly enjoyable game with excellent gameplay mechanics, an engaging story, an online system that works and is explained in game. My only caveat is that this game is most certainly NOT for everyone. At its heart it is a “walking simulator” and if you don’t enjoy that style of game then you aren’t likely to enjoy this.