Nintendo Okie

Activision recently acquired the license to publish NASCAR games for all major consoles. They’re first game under that new license hit stores earlier this year, but they’re back with a second game in just a few short months. The two games couldn’t be further apart in style, but can it stand up in a genre filled with games like Split/Second, Diddy Kong Racing, and the king, Mario Kart?

What You Need to Know

NASCAR Unleashed is a kart racing style game filled with licensed drivers and tracks based off of real world locations. You’ll compete in a bracket style campaign where winning unlocks the next event. Complete them all and you become the king of the NASCAR world. You’ll have plenty of objectives to complete along the way, bonus missions that pop up at random and plenty of rubbing. As you know, rubbin’ is racing. Two player co-op ramps up the level of insanity and allows you to take on the circuit with a friend.

The Art Style

NASCAR Unleashed doesn’t do anything to take itself seriously. The art style of the game is very over the top in terms of the presentation of the cars and the tracks. You’ve got a number of licensed cars, all with the same paint schemes that you would see every Sunday at the track. The difference is in the body of the cars themselves. Each of these racers is more like an oversized micro machine than any real world car. The cars are considerably shorter than their real world counterpart. The tires take up more in proportion to the overall size of the cars, and all of the angles, while still round, are considerably sharper.

The tracks are just as crazy. While they are all named after real tracks on the NASCAR circuit there is little outside of that which makes them actually resemble the tracks they’re named after. Tracks like Martinsville wind up through mountain passes and cross rivers with covered bridges. Others will wind through city streets and even up the sides of buildings. These tracks all have little secret paths, and narrow bottlenecks that really ramp up the craziness. They’re fun, but definitely don’t resemble anything you’d see if you were watching a NASCAR event on television.

In Game Missions

I liked this aspect of the game a lot as it allowed you to really go after objectives that were secondary to your main goal. At random times throughout the race you’ll be given objectives like complete a drift turn, make rivals, or ram a specific number of cars. Completing these objectives gave you considerable boosts to your race XP, which you can use to unlock new cars and paint schemes. These objectives, with a couple of small exceptions, were a lot of fun to try and pull off and gave you something to do while you were racing around the different tracks.

The Rubber Band is a Bungee Cord

Rubber banding AI is nothing new in the world of kart racing games. They’re everywhere. If you’re not familiar with the term it means that the computer artificially adjusts the difficulty of the game depending on how well you’re doing. If you’re doing really well the computer opponents get tougher. If you begin to fall back they get less aggressive. That keeps going back and forth for the race like pulling on a rubber band.

In NASCAR Unleashed the swings in that ‘rubber band’ are so wild. You can really see how the changes come. You’ll be back in 12^th place only to see yourself fly by all the cars on the track (without the aid of any boost). Then at another point you’ll be cruising along in first place only to see every fly by you like you’re standing still.

Most of the time you find yourself stepping on the gas at the beginning of the race and hoping that the bungee cord launches you forward at the end of the race.

You Never Feel Like You’re in Control

The racing in the game is fast, frenetic and frenzied. There’s a lot of stuff going on every second of the race that it’s hard to really keep track of it all. Part of the fun of kart racers is that unpredictability, but it feels very different in NASCAR Unleashed. The physics engine, AI, track design and speed are all working together in this formula that just makes you feel like you’re constantly out of control.

So many times you start a race and you’re automatically at a disadvantage because the second you hit the pack of computer controlled cars the demolition derby begins. You’re hit in one of the car’s quarter panels and immediately lose all control of the car, potentially tumbling down the track, while the camera is spinning wildly. The elevation changes and jumps in the track come suddenly, and many times they’re so well hidden that you don’t see them until you’re right on top of them. Then you’re in the air tumbling sideways only to bounce around uncontrollably when you land. When boost and packs of cars come in to play the pinball begins and cars are bouncing everywhere. The smoke begins to billow in front of you and you can no longer see where you’re going.

There are speed boosts that can be obtained in the game that allow you to really ramp up the speed. This is done, however, through things like drifting around corners, ramming other cars and taking out obstacles in the road. The drifting was especially difficult to get down. The touch required was very precise. Too little and you under steer into a wall, but too much and you’d spin out, losing precision track position. Add to that the fact that you’re trying to drift around corners, while avoiding other cars ramming you and it becomes an exercise in frustration more than a helpful tool.

Kart racing is always about some unpredictability, but the best kart racers, like Mario Kart, always give you the sense that you’re in control of your destiny and that the car is going to go where you want it to when you want it to. I never got that feeling while playing NASCAR Unleashed.

Conclusion

NASCAR Unleashed is definitely only a NASCAR game in name only. There’s nothing here that really resembles anything you’d see at an actual NASCAR race. There’s a great sense of speed; the cars move lightning fast. However, the extremely flexible AI, out of control physics model and camera that makes the most intense roller coaster seem tame really mar the experience more than they enhance it. You want a racing game where you feel like your skill level and improvement over time affect how well you finish races. That’s just not the case with this game. I found myself, more often than not, relying on an opportune jump thanks to the rubber banding. It was more press on the gas and hope for the best and that just didn’t make for the most fun experience.

Final Score: 

Review copy of the game provided by Activision.
Played through the campaign mode, set lap times on a number of time trials.
Total Play Time: 4 hours