NASCAR Racing 4 Review

PRICE: £23.99 – PUBLISHER: SIERRA – DEVELOPER: PAPYRUS – WEBSITE: WWW.PAPY.COM
OFFICIAL 2001 CARS AND DRIVERS – ALL THE 2000 TRACKS
FOUR GAME MODES – REVOLUTIONARY PHYSICS
43 PLAYER MULTIPLAYER – HUGE INTERNET FOLLOWING
PAPYRUS MINIMUM RECOMMENDATION: P266, 64MB RAM, 8MB DIRECT3D COMPATIBLE GFX CARD
OUR MINIMUM RECOMMENDATION: P400, 64MB RAM, 32MB+ DIRECT 3D COMPATIBLE GFX CARD, STEERING WHEEL
GRAPHICS: DIRECT3D OPENGL
SOUND: STEREO
PLAYERS: ALL MODES: 1
MULTIPLAYER: INTERNET: 43 – LAN: 43
MODEM NEEDED: 33.6

Introduction

I am one of (perhaps) the few in the UK who purchased every one of the Papyrus NASCAR series. But I had never felt the advancement in both the physics and features that I always felt I wanted.

I will always be a Grand Prix Legends racer, maybe even a fan. But I always found a championship mode in a NASCAR sim much more of a challenge than one in GPL, and I always wanted a NASCAR sim to challenge my driving like GPL did.

It’s not often a sim racer can say it, but NASCAR Racing 4 is what I wanted when I bought it. How many times have I been able to say that in the past? Twice; NASCAR Racing 2 and Grand Prix Legends were the titles.

Installation

The installation itself was flawless, with simply the sound check, then the file copying. But like (unfortunately) most sims these days, that’s not the end of it. Yet again I find myself having to setup my video card outside of the installation, this is acceptable, but then you find you have to setup half the settings by opening *ini files. Due to my experience with Grand Prix Legends, it was fairly painless, but I fear for a computer illiterate person trying to extend their replay length. This isn’t a problem, it’s just annoying that yet again, we have to ‘edit files’ to get things how we want them.

The sim will run on anything above a 400mhz machine with relative ease… But that’s in testing with no graphics turned on! Yes, we again need a monster PC to run it, and luckily enough, I have one. I bought my video card because a Papyrus programmer said it would work well with N4 – now that’s trust, hehe.

* ini filetype, can be opened in Windows using notepad

The Test Machine

AMD Athlon 1.1Gigahertz
256MB RAM
GeForce2 Ultra 64MB DDR
Windows Millennium
My version of Windows has most of it’s features turned off to increase gaming capability.

The Start

When you first start the sim, you may find yourself disappointed in the International version to find none of the famous Papyrus Intro sequence that you’re used to. Infact there isn’t really one. The USA version has a lavish movie with clips from real NASCAR events all around it’s most prestigious events. If you haven’t setup your video cards yet my selecting the separate EXE in the N4 folder, this is where you’ll be asked to do so, as the EXE will start when you run N4 for the first time.

The Manual

I’ll admit I only very lightly skimmed the manual. Having played the (lacking) demo, and having played GPL, I thought myself ready to conquer. Since then I have read it in my own time and found it incredibly informative, and if you can read it before you start the sim, I’d recommend it. Something I liked was some information on some of the best NASCAR Racing online racers just like you and I towards the back of the manual. Most of these names I know, and it was a real pleasure to read about them.

The Main Menu

Testing Session

Here you have the opportunity to take your Winston Cup car out for a spin without the worry of getting in someone else’s way, or getting chased down and attacked while you take those first few tentative wheel turns. You can choose from any of the 24 circuits available (note: some are just night versions). You are able to turn damage off, set the weather, and also set the Physics mode which I’ll explain later. This is where you’ll spend most of your time if you’re looking at hotlapping your way to fame, cooler is faster – remember that when you set the weather.

The setting up itself is the best I’ve seen in any simulation to date. You have four Papyrus beta team setups available, these are Qualify, Easy, Intermediate and Fast. They (of course) differ quite a bit, they get slower and faster, and usually more difficult to drive the faster you go. Most of us though want to make our own setups, don’t we? Things like; Camber, Caster, Grille Tape, Tire pressure and loads more settings can be fiddled. If you right click anywhere on the setups screen, you get a nice explanation of what the area does when you modify it, it also gives little recommendations. If you don’t want to mess around though at first, the Papyrus setups are quite fast enough to compete with the AI, or compete with an average field of online racers in any league. You can download setups from various sites, so don’t worry if they’re too slow and you don’t want to bother with setting up the car yourself.

The Physics you can choose, Simulation or Arcade, are worlds apart. Arcade is in my opinion quite similar to NASCAR Racing 3, simulation is in my opinion quite similar to that Sunday ride at Daytona on memorial weekend. I must warn you, Grand Prix Legends has faults, serious ones, which allow you to do unrealistic things with your driving to make yourself faster. A small one of these is trail braking (which I was very good at), I locked the inner wheel every time I did this, as trail braking is in essence braking while you turn into the corner. If you lock like that in N4, you’ll wear that tyre down until it explodes – literally.

Single Race

Pretty easy to explain, you have a single race against the AI. You can set weather, physics, distance, AI strength (I’d suggest 102% for Daytona and Talladega, and 96% for other tracks when you’re new to N4), you can set yellow flags on or off, and even turn off the damage too (which I’ll go into later).

Taking a race in N4 isn’t what it was in NASCAR Racing 3. It requires consistency, it requires you to do things right, it requires you to make few mistakes. To explain, I’ll go for a 500 lap race at Martinsville that I did the other night. I setup the race with full damage, totally realistic settings, and random weather. I started 39th (yes, the AI are fast), after 40 laps I was already beginning to notice I’d fried the tyres by braking too late (and therefore braking too hard to correct), and putting on too much throttle – too early. It was absolute hell until the first pitstop (taken under green), because the car felt totally wrong, not due to the setup, but due to how I’d mistreated the car. I was running mid-pack, and had been lapped once by the time we got to lap 150. I hadn’t made any serious mistakes, and hadn’t touched another car except into the turns where I’d simply bumped them door to door or front to back. After the setup though, I had to settle myself, and I had to treat the car easy and gently, yet get the absolute maximum out of it. (I never remember GPL being this hard in a full length race).

At about lap 300 I simply let the wheel slip – that’s all. I went straight into the wall with the right-front of the car. The damage this caused was fairly hard, the RF wheel was caved in underneath the bonnet (hood for you Americans) and the RF was all flattened off (yes, N4 has the realistic damage model we asked for). The yellow came out right away (only the 3rd in the race) and I had to limp back into the pitlane (which I was surprised to see was joined, I hadn’t noticed last time I watched NASCAR race there). The damage was fixed relatively quickly by my crew (who I should probably add that you see running around the car – we wanted it, we got it), and I was on my way again now running in a lowly 28th position.

I don’t really think I need to go any further with this ‘story’ – all I need to say is, GPL was never this difficult for me. That is no detriment to GPL, it’s just a fact.

Championship Season

Can you imagine a full season of what I described under ‘single race’? The race I described was my season event at Martinsville. I haven’t finished in the top five yet, but I am truly loving the racing. All the single race options are available here too, but you have to stick to them for every race, ready for the challenge? I doubt it, I’m not, but I’m having fun trying. I am also enjoying seeing Earnhardt Sr. out there, but that’s just personal addiction. It’s going to be hard to install a 2002 carset next year.

Multiplayer

Where do I begin, and where does multiplayer end? The possibilities are huge. League races, open (pickup) races, arranged races, random races, short races, long races.. I love them all with N4. I’m taking part in the GED ESCORS league in their new season, can’t wait for that. But outside of league racing, N4 hits all the right buttons. It has a ranking system, you get in lots of accidents, it marks it, you finish well all the time, that ranking goes up and up. You finish well on superspeedways, but drown on road courses, you ranking shows it, some servers specify what rank people can join, which is great. The multiplayer itself is similar to GPL, but I believe it’s slightly more advanced in it’s data sending, when I enabled the meters to monitor the connection, I saw very little problems in my connection, and that’s very rare for me in GPL. There is very little warp, so N4 has a better prediction quality than GPL has, and the connection can (sometimes) be good enough for contact to be made that won’t result in a physics spasm.

N4 does (like GPL) suffer from the occasional physics problem when racing online, although in N4 it’s MUCH less. The only time I’ve ever had a problem is when a warping car tried to bump draft me with my permission, my car was launched ninety degrees to the right and upwards into the fencing, but on the replay it’s evident that he did warp left just before the contact.

At the time of writing, the spotter has a few bugs when you race online. You sometimes get told to stay behind cars you shouldn’t, or pass the pace car when you’re leading. With experience you’ll get to know what to ignore

The Car Painting

Ahh, what some of us bought N4 for… the graphics look so good that even the worse painter in the world will have a car that looks wonderful! It has tools that you will find in Photoshop or any other paint program. You can change pretty much anything, although when you change your ‘pitboard’ you should bear in mind you need to see it. I coloured mine blue, and had difficulty seeing where my pit was because of the sky being behind it. It’s also interesting to put your friends faces on the pitcrew. Again I should add, you can download many many cars from all over the ‘net. If you are serious about painting the perfect car, I’d recommend you export it and use a proper paint program.

Overall Verdicts

On my system, NASCAR Racing 4 is a permanent addition. I still have Indy 500 installed on here, and that’s not going anywhere either. N4 is that much of a ground breaker, it’s everything I personally wanted from a NASCAR sim, and it’s a real shame that as I’m writing this I can’t think of everything, Because I’ve left so much out. The AI is the best I’ve ever seen, in any sim, I often find myself clawing my way through the field at Daytona, to find I make one wrong move, brake, and lose it, and the AI scatter and look very realistic while doing it. I love seeing them drive through the grass when the tracks blocked, and I love seeing them react to me the way they do. It’s also difficult to do things that I’ve always found easy in NASCAR sims. Bump drafting is dangerous, many of us remember seeing races on TV where someone bump drafts and the car they’re doing it to spins? In N4 you have to be just as careful, hit too hard and you’re going to spin them out, you have to be only slightly faster – Earnhardt style.

The only thing I can say to GPL fans, who hate NASCAR is; This is a more realistic physics engine than GPL, that’s obvious to me. I find this more difficult to finish races (even of equal distance) than I ever found GPL. I find it harder to drive fast, and keep doing in this, than I ever did in GPL, because these cars are affected. Although GPL has a damage engine, it is only affected by over-revving and contact. N4 is affected by how you brake, how you steer, how you shift gears, how you apply the throttle, how you ride the kerbing, how you balance the car, how you setup the car and more. This sim isn’t GPL, that’s for sure, and for all you thinking of buying it, I’ll tell you now, it’s not as much fun to drive these cars as it is a ’67 F1, simple as that. But in my opinion, even though at 93% of the tracks it’s all left turning, it’s as much of a challenge to a sim racer.

Papyrus have released another ground breaking sim in my opinion, and how I’d love to say that I still like GPL more, but it’s lost it’s place now because it’s just not got that ‘challenge’ to it anymore.

Physics: Better (just) than GPL (Papyrus 1998) enough said.

Graphics: On my system, fantastic. F1 Racing Championship (Ubisoft 2001) looks tidier (just).

Gameplay: I love it, don’t expect to find it easy though to finish a full race.

CLOSING: “Papyrus raise the level of modern simulations.”