When it comes to sim-racing games, I usually prefer those with a lot of variety in tracks and cars. Games like Gran Turismo 7 and Assetto Corsa EVO offer a ton of cars and track configurations to enjoy. With the release of NASCAR 25, I wondered if the opposite could still hold true for fun and excitement.
At first glance, NASCAR 25 has a good racing background, developed by iRacing Studios (probably the most popular racing simulator today), and what it has that iRacing lacks is a dedicated Career Mode. I spent most of my time with the game here, and my feelings are mixed.
Career Mode: Lack of Content
While the career mode in most games allows you to create a character, give them a name, appearance, and style them to your liking, NASCAR 25 offers the absolute minimum. You can give your character a name and choose a male or female gender. A blank silhouette is used as your portrait, and that’s it. You can customize your car and driver suit, but that’s all.
During your career, you start in the lowest available division, the ARCA Menards Series, and climb through the Craftsman Truck Series and Xfinity Series, before finally reaching the NASCAR Cup Series. Honestly, I wanted much more than what was offered. There’s no sense of connection with the team or driver. It all boils down to "go to this track, race, fix your vehicle afterward, hire a new staff member or upgrade car parts, go to the next track" and repeat the process.
At no point is there a story, rivalry between drivers, or any meaningful interaction. NASCAR 25 features over 150 officially licensed drivers, and you literally do not communicate with any of them. After each race, there’s a brief overview of social media where other drivers can offer praise, criticism, or both, depending on your performance, but the screen appears for barely 10 seconds if you read all the posts.
Other Game Modes and Online
Championship Mode offers users the choice to race in any of the four mentioned series with one of up to 7 different season configurations, ranging from short, quarter, half, full, and more. Drivers race against artificial intelligence and can adjust the difficulty level to their needs. This mode is perfect if you’re looking for a fun championship where you don’t have to worry about upgrades. It’s just racing as long as you want.
Online Mode is where the vast majority of people will likely spend their time in NASCAR 25, which makes sense. Racing against artificial intelligence is fun for a while, but racing against other people, for better or worse, is far more tactical. I dove into the online part for a few hours over the past few days, and my experience was about what I expected, considering the oval races online in GT7.
In online mode, you can create an event or a custom lobby. Event lobbies set the track, race length, and car series, while custom lobbies reflect exactly what the host wants. You can customize the race length, track, damage level, AI cars, yellow flags, and whether the lobby is public or private.
My experience with event lobbies is that the race would usually devolve into an absolute slaughter around the second turn. I honestly thought some people were allergic to driving straight, as they pushed other drivers, executed "pit maneuvers," and otherwise collided with them, even to their own detriment, as vehicle damage was enabled. There were several races where they crashed into me so much that my car could no longer turn left, and on an oval track, that's all you do.
Driving and Physics:
When it comes to the driving itself, NASCAR 25 is somewhat mixed. Drivers using a wheel and pedals, like me, will immediately notice the lack of force feedback on the wheel. The only thing I noticed regarding force feedback was that the wheel became stiff when turning at higher speeds in corners. At no point was there any indication that the car was losing traction, going over rough pavement, and even pushing or colliding was not registered on the wheel.
"What NASCAR 25 absolutely nails are the visuals. Every track looks incredible in both day and night races."
For a racing game developed by a studio with such a good feedback model in its second game (iRacing), it confuses me how they couldn't include it even in the most basic introductory way.
Additionally, regardless of which game mode I played, I noticed that the cars had a tendency for terrible understeer. After I passed 80% of the corner, I noticed that every car I drove would understeer to the point where I had to lift my foot off the gas to avoid crashing into the wall. I understand that not every track can be like Talladega or Daytona where the gas is pressed the whole time, but I should be able to avoid understeer, especially on road courses like Watkins Glen and Circuit of the Americas. The cars felt stiff and unresponsive to braking and turning.
Graphics
What NASCAR 25 absolutely nails are the visuals. Every track looks incredible in both day and night races. Each track feels like the real thing and enhances immersion, especially if you prefer driving using the cockpit view.
I previously mentioned that you can customize your car, and now I will go into more detail. NASCAR 25 has its own livery editor, and each car and driver suit can have up to four different styles. In the menu, you can choose from 24 base designs, then customize the colors and stickers on the car. Each sticker comes pre-loaded from a list of manufacturers and shapes. While this offers a decent range of customization, there is no option to upload your own stickers to the game's library.
Conclusion: At its core, NASCAR 25 is less of a simulation and more of an arcade-style racing game. NASCAR fans will enjoy being able to play as their favorite driver from any of the four major series and race on over 25 tracks. I can still conditionally recommend NASCAR 25 but only to fans of this style of racing— it’s a fun arcade-sim (however you want to call it) race with impressive visuals and an easy-to-use online experience.
Game copy provided for review purposes by the development studio iRacing
