Project CARS review: The detailed simulation virtual gearheads deserve

If the arrival of a good racing game is cause for celebration, then break out the party hats. Project CARS is here, and the hype that has built up during the game’s long development may be well deserved. Although it is a game about cars, in this case CARS is an acronym—Community Assisted Racing Simulator—and the game replicates (mostly) real cars and tracks to a degree that until now has been the preserve of the PC racer. We Xbox One and PS4 racers owe that community a thank you, because their honing of the game under the spotlight of a public beta has pushed the genre ahead for consoles, too.

The game's overall format is entirely conventional for a racing game. There’s a career mode with different championships, a solo mode for quick races or just practice laps, and online and community events. But unlike its marquee rivals, Project CARS isn’t aiming to be all things to all gamers. There are no showrooms, no paint shops, and no Top Gear tie-in. The focus is on clean, hard racing with a minimum of hand-holding. We can trace Project CARS’ lineage back to games like GTR and GT Legends. Like those titles, it doesn’t suffer fools. There’s no rewind button, no racing line to show you where to turn or brake.

What you do get is 60fps graphics, dynamic weather and time of day, a physics engine running at 600Hz (evolved from Need for Speed: Shift), and up to 44 other cars on the track. There’s also a level of adjustability that PC gamers take for granted but which is refreshing in a console game. The graphics can be tweaked to your liking—heat haze and lens flare and rain droplets—as can the controller inputs, the goal being to immerse the player deeply in the simulation.

Project CARS

Before we go any further: you can play Project CARS with a controller, but you really shouldn't. Slightly Mad, the game’s studio, has gone to some effort to make lots of wheels compatible, and it’s worth spending a minute or two calibrating yours if you have one. Career mode starts you off in trickier karts. It is quickly apparent that you can’t take these by the scruff of their necks and just throw them anywhere. Trying to go flat-out straight away is an exercise in frustration; these karts require finesse on the progressive throttle and brakes. Now, aren’t you glad you calibrated your setup?

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments