Racing Project Review

I parked at the back of the grid at Panorama Hills, waiting for the race to start, and the car in front of me was actually facing rearward. This won't go well. As you might expect, when the lights go out, chaos ensues. The game has just started and the scene is already chaotic.

Unfortunately, that's the racing plan in a nutshell right now.

On paper, Project Motor Racing is exactly the racing game I want to play. It has a huge selection of cars, some of which are completely underrepresented in modern racing. It also doesn't have the trappings of free games or monthly subscription limitations, and its focus is no Mainly multiplayer games. All of this is high intensity music to me. In practice, however, Project CARS simply doesn't work, and I've grown completely out of its current state, thanks to an artificial intelligence that largely ignores your presence on the track, a hopelessly unfair penalty system that only frustrates and ruins your races, and its host of bugs and bizarre physics quirks.

Project Motor Racing is the spiritual successor to Slightly Mad Studios' now-defunct Project CARS series, which failed to survive the acquisition of Slightly Mad by Codemasters (and subsequent acquisition of Codemasters by EA). Sure, there might be some different logos on the loading screens, but developer Straight4 Studios is basically Slightly Mad reborn after someone hit the VIN with an angle grinder.

Perhaps more specifically, it's an attempt to pick up where Project Cars 2 left off — leaving behind the confusingly haphazard reinvention of the series that was seen in Project Cars 3. If you need a comparison to think about it, it's a bit like Jaws 4 ignoring the events of Jaws 3D. Unfortunately, like Jaws 4, things can get very fishy very quickly.

superficial intelligence

To be fair, Project Motor Racing's single-player setting has a good foundation to it, and I did like how malleable it was initially, with three starting budget figures giving us the flexibility to choose the career mode of our choice. That said, you can choose to go into the entry-level category with enough cash, or you can choose to have a big enough wallet to buy any of the cars on offer and jump right into the top-tier category. It's smart to have these options. There are actually three different careers available in the game at the same time, so there's a lot to experiment with (or, in my case, let my sons dabble in their own career saves without messing with mine – an underrated addition to any racing game).

Your in-game payout can also be adjusted to suit your play style. For example, you can choose to keep things simple and get a fixed payout for each match, or you can mix it up and only get bonuses when you win – or even cover your damage repair costs in exchange for a steady portion of your match income. No matter how different your and my plans for the game may be, this is an equally sensible way of providing honor to us.

However, the management component stalls here because it has no other meaningful aspects. There is no in-game ability to create custom team skins for the cars you purchase and race, nor to apply sponsor logos. In this regard, don't expect anything like the recently released Nascar 25. Support for mods is a highly regarded feature of Project CARS on PC and consoles – I have no doubt that many of the recognizable liveries will be convincingly recreated and used through user-created mods – but it seems unlikely that mods will fill this particular gap.

Once you have a team and a car, campaign mode becomes a simple matter of selecting a championship or event, paying the entry fee, and competing. The overall goal is really that of any real-life racer at this point – spend your workday at high speed around 18 world-famous tracks and try your best to win (or, if you fail, not bankrupt your team). This method works for me. Or, at least, it would happen if Project CARS races weren't so inexplicably irritating.

It's frustrating that racing has come close to being completely decent, but it's currently completely undermined by its aggressive oblivious AI and blatantly unfair penalty system – both of which are so annoying that I wouldn't want to continue playing it right now.

A big problem with AI is that they often drive like you're not on track. I'm not saying they will show up on you when you only have slight overlap and maybe initially optimistically glued your nose there (although they will Do this, watch the replays and you'll see they sometimes ghost-snip your front end to do it). I'm talking an absolute bargain, when you're alongside them they want to continue down the racing line like a freight train, so they slam into you and ignore your presence. It certainly doesn't help that it currently has no radar or proximity indicator for cars around you, nor a spotter.

On PS5, the number of opponents in single-player is actually limited to 15 (cross-platform multiplayer allows up to 32). Frankly, 15 isn't enough for a racing sim of this type, but given the way they drive, I guess I don't know if I want more of these maniacs right now.

Let's be clear, my favorite real-world racing categories are vintage super tourers and V8 supercars, so I'm also unequivocally in favor of intense, panel-punishing racing in my game – but that's just pissing off. Project Motor Racing's AI often reminds me of classic Gran Turismo, where the AI ​​racer always felt exponentially heavier and was generally unaffected by the player's racing. To experiment, I fired projectiles into my opponent's back, but to no avail. When I parked on the gravel road they just continued to turn without losing position.

This problem is compounded by an extremely strict track-limited penalty system that just ruins your entire race for zero reason. Knocked off track by artificial intelligence? Violations of track limits will result in a two-second penalty. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t your fault, and it doesn’t matter that you may have lost time because of it. If you set your opponent's power slider at the appropriate level so that you can go toe-to-toe with the AI, two seconds can mean a lifetime. It ruins the game immediately. It's truly a killjoy to be at your best, circling in unison with a slightly spread-out convoy and thinking, “You know what? This actually feels pretty good right now” – and then, bam; tiny moments of silly punishment.

In contrast, Assetto Corsa Competizione also imposes penalties, but only if it detects an advantage. If you're forced off track, or your ego writes a check to your tires that can't be cashed, and you catch a bit of impromptu dirt on the exit of a corner, ACC won't penalize you benefit From a trip that went off the rails. Project CARS is the opposite, where you're punished for making small mistakes. already Take your time. Hell, they don’t even have to be small; You can spin, be overtaken by the entire field, and still Once you rejoin, you'll incur a two-second penalty. I’m not cheating; collapse. Confusingly, I had better luck actually Cheating, because the penalty system allowed me to charge straight into T1 on Project Motor Racing's unbranded version of the Monza, pay my dues by slowing to 60 km/h, and instantly go from 16th to 1st. This is also repeatable – sometimes I actually didn't get punished at all.

Regardless, thanks to the penalty system, I certainly have no interest in playing Career on “real” difficulty, which locks the opponent's power at 100 and doesn't allow the game to be restarted. This may be a problem if trophies are important to you, as a large group of trophies are tied to completing a “real” career. Realistic mode is optional, but racing events are best remembered we are not all When we play video games, we go as fast as real racers. that is Why I play video games. Currently, in my current career, whenever I get unfairly punished, I usually hit the pause menu and try again. I just hope that when we start over, everyone is facing the right direction.

The storm is coming

Considering how much I love its current garage, considering how much I love Project Motor Racing's vulnerability on the track, not to mention how excited I was to learn that Australian Touring Cars from two different eras of the Supercars series are scheduled to launch as DLC later next year.

Project Motor Racing has over 70 race cars, and I appreciate the refined approach that focuses strictly on racing models. Ferrari and McLaren appear to have turned down seats at the moment – which does create some huge holes in the categories they focus on – but it's particularly nice to see some of the older GT and N-GT cars that get so little love in contemporary racing games. For example, I've always had a soft spot for the Lister Storm and its 7.0l V12. After all, there is no substitute for displacement.

These cars look great on the menu screen, but they're not that glamorous on the track. In real-world use, it's actually pretty much washed out, and definitely doesn't look newer than the excellent Project CARS 2. The damage was not that great, and neither was the rain. There are many layers to the sound, and it does capture a lot of the raw mechanical noise of the race car – although there's room for improvement overall, and I wish the engine had a thicker, throatier sound.

However, in terms of the way the car handles, I was pulled in both directions – literally, in this case. Nothing is more important in a racing sim than handling, and I have to say that there are some combinations of cars and tracks in Project Motor Racing that I'm really happy with the overall feel of the steering wheel (the only PlayStation steering wheel I own is the Thrustmaster T-GT II, ​​which isn't a direct drive wheel but is just as good as a belt drive wheel in terms of force feedback).

For example, when driving a GT3 race car like an Audi R8 or Ford Mustang around Mount Panorama, I could ride cleanly and the car felt compliant under my feet. Am I as fast as a real GT3 driver? Not at all, and I'm probably under-driving the car to some extent – but at the speeds I'm racing at, it all does feel very intuitive to me. The buzz from the curb is strong, and the feeling of weight fluctuations is very noticeable – just as everything feels lighter as you charge over the top, your car becomes heavier and stickier as you slide down the end of the slope. This is an important factor for a track like Bathurst with such huge elevation changes. In Project Motor Racing, the difference in performance between cold and hot tires is also huge, and there's a strong need to be more subtle with the driving for the first lap or so, which is also a satisfying enough challenge.

However, I have much less confidence in other cars. Supercars are the worst offenders. They just want me dead. Obviously, I'm not a professional race car driver, and I'm not going to talk to you like I am, or act like I know exactly what's going on beneath the surface of something like Project Motor Racing while simulating a Le Mans prototype. However, the supercar isn't ready to go right out of the box, not even on wheels. They pulled, skidded, slid, and scrubbed side to side—with zero of the massive downforce I was expecting. For clarity, we're talking about a car that generates four times the downforce as drag.

Unfortunately, on gamepads, the news is even worse. It's just too stressful to play a satisfying simulation game on a standard controller – especially when the tiniest wrong stick could mean pointless punishment. I tried turning down the sensitivity of the steering, but it had little effect. Cars (especially prototypes) can become very unstable when turning from left to right on the gamepad, and I really wouldn't recommend picking it up if you plan on playing Cars Cars this way.