NASCAR The Game 2011...from Eutechnyx and Activision

[Teal]

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/30/activ ... game-2011/

[Rodster]

IIRC Eutechnyx was behind SuperCar Challenge and Ferrari Challenge. Neither game was overly impressive and SuperCar Challenge was downright awful. On the positive side the new screenies look good.

http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?ga ... id=1276436

[Teal]

Well, outside of Nascar 09, which I REALLY liked, they can't do a whole lot worse than EA, can they?

[Rodster]

Umm if you've ever played Supercar Challenge then the answer would be yes.

[Teal]

Never did...well, we'll see.

[DChaps]

Wow, there are some more nice previews at the link below. If these are truly in game captures that is impressive. Even though I would not get my hopes up yet, I believe Eutechnyx’s Executive Vice President Ed Martin was involved in at least a couple versions of Papyrus' Nascar series as well as the pretty excellent Nascar Heat. However, I believe he was also at the helm of some of the EA Nascar games as well, so who knows.

http://www.virtualr.net/nascar-the-game ... reenshots/

[GB_Simo]

IIRC Eutechnyx was behind SuperCar Challenge and Ferrari Challenge. Neither game was overly impressive and SuperCar Challenge was downright awful.

Rod, you beautiful man, you know I love you dearly but...I mean, really? Downright awful?

Not that it was perfect, of course. The weakness in both games was the AI. I've got some impressions elsewhere on the board of Ferrari Challenge, though I don't recall if I bothered for Supercar Challenge. The other major flaw with Supercar Challenge was that it was essentially Ferrari Challenge with a few token cars thrown in, and it seemed that not very long had been spent on those cars. Stick to the Ferraris, though, and it was one of those rare games where simply hotlapping against your own ghost was genuinely enjoyable.

I will admit that having weak AI isn't good news if you're developing a game that needs 42 AI cars on track at once, but the handling model Eutechnyx put together was very, very solid indeed for the most part. I certainly wouldn't go giving up on NASCAR 2011 just yet.

[jcalvert]

Personally I think Ferrari Challenge was much maligned, and did not really get a fair go of things from the major media/review outlets. It had two major things going against it - First up, Ferrari Challenge was not as "pretty" as Gran Turismo. That one is kind of hard to live down.

Ferrari Challenge leaned much closer to casual style racing, however it attempted to strike a decent balance of realism into the mix. It did not necessarily succeed, but I don't think the game ever claimed to be a balls out sim. Of course going towards NASCAR, the developers will have to figure out some contact physics, damage modeling, and a way to penalize you other than slowing you down for 10 seconds. I digress.

Ferrari Challenge offered plenty of replay value, circuits, and cars ... unless you grew tired of driving a Ferrari, which was the other major strike against the game. "Come on, you can only drive a Ferrari!" - Good grief! That was sort of the point of the game.

Simo does a better job offering up impressions of this one than me, and if I recall correctly, I think I rated it slightly higher. Probably because I am not as good at racing games.

[Rodster]

I was reading some of the dev blogs and I take back what I original said regarding this racer. It sounds like it could be real good.