NASCAR 08 will let you customize your cars inside and out. Gearheads will love the degree of tweaking and customization they can do to their cars' inner workings, but the average player will find the whole thing hopelessly complicated and equally cryptic. Everyone likes to make their car look pretty, though, and the game comes with tools to give your car a custom look. The tools let you combine a number of different paint highlights to your car such as stripes and flames, but they are all stock and locked in their placement on your car. I know that EA has access to some excellent car modification tools because I've played the Need for Speed games, so it's a little disappointing that you can only work with combinations of set customizations here.

While we're in a visual frame of mind I should mention the game's graphics. Overall I'd say that the game has more of a generation 1.5 look to it than a next-gen feel. The cars look pretty good and there are some nice sky and weather effects, but the tracks look like they could have come from an Xbox version of the game. Also, the sense of speed conveyed by the game seems to have taken a step backwards in the move to next-gen. Prior NASCAR games did a better job of making you feel like you were really going really fast. With NASCAR 08 I found myself double-checking the speedometer thinking I was going too slowly only to see that I was racing ahead at over 190 mph.

NASCAR 08 supports online racing for up to twelve players, but a full race seems to be a rare occurrence. The online races run nicely, but outside of leaderboards there's not much to the online game outside of the racing. Leagues, tournaments, and the like are noticeably absent.

NASCAR 08 is not a bad game, but you'll probably feel like it has potential to be a lot more. I hope that more modes, arcade-style racing, and more forgiving AI are all in the works for NASCAR 09.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 74%. NASCAR 08 runs a good race but doesn't take the checkered flag.

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