All right, before I get too far into this review let me come out and say I just
don’t get auto racing. I’m not saying it’s bad or stupid or a waste of time. Far
from it. I’m just saying I don’t see the excitement, be it NASCAR or Formula One
or IndyCar. I know a lot of people feel the same way about my favorite sport of
football. So with that I mind I am going to try and keep an open mind as much as
possible for Codemasters newest racing game IndyCar Series.
As I warned I’m not huge into racing games. Yet sometimes a game comes along
that is just plain fun to play no matter what type of game it is. For instance,
I’ve really had fun with the Daytona games from Sega and a couple of the NASCAR
games. There was just an overall feeling of fun with those games. Unfortunately
I didn’t have the same experience with IndyCar. While there were parts of the
game I really found of high quality there were also low points. I’ll cover both…
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| Racers jockeying for position. |
First a little bit about the game. IndyCar has a few different gaming modes to
choose from. There is the “Quick Race” which is basically the arcade version. In
this mode you don’t have to concern yourself with pesky little things like car
damage, fuel, and realistic physics. Another mode is called the “Indy 500.” Here
you can go directly to the biggest race of all, the Indy 500 for those not
keeping notes at home, without driving through an entire season. Think of it as
going straight to the Super Bowl without the regular season getting in the way.
However the biggest part of the game is the “IndyCar Series”. This is a series
of 15 races where you develop your career. Here is the heart of the game where
you can really tinker with every detail of your car and get a very good feel for
the complexity of the sport. You can choose from just about any of the major
Indy drivers such as 2001/2002 Champion Sam Hornish, Al Unser Jr., and even
Sarah Fisher. If none of the real drivers are what you’re after you can always
create your own. Along with a ton of real drivers you also have 14 real
speedways. Some of those include the California Speedway, homestead-Miami
Speedway, and, of course, Indianapolis Motor Speedway which can seat more than
250,000! That’s a lot of people watching cars make nothing but left turns.
Looking at IndyCar is nothing special. Truth be told, it’s rather disappointing
and resembles a PS2 game from a couple of years ago. The tracks themselves could
be very realistic but when you get down to it there can’t be that much you can
do to make the tracks look a whole lot different. I mean you are just going
around in a big oval. Sure some ovals are shaped a little different but they’re
still just big ovals. The cars seem to be very crude and lack detail. There are
a lot of the jaggies on display and that’s too bad. I was a little disappointed
in the lack of a true feel for the danger and speed of racing. Maybe it’s due to
the type of tracks but I never felt that I was hitting speeds of over 230 mph
and controlling a car with over 650 ponies under its hood.
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