Some time ago I had a look at the media demo of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (N2003), which was only about 80% complete. This time I'm reviewing the retail version, which is already in the stores in the US. As we all know N2003 is the final Papyrus NASCAR simulation for now as EA have bought the NASCAR rights and Papyrus and Sierra are moving towards the console market. My expectations for N2003 grew higher the closer we got to the release when I read about the involvement of Jasper Motorsports and Goodyear. Due to N2003 being the final in Papyrus' NASCAR series I was hoping for quite a few new features and of course improvements to the already good physics engine and multiplayer, so that the community will be happy with it for years to come as they have been with Grand Prix Legends. Is N2003 good enough? Read on.

Let's start by having a look inside the game box. You've got the CD (duh), and the manual. I enjoy reading the manuals (call me crazy) and one of my favourites is "Four-Wheel Drift" by Steve Smith included with Grand Prix Legends. The N2003 manual isn't that special, especially if you own N2002, as these manuals are quite similar. Sure, it has all the useful keyboard commands and all the information you need playing the game, but I was hoping for more information about car setup and the characteristics of the Winston Cup tracks. The manual (about 50 pages) is a good read for novices for learning about the game and the NASCAR rules. I need to mention that on the CD you can find "A Philosophy for Setting up the Winston Cup Race Car" document written by Manuel Daskalos (Chief Engineer at Jasper Motorsports) which is a very good read and can help you understand more about setting up your car. This 5-page documents completes the manual nicely.

Installing the game is as easy as it's been before. You choose the directory, some graphics options (renderer, resolution, colour depth) and you're set. The installed size of N2003 is a little over 500 MB which is not much compared to some other new games out there. Launching the game for the first time I was expecting to see some kind of an intro movie, but there isn't one. Not a big deal for me personally, I always watch them once and after that they're useless. As I mentioned in my preview earlier, the menus are similar to N2002. The colour scheme is different of course, and you have animated backgrounds, which look nice in my opinion. In the main menu you can choose between four different driving modes: testing session, single race, championship and multiplayer. You can also watch 10 driving lessons (pitting, drafting and car tuning for example) which are similar to ones already included in N2002. Sadly, there are no track lessons, but if you watched them in N2002 you won't miss them much.

The first thing you want to do in options, is set up your controller. This too is quite similar to N2002. First you calibrate your steering wheel and pedals (or joystick) and assign the buttons for shifting and looking left and right. Those of us using an FF wheel can turn the FF effects on/off and tweak the feel by changing the strength, damping and latency settings. I find the FF feel very similar to N2002, which is fine as Papyrus' FF has always been good. There's also a new "advanced" menu for the controller options. You can change the steering linearity which is a very important setting to get right if you're using a steering wheel or a joystick. It can make a big difference on how the car feels on the track so make sure you experiment with this setting. In the advanced menu you can also enable/disable the "steering boost at low speeds" option which was previously found in the core.ini file. There are also new settings for keyboard players to play with. You can set steering assistance from 0 to 100% which, as the name suggests, makes steering easier with a keyboard or a gamepad. There are also smoothing settings for the steering, brake and throttle. I didn't give these settings a try as I prefer using my steering wheel and pedals. The controls menu is very well done with support for multiple controllers and you shouldn't have any problem getting your controller device to work.

The sound options are also familiar from N2002, but let's go through them anyway. You can turn 3D audio on/off and even turn sound off completely. You can choose the maximum number of sounds played between 8 and 24. This setting affects the frame rate so some experimenting is needed choosing the right value. In the sound options you can silence your spotter and crew chief or have their comments displayed as text on the screen and also have them heard at the same time. Or any combination you wish. There are also different volume levels you can adjust, including master volume, player engine, opponent engines and track surface.

There are a few new graphic options. Settings like track lighting & shading, solar effects and shadows are the ones which have the biggest effect on frame rate, but also make N2003 look so much better than N2002. Another new option I'm happy to have is the field of view (FOV) setting. In the previous NASCAR titles this was set to 78 degrees and there wasn't an option to adjust it. A FOV of 78 degrees gives you better visibility to both sides of the car but also gives you a "backseat" feel; everything looks a bit too small. In N2003 you can change the FOV between 65.00 and 78.00 degrees. The default is 65.00 and to me this looks great. All objects and cars look bigger. Even the banking at Bristol looks steeper. Not to mention that now you can actually see the tachos much better. The visibility to the sides of the car is reduced a little but I feel it's worth it for the more realistic view.

Let's move on to the track. I did my first laps at Infineon Raceway (previously known as Sears Point - R.I.P) and it has changed quite dramatically from N2002. The pit area has changed the most, there's no wall inside the final hairpin anymore. Many of the corners have been modified a little, too. The kerbs are different, some objects have been removed, small changes like that. All in all it looks more realistic than before judging from what I've seen on TV. First thing I noticed driving around is that the car feels much more glued to the track than before. No more of that gliding over the track feeling. You can now push the car a bit harder and the driving feels easier than it did in N2002. Close to the limit it's still not easy of course, although when the rearend steps away you can bring it back with opposite lock a little better than in N2002. All in all there's just a much better feeling of grip and four tyres under the car. Next I tried Darlington, and first time coming out of turn 4 on to the front straight I thought my teeth would fall off. Darlington is really bumpy! Not just the front straight but also the turns. The bump modelling is really well done in N2003 and adds a lot to the game. The bumps are not excessive but can get you into trouble at tracks like Darlington, Bristol and Lowe's if you're not careful or if your car setup isn't optimal. It's also possible that you need to change your driving line a little due to the bumps on some tracks. This might not sound like a big new feature, but in my opinion it's one of the biggest factors that makes N2003 great.

The improvements to the graphics are really visible at the evening/night races. Driving at Lowe's night is beautiful. On the front straight as you approach turn 1 the sun literally blinds you (if you've got solar effects turned on) and decreases your visibility. Entering turn 1 the sun disappears behind the buildings in turn 1. It's just graphics but it's a really beautiful effect. I haven't seen it done this well in racing sims before, or any game for that matter. Another thing that I really like about the graphics is the sky. Everytime you load a track the sky seems to look different, and the clouds look great. Not to mention that at night races the lighting level changes going from happy hour to race, which is another subtle, but nice effect. The way the track lights reflect of the dark asphalt at Richmond night is another thing that adds to the immersion level. I really love these lighting and solar effects, and although they reduce your frame rate I think it's worth it. The track textures, asphalt, grass, and the other texures are quite similar to N2002, but the lighting really makes the tracks come alive. It's most noticeable in night races, but also looks very good at day when the amount of sunlight changes around the track depending on the conditions. It's also really easy to tell the difference between a clear and a cloudy day; when there's cloud cover everything looks a bit darker and gloomier.