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"The long awaited stockcar simulation is finally here!"
It has been a long road for diehard stockcar simracers throughout the world as they have been waiting patiently since 1996 for the stockcar simulation successor to the popular NASCAR Racing 2 by Papyrus. You may be pondering on why I said, "1996". Papyrus did release NASCAR Racing 3 but since it still used the same dated engine - with some tweaks - from NASCAR Racing1, there weren't any new physical innovations with its release. When NR3 hit the market many simracers were disappointed that it did not use the new 3D physics engine and voiced their opinions loudly at various gaming forums throughout the simracing community. Folks, NASCAR Racing 3 was basically a placeholder for the market as the Papyrus people felt that the GPL based variant wasn't ready for the masses. Technology wasn't up to par, so to speak, and other game refinements needed to be done to make the game play on moderate equipment.
NASCAR Racing 4 was supposed to be released late last year but Papyrus felt that it would be wise to hold off and release the product early this year to fix and refine the game engine a bit more. (Smart thinking here) As I mentioned before, NR4 uses their latest and tweaked physics engine from their 1960s F1 simulation, GPL (Grand Prix Legends), which was released several years ago. Gone are the 2D physics that has been in use since the release of their Indycar Racing 1. (Man, that was a long time ago!) I welcome the new addition of realistic 3D physics from Papyrus to their line of stockcar simulations. With the new physics engine in place you will be able to experience the realism of driving a Winston Cup stockcar through conditions at the various tracks. Which means to my fellow simracers that this is a simulation first and an arcade game second. So enough of the past and let's move on with the review as the one of the most highly anticipated stockcar simulations of all time has been finally released. Could this be the cr�me de la cr�me of all stockcar simulations to date? Perhaps.
MY SETUP:
- CPU: AMD Thunderbird 1.0GHz
- PC133 256MB
- Creative Labs Annihilator II
- Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla
- Act Lab FORCE RS & RS Shifter
- Microsoft Game Voice
CONTENT:
Well besides the nice looking box, you get a 130 page NR 4 manual, CD, a reference card for the macros and a registration card. The NR4 manual itself was easy to read with detailed explanations for configuring the game to your system.
INSTALLATION:
After the disc gets loaded and you click on the installation routine (hey, you want this installed, right?) you are presented with several options varying with the amount of disk space. I opted to go for the maximum installation which was approximately 370MB. Once the installation was completed, I decided to configure the graphics by running the 3D Graphics program in which you can select the following APIs: Direct3D, Direct3D TNL and OpenGL. I chose the latter since theoretically it is faster in performance, plus the fact there are other enhancements available. This entire process takes an average of 30 seconds or more depending on the resolution, processing power, memory and speed of your video card. You also get an option to have the game run in a window or use the software cursor.
IN THE GAME:
Now it was time to get into NR4 to see what is new. Once you have clicked the shortcut, you are given a prompt for you to enter your CD-KEY that is located on the CD jewel-case, which is something like Half-Life used for security. After you have entered the proper key, you are then introduced to some Bink movies for Sierra and then Papyrus that are followed by the NR4 introduction movie. This movie has racing clips that were taken during last year's WC season that gets you in the mood to go racing. The music and the action portrayed gets your adrenaline flowing. The movie is a bit long and after viewing it several times you might want to disable it via the 'Options' menu so you can immediately get into the game without hitting ESC or the spacebar to bypass it.
Once the movie has been completed or skipped, you are introduced to a menu layout, which is somewhat reminiscent of GPL. But first things first, you are prompted to calibrate your wheel, joystick or whatever game device that you are planning to use and assign your buttons and axis'. So I calibrated my Act Lab FORCE RS (Serial) and appropriately assigned the RS Shifter. If you do have a shifter, you can tell the game what type of gearbox (Sequential, H-box, .etc) you plan to use which in my case was the H-Box and then I program the game to know what gear would be what when I used the shifter. After that was completed, I looked at the help aids and made sure all were off with the exception of the auto clutch feature since I no longer have a clutch. I enabled the Force feedback that is exclusively available when only using the Microsoft driver and was given several options to tweak: damping, strength, latency and also there is linearity which was set to 100%. Papyrus as also included their very own generic controller driver but this reviewer didn't use it. Before I forget, NR4 supports an abundance of axis' for game controllers, which means it supports more than 4 axes. I recall it was either six or eight axes. (Actually 12, just like GPL,) You can find this in the calibration screen by clicking on the arrow that takes you to the next axis calibration screen.
When I completed with the controller section, it was time to set the graphics and sound options. In the graphics menu, you can scale how much detail you would like to see front to back, what type of detail in the mirror, detail on the track and the cars. I pretty much had everything set at their highest values with the exception of the mirror which was set to 50%. Since I was using OpenGL, I checked every option available to see NR4 in all its bliss and glory. One thing to note is that if you use Direct3D/TNL, you will have one option grayed out which was spectacular highlighting.
The sound menu presented a master gain level and other levels for you to adjust if you wanted more emphasis over another sound. Also shown was the ability to choose what sound API you would like to use in the game that were: Microsoft DirectSound3D, A3D 2.0 from the defunct Aureal and Creative Lab's EAX. I chose A3D 2.0 since I favor realistic 3D positional sound over reverb and I also opted to leave the amount of sounds to be heard at eight although you can set it up to 24 sounds in my case.
Going back to the main menu, you will see two tables. On the left, you have Testing Session, Single Race, Championship, Multiplayer, and Exit. On the right table you have: Player Info, Opponent Manager, and Options, Configure 3D Graphics and View Saved Replay. Let me go through each of them for you so you can get a basic idea of what the game offers. Since NR4 was modeled for the 2001 WC season the schedule and all rule changes apply. All car makes are represented and chassis manufacturers included: Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford and Pontiac. Although there are no performance or handling differences between that chassis' as they are just graphical representations. NR4 is also the first stockcar simulation to have all of the WC tracks! And for the first time there will be Daytona, Pocono and Indianapolis in the same game, now isn't that special! Yet, it is missing Kansas City and Chicago. I guess licensing issues were the roadblocks.
Testing Session: Here you can choose what weather (custom or realistic), damage (none, moderate, or realistic), physics (arcade or simulation) and a track to test. There is no time limit in testing session and this is where one would spend the most of their time getting acclimated to the physics and the tracks.
Single Race: Basically involves you racing with the Artificial Intelligence (Ai) cars on the track with the same options as the Testing Session but also with some additional options that pertain to running a race. Options like turning on yellows, full pace lap, race length, AI strength/amount and the time limit for the practice (max is 90 minutes) and warm up (max is Happy Hour) sessions.
Championship: This option lets you run a season in NR4 that is based on the 2001 season and you can create multiple instances of seasons with varying options (e.g. amount of tracks) just like the two other options mentioned.
Multiplayer: This is where you can race some human opponents or you can add some AI to the mix too! You can online race using several methods, by either doing IP or going to the Sierra site. If you have ample bandwidth, you can also host and set the rules for your races. You can create races with fixed setups or force some graphics to be on/off, max latency, password and lastly, which seems to be getting some controversary forcing the cockpit view. - You want a simulation, right? The same racing options are available for the host to choose.
Got a spare PC laying around? NR4 can give that PC new life by making it a dedicated server. Just be sure you have the bandwidth available to use this function.
Now moving on to the other side of the menu.
Driver Info: Here is where you provide your information, what car you want to use, either offline or online, and save it. You can also create more than one driver profile but, be warned if you delete a profile, you will loose all your setups! You can also view the roster that is currently being used and you can also paint your own car if have the creative touch by entering the paintshop. The paintshop itself has somewhat gotten a facelift and you can do most of your painting within the game. But most talented people for past several years go outside the game by exporting a car file and then painting the car with some third party software like Photoshop or Paintshop Pro and then importing the work back into the game.
Opponent Manager: This is a new feature that has been added and it has been highly needed. What the Opponent Manager basically does is not only help you in creating your very own roster but also help you edit each driver's rating in the game. And I might want to add the rating system has gone through a complete facelift, as in the past they were pretty vague for the overall performance of each driver. In NR4 you can get an explicit breakdown on things like, qualifying, consistency, finishing, etc., so you can really get the drivers behaving like their real-life counterparts.
Options: Here's where you set your hardware to the game in which there are three menus to choose from: Controller, Graphics and Sound. I have discussed these menus earlier.
Configure 3D Graphics: If you would like to change the API, resolution, use the window mode or software cursor, this is the section of the menu in where you would like to do it, although you could also do this outside the game.
View Saved Replay: This is where all the replays you have saved and can be watched. The beta testers have also recorded some laps for you to view if you happen to be confused at a certain track. There are two pull downs in which you can either view just a driver's replay that you created or just view the replays at a particular track.
Exit: You click this to get out of the game and you can also by-pass the viewing of the credits by disabling this feature in the options menu.
Overall the mouse movements through the menus were crisp and very precise when using either hardware or software cursor. When saving or adding replays, cars, or setups, the directory structure in NR4 has changed with the likes of GPL.
 
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