If you've been living under a rock in the last couple of years, you probably have missed the massive surge of popularity of one particular sport in America. This popularity could be thought of as a revolution. As there is a changing of the guard, since it's popularity has even outdone America's longtime popularity leader, football. It doesn't use a ball or even human athletics. But some would differ on the latter. It deals with the same team concept but also with a machine. In this case a car. So what sport is this you may ask?

It's NASCAR and it's a motorsport, not the same type of sports you are accustom to in watching or playing. EA Sports enters the auto racing arena with NASCAR Revolution.

When I first heard about EA Sports developing a NASCAR racing simulation, I had some mixed emotions. Not because I am against the idea - I love competition - but I was worried how the hard-core sim racers would take to this new EA Sports product on the newsgroups and being claimed as a simulation, it's going to be taken apart piece by piece. It seems with the strong popularity and dominance of Papyrus auto simulations in the past several year, that most hard-core racers seemed to be use to the Papy feel as I call it or become a Papy zealot. They seem to flame any type of auto sim product if it's not done by Papyrus. To me this current type of thinking is really bad for racing sims in general as with upcoming racing simulations in the future from other companies, can really have a classic or a masterpiece on hand. I wished more people kept an open mind when viewing each racing sim. Each individual has their own definition of what makes a sim. My feel and desires in want a simulation comes from some experience in real life racing and some in F1/CART simulators. The latter is unbelievable!

In the case of NASCAR Revolution, this simulation did get a lot of flack on the newgroups. Since most felt it wasn't really a simulation, hence the Papy mold. More on this subject later. Also, they felt there was some false advertising in hyping up the product. I, on the other hand, differ on the subject of simulation with NR a bit from the norm. NR certainly does have a lot to offer to any racer interested in NASCAR type of racing. Is it a true simulation? No, but are there really some out there? Yes, there's a couple that comes to mind.


CONTENTS

From the overall graphical representation of the box from sales point is great looking box with "Da Man", Dale Earnhardt -I hope his good luck is coming- on the front. So EA Sports got that right! Throughout the box, you are given brief description on what is NR. Inside the box, you get your NR CD, quick reference manual, NR manual and registration card. The manual is a bit brief and vague, which I feel it's going to hurt an upcoming driver compete successful in the simulation mode. Luckily for those of you that will be lost that there is an official NR web site that will soon have some setups. Say, "thank you" to the EA Sports team.


PHYSICS

This is going to be a touchy subject for some as I noted earlier. This part of the review focuses on the simulation aspect of NR, though NR does have an arcade feature. The key to any auto simulation is the feel it translates to you, the driver. But, the problem again is the perception of what this feel should be. Since you are not the one developing the game, you are going to have to adapt to each type of physics models offered by game manufacturers. But don't think the physics will be the same in what you accustomed in racing. So NR's feel won't be the same as Papyrus' dated NASCAR 99 and you shouldn't think that. Which means you, the driver, are going to have to again, adapt to the feel. Now with this way of thinking, you will see what any auto simulation will really offer you. Remember, how you first started in racing simulations? You did adapt to the sim, didn't you?

In NR, it took sometime for me to get a feel of the car. After couple of hours, I finally figured how physics model felt. I must say it's not bad at all and it's actually good. The physics has a good representation of the weight of the car, as the weight moves about during a turn, braking or accelerating. The physics is a bit easier to drive that I am use to in driving. So my question now is, if it drives easy does it make the physics model arcadish? From my experience with the NR, no. Why? Because, if it was easy to drive, wouldn't you think you would be able to dominate the game at it's max settings under simulation mode? I think not. You still have to have a car/setup that can last through the whole gas run.

Now when you have finally gotten your feel, you can start adjusting the car via setup options in the garage. NR has the most comprehensive setup detail I have seen yet. With all the available setup tweaks that you can do to the car such as, track bar, camber, weight distribution, gearing, wheel lock, tire pressures, shocks, wedge adjustments -for all four wheels, rear spoiler and gasoline level, you can be sure there will be endless types of tweaks for you to try. You might want to leave the tire pressures alone in NR when you first start out, since these are the recommended tired pressures by Goodyear. Did you just read that? It seems that the developers have taken the time to do a lot of research in the setup department. That's a nice thing to know. I am impressed. If you haven't noticed there are more tweaks than that Papyrus' NASCAR series offers. NR is still missing a couple settings that I would like to see make it in upcoming versions of NR. Some that are missing are the front and rear sway bars, tape on the front grill, and springs. Now when you start making these adjustments to the car, you will notice the characteristics of the car change. The setup tweaking took sometime to get the proper tire wear I was seeking and it surely is a challenge!

Also, during your testing, you have telemetry available to you. So you can see what you car is doing. You can only access the tire temperatures in this area. Which promotes realism. Your tire wear indicators can been seen when you are driving on the track, with the exception of the cockpit view. Also, in this view, if you want a speedometer, laptimes, or lap counter it will not be shown. This could be a bad thing for some, but I don't think so for me as it promotes more realism.

There was one problem in the whole setup department and that when went to qualify. The problem I have is, you have the ability to adjust the fuel level for qualifying. This is a no-no. Since the early 90s NASCAR mandates all cars to run the full 22 gallons for qualifying. A patch should quickly remedy this.

Damaging modeling is a bit touchy in NR, as I found that model was a bit sensitive. If you barely touched a car or any object on the track, you will see tons of shrapnel flying off the car. This gives you a wrong representation of the damage to your car. When in an incident you do get to see some spectacular crashes with cars flipping and rolling easily. I was amazed, but I felt that the Winston Cup cars couldn't flip or roll this easy. Again a patch could rectify this area.

Other than the damage modeling, I feel that the physics model could've been done to give a heavier feel to the car. It's a bit on the light side.


GAMEPLAY

You are first greeted with the infamous EA Sports moto and a nicely done intro movie showing some NASCAR racing footage. After the movie is completed, you are presented with the main screen. From here you can either do a Single Race, Championship Season, Multiplayer, League Play, load a saved game, view saved replays, options for setting up the game, Driver information, credits and exit the game. When you select either Single Race or Championship Season, NR gives you endless amount of options to adjust before entering a race or starting a season. These options can be adjusted in the NASCAR Options menu. In this menu, you can set the race length, field size, short pit, damage, yellow/black flags, equipement breakdowns, Pit crew mistakes, and then there's the Physics/AI settings menu. On the latter, you have the ability to set the AI strength, drafting effect, horsepower, car balance, and speed sensitive steering.

I ran a couple of races first to get my feet wet with the AI strength set at 105%. I did noticed that there were a couple of problems areas. These problems areas were:

• Everytime I wanted to exit any session, I was always introduced to a drive bay. There needs to be the ability to turn this off.
  
• When entering in practice or qualifying, your car is already on the track. I prefer to drive out the pits.
  
• Going into and leaving pit road, you get an auto-pilot. There needs to be an option to turn this off.
  
• In some of the races, I was racing in, when I pitted, the game told me I was either done for the day, thus not completing the race or it booted me back to the desktop.
  
• All tracks use a high groove, though you can make a car to run on the bottom.
  
• When using a force feedback device, the force feedback operations continue when you leave the track.
  
• When using automatic transmission, the car short shifts, thus making the engine lug at low rpm. Plus, it will always seem to start out in fourth regardless of what the speed you are running at the start.
  
• When using manual transmission, you can not shift the gears on the rolling start. You have to wait for the green flag and then shit down.
  
• Commentary is repitative. I wished the play-by-play would be like FIFA 99.
  
• Caution laps seem endless at times.
  
• Everytime you enter a race, you are greeted with a intro and anthem. Should have the ability to turn this off.