PCARS Post Release Review

by **IFCA GTDon** Fri Jun 05, 2015 3:35 pm

And so here we are.  After all the hype and anticipation of Project CARS, the ultimate questions become, did it deliver?  Was it worth the wait?  Was it worth the money?

1.Was it worth the money?
Sure, it reached the level at which it can justify its price.  It is a high end, fairly well thought out premier title that does compete with more established rivals such as Forza and Gran Turismo.  That’s an easy one to answer.

2.Was it worth the wait?
This is a little tougher to decide because PCARS was not exactly ready for prime time even after its many delays. It created a lot of frustration early on, so we have to say that this is a debatable question at the very least.  Had the basic issues been worked out with the hand controller settings and freeze ups, the answer would be yes for the most part.  Seems silly for such basic things to be broken on the day of release is the point.

3.Did PCARS deliver?
Almost depends on what you were hoping to receive.  If you wanted a more race oriented simulation with active weather options, adjustable pit options, challenging physics, massive track selection, no “grinding” and a good career mode, you probably got what you wanted.

If you were looking for PCARS to be the iRacing of consoles, you were mostly disappointed. PCARS is not a hardcore simulation as the major gaming critics would have you believe.  It is slightly more hardcore than Forza or Grand Turismo, but only by a slim margin.  It requires you to drive more carefully to stay on the track, but still has a very simulation-lite feel to it like its main rivals.

If you were looking for a dominant replacement for Forza or Gran Turismo, a game that would just smash the competition to oblivion, you were probably very disappointed.  PCARS 1.0 is just not able to deliver this kind of total supremacy in its first iteration.  It was a decent attempt, but up against the 5^th and 6^th versions of the competition with 10 years of development behind them, was it realistic to expect PCARS to blow its competition off the track?  I don’t think so.  But the hope was there along with the hype, and this is what has many somewhat disappointed. One hyped item in particular was the promise of driver exchanges in endurance racing.

Managing public expectations during pre-release, and hyping the product, is a difficult activity to balance.  Unfortunately the hype almost always over shadows the content, which in turn harms the elevated expectation.
Project CARS has its foot in the door of the competition, but it remains to be seen if it can push its way into the room with version 2.0.  It does many things better than the rest.  Its physics are perhaps the best and most natural feeling of any simulation on any platform.  Its sound quality gets the Blue Ribbon too; just as real sounding as it gets.  PCARS graphics are equal to or better than its competition as well.  Track selection is large, second only to iRacing.

What PCARS does poorly is having a limited car roster.  And the inability to race cars across classes.  You can’t race an open wheel car vs a prototype, or a road car vs a GT etc.  You can’t upgrade or paint the cars either.

Aside from these minor aggravations the real disappointment is not unique to PCARS. The real disappointment is with console simulation racing as a whole.  There is still an active ingredient that is missing among all of the console racers including PCARS.  There is no accelerant to light the fires of enthusiasm among the grass roots of the console community.

None of the console racers have figured out that much of the excitement of real racing comes from open competition in organized graduated forms.  Virtually all forms of real racing is basically divided up into regional, national, international, and world championship levels.  The foundation for the top levels of racing is at the grass roots.  Everyone from the bottom up is competing to get to the next level whether you are talking WRC, NASCAR, NHRA, FIA, AMA,  MotoGP or whatever, each form of racing has its lower tiers who are competing to reach the top levels of their form of racing.  Everyone is trying to become the fastest, and be in the world championship class is the point.  This is what brings merit and glory to those who reach the ultimate level in their sport.  This is what gets people excited!  This is what brings the fans to the race track!  This is what inspires the lowly underfunded privateer to take his shot!  This is what console sim-racing needs more than anything else.

For example, the success of iRacing is mostly due to their uniformly graduated licensing and ratings system, and their international competitions. They figured out that just setting up hot lap competitions isn’t something that will capture the fervor and competitive imaginations of racers; that for there to be real fun, you will have to structure things like real racing!

So this is our grass roots advice to ProjectCARS and its competitors.  If you want people to become addicted to simulation racing, then mimic why people are addicted to real motorsports.  It’s all about the competitive fire!

by Guest Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:07 am

Thank you Don, these settings helped me a bunch.

by Ax4x Nelly Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:20 am

These are the settings I've been using on the PC version for the last year of testing prior to the games launch.

They work for pretty much every car in the game. Unfortunately some of the road cars in the game are pretty much garbage but I'll be getting on to the devs and see if they can look at the physics models again.

by **IFCA GTDon** Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:45 am

Nelly D Racer wrote:These are the settings I've been using on the PC version for the last year of testing prior to the games launch.

They work for pretty much every car in the game. Unfortunately some of the road cars in the game are pretty much garbage but I'll be getting on to the devs and see if they can look at the physics models again.

Well, don't be too hard on them, they are street cars afterall, so they should be softer and a little less controlled. Maybe just a race tire upgrade would be the truest fix to give the cars a little more safety on the track?

by Guest Thu Jun 18, 2015 2:08 pm

you guys still using these settings?

by **IFCA GTDon** Thu Jun 18, 2015 2:30 pm

ridin sideways wrote:you guys still using these settings?

I am.

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