Project CARS is a true success story within the videogame industry, what originally started as a game funded by the devoted community and the developers, it was always developers Slightly Mad Studios intentions to create a sim, rather than the more arcade types ready and waiting to hold your hand.  It was always a very ambitious project (no pun intended) and as the development progressed, it became a meatier prospect.  While it wasn’t Slightly Mad Studios original intentions, without the helping hand of Bandai Namco it might not have had the resource to see the light of day.  So after several delays and a lot of patience, Project CARS crossed the finishing line (pun intended) and what we have is arguably one the most authentic racing sim experience to ever grace the home console.

 

If you go into Project CARS expecting something like the recent Forza titles and even arcade racers such as your Need 4 Speed’s, you’re gonna be in for a culture shock.  During my first few hours of playing the game, I almost gave up.  Seriously, how difficult should it be to keep a Renault Clio on the dam road, no matter how supped up?  To say it tested my patience was an understatement and don’t even get me started on the Karting and rookie Formula race-types.  My god, I’ve never known a game to have me recycling that re-start function like Project CARS.  It can be very unforgiving, with sometimes even the smallest of mistakes punishing you with the cost of the race (there’s also no rewind feature here by the way).  Yet when you can master the game or even just the race, it can be a very rewarding game.  This may seem like an odd comparison, but in some ways I think of Project CARS as the Dark Souls of the racing genre.

 

Then it wasn’t until I tried out the Gran Turismo championships and suddenly it clicked.  Project CARS isn’t a game that’s necessarily going to suit you all-round; instead it’s about you finding the race discipline that suits you.  And it’s a god-send for Project CARS has an open-sandbox approach.  What I mean by open-sandbox approach is that unlike most other racing games, you don’t unlock a discipline as you progress into its career.  Instead you can pick which racing discipline you choose from the off-set.  So if like me you start off with the Karting and you find it’s not for you, then when the first season is over, just try something else when you receive the contract offer.  Or if Karting is for you (and like all the other disciplines), then you can stick with it and become the Karting master that even a podgy, moustachioed stereotypical plumber would envy.  It’s this kind of open approach that gives Project CARS a unique edge over many of its competitors.

 

 

Even when it comes to the big race, the game makes a day of it.  Depending on the discipline, the daily events will vary.  But on many occasions you will have your practice laps, qualifiers and of course the main race itself.  One thing that I noticed, during the qualifying sections, is that for the first lap at least, I’d find myself skidding off the track with ease, especially during the first lap.  But as I found out later, you need to warm up your tyres, much like you see in F1 when the cars are zigzagging all over the place.  Some of the races will even require mandatory pit stops, to change your tyres or re-fuel.  I’m gonna use this term more than once here, but this is just one of the many aspects that makes Project CARS as authentic as it is.

 

When participating in the big race, the car A.I generally handles itself well for the majority.  They won’t stick to the race line, they will make mistakes (sometimes causing you to crash) and they even seem to be aware when you approach them to the side or from the rear, as they subtly try to avoid a collision.  It’s a testament to the great work that the developers have put into making the A.I behave as realistic as possible.  However, there is one aspect that I did find off putting at times and that was with how the A.I would keep up speed when off track, even at times being able to over take me while I was still on the track! (And yes I was at high speed before you ask).

 

Collisions are inevitable and of course so are mistakes.  So as expected when I do rear off the track and on to the grass, my car would slow down.  Yet at times, when both I and an A.I collided off the track, the A.I car seemed to maintain their speed. Thankfully this did not happen on all occasions and it only occurred as a minority.  Yet, it was quite worrying that this not only happened to me while playing on the Xbox One, but I also witnessed it round a friends on the PS4 version, coincidentally and as if by magic,  while I was explaining my experience to that friend.

 

 

Visually Project CARS is a stunner, perhaps not to the high level of visual detail to that of DriveClub (in my opinion of course), but it’s among the best looking racers that you will likely see in recent times.  However where Project CARS really shines is the exterior and interior details.  Petrol heads will instantly recognise their favourite cars and even if you don’t, you can still marvel in their visual beauty.  Yet the game manages to shine further more when you select one of the viewpoints from within the driving seat (there are seven viewpoints altogether).  Not only seeing the steering wheel and dashboard, but also the stripped down exterior fitted with roll-cages and modified gearstick’s, all helps to give Project CARS some added simulator texture direct to your eye sockets.

 

Likewise with the immense number of courses, albeit that some names could not carry the same as their real-life counterparts (due to licensing I assume), but racing fans will recognise them none the less as they are all created to a high level of replication.  In fact, while we’re going into the topic of numbers, Project CARS features 30 locations (with 110 courses) and 65 cars at launch (not including DLC).  The only real issue in terms of visuals for Project CARS is how cluttered the in-game menus are.  There not exactly pleasing on the eye and it won’t be all that straight forward to navigate at quick glance.  But this is somewhat of a minor issue, to what is a really good looking game.

 

Something that just about every petrolhead will appreciate and expecting is the authenticity of that purr & roar of the engine, the shift of gears, the screech of the breaks as you take a tight bend.  With all its refined gameplay, stunning visuals and packed content, my favourite aspect of Project CARS is the sound effects, which is one of the games strongest assets.  I can’t type into words how pleasing the car sounds are to your ear, even watching one of the many gameplay videos uploaded to YouTube can’t do it justice.  The only way you can get an understanding to how great the sound effects of Project CARS are, is simply by playing the game.  Slightly Mad Studios have gotten a lot right with this game, and the sound effects are certainly one of them.  The same can’t be said for the in-game music, which was so distracting in fact that I muted it.  But do we really care about the music in a game as authentic as this one?  You may very well do, but it’s not an issue for me.

 

 

One aspect of Project CARS that I didn’t expect is the insane amount of options.  I mean you can customise just about everything in this game and I’m not just talking about the cars.  You have you usual visual and audio options to tweak as you please, but on an immense level.  I’m not a modern day PC gamer, so I can’t speak from recent experience, but I’m told that the amount of customisable options that you have in Project CARS in the console version, is not to dissimilar to that of PC (even the difficulty has more variety then I’ve ever seen before).  This goes to show that if developers are as dedicated as the ones at Slightly Mad Studios, even console games can have the amount of options similar to that of the PC.  Of course there are also many ways in which you can tweak your car, from the way it handles to making some engine adjustments.

 

Earlier in my review, I compared Project CARS as this genre’s answer to Dark Souls and I stick by that.  This is a game that will drive you insane at times (pun unintended), you might think it’s being cruel and over sensitive, and at times you might think about giving up altogether.  However, Project CARS is a game that requires patience and a degree of dedication, but if you stick with it, you’ll find it to be a very rewarding game once you begin to tame the beast.  Boy racers need not apply.

 

Do you want reveal the Review Score?