Name:  - NASCAR 4
Sierra Description:
NASCAR Racing 4 puts you in the driver's seat of a 750 horsepower NASCAR Winston Cup car that responds to your every move and leaves your heart pounding! Papyrus originated the NASCAR sim and consistently sets the standard in racing games.
No one else comes close to the physics and graphics engines for sheer realism or offers the 2001 teams and sponsors. Control everything from the paint scheme to the gear ratio or just jump in and drive in Arcade Mode. Loaded with support for 43 drivers via LAN or Internet, NASCAR Racing 4 is the only choice for anyone serious about racing.
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4/2/2001 - I've owned every racing simulation made by Papyrus and have enjoyed every one of them. NASCAR Racing 4 doesn't disappoint. It features many (not all) of the 2001 teams and sponsors, all 4 car manufacturers, 21 Winston Cup tracks (finally Daytona!) and multiplayer support for up to 43 drivers. New 3D physics and spectacular graphics are very nice. There is a patch in the works for some issues with the sim and may change some thoughts here, but for now I'll just comment on what I have.
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LEW Brings It!
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83
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| First Impression and Game Installation |
My first impression was actually from the demo that Papy put out a few months before the release of the full version and it got me very excited about the upcoming full version. The graphics blew me away although I could tell a computer upgrade was in the near future (Upgraded before final version released). The new 3D physics model made the car much more realistic to drive and much more difficult as well. As with N3 you can paint your car (paint kit is improved a lot) and email it to your buddies so they can put it in their game and see your car when you race in multiplayer. All in all, I was blown away at first. This seemed to be the sim the NASCAR sim world had been asking for.
Game installation was straight forward and easy with no problems. I opted for the full 370MB install option. DirectX 8 is required and will be installed also if it's not already on your machine. You must also enter a set of numbers off of the CD case.
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9.0
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| Configurable Options and Ease of Use |
Before you are allowed into the game the first time you will be prompted to configure your video options. You have the choice of Direct 3D or OpenGL along with a wide selection of resolutions as well as 16 or 32 bit color. I chose the OpenGL which seems to provide the best frame rates for most people as well as 16 bit color. You may change these settings at any time pretty easily. There is also an option to run the game from a window. Configuring the joystick was easy and offers a wide range of options for any type of controller you may have. N4 supports force feedback wheels now as well as clutch support. The multiplayer options are all there and straight forward. A good friend of mine who runs our server that we race online with says the server tools are pretty good, but have a few bugs to be worked out. |
9.0
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| Graphics |
The graphics in N4 are incredible. The cars now produce shadows, sparks etc. The sky looks very nice with sunny weather or cloudy. The tracks themselves have everything you can imagine. Catch fence, motor homes, ambulances, all the lights for night races etc. The smoke from cars skidding is outstanding and kind of lingers around until the wind blows it away, also the smoke from a blown engine looks way cool. New to N4 is an animated pit crew, so now you see your crew jump over the wall and go to work changing the tires, fueling you up and beating any dents out that you may have received. Another nice addition this time around is the inclusion of straight pit lanes instead of the curved lanes of previous versions. The 3D cockpit is really cool as you bounce up and down a little when you hit the little bumps in the tracks. The only catch here is that you better have some horsepower in your box to view all the nice scenery at an acceptable frame rate which is now unlocked. In N3 the maximum frame rate you could get was around 30. |
9.5
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| Video at Minimum and Maximum |
Like I said before, you better have some beef under that computer case if you want to run the graphics at a high level. I'm currently running a Plll 933 with 256k of ram and a Geforce2 64mb video card and it's a load for that. Not only does the great scenery take a lot of power, but the 3D physics gobble up the cycles too. Fortunately Papy included a lot of graphic options that you can play with to help out with the frame rate. There is also a frame rate counter that can be toggled off and on to see just where you are at. The lower settings aren't too bad, but the higher detail settings are so incredible that you will hate to turn them down any. |
9.0
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| Sound |
I was disappointed with the sound. It's a little better than previous versions, but left a lot to be desired in my opinion. With the new awesome graphics and the physics model getting me so pumped up the sound brought me down a bit. I'm not picky, I just want that sound you get from the T.V. when they go to the in car camera . You have a choice of DirectSound, A3D or EAX sound with a check box option for 3D Sound and a slider bar for how many maximum sounds you want to hear. The spotter and crew chief sounds are better now and really add to the sim. |
6.0
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| Beginner thru Advanced Use |
NASCAR4 does a really good job making this sim easy enough for beginners and tough enough for the seasoned driver with a host of aides and difficulty levels to choose from. Auto-shifting, auto clutch, anti-lock brakes, traction control and stability control are there for the beginning driver as well as Arcade or Simulation modes. The computer controlled cars skill level can be adjusted too. Having driven Papyrus sims almost exclusively starting with the original NASCAR Racing, I can tell you that I've put in an awful lot of hours driving around in a circle. With that said, N4 humbled me to no end with all of the aids turned off as that is the only way I like to drive. Gone are the days of driving deep into a corner and standing on the brake for a second, then mashing the gas coming out. With the new physics you must be smooth both in and off the corner or you're going to be looking the wrong way up the track real fast. I race in a few leagues online with some of the best drivers around (some who beta tested and created some of the default setups in the sim) and you see them just lose it all by themselves from time to time too. We quit laughing at the Cup guys on T.V. who loop it trying to get onto pit road, its tough! Once you kind of get the hang of driving with the aids off though, you will never go back. It's what the NASCAR Sim crowd has been asking for and when you turn some fast laps it feels great. There are 4 default setups for each track included: qualify, easy, intermediate and fast. The garage area can be a bit intimidating at first since now almost any adjustment that you can make on a real Winston Cup car can be made to your car. The manual can tell you what each adjustment does and in the garage menu you can hold your mouse cursor on each item and a little help box will pop up with information on what that item will do to your handling. |
8.5
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| Multi-player |
The multiplayer in N4 is pretty good with a button to push that takes you to Sierra.com's multiplayer matching service. There you will find a bunch of privately owned servers on which to race. Some are password protected by the owner to run private races on, and some are open to the public. You may also 'Host' a race on your machine, but will be limited on how many other people can join your race by your type of connection to the internet (i.e. 56K, cable modem, DSL etc). The 3D physics sends a lot of data out so the more bandwidth you have, the more cars you can have in your race. You can also race without going through Sierra by giving out your IP address to the people you want in. The races that are on Sierra and open to the public are what's known as 'pickup races' and are usually pretty..well... sloppy . Finding a good league to race in is usually your best bet. I'm in with a group of guys that have been racing together for several years and it's become somewhat of an addiction with all of us, but we have a lot of fun together and have made some great friends even though a lot of us have never met face-to-face. One problem that I did have with Sierra though is that on my 56k dial-up connection, I would get a latency spike every 2 minutes which would make my car disappear from the track, or 'warp' then reappear, which at 190mph is BAD! Some other people were having the same problem, so we took our server off of Sierra and this seems to have solved that problem. I'm not sure if anything in the upcoming patch will address this problem or not. There are a few other problems with the Sierra site which also has a chat box for talking to the other racers that are not in a race. I'm sure that the problem will be addressed in the future. It's kind of hard to rate this one because the multi options in the game are fine, but the Sierra matching service is kind of messed up right now and I don't know if I should lump them together since they are kind of separate. I guess I'll just rank the multi within the game. |
8.0
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| Help Instructions |
The manual is very nice and contains a lot of helpful information. Setup help, track information etc. is all there. It also has a nice section dedicated to the multiplayer aspects of the game with some quotes from some of the online 'legends'. Many who I've raced with for the last several years. |
8.5
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| Value (price for what you get) |
I guess the value is pretty good. I've gotten my money out of all the previous Papy NASCAR titles as they are pretty much the only sims that I spend much time at (maybe too much time ) The sim is in dire need of a patch for some issues however. It is my understanding that a patch is in the works now, but there haven't been any rumors as to when it will be out. |
8.5
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| Recommend to Others |
I would recommend it to others that I know are into NASCAR. I run almost exclusively online and very little against the computer controlled opponents. My 10 year old son runs a lot offline against the AI and we have seen some major flaws here however. The computer cars seem to run over you quite a bit at some tracks, but don't seem to want to pass each other very often and when there is an accident they all seem to just pile into each other causing a huge mess. Rumor has it that the upcoming patch will address some of the AI issues. With that said I guess I might recommend that if you are going to use it mostly for racing against the computer opponents you might wait until some of the problems are fixed. |
7.0
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RECOMMENDATIONS to the Vendor
LEW
- Get the patch out . (Actually Papy has been great about fixing stuff)
- Sound could be more beefy.
- The way warp is handled online is kinda bad. NASCAR Heat did this much better (The only thing they did better) with the car fading back in instead of just appearing and causing a crash.
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