NASCAR 09 is another racing game in EA’s ever growing list. This title however has a more realistic approach than the Need for Speeds or Burnouts. As usual you are placed in the game as the new rookie, with Jeff Gordon, one of the current NASCAR stars taking you through the game and races.

Jeff will pop up from time to time, explaining what new areas you have opened up and gives advice on what to go for next. This is another great step from EA to make games more accessible to all, Jeff’s appearance is very mentor like, during the first hour of gameplay he will pop up in an in-game video, telling you what to do next. From booting up you are taken through a tutorial, first up you are offered the choice of the 2 driving styles, Normal or Pro, normal is your basic steering and acceleration, no real excitement and a lot of braking and steering assistance, whereas Pro allows for damage to your car, the tweaking of game assists, tyre wear and oil temps. You are able to test drive each mode and once you have decided you move onto customizing your car. At this point customization is really just the colour and decals. Jeff also explains the reputation point system, with each race, depending on how sportsmanlike you perform and your final position, you will earn rep points, and with these points you can upgrade you cars on certain areas, which can then give you faster cars and better grip.

Unfortunately there are only three cars to drive, one for each race style, you have the cars you use in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series, and for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series you have trucks (surprisingly), there is not much difference between each vehicle, which is a shame, the only real difference is the look and decals you can customize in.

Track-wise there are plenty to play through, you have the standard oval tracks, but there are also some more conventional race tracks to race around, each one has been modelled on a real life track, so the distances, pits and more importantly the angles of the corners are still there. The look of the tracks is quite boring, not much to look at other than the concrete and the back of another car. Whilst its reasonable looking, it does not even touch the likes of Burnout or Gran Turismo. This is a real shame as the bad looks don’t stop there, the cars themselves look really dated, very square edges, and dull looking, it even borders on lazy, go for a 3rd person view and look behind you, take a turn and your driver does not even move to steer, however the in car view at least makes him turn the steering wheel and it also has a better sense of speed. Even the drift effect is really poor, hang behind another car and there will be a few wispy, hair-like lines around the car, whilst it does the job in showing the drift, it looks lame. Overall the graphics are more like last gen PS2 or Xbox rather than a 360 title.

Thankfully actually racing the car is a much better experience, using the pro mode you are able to tweak so many options including gear ratios, tyre pressure, suspension springs tightness, adjust damage on the car itself, you can also check tyre wear and oil heat using the HUD to make you last the longer races. Each race has 43 cars on track, this makes for some real tight races. At the start of each track you are presented with a video showing the speeds and corners that you have to contend with, you can also amend other settings like the amount of laps and skill of the other racers. During the game you have in-race contact with your pit team, as you race they will give advice, telling you to keep it easy on the tires, how many laps you have done and they will also let you know if someone is close to you. This helps a great deal to add realism and also if you are racing in-car view mode, (the only way in my opinion) it’s hard to look either side of you so reliance on the pit team is paramount. There are a few in game replay options that occur automatically, if a crash occurs, a yellow flag will be shown, here all of the cars will be reset and a replay of the incident will be shown, again the graphics here really let down the whole experience.

NASCAR 09 offers a good selection of racing modes, you have the career mode where you race through the ranks, gaining sponsors and eventually get invited to the Race Weekends.  Sprint Driver Challenges have 75 tasks to complete for rep points, this can be taking corners and not dropping below a certain speed or pitting in a set time. As you open more you are able to challenge another NASCAR driver, 20 in total, here you will be presented with a short video explaining the challenge, though this normally involves taking over the pro without hitting him, win this and you move onto harder challenges and gain more rep points. You also have a Season mode, here you can either play the full 2008 NASAR Season or just half of it. Another mode worth mentioning is Chase the Cup, which takes you straight to the highlights of the NASCAR season. Of course there is also the online mode, however as this game is EU locked, there does not seem to be many people playing this game at the moment so I am unable to comment on this aspect.

I never really got NASCAR games in the past, this game made me realise that it is a lot more than just cars going round in fast circle and I really enjoyed it, however you cant avoid the fact that the graphics really let this game down.