Days of Thunder (Nascar 3 (PC))

Member Name: DavidJWest

Product:	Nascar 3 (PC)
Date:	06/09/04 (311 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Realistic, Detailed, Superb racing online

Disadvantages: None

For those of you who don't know, NASCAR stands for North American Stock Car Automobile Racing. The sport is popular in the US but fairly low-key over here, despite some races taking place in the UK recently. The racing is close as most circuits are ovals and the cars are of a similar specification, looking from the outside like normal road-going cars.

In fact the cars are monsters, 5 litre V6 engines producing enough grunt to get them up to around 200mph on some tracks on one hand but on the other hand they are very low-tech, no carbon fibre brakes or traction control on these crates. I'm used to racing F1 cars in various computer silmulations (not tried a real one yet unfortunately) and compared to that type of car driving a NASCAR is a bit like sailing a ship. You have to brake very early for the corners as the brakes are so inefficient compared to the carbon fibre ones in F1, 400 yards before a corner in some cases.

Once you've installed the game, which is pretty straightforward (650 MB needed) you'll come to the main menu. There are plenty of options to choose from, single races, practise races, entire seasons and online racing are just a few options. There is also a handy tutorial which explains to you the ins and outs of NASCAR from racing etiquette to setting up the car.

First thing you may want to do is choose your car, there are four types including Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet and you get to pick which number and livery you'd like. No doubt if you are a big fan of the sport you'll pick your favourite drivers car as every livery from the 2003 season is included, Rusty Wallace and Dale Earnhardt Jr (whoever they are) for example.

I chose car 144 as it describes my driving style nicely (144 equals one gross) and the colours are my favourites, being yellow on purple! You can paint your own livery if you like and there are many places on the net where you can ask other people to pain schemes to
your specification. Yes, people actually do this for free as they enjoy it so much!

It's a good idea to get the hang of how the car drives so a single race or practise is advisable before trying to race an entire season, or going online and embarrassing yourself against other humans.

You can play the game with keyboard if you like, but I strongly advise getting an analogue controller for the most realistic experience, a steering wheel obviously is the best choice here. Before you do hit the track you can tinker with a whole host of other settings.

For example you can tailor the graphics to your own system specs, if you have a fairly elderly PC you might want to lower the screen resolution for example and turn off effects like smoke and solar effects (lighting and shadows). The minimum specifications on the box state PII 450, 64 MB RAM, with 16MB Direct 3D graphics card but if you have that type of spec I'd reckon you'd need to turn off practically everything to get a decent frame rate of over 30fps.

The recommended specifications are PIII 800, 128MB RAM, 32MB graphics card but even then you'll need to turn off some details.

I'm running an AMD 2500XP with 512MB RAM and 64MB grapchics card and it will run OK with all settings turned pretty much up to the max, I get a frame rate of around 80 fps. Frame rate only becomes a real issue if you want to play online, as if you do and frame rates drops too low then you may suffer warp or get disconnected. Warp simply means that your start to lose contact with the host server and means other cars will disappear when you are racing, not very good! Of course your connection speed and type is important if you want to race online but so is the frame rate, not a lot of people know that!

The game really is meant to be played as a simulation, it realistically depicts a modern NASCAR in every respect, apart from the fact that if you crash you don't get
hurt (apart from your pride maybe). There is an arcade mode to the game where everything is simplified, the car easier to drive etc but I have only played the simulation version which is really how this game should be played. If you want an arcade type racing game then you probably want to look at other offerings.

First up, you need to get some practise done - every race has four sessions, pratice, qualifying, happy hour and the race itself. Practice lets you loose on the track where you can get familiar with your surroundings and adjust your car's setup as necessary. This period tends to last a few minuts up to an hour, again this is another area of the game that can be adjusted.

It's important that you get your car setup so you get the most out of it. You can change just about everything you can think of and then some, tyre pressures, grille tape, springs, camber, gear ratios and more. It's more complex than you might think as getting the car to go fast isn't everything, as sometimes the car can be made quick but will either be near impossible to drive or it will eat it's tyres so badly you have to make more pit-stops that your rivals.

The key to NASCAR often is to have a setup which allows you to drive consistently quickly whilst looking after the car and espeically the tyres, driving style is also important here. Often in online races I drop down the order early on, only to catch the cars up who overtook early on as they have either wrecked their tyres or have had to pit early. Worn tyres can easily knock 5 seconds off your lap time.

Once you are happy with the car, or you run out of time then you need to go out and do your fastest possible lap as qualifying. The starting grid consists of all the cars with the fastest qualifiers first, if you are near the front at the start it gives you an advantage as overtaking can be tricky and you are less likely to encounter crashes.

Finally you get
a chance to practice once more before the race itself during happy hour. This is useful as you can learn exactly where your pit-crew are located in the pit-lane, this again depends on how well or badly you qualified. It's not ideal to come into pit-lane during the heat of a race and looking for the pit-crew as you aren't sure where they are!

After you've again run out of time or had enough of happy hour, it's onto the starting grid for the race itself. I should mention here that if you are playing the game alone, versus the computer controlled cars you can decide exactly when to proceed to the next session, qualifying, race etc. You don't need to sit waiting for time to run out, unless it's an online race in which case you will need to wait.

You can decide to run an entire pace lap or just start a few hundred yards from the start if you want to save time. The pace car leads away and your job is to maintain pace with it whilst avoiding colliding with the other cars as you head for the start. They have rolling starts in NASCAR, usually the speeds are about 50-70mph as the lights go green.

The graphics are pretty awesome, assuming you machine can handle them. TO see everything in all it's glory you'll need a reasonable specced PC, 256 MB RAM, Pentium 4 2.5Ghz (approx, or AMD 2600XP) and a decent graphics card, a 64Mb should just about do it. These are very rough and ready specs though!

With full effects you'll see smoke coming off those spinning tyres, skid marks being put down on the track and shadows of objects, solar effects too. If you decide to drive from the cockpit view (you can choose a variety of views) then you even get "buildup" of dust, oil etc on the windscreen obscuring the view. Of course when you pull into the pits your friendly pit-crew will wipe it off for you!

The car physics are superb, about as realistic as you will ever get with a computer simulat
ion. You can play the game with keyboard but for more realism you really need an analogue device, a wheel is the option to go for if you want the most in your face realistic option.

As you pull away from the pits, you need to be careful not to give too much throttle or the wheels will start to spin madly, this can be so severe that the car pulls to one side. You can use oposite lock to correct this type of behaviour to get things back under control and up to speed. Gear changes need to be done carefully, if you try to go down a gear when the revs are too high, or go up a gear without bothering to use the clutch, you may lose a gear due to damaged or even trash the engine entirely! Of course you can turn the settings down so the gears/clutch etc are handled automatically. With all the aids turned on a 10 year old could drive the car fairly easily, with full realism and no aids it will requrie a lot of skill, practise and patience - which is how it should be in my opinion!

Once on the track and up to speed it's important not only to drive quickly but also to be conservative so you don't burn out the tyres too much. Brake nice and early for the corners then turn in gently. Come in too fast or turn too hard and you'll understeer most likely, the front wheels screeching as they leave black lines on the track. Turn in and try to brake at the same time will result in the same problem unless you are super smooth and if you try to get the power down too soon coming out of a corner you may well get it sideways with the rear wheels stepping out to create oversteer. Of course this can be controlled by a skilfull driver and it feels and looks great but it's very wasteful. Once the tyres start to wear out you lose grip and things slow down as you have to take the corners more gingerly. You can pit for tyres and fuel of course but that is very time-consuming, you really need to aim to make stops only when the fuel is almost out!
r>Overall this game is fantastic for anyone who likes racing games and especially those who want to try online racing. I was very sceptical when I first got this game as being an F1 fan I thought NASCAR was simply a case of steering right and planting the foot on the floorboards for 100 odd laps. But now I've played this game I can tell you there is a lot more to NASCAR than that and you really ought to try it out if motorsports are in any way shape or form of interest.

One word of caution is you really need broadband if you want to play on the net and not be frustrated by getting disconnected etc.

If you want to see some screen shots or just learn more about this type of thing, visit either my website at www.davidjwest.org.uk which has my online racing history including screen shots or my team site at www.speedworx.org which is where my team-mates and I get together.

Maybe I'll race against you online some day!