Miles upon miles in first place, but spins out on the last lap

Let me begin this review by saying that this is my first Nascar game that I've played. Also, I am not a fan of Nascar racing. With that said, I have one word to describe my reaction to this game: impressed.

I'll start off with the basics of the race. First, you choose a series to race in and a driver. You can choose from the Craftsman Truck Series, the Nationwide Series, and the Sprint Cup Series. While picking drivers, you can view their stats on each type of course (road, short, speedway, superspeedway). Also, you can choose to race in your own custom car using the stats that you build up yourself. Next, you choose the track you want to race on. There are 25 tracks to race on and all are built exactly the same as their real life counterparts. When you get into the race, you can choose to practice, qualify, race, or change your car settings. Practice is highly recommended because it gives you the chance to run the track and tweak adjustments to optimize your car's performance. Next is the qualifying round where you are given two laps to reach the best lap time. After the qualifying round is the race. You start in the position you qualified in. Before you begin the race, you have the chance to adjust the race settings, such as how much of the race you want to run and the use of yellow caution and black penalty flags. During the race, you use typical Nascar tactics to finish in the best position. These include drafting, cutting in tight on turns, and avoiding crashes.

There are a few modes to choose from in addition to the standard race. The most expansive of these is the Chase for the Cup mode where you begin as an aspiring Nascar driver. You sign contracts based off of your racing performance and these contracts can boost some of your driving stats. You choose a series to compete in and race through all of the races in the season.

Another mode is Career mode where you simply pick an already seasoned driver and race through as season as them.

One of the most fun modes is the Sprint Driver Challenges. In this mode, there are a total of 77 challenges to complete. Each puts you into a situation where you must test your driving skills whether it be through following a car by drafting, avoiding a pile-up, and more. After every 4 challenges, you are challenged by a professional driver to a race. After each challenge is completed, you gain performance points, which are used in upgrading your driving stats.

The last mode is Test and Tune which essentially is like a practice mode. It is just you on any track you choose and you can tune your car and find the optimal performance for your racing needs.

In addition to the single player modes, there is an online multiplayer mode. This is fun, but when the races start to exceed only a few players, the game begins to become laggy.

There were two aspects of this game that I found very innovative. One is the mentoring. Jeff Gordon is your mentor throughout this game. Using real video, he helps you through the basics of what you need to know to become a successful Nascar driver. Also, using the new EA Locker system, you can upload car designs onto the internet using a computer and download them to your car in the game.

I only have a few complaints for this game. The first is the steep learning curve. You can race fine with the default settings at first, but to move onto harder difficulties you must tune your car. I am unfortunately not a huge racing fan so I don't know what adjusting the camber of the tires of wedge of the car will do to the performance of my racing and I don't have the time to spend hours trying to figure this out. Another complaint is slight glitches during the challenges. Sometimes an AI controlled car will not follow the racing line as it is supposed to or not pit when it should, but these are easily fixed by simply restarting the challenge. A common complaint I have heard from others is that the crashes are unrealistic. In a big pile-up, you often just see cars spin out with the occasional car flipping over, but sometimes you see cars rocket off the track. Although this is odd, Nascar is a racing simulator and not a vehicle crash rally, so I am not bothered by the fact that the crashes are slightly unrealistic.

Overall, I thought that this game was quite impressive. The different modes and amount of detail put into the tracks and cars have gotten me hooked and I look forward to more Nascar games in years to come.