NASCAR for PSP Reviews & Ratings by IGN

NASCAR racing is one of those things that most people either love or hate. On the one hand, it's basically racing four or five-hundred laps around a circle for hours at a time. On the other hand, it's a test of racing perfection, driver endurance, split-second finishes after hours of grueling driving and 700+ horsepower engines.



The first iteration of the series on the PSP, NASCAR is a fair bit like what you'll find on the consoles in NASCAR 07, though there are a few differences here and there. Many of these are fairly minor, though the lack of Total Team Control and addition of Instant Rewind changes the way the two play in fairly major ways. The lack of Total Team Control is somewhat curious in that the D-Pad is only set up to look backwards and steer, which you should be doing with the analog stick anyway. While you can of course get by without communicating with your team, it did make the game seem much more one-sided communication-wise, since your pit crew is constantly chatting at you.



The Instant Rewind ability keys into the game's slight tilt towards arcade-esque play on the PSP. Your usable time will build up as you race, and you can use as much or little as you'd like at any one time. One problem that we found is that unless the meter is nearly filled, you generally don't have enough time to actually correct whatever problem you just had - you're generally going too fast and are set in a given line to do anything about it. Granted, this keeps you from being able to abuse the system lap after lap, but it would have made more sense for it to build up to a certain point and then become enabled instead of only giving you one second or so when it's not filled.



All of this aside, the game plays very much the console variants, though the lack of analog brakes/gas and the short throw of the PSP's analog stick makes the game a bit more difficult to control. When you're starting out in a large grid on any given race, sticking to your line is paramount less you leave the draft line and fall behind or slam into another vehicle. The analog stick makes it somewhat hard to dial in a pitch-perfect driving line, and not having the ability to play with the subtleties of the throttle or brakes can make it hard to stay low in the corner.



One thing that hurts this slightly is that the AI doesn't tend to get out of your way very much, and though arrows point at where cars are, you can't look anywhere but in front or behind you, so you'll find it's hard to keep from running into the other racers. While tapping them slightly won't affect your overall race, at least if you're very careful, it does tie into the game's hero/villain setup. You can play through the game just fine at either level, but it's infinitely easier just to play as a villain than it is to try and become a hero simply because it's so easy to make a mistake and ruin your profile.



Presentation-wise, the game contains almost all of the nice setup and career-oriented aspects that the console versions do. The contract system is great in that you'll be able to choose from multiple offers during your career, and while you might get more money per race from one team, another may offer you a higher percentage of merchandising sales. So even this ties into your fan base and your hero/villain rating in a way, which is cool.



One thing that could have been done a little better is the car setup options. You're able to change spring rates, downforce and things like that, but you aren't given default setups for each track. Short or complex tracks obviously require better handling than the long, wide-open courses, and yet this isn't reflected in the defaults. Changing up the settings takes very little time, though you aren't able to save specific settings for each course, which too is a tad bothersome.

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