It’s been five years since I’ve last reviewed a NASCAR game, as I’ve always asked myself what could I possibly write about another entry based on this specific stock car racing category. I learned not to completely disrespect NASCAR for its bland track design (yes, it’s mostly ovals, and you’re mostly slightly tilting to the left all race long), but what else would another game do that others hadn’t before? I had to wait for a complete technical revamp from iRacing in order to see the answer. NASCAR 25 doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s now built on top of a much shinier chassis.

It might not look like it, but it’s a visual improvement over its predecessors.

Yep, welcome to Unreal Engine 5. My biggest complaints about older NASCAR games I’ve played was the fact that they looked repetitive and their performance was all over the place. Maybe it was an issue with Unity, who knows. NASCAR 25 now runs on a much prettier, more stable engine, and you can clearly see the difference when racing through these big fat ovals. I can’t do much regarding the visual repetitiveness, as there’s just so much you can do with these speedways if you want to keep them as realistic as possible, but regarding performance, yep, it’s juicy. Regarding the quality of the assets, visuals, whatnot, it looks like a premium PS4 game at best, but it gets the job done.

What makes these NASCAR games stand out, NASCAR 25 included, is the quality of their career modes. Even if NASCAR 25‘s career mode didn’t let me create a driver from scratch (I was ready to make my driver look the least Daytona-friendly human being in liberal existence), it’s still a really impressive and lengthy career, complete with a sizeable amount of live action footage and podcasts recorded by Dale Earnhardt Jr. (one of the very few NASCAR drivers I actually knew about prior to playing one of these games). To top it all off, menus and career mode sections are presented to the sound of a shockingly varied licensed soundtrack, with artists like Killer Mike, Jelly Roll, Molly Hatchet and System of a Down.

Whenever I see a Daytona logo, I just feel depressed about Sega not wanting to re-release its iconic arcade racers.

Gameplay-wise… well, there’s not a lot else that can or needs to be said, right? I try not to be superficial with the NASCAR games, but an immense chunk of the races are just comprised of oval tracks where you’ll drown your finger onto the right trigger, and slightly lean the analog stick to the left. There’s something about NASCAR that makes these neanderthal-like races actually fun and engaging (maybe it’s the Cars fan inside of us), but when you’re in a race, that’s the most you’re going to do. Granted, due to the simplicity of these races, even when there are, like, ten or twelve tracks for you to complete, they are finished in just a few minutes. That gives NASCAR 25 an additional arcadey vibe I just wasn’t expecting, especially when its main focus is its career mode.

It’s like Cars, but without the ka-charm.

This is far from being a game changer in the racing genre, but NASCAR 25 gets the job done when it comes to pleasing fans of this very specific racing niche. It looks decent, controls well enough, and whilst its track design is obviously repetitive as hell, it makes up for it with its arcadey vibes (almost a consequence of how quick these races are) and its very interesting career mode. As good as a NASCAR game can possibly be, I suppose.

NASCAR 25 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of NASCAR 25 was provided by the publisher.