People into the competitive racing game scene are probably well aware of iRacing. It’s a subscription based racing simulator that makes Assetto Corsa feel like Mario Kart by comparison. Its focus is on pure, unadulterated realism, to the point that major racing organizations such as NASCAR have used iRacing as the basis for their competitive esports series. As you’d expect, this isn’t exactly the kind of experience you can easily translate into a console game aimed at a less hardcore audience.

iRacing Studios‘ solution was to create a more colorful, newcomer friendly take on its hardcore racing formula, aptly named iRacing Arcade. It’s certainly more approachable at first glance, with its colorful visuals and chibi characters, but that raises the obvious question: is this actually an arcade racer? More importantly, does it manage to hit the sweet spot between simulation and accessibility?

Whilst cute, it is filled with instances of pop-in.

I don’t know why, but racing game developers are struggling with understanding the concept of an “arcade racer” nowadays. To me, an arcade racer is the kind of “easy to pick up” racing game where you can just select a course, a car, and just jump into a race in less than a minute. No need to worry about a career, finances, menus, just pure driving, usually without the most realistic of controls and physics. iRacing Arcade… isn’t that. Whilst far from being as realistic and prohibitive towards newcomers as its big brother, it sits on a bizarre limbo, not knowing if it wants to be a kid-friendly racer with goofy visuals, or a racing sim. A less realistic racing sim, but a racing sim regardless.

You can change your livery colors for free, but new patterns will cost you as much as half of a new car for your garage.

It’s easy to grasp its controls and physics, that’s for certain. But iRacing Arcade focuses more on a simplistic career mode that is the core of its somewhat paultry amount of content. You start off with a Fiat 500, compete in races featuring similar vehicles, and partake in championships in order to amass money to upgrade your garage, change your liveries, or buy new vehicles altogether. That said, “new vehicles” might actually be a bit of a stretch. Each car you can buy in iRacing Arcade is, in essence, a new racing category you can partake on. Spend money on a Caterham, you can then race against other Caterhams. Buy a truck, you can then race in Formula Truck. And so on.

But at the end of the day, you’re just doing that to unlock new ways to race in the same dozen or so tracks. Every competition will feature twelve copies of the same car racing around a chibi-esque rendition of a real-life racecourse, just hampered by some insanely low draw distance (pop-ins are frequent). No meaningful sound effects, no flashy effects to make the visuals stand out just a bit, it’s all pretty standard. I did also notice a handful of occasional loading errors in between rounds; rebooting the game would mitigate these issues, and I’d never lose any kind of progress, but it felt weird nonetheless, and I hope a patch is being considered at this moment.

There are many different racing categories, but each category is limited to a single vehicle with different liveries.

There’s nothing about iRacing Arcade that makes it a terrible game, but I couldn’t help but expect a bit more from it, both in terms of content and, to be really honest, knowing what the hell it actually wants to be. It’s neither feature packed nor realistic enough to work as a proper racing sim, but at the same time, it’s not, for lack of a better word, “arcadey” enough to justify the Arcade label slapped onto its title.

Instead, iRacing Arcade finds itself stuck in a strange personality limbo, never committing enough to either side of the racing spectrum to stand out among the dozens upon dozens of similar games released every year. It might have the pedigree and endorsement of one of the biggest names in racing simulation behind it, but ultimately, it lacks the focus, personality, and polish needed to truly make an impression.

iRacing Arcade is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of iRacing Arcade was provided by the publisher.