Welcome to Project Cars, a type of game that’s usually unheard of in terms of gracing our consoles. A game that not only claims to be the most authentic and furthermost, technically advanced of late, but also backs up its claims by being heavily influenced and inspired by real-life drivers and its passionate community. Can Project Cars carve out a name for itself amongst the already established racing franchises and find its way to a podium finish?
Judging by its competition of late, most likely yes. I’ve had quite the affair with racing games in the past, no matter what variant they release of late, nothing seems to capture my attention in the way that both Gran Turismo 4 and the majority of the Forza titles have. Nothing blew me away particularly on the PS3, especially my beloved Polyphonic franchise, which in fact had quite the opposite effect. Need for Speed can have its moments, but it swings too much on the arcade side of the track for me and the less said about Dirt the better I think. More recently DriveClub attempted a social game more concerned with connectivity than realism, which never truly amounted to that in retrospect. I enjoyed the open world and customisation aspects of The Crew, but its grindy levelling up system ultimately put me off too.
So now it’s the turn of Project Cars, a game that sacrifices almost all other conventional tropes in order to give you the fullest and most precise racing experience available on the PS4. Project Cars summed up in one word would be a sandbox, a plethora of both car and gameplay tuning tweaks that let you create the exact difficulty and experience you want whilst racing a car. This is not a game for those who wish to level up and purchase cars, upgrades and aesthetical mods, there’s none of that here. You simply get in a car, and drive like you stole it.
There is a campaign mode on offer, but in terms of artificial rewards and senses of progression, you’ll need to look elsewhere. You can start off in any division, from the ubiquitous Touring and hardcore races, to the bane of all racing game leagues, Kart racing. It doesn’t particularly give much of a helping hand in regards to which you’d be best served starting off in, instead, everything is pretty much unlocked from the start. If you want your first championship series to be in the Formula cars, then go for it, if you fancy your chances in a league of Le Mans machines, then by all means opt for that. The lack of direction is both a blessing and a curse, potentially alienating and intimidating the more casual crowd in an effort to please the petrol heads is a bold move, and something that becomes rather a trait of the game as you peer deeper under the bonnet.
The sheer amount of game options is incredibly intricate, there are the obvious HUD and brightness settings that adorn the majority of games nowadays, however to accompany these, there are graphical options, of which you would never find amongst a console game. That’s not where things get deep however, delve into the more advanced options and you can find a whole host of gameplay and control tweaks that are likely to baffle even those possessing engineering doctorates. Every aspect can be controlled, whether it be your cars tuning, pit stop strategies, race length, AI difficulty and more. Even the specific intricacies of your controller/wheel can be altered in an effort to let you play the game how you’d like.
On top of the frankly sublime handling model of the game, which takes into account more than you’d care to know, there are also an outstanding amount of racing tracks on offer. In excess of a hundred courses are there for you to try and master, with over 20 real life counterparts, others are mentioned by region, yet are also included too. The only thing truly letting the side down in terms of content is the slightly disappointing roster of cars. This can mostly be forgiven in that the main focuses are aimed at (unsurprisingly) race cars and not your standard run of the mill people carriers. However it would’ve been nice to have a spin in a few more hot hatches or Japanese sports cars in order to get warmed up for the ever so slightly intimidating hyper-cars. This is easily overcome due to the many driver assists available; yet slowly easing yourself off the traction control and stability management assistances is certainly easier when you’re not approaching corners in speeds upwards of 150mph.
In a game where than be an ungodly amount of cars on track at any time, it calls for some delicately balanced AI drivers to not deliberately ruin your day. For the most part, the computer controlled racers do their due diligence in a considerate way. They don’t always stick to the racing line like highly tuned pro’s, nor do they weave back and forth unnecessarily. Some even seem to be more aggressive than others and you’ll often find yourself a rival in each race that either constantly nips at your heels or consistently performs better in certain sections than you. Once again, as in seemingly every racing game I can remember, there’s usually at least one corner or chicane where the AI seems to struggle enormously however. I’m never quite sure whether this is intentional or not, but it certainly helps in the trickier races!
Once you’re tired of making your own fun in the decidedly clinical campaign mode, there’s unfortunately not much to keep your attention besides the pure racing enjoyment. As stated previously, there’s no aesthetic customisation besides a few pre-made liveries to choose from, there’s no grinding money or levels to acquire a new car and there are no out of the ordinary game modes to jump on and have a little fun with. All that’s left now, is for you to dip your toes in the often dreaded online mode, hoping to the gods of racing that you don’t cock up the first corner in front of everyone.
There are good and bad points regarding the general online experience I encountered, firstly, the connection was solid, there was little to no lag and the game was all the better for it. Secondly, I encountered mostly mature people who just wanted to race and not drive backwards around the track etc. All good so far then, well that’s after eventually finding a lobby I actually wanted to participate in. You see, there’s no matchmaking, you just find lobbies where the host has set up whatever traumatic experience they desire. They have complete control over the rules and aside from requesting what you want, you’re left to set up your own lobby and hope like-minded people will join in.
Aesthetically, Project Cars looks good, really quite good in some parts, although having reviewed and played it on the PS4, I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy for its PC counterpart, especially with the option for up to 12K Ultra HD and Oculus support too. There are aspects that don’t quite match up to its rivals such as DriveClub, but for the most part it aims for the magic 60fps, which in my opinion is far, far more important.
Project Cars is a racing sim through and through. Those looking for customisation outside of sliders and tactics will need to look elsewhere. There’s a basic career mode that, without any direction, may as well be a glorified single race mode and that’s about it as far as singleplayer goes. The real draw comes in the joy of pure, dedicated racing and being relentlessly anal with perfecting your set-up, qualifying, hot laps and pit stop strategies; but once you’re hooked, you won’t want to put it down.
