Will NASCAR 25 Be Worth the Hype?
In less than four weeks, NASCAR gamers will have a new toy to play with when NASCAR 25 is released for PlayStation Five and Xbox Series X/S on October 14th. This will be the first NASCAR video game since Motorsport Games released NASCAR 21: Ignition in 2021. Needless to say, it was a bit of a letdown, as many in the NASCAR video game community called it one of the worst of all time. The game received an update in 2022 for the new cars and rosters, and NASCAR Rivals was released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch in 2022, but it was more of a reskin of NASCAR Heat Five, which was the final game in the NASCAR Heat series, made by 704 and Monster Games. It’s been a while since NASCAR fans have had an updated video game to play, and there has been a lot of buzz around NASCAR 25.
iRacing acquired Monster Games in 2022, and with it came the rights to create the exclusive NASCAR video games. In 2023, the company announced it would create a NASCAR console video game and gave itself a couple of years to get it right. Former driver and iRacing advocate Dale Earnhardt Jr has been a big part of the game’s process and wanted to ensure that the game captured the essence of raceday. Through the years, some NASCAR games took out or didn’t include features found in others, and NASCAR 25 adds some back while also adding some things that have never been in NASCAR games before.
One of the biggest selling points of the game is that all three national series, Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks, will be in the game, but so will the ARCA Menards Series. ARCA has never been in a NASCAR video game before. All of the tracks in the game have been scanned by iRacing to ensure that they are all exactly like their real-life counterparts. Some tracks were rescanned or scanned for the first time just for the game.
On September 17th, the official hype trailer was released for the game, giving a slight glimpse into what it offers. Snippets of racing and menus could be seen, one of which showed the career mode. The career mode’s race shop will include urgent tasks, a garage, parts store, office, reputation, achievements, lifetime stats, finances, and more. The gameplay showed short clips of all series at different tracks from the superspeedways to the many road courses during the day and the night.
Personally, I was excited when the game was announced, but not without my own questions, specifically with graphics and the gameplay itself. After viewing the hype trailer, I can officially say I am slightly concerned. The footage reminded me too much of the NASCAR Heat games, some of which were solid games, while others were downright bad. Granted, there isn’t any official gameplay out there, but based on how the cars moved in the trailer and how everything looked, I worry that too much effort was spent on the menus and the soundtrack. There are even some tracks that won’t be in the game, such as Bowman Gray Stadium, Mexico City, and Portland. I’m holding out hope that the official gameplay trailer will be better, but I am worried, especially with the game coming out so soon. I will say, beating drivers like the prodigy Connor Zilisch in the Xfinity Series and the dominantCorey Heim in the truck series should be a fun challenge.
