Boogity Boogity Boogity
Beauty is only paint deep in NASCAR The Game 2011.
Published: April 4, 2011
This game is hilarious. No really, it is. Now you’re probably wondering to yourself just how funny can a NASCAR simulator be? Let me preface this with a request. Go to YouTube and search “NASCAR 2011 glitches.” Go on, I’ll wait.
Done? Alright, with that in mind let me say that those aren’t isolated incidents. NASCAR 2011 The Game is unfinished and it shows on everything from the start to the finish of every race. So much effort was put into making everything look great and control well yet I can’t even play a single online race without something going wrong. Single player is almost as bad, especially if there’s a caution, which has a knack (about one out of every five cautions I’ve found) of just piling every single car together before the start/finish line. In the single player the game manages to correct itself, but the way it does so is completely wrong. The first place car will gain control and, if they’re lucky enough not to have a stack on top of them or be boxed in they can put it in reverse and drive around on a casual lap. Once one driver (usually the AI) finishes a lap, everyone else gains control, one lap down, completely torn up and in a mess of carnage. Again, this is a positive compared to the multiplayer.
Hoo-boy. I have spent the past few days trying to get one race that had no problems. Let me start with a nontechnical problem: headhunters. These are the guys who try to wreck everyone, whether it’s clipping bumpers or going backwards and trying to take people out. I’m not a programmer, so I have no idea how hard this would be to institute, but an easy fix would be that if someone is driving around backwards for a set period of time they should be booted. I saw someone playing as Jeff Gordon go around Daytona for five laps, backwards, wrecking everyone he could. I understand that “rubbin’ is racin’” but in this case it just doesn’t apply. Another problem is if you get spun out the caution doesn’t always fly, so you could be in a three car pileup at Bristol and lose three or more laps because the leaders are still driving around under green.
Technically, as I said, it’s a mess. Here is a full list of problems that I ran into just yesterday (I took notes after each race),
- During a caution my car was glitched inside of the pace car. I was in third place. The two leaders were in turn four at Daytona by the time I got out of turn two. I think this is an issue due to someone pitting but I never saw anyone off the track.
- At a restart of a ten person race all of the engines died. None of us ever reached the start finish line and while I was chatting with others and trying to figure out what happened all of our cars disappeared and reappeared in the grass. Cue a ten car synchronized flipping scene before everyone was inevitably booted.
- Before races begin and during restarts (notice a trend?) it seems as though the cars die. Usually the first place driver can play normally but everyone else is stuck in place. There are times where this turns into a pile up (as I mentioned in the single player) but more often that that everyone is just stuck. The only way for this glitch to correct itself is if the leader wrecks/steamrolls someone and brings out a caution. If not, you may as well just quit.
- Cars inexplicably flipping. The game really likes making the cars fly through the air (though they look and feel more like a block of wood than a vehicle), but just because someone is drafting off of me down the back stretch should not mean that when he catches up (sometimes not even touching) that we start flying.
- Impossible lap times. When the cars die (see above) and the leader brings out a caution every driver gets a “completed lap.” Either I am the greatest driver ever or this is an issue because I don’t think anyone can get around Kansas Speedway in 0.00.43.
- In one race the green never waved. Instead, we came down to the checkers at Martinsville.
