NASCAR 25

I've put enough time into NASCAR 25 to say with confidence that iRacing has done something the last two publishers could not: ship a NASCAR console game that actually works and actually feels like NASCAR. After the disaster that was NASCAR 21: Ignition, that alone is cause for mild celebration. But "better than the low bar" only carries a game so far, so here's what you actually need to know. The career mode is the real hook. You start from a backyard garage in the ARCA Menards Series, and if you grind hard enough, you work your way up through the Craftsman Truck Series, Xfinity Series, and eventually the Cup Series. Between races you hire staff, manage sponsors, repair damage, and upgrade your facility. It's not the overwhelming spreadsheet nightmare of some sims, nor is it a hollow checkbox list. The pacing is designed so that casual players can let the game auto-manage a lot of the team side of things, while the obsessives can micromanage every shock absorber. Dale Earnhardt Jr. narrates career turning points, and real NASCAR media figures contribute a social feed after each race, giving the whole thing a surprisingly convincing broadcast feel. On track, the handling sits firmly in simcade territory. This is not a console port of iRacing's subscription service, and wheel users should know upfront that force feedback is underwhelming on straights, the nature of oval racing meaning long stretches of very little FFB input. It comes alive in banked corners and especially on superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega, where the AI bump drafts and forms lanes convincingly enough that replays genuinely resemble what you see on TV. Driving assists, including transmission, brake smoothing and difficulty sliders, are generous enough that a complete newcomer can get competitive with some patience. The physics model draws on real-world feedback from actual NASCAR teams and drivers, and you feel that on the ovals where it counts. Multiplayer supports up to 40 players online in Cup races and 36 in Truck races, which is a genuinely impressive field size. The bad news, and there are a few patches of it: the online ranking system mixes clean racers with wall-bashers in a way that turns structured events into coin flips. The lobby structure is bare, and if you want a properly organised competitive night, private lobbies are your friend. The harder news for couch co-op fans is that local split-screen was cut for year one, which is a real miss for a sport that has always had a party-racing soul. As a tool for "four friends, one TV, Saturday night", this is not it right now. Stick to online if that's your crowd. Graphically the game runs on Unreal Engine 5 but with several of its showcase features disabled, so don't go in expecting a generational leap. It looks fine, tracks have good draw distance and crowd detail, and car models hold up in close-up. The PC version offers limited customisation headroom for hardware enthusiasts, so treat it more like an annual sports release than a tunable sim. Reception has been genuinely split, with some reviewers calling it the best NASCAR game in years and others finding it too shallow for the iRacing name attached to it. Both views are fair depending on what you're bringing to the oval.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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