For today's Eric Vs. 365 title we played NASCAR 15: Victory Edition for Xbox 360. It was the final last-gen NASCAR game and final NASCAR game from Eutechnyx after 704Games gobbled up the license and handed development duties to Monster Games for the next (current) gen versions. It's kinda crap, but still kinda good. Does Eric actually win this time? Read on for more and to watch gameplay video.
I reviewed all of the Eutechnyx NASCAR games back in the day and they were all really, stunningly, mediocre. The first one was kind of a nice surprise just because we hadn't had a NASCAR game in a while, but then they never really improved on that. They all had mediocre presentation, bad physics, bad A.I., bad caution flag implementation, not enough features, and a bunch of other problems. These games were not good, though I do think they sold fairly well. It really makes you appreciate how good 704Games has been for the license. NASCAR Heat 3 and especially 4 are excellent compared to this.
For the video I ran a 40 lap race at Charlotte with 4x fuel use to make sure every car had to stop at least a couple times. Just like my other two NASCAR videos, however, things didn't go quite as planned. First, for whatever reason, the A.I. cars could run 2-3 laps further on a tank of fuel than I could so I had to make one more stop right at the end that the other cars didn't. Second, Austin Dillon straight up wrecked me about 2/3rds through the race. I didn't have damage on and there were no caution flags - because the way the Eutechnyx games did caution flags was basically broken - so I went from 7th, and easily making my way through the field, back to 17th.
If I hadn't gotten wrecked I would have easily gotten back to the lead. Instead, I had to race my way through the field, again, and then make another pit stop. If I didn't get wrecked, and lost all of that time, the way the pit stops would have worked out would have had me in the lead at the end because I was significantly faster than everyone else on the track.
But I got wrecked. So I lost. Again. Man, I need to stop making these NASCAR videos because I never win.
