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00:00I'm parked at the back of the grid on Mount Panorama awaiting the race start
00:05and there are cars ahead of me literally facing backwards. This is not gonna go
00:10well. As you'd expect, pandemonium ensues when the lights go off. The race has just
00:15begun and it's already a mess.
00:20Unfortunately this is Project Motor Racing in a nutshell right now. On paper
00:25Project Motor Racing is precisely the sort of racing game I want to play. It
00:30has a great selection of cars, a number of which are thoroughly underrepresented
00:35in modern races. It's also not crippled with free-to-play chicanery or subject to
00:40a monthly subscription and its focus isn't primarily multiplayer. All of this
00:46is high-octane music to my ears.
00:50In practice, however, Project Motor Racing simply hasn't worked out and I've
00:55totally bounced off it in its current state thanks to AI that essentially
00:59ignores your presence on track, a hopelessly uneven penalty system that
01:03serves only to frustrate and ruin your races, and its array of bugs and
01:08peculiar physics quirks.
01:10Project Motor Racing arrives as a spiritual successor to Slightly Mad Studios' now
01:23defunct Project Cars series, which failed to survive the Codemasters acquisition of
01:28Slightly Mad and the subsequent EA purchase of Codemasters. There may be some
01:33different logos on the loading screen, sure, but developer Straight Force Studios is
01:36basically a rebirthed Slightly Mad after someone hit the VIN with an angle grinder.
01:45Perhaps more significantly, it's attempting to pick up where Project Cars 2 left off, brushing aside
01:51the bafflingly casual reinvention of the series in Project Cars 3. If you need a
01:56comparison to chew on, it's a little like how Jaws 4 ignores the events of Jaws 3D.
02:02Unfortunately, just like Jaws 4, things get real fishy real fast.
02:16To be fair, Project Motor Racing's single-player setup has a good base, and I do like how malleable
02:22it initially is, with three starting budget figures that give us the flexibility to approach the
02:26career mode however we choose. That is, you can select to begin with just enough cash to scrape
02:32into the entry-level categories, or wallet big enough to buy any car on offer and head straight
02:37to the top classes. It's smart that it has these options. There are actually slots to have three
02:43separate careers on the go simultaneously, so it's possible to experiment with multiple approaches.
02:48Or, in my instance, for my sons to dabble with their own career saves without messing around with mine,
02:53an underrated addition to any racing game.
02:59Your in-game payouts can also be tweaked to fit your playstyle. For instance, you can opt to keep
03:04things simple and take a flat payout per event. Or you can mix it up and take bonuses for winning
03:10only. Or even have your damage repair bills covered in return for a steady portion of your event takings.
03:15This is an equally smart way of slinging out credits to us, regardless of how differently you
03:21or I may plan to go about our racing. The management component plateaus here though,
03:26since there are no other meaningful aspects to it. There's no in-game way of creating a custom
03:31team appearance for the cars you buy and race, or applying sponsor logos. In this regard, don't expect
03:37anything like, say, the recently released NASCAR 25. Support for mods is a much-touted feature of
03:45Project Motor Racing on both PC and console, and I have no doubt that many recognizable liveries will
03:50be convincingly recreated and available via user-created mods. But mods feel unlikely to fill
03:57this specific gap. Once you have a team in a car, the campaign mode becomes a simple matter of selecting
04:02a championship or event, paying the entry fee, and competing. At this point, the overall objective is
04:09really that of any real-life race driver. Spend your workdays at high speed on a world-famous
04:14racetrack and do your best to win. Or failing that, not send your team bankrupt.
04:21This approach works for me, or at least it would've if Project Motor Racing had not been so
04:27bafflingly irritating to race in. The racing is frustratingly close to being entirely decent,
04:33but it's currently completely undermined by its aggressively oblivious AI,
04:38and its brazenly unfair penalty system, both of which are so annoying I have no desire to keep
04:43playing at the moment. The big problem with the AI is that they regularly drive like you're not on
04:48track. I'm not just talking about them coming across on you when you only have a slight overlap and
04:53probably got optimistic sticking your nose there in the first place, although they will do that,
04:58sometimes clipping through your front end like you're a ghost.
05:01I'm talking about the absolute argy-bargy that occurs when you're right alongside them and they
05:08want to carry on sticking to the racing line like freight trains, so they thump into you with zero
05:13regard for your existence. It certainly doesn't help that it currently features no radar or proximity
05:21indicators for the cars around you, and no spotter either. On PS5, the single player opponent count is
05:27actually limited to just 15, although cross-play multiplayer allows up to 32. Frankly, 15 isn't
05:36near enough for a racing sim of this type, but considering the way they drive, I guess I don't
05:41know that I'd want any more of these lunatics out there right now.
05:44Let's be clear, my favourite real-world racing categories are old-school supertouring and V8
05:54supercars, so I am unequivocally all for elbows-out panel-punishing racing in my games too, but this
06:02just takes the piss. Project Motor Racing's AI regularly reminds me more of classic Gran Turismo,
06:10where the AI racers always felt exponentially heavier and generally incapable of being affected
06:16by the player's car. To experiment, I've cannoned into the back of opponents in Project Motor Racing
06:22for no result. They just carry on cornering without losing a position while I'm parked in the gravel.
06:28The issue is compounded by a ruinously strict track limit penalty system that will just nuke your
06:35whole race for zero reason. Get bumped off track by the AI? That'll be a two-second penalty for
06:41breaching track limits. It doesn't matter that it wasn't your fault, and it doesn't matter that you'll
06:46have already likely lost time because of it. If you have the opponent's strength slider set at just the
06:52right level to have your times toe-to-toe with the AI, two seconds can be a lifetime. It just
06:58immediately spoils racers. For comparison, Assetto Corsa Competizione also dishes out penalties, but only
07:05if it detects an advantage. If you're forced off track, or if your ego writes a check your tyres can't
07:11cash and you grab a bit of impromptu dirt on a corner exit, ACC won't penalise you if you didn't
07:17benefit from the off-track excursion. Project Motor Racing is the exact opposite, whacking you with
07:23penalties for tiny mistakes that have already cost you time. Track limit violation, officials are aware.
07:32Hell, they don't even have to be tiny. You can spin, get overtaken by the whole field,
07:38and still be slapped with a two-second penalty the moment you rejoin. You committed a track limit
07:43violation. I wasn't cheating, I was crashing. Confusingly, I had better luck actually cheating,
07:51because the penalty system has allowed me to blast straight ahead through turn one on Project Motor
07:56Racing's off-brand version of Monza, pay my dues by slowing to 60 kilometers per hour, and immediately
08:03go from 16th to 1st. At any rate, it's thanks to the penalty system I certainly have no interest playing
08:09the career on authentic difficulty, which locks the opponent's strength at 100 and does not allow race
08:15restarts. Any time I get pinged unfairly in my current career, I typically just hit the pause
08:21menu and try again. I just need to hope that everyone is facing the right way when we restart.
08:32Project Motor Racing's weaknesses on track are annoying considering how much I like its current
08:37garage, and doubly so considering how excited I was to learn that Australian touring cars from two
08:43separate areas of the supercars series are planned to arrive as DLC later next year.
08:48Project Motor Racing features over 70 cars, and I admire the distilled approach of focusing strictly
08:55on racing models. Ferrari and McLaren appear to have turned down a seat at the table for now,
09:00which does create some hefty holes in the categories Project Motor Racing focuses on,
09:04but it's particularly neat to see some of the old GT and NGT cars that rarely get much love in
09:10contemporary racing games. For instance, I've always had a soft spot for the Lister Storm,
09:15and it's 7L V12. After all, there ain't no replacement for displacement.
09:21The cars look nice in the menu screens, but they're not as glamorous out on track. In action,
09:25Project Motor Racing is actually quite washed out, and it absolutely does not look a generation newer
09:31than the excellent Project Cars 2. There are a lot of layers to the sound, which does capture a good deal
09:37of the raw mechanical noises of a race car. Although broadly speaking, there's room for improvement,
09:42and I'd love the engine notes to be a little thicker and throatier.
09:50In terms of how the cars handle, however, I'm tugged in two directions, literally in this instance.
09:56There's really nothing more important to a race sim than the handling. And I have to say,
10:00there are some car and track combos in Project Motor Racing where I've felt very satisfied with the
10:05overall feel on a wheel. The only PlayStation wheel I have is the Thrustmaster TGT2, which isn't a direct
10:12drive wheel, but is about as good as belt-driven wheels get in terms of force feedback. For instance,
10:18in a GT3 car like the Audi R8 or the Ford Mustang at Mount Panorama, I can lap clean and the cars feel
10:25compliant beneath me. The buzz from kerbs is strong, and the sensation of weight fluctuating is
10:31impressively pronounced, like everything lightening up for a beat as you barrel over a crest, and your
10:37car becoming heavier and stickier as you scoot from the end of a slope. This is a big factor on a track
10:43with such profound elevation changes like Bathurst. The disparity in performance on a cold tyre versus
10:49a warm tyre is also huge in Project Motor Racing, and the very real necessity to drive the first lap or so
10:55more delicately is also a satisfying enough challenge here. I've been far less confident in other cars,
11:02however. The hypercars are the worst culprits. They just want me dead. Obviously, I'm not a professional
11:10racing driver, and I'm not going to speak to you like I am or act like I know exactly what's going on
11:16beneath the surface of something like Project Motor Racing when it comes to simulating a Le Mans prototype.
11:21The hypercars, however, are undriveable, even on a wheel. They slip, slide, and scrub, and there's
11:31zero feeling of the immense downforce you'd expect. Unfortunately, on gamepad, the news is worse. It's
11:39just way too twitchy to be a satisfying sim on a standard controller, especially when the tiniest,
11:45erroneous flick of a stick can mean a nonsense penalty. I tried dialling down the
11:51sensitivity of the steering, but it really had little effect. Cars, especially the prototypes,
11:57get so unsettled when steering on a gamepad, I just can't really recommend picking up Project
12:03Motor Racing if that's exclusively the way you plan to play it.
12:11Right now, Project Motor Racing feels like an early access game that hasn't actually been
12:16identified as such. There are certainly glimpses of a competent racing sim here, but it is drastically
12:23unfinished. With time and its mod browser, I sincerely hope Project Motor Racing can be
12:28fashioned into something that can fill the void left by the long-delisted Project Cars 2,
12:33but it's an entirely mediocre single-player racing experience for now. It may have positioned itself as
12:39the air to the Project Cars 2 kingdom, but it is simply not a better racer than its 2017 ancestor.
12:50For more recent reviews, check out our verdicts on Cricket 26 and Kirby Air Riders. For everything else, stick with IGN.
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