- 7 weeks ago
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GamingTranscript
00:00I'm parked at the back of the grid on Mount Panorama, awaiting the race start and there
00:06are cars ahead of me literally facing backwards. This is not gonna go well. As you'd expect,
00:12pandemonium ensues when the lights go off. The race has just begun and it's already a mess.
00:17Unfortunately, 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 has a great
00:31selection of cars, a number of which are thoroughly underrepresented in modern races.
00:36It's also not crippled with free-to-play chicanery or subject to a monthly subscription,
00:41and its focus isn't primarily multiplayer. All of this is high-octane music to my ears.
00:48In practice, however, Project Motor Racing simply hasn't worked out, and I've totally bounced off
00:57it in its current state thanks to AI that essentially ignores your presence on track,
01:01a hopelessly uneven penalty system that serves only to frustrate and ruin your races,
01:06and its array of bugs and peculiar physics quirks.
01:19Project Motor Racing arrives as a spiritual successor to Slightly Mad Studios' now-defunct
01:23Project Cars series, which failed to survive the Codemasters' acquisition of Slightly Mad
01:29and the subsequent EA purchase of Codemasters. There may be some different logos on the loading
01:34screen, sure, but developer Straight Force Studios is basically a rebirthed Slightly Mad
01:39after someone hit the VIN with an angle grinder.
01:45Perhaps more significantly, it's attempting to pick up where Project Cars 2 left off,
01:50brushing aside the bafflingly casual reinvention of the series in Project Cars 3.
01:55If you need a comparison to chew on, it's a little like how Jaws 4 ignores the events of Jaws 3D.
02:05Unfortunately, just like Jaws 4, things get real fishy real fast.
02:17To 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 career
02:27mode however we choose. That is, you can select to begin with just enough cash to scrape into the entry-level
02:33categories or wallet big enough to buy any car on offer and head straight to the top classes.
02:39It's smart that it has these options. There are actually slots to have three separate careers on
02:44the go simultaneously, so it's possible to experiment with multiple approaches. Or,
02:48in my instance, for my sons to dabble with their own career saves without messing around with mine,
02:54an 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 only.
03:11Or even have your damage repair bills covered in return for a steady portion of your event takings.
03:16This 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
03:38anything 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
04:03a 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 and its brazenly unfair
04:40penalty system, both of which are so annoying I have no desire to keep playing at the moment.
04:45The big problem with the AI is that they regularly drive like you're not on track. I'm not just
04:50talking about them coming across on you when you only have a slight overlap and probably got optimistic
04:55sticking your nose there in the first place, although they will do that, sometimes clipping through your
04:59front end like you're a ghost. I'm talking about the absolute argy-bargy that occurs when you're
05:07right alongside them and they want to carry on sticking to the racing line like freight trains,
05:11so they thump into you with zero regard for your existence.
05:17It certainly doesn't help that it currently features no radar or proximity indicators for the
05:22cars around you, and no spotter either. On PS5, the single-player opponent count is actually limited to
05:29just 15, although cross-play multiplayer allows up to 32. Frankly, 15 isn't near enough for a racing sim
05:38of this type, but considering the way they drive, I guess I don't know that I'd want any more of these
05:43lunatics out there right now. Let's be clear, my favourite real-world racing categories are
05:51old-school super touring and V8 supercars, so I am unequivocally all for elbows-out-panel-punishing
05:59racing in my games too, but this just takes the piss.
06:05Project Motor Racing's AI regularly reminds me more of classic Gran Turismo, where the AI racers always felt
06:12exponentially heavier and generally incapable of being affected by the player's car.
06:18To experiment, I've cannoned into the back of opponents in Project Motor Racing for
06:22no 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
06:34nuke your whole 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
06:51just the right level to have your times toe-to-toe with the AI, two seconds can be a lifetime. It just
06:58immediately spoils races. For comparison, Assetto Corsa Competizione also dishes out penalties,
07:04but only if it detects an advantage. If you're forced off track, or if your ego writes a check your
07:11tyres can't cash and you grab a bit of impromptu dirt on a corner exit, ACC won't penalise you if
07:17you didn't benefit from the off-track excursion. Project Motor Racing is the exact opposite,
07:23whacking you with penalties for tiny mistakes that have already cost you time.
07:27Track limit violation, officials are aware. Hell, they don't even have to be tiny. You can spin,
07:35get overtaken by the whole field, and still be slapped with a two-second penalty the moment you rejoin.
07:41You committed a track limit violation. I wasn't cheating, I was crashing. Confusingly, I had better luck
07:50actually cheating because the penalty system has allowed me to blast straight ahead through turn one on
07:55Project Motor Racing's off-brand version of Monza, pay my dues by slowing to 60kmph, and immediately
08:03go from 16th to 1st. At any rate, it's thanks to the penalty system I certainly have no interest
08:09playing the career on authentic difficulty, which locks the opponent's strength at 100 and does not
08:15allow race restarts. Anytime 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
08:38garage, and doubly so considering how excited I was to learn that Australian touring cars from two
08:43separate areas of the supercar series are planned to arrive as DLC later next year. Project Motor Racing
08:49features over 70 cars and I admire the distilled approach of focusing strictly on racing models.
08:56Ferrari and McLaren appear to have turned down a seat at the table for now, which does create some
09:01hefty holes in the categories Project Motor Racing focuses on, but it's particularly neat to see some
09:06of the old GT and NGT cars that rarely get much love in contemporary racing games. For instance, I've always
09:13had a soft spot for the Lister Storm and its 7 litre V12. After all, there ain't no replacement for
09:19displacement. The 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 than the
09:31excellent Project Cars 2. There are a lot of layers to the sound, which does capture a good deal of the raw mechanical
09:38noises of a race car. Although broadly speaking, there's room for improvement and I'd love the engine
09:43notes to be a little thicker and throatier. In terms of how the cars handle, however, I'm tugged in two
09:53directions, literally in this instance. There's really nothing more important to a race sim than the handling.
10:00And I have to say there are some car and track combos in Project Motor Racing where I've felt very
10:04satisfied with the overall feel on a wheel. The only PlayStation wheel I have is the Thrustmaster TGT2,
10:11which isn't a direct-drive wheel, but is about as good as belt-driven wheels get in terms of force
10:16feedback. For instance, in a GT3 car like the Audi R8 or the Ford Mustang at Mount Panorama, I can lap
10:23clean and the cars feel compliant beneath me. The buzz from kerbs is strong and the sensation of weight
10:30fluctuating is impressively pronounced, like everything lightening up for a beat as you barrel
10:35over a crest, and your car becoming heavier and stickier as you scoot from the end of a slope.
10:41This is a big factor on a track with such profound elevation changes like Bathurst. The disparity in
10:47performance on a cold tyre versus a warm tyre is also huge in Project Motor Racing, and the very real
10:53necessity to drive the first lap or so more delicately is also a satisfying enough challenge here.
10:59I've been far less confident in other cars, however. The hypercars are the worst culprits. They just want me
11:07dead. Obviously, I'm not a professional racing driver, and I'm not going to speak to you like I am,
11:13or act like I know exactly what's going on beneath the surface of something like Project Motor Racing when
11:19it comes to simulating a Le Mans prototype. The hypercars, however, are undriveable, even on a wheel.
11:27They slip, slide and scrub, and there's zero feeling of the immense downforce you'd expect.
11:35Unfortunately, on gamepad, the news is worse. It's just way too twitchy to be a satisfying sim on a
11:42standard controller, especially when the tiniest erroneous flick of a stick can mean a nonsense penalty.
11:49I tried dialling down the sensitivity of the steering, but it really had little effect.
11:55Cars, especially the prototypes, get so unsettled when steering on a gamepad,
12:00I just can't really recommend picking up Project Motor 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 identified as
12:17such. There are certainly glimpses of a competent racing sim here, but it is drastically unfinished.
12:24With time and its mod browser, I sincerely hope Project Motor Racing can be fashioned into something
12:29that can fill the void left by the long-delisted Project Cars 2, but it's an entirely mediocre
12:35single-player racing experience for now. It may have positioned itself as the heir to the Project
12:41Cars 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.
12:56For everything else, stick with IGN.
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