This is a step in the right direction, but no matter how they try to record the sounds, it always ends up sounding “tinny”. The motor sounds a bit artificial, but there hasn’t been a console racing game yet to capture the true sound of these machines. Unlike the graphics, the sound in NT04 is very good. It works, but it won’t knock your socks off. Bottom line: it conveys a Sunday race of Nascar. You have a lot of options in the create-a-car mode, so you’ll never have to take the same car to the track twice unless you want to. The tracks are well done, and the car models themselves look detailed enough. It’s fairly helpful, but I would still prefer to have a look left/look right button, especially when using the cockpit camera. When actually on the track, you’ll have “passing indicators” that will notify you of a car’s position behind/beside you. If you switch to an external camera while heading down pit road, you get a nice cinematic of your pit stop…even crewman mistakes. Cars take visible damage as they bang around, and your pit crew is fully animated. The framerate is pretty consistent, even if you have a lot of cars in front of you (which, at the beginning of a career, you will have more often than not). The visual presentation in NT04 is typical of a PS2 game: aliased a bit, but fine overall. However, it carries over a lot of the previous titles’ problems, and tries to cover it up with new features and presentation tidbits. NT04 is certainly not a bad game far from it. The Nascar Thunder series sells a ton of copies every year, despite having a sloppy driving model, and I have no doubt that it will continue that tradition this year. EA racing “sims” are usually a little loose on the sim, and heavy on the presentation. To the average fan, that’s not a very big deal. Of course, with Electronic Arts’ exclusive licensing deal signed with the stock car racing megacircuit, it’s also the only one. EA’s yearly stock car release, Nascar Thunder 2004 (NT04), is the best console Nascar experience you can get this season.
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