The last few months, also thanks to the pandemic of early March and the rapid expansion of SimRacing, have seen a strong rise in the popularity of driving games. In all this hullabaloo of titles vying for who offers the best simulation of tires, damage, set-up, weather and the smell of burning cabins, Slightly Mad studios has decided to make a U-turn making Project Cars one of the most arcade games of this end-generation.
Nothing new under the hood
The structure of Project Cars 3 is very simple, but it fits perfectly to what the goal of the game is. Before hitting the track, you create your avatar, decorate your helmet, and are ready to ride. Already from here, however, he turns up his nose a little: despite the fact that the pilot never sees anything physical, being always covered by overalls, gloves and helmet, the choice to restrict the genders to binary level (man and woman) is quite dated and could have been presented differently. Even the choice of nations, very abundant in truth, smells of political, with nations like Taiwan left off the roster for fear of problems with China. Going beyond these however important political considerations, the game features three main modes: online, rival, and career. In the end, the story is always more or less the same: take a car, drive against others, gain experience points. And yes, I understand that this could apply to pretty much any driving game, but in Project Cars 3 the driving feeling is very similar across all modes, regardless of whether our opponents are AI or other players. I still haven't figured out if it's a good or a bad thing, but the fact is that as soon as the game opens, many possibilities are revealed, a rich and varied menu that can satisfy more or less any motoring desire and adapts to the time you have available.
Going into more detail, more for reporting than for necessity (since the modalities are really immediate and easy to understand), the campaign has a classic category structure: each category has four distinct blocks, each in turn made up of four challenges, three qualifying and one championship. For each race up to three stars are assigned depending on the objectives achieved, and six are enough to unlock the championship race and the next block. Sometimes to reach these stars you have to drive in order not to win, but never mind, the goal is to go further. What if you can't reach these phantom stars? No problem, access can be bought for the price of a few thousand coins, to avoid getting stuck. To all this is added some variations, such as event or invitation-only competitions, but in short, that is the story, with a very linear career that in any case never tires. The only annoying thing about this mode is that some events require a specific car model, and the race rewards are nowhere near enough to cover the expenses for all of these cars. You have to either sell the old ones or go through the same races several times just to get cash to reinvest. Given the disproportionate number of cars in the game (over 200), wouldn't it have been a good idea to make the cash prizes much bigger to help the player collect cars without going crazy? I ask for a friend.
Fortunately, this problem is neither in the online nor in the rival mode. In both cases the cars are decided a priori and anyone can participate, even if they do not have this model. He will obviously pay the discount in terms of assigned experience points, much less if the car is rented, but all in all who cares. Experience in the game is of little use. Returning to the modalities, the rival one (a name perhaps revisable) presents three possible challenges, one daily, one weekly and one monthly. The player is thrown on the track with twenty attempts, the results are entered into an overall leaderboard, and at the end of the event the winners are crowned. In this case the competition is obviously asynchronous, with the players free from constraints of any kind except for the time. I admit that I was skeptical, but it is a really good way for those who maybe only have a couple of hours in the evening and want to relax without having to macrare money or stay at the counter. You sit down, the car and the track are provided by the game, and you drive at your best, without fear of other crazy people on the track.
Don't call him Simcade
If Project Cars 2 was the perfect example of a Simcade, or a driving game halfway between a simulation experience and an arcade game, this third installment puts a lot of effort into leaving out any realistic elements, leaving the player with only two obligations: accelerate and brake. There are no pits, there is no refueling, there is not even the shadow of tire wear and qualifying does not even know where they are at home. Any simulation element has been pruned to make room for doors (which cause some aesthetic damage) and tires that burn (without wearing out). This is also reflected in the interaction: the game is thought out and works exponentially better on a controller than behind the wheel. The basic setups (tried that of the Fanatec CSL elite) are quite questionable, and require a lot of tinkering before being set up properly. The cars do give different sensations depending on the type of car, but they are far from realistic, we might as well leave the wheel where it is and enjoy the game with the controller. Which then, if you think about it, it is also a shame, since the integration with VR works and also well, being able to drive at best with the wheel would have been really intense.
From a narrative point of view, Project Cars 3 strangely felt compelled to add a background story with cinematics and voiceovers telling us how cool and beautiful we are, as happens in all arcade driving games. Too bad the way he does it is so obvious and cloying that it makes you want to say "please shut up and let me drive". The initial narrative is banal, it almost seems that you are looking for the hero, the savior, when then the first thing he does is present the aids for braking, apex and corner exit. Time and resources wasted on something not very enjoyable that adds nothing to the game, we might as well not include them.
A few words are worth spending on AI, something I still haven't understood, after tens and tens of hours. The only sure thing is that you don't drive with the same rules as the player, but that you obviously cheat. As also reported by large-caliber YouTubers, it is clear that in some contexts the AI does not need to use the gearbox, and it does not seem to adapt its driving style too much to the car itself. And then we reject it? No, because regardless it remains an AI that works and that makes the challenge level interesting, with machines that slip in every time we leave the door minimally open. In arcade logic who cares if the AI has an advantage or not, the important thing is that it's fun to drive against, and this time it is. But it eats to be stripped of paint for sins not ours. And how he gnaws.
Double terminal with perforated muffler
When I first took note of the strengths and weaknesses of Project Cars 3 and reread them, I wondered that I was bipolar. Rarely in my gaming life have I seen a game do so much good of things, only to fall miserably on others. I don't know if it's outsourcing or it's simply related to development issues / derivation from previous versions, but I've really seen a game throw away so much potential for little things.
Let's start with the things that work: the game is beautiful, beautiful, the cars are modeled to perfection and the landscapes are extremely beautiful. If you read the opposite somewhere else, or even worse read that the second chapter was better, below is a direct comparison that speaks for itself. The weather effects are also fantastic on both the environment and the cars, (although the gusts of water look more like white hayballs), with driving varying a lot, perhaps too much, based on the asphalt and its condition. .
This beautiful look comes with a livery editor, where you can customize almost any car you own, changing colors, sponsors, rims, and whatever else you can think of. The function that allows you to create a standard style and apply it to each machine is also very useful, something that should be implemented in every driving game that has ever existed. And do you know what is even more impressive? That all this work does not have a very high cost in terms of performance. The review was done with a 970th generation GTX 5 and iXNUMX, and the game didn't drop a frame. Fluid, beautiful to look at, and stable, very stable, at least until it crashes. Yes, it crashes. At first I thought it was somehow my fault, that I had Firefox open to take notes (twice alt + tab caused a BSOD), but even without it, I had to reload the game more than once. Annoying, very annoying.
Even more annoying is the off-track repetition that the game offers. To give a couple of references: before each race, the car is framed in cinematic mode, always from the usual three, very boring angles. But is it possible that with the game already loaded and the race ready to go, it was not possible to vary this routine a little? Also because they are beautiful shots that seem made for taking screenshots, why not add a few more, just to create variation? And then the plates, since that user is customizable, was there really no way to do the same thing for the AI? What's the point of having such a cool photo mode if you get lost in such macroscopically repetitive and annoying details?
Maybe I'm being a little fussy, I don't know, but it would have taken so little to make that huge difference that one wonders if it wasn't a deliberate and wrong choice, or maybe it didn't happen to me. However, I remain of my idea, and I hope that over time some patches can add these variations as small as they are significant.
Conclusions
Project Cars 3 makes a 180-degree reversal from its predecessor, becoming a full-fledged arcade title. The improvements are there, from a graphic and content point of view, and the game offers a mode for anyone. However, some really worrying gaps remain, side elements that should have been an enrichment of the experience that sadly end up lowering, and a lot, the overall value of the game. In conclusion, Project Cars 3 will be the classic game that you will play with pleasure once and that you will leave on your hard disk convinced to make a race every now and then, slowly ending up forgetting it, without ever removing it really.
