Tony Stewart's Sprint Car Racing Available Now - Post Impressions Here

[Steve_OS]

Tony Stewart's Sprint Car Racing is available now on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for $29.99....

Written By: Steve Noah

Click here to view the article.

[zbundy3]

Any idea what time today this will be available on Playstation store?

[TCrouch]

It actually unlocked yesterday evening on XBox, so I spent about an hour and a half with it. Surprised me that I could play at 8PM Central, as games usually unlock at 11 my time.

1) Played on an XBox One X with a controller (no way I'm moving my sim rig or my XBox to play this lol).

2) Out of the box, I jumped into a TQ race and the cars felt like absolute boats. Turning felt so sluggish, it was like trying to steer a NASCAR truck at Eldora. In a TQ.

3) Left the first race and went to controls, and they now have a Steering Sensitivity as well as "Turn Rate" setting. I kept messing with them...turning one up and then the other. I could never find a happy performance spot with a controller. I could watch the wheels turn sluggishly, so I'd increase sensitivity...then I'd get snap-overcorrections mid-corner. Eventually I found a setting that let me get around the track alright. But in a race, when you get hit inside on the nerf bar by somebody, I immediately went into a crazy fishtail when trying to correct it. Not a fan. I'll try with a wheel when it comes out on Steam next week. I haven't raced any racing game outside of Supercross with a controller in years, so YMMV.

4) Once I got the car semi under control, I at least found that the handling model is predictable enough. I could figure out where the slide point would be (didn't have the dreaded "center pivot point" I hate so much. I could actually try and drive it off rear tire, which was nice).

5) I ran the AI at 100% (didn't even want to try 105 with a controller that I can barely use) and had a good challenge in a couple of quick races I tried. Think I was 2nd in the A Main and want to say 7th or 8th in another when I got nerf bar'd and kicked around the track. It has enough challenge for me, considering there's another 5% above what I ran last night.

6) Career mode is awesome, and each upgrade is a tangible difference. I started on Expert AI with all the assists off, and was qualifying high 20s. First race didn't come close to the A main, so I got a 2-star suspension with higher durability. That improved my position by about 3 spots. Next race, B main again, missed the A Main again, but got better performing tires. Barely missed the A main in the next race, and finally got a better engine. This time I was fast enough to make the A-Main (granted, I finished 21st), but each seemingly minimal upgrade in the car gave me a boost on the track. I dig it.

7) Cockpit camera seems to have a pretty good angle, but when I could barely control the car with a gamepad, I settled on external for a lot of my races.

8) The car models are still trash, but they don't distract me as much as I thought they would. I got used to it pretty quickly.

9) AI did a fairly good job of racing hard without massive punts every corner. It happened a few times, and I really sent it on a few others and did it to the AI, but there were also several stretches of exchanging slide jobs every corner that really got me going. Overall I'm happy with their performance so far.

10) Performance on the X1X is surprsingly inconsistent. It doesn't look like a demanding game, but I'd get stutters and slowdowns that were noticeable. Maybe all of the dust/dirt effects, not sure. I noticed it and shrugged, kept right on playing.

11) For anybody curious, I streamed most of it past my initial Heat Race. The video is here (I'm not really a "streamer", I just streamed gameplay with nothing else):

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/551637614

Overall, I'm excited to play it some more--especially with my wheel. I'll have to watch Favignano's video to see what to expect, but I heard in my SimPit discord that he never quite got it feeling the way he thought it would, so I'm not expecting great wheel support there.

[zbundy3]

Thanks for the update! Definitely looking forward to playing this today when i get off work. Hopefully it is available on the PS store when i get home.

[TCrouch]

Oh, and...sound. Not a fan.

If I hear "we're constantly improving our speedway, head on down to the concession stand and get a bite to eat" one more time, I'm going to throw something.

I swear I hear it AT LEAST 3 times per race. In 15 laps. If you don't have enough lines for the track announcer to avoid repeating things once every 5 laps---just don't add that capability. Limit it to green flag, checkered, passes, whatever.

Engine sounds also are completely "meh".

[jct32]

Quote: Originally Posted by TCrouch

Oh, and...sound. Not a fan. If I hear "we're constantly improving our speedway, head on down to the concession stand and get a bite to eat" one more time, I'm going to throw something. I swear I hear it AT LEAST 3 times per race. In 15 laps. If you don't have enough lines for the track announcer to avoid repeating things once every 5 laps---just don't add that capability. Limit it to green flag, checkered, passes, whatever. Engine sounds also are completely "meh".

Is there an option to turn the announcer off?

I might get this tonight. It sounds like career mode will be fun and I think that’s the main draw for this game. Thanks for the impressions!

[TCrouch]

Quote: Originally Posted by jct32

Is there an option to turn the announcer off? I might get this tonight. It sounds like career mode will be fun and I think that’s the main draw for this game. Thanks for the impressions!

I'm sure there is. I only played it for about 90 minutes, because I was taking a break from building my P-1X sim rig for PC racing. I didn't dig into the volume (wanted to turn music off, for example), but I will when I sit down to play it with my wheel here in a bit.

[Steve_OS]

Quote: Originally Posted by zbundy3

Thanks for the update! Definitely looking forward to playing this today when i get off work. Hopefully it is available on the PS store when i get home.

It is...

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/...RSNS20BASEBUND