NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup

There?s a lot more going on in NASCAR 2005 than just turning left as EA Tiburon is prepping a drastic and dazzling overhaul.

NASCAR 2005 must be attempting to nudge MVP Baseball off the pedestal reserved for most improved sports game of the year. Sure, the preview versions by definition were still a bit raw and unfinished in areas ranging from graphical polish to driver A.I., but the structure of what EA Tiburon is aiming for was easy to appreciate. Beyond dropping ?Thunder? from the name, NASCAR 2005 should capture race fans? attention with a fantastic new career mode called Fight for the Cup. Before you can even get to the main menu, the game goes directly into a street race against your favorite driver, and his endorsement earns you a contract in the Featherlite Modified series. Using a framework lifted from NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona, you can earn your way into the Craftsman Truck, Busch, and Nextel series. You can either just drive, worrying only about turning left and occasionally right, or you can become an owner/driver, managing every element of your team from merchandise to pit-crew staffing and training.

NASCAR 2005 is also amping up the popular grudges and alliances between other drivers by adding a way to intimidate opposing drivers and a way to settle post-race disputes in street races with production model cars like the Ford GT. A standard Season mode and online support for the PS2 and Xbox versions round things out nicely (the GameCube preview version wasn?t available). NASCAR 2005 still drives very much like a sim, requiring you to master track lines and drive cleanly, but with this whopping new feature set, it should have the horsepower to lure a much bigger crowd.

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