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PS2 | Driving | NASCAR Thunder 2004

Boxart for NASCAR Thunder 2004
NASCAR Thunder 2004 33 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.0
  • SOUND: 4.5
  • CONTROL: 4.5
  • FUN FACTOR 4.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.4
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Review: NASCAR Thunder 2004

Review by AIRHENDRIX | 09/15/2003 | 12:29:45 PM PST

NASCAR Thunder 2004 takes PS2 racing online with a sharp update to America?s #2 sport.

An exclusive licensing deal makes NASCAR Thunder 2004 the only NASCAR game this fall, so it?s fortunate that EA Sports continues its streak with another strong performance. Some innovative ideas and slick polish give race fans plenty to roar about...unless they own a GameCube, which got bumped from the circuit this season.

Rubbin? and Rememberin?
Alongside a vast array of drivers and all the real-life tracks, the big new feature in Thunder 2004 is grudges and alliances between drivers, which are represented by colorful in-race icons. Slam a fellow driver into the wall, and they?ll take note and thump you later. But if you share the draft, you can make friends who might let you pass in a key moment. The downside to this feature is that the icons feel a little busy and gimmicky, but its strong upside is that you start to pay attention to realistic, clean driving.

If you prefer to drive like a battering ram, your hide will chap quickly, but at the finish line, the gameplay benefits big time. The feel of pack racing really shines as you concentrate on driving at high speed mere inches from a jostling crowd while focusing on staying in a slipstream until it?s time for a slingshot pass.

Comparing the two versions, the Xbox is more visually polished, and its steering responds more crisply, although it?s a photo-finish difference as both games control more smoothly than they did last year. The PS2 makes amends for a slightly rougher performance with excellent online support?its head-to-head racing performed sharply in beta-version tests. Across the board, the graphics shine with a much-improved sense of speed and richer detail, while the sound also raises the bar with excellent new effects for drafting and a solid track announcer.

Sign Here
Thunder?s one major fault is the balance between its two main modes of play: Season is a bit too light, Career is a notch too slow-paced and challenging, and there?s no middle ground. In a career, you build your own car and team from scratch, tackling duties like hiring/firing team members, signing sponsors, bolstering car-design technology, and building/overhauling a stable of engines, chasses, and bodies. It?s a very long-term endeavor, and you have to be willing to drive a lousy car and battle tooth-and-nail just to come in 40th for a long time?the pace of improvement and skill-building is really slow. The frustration factor would be much less substantial if you began in a junior racing circuit where the competition was less ferocious.

If you lack the patience and dedication for such a challenge, Season mode lets you pick your favorite driver and race through the real-life season without worrying about anything other than car setups and turning left. It ends up feeling a bit short on depth, though, and the game would really benefit from a Season mode that included optional team-management elements or a Career mode that let you choose to start somewhere besides the very bottom rung of NASCAR.

Peel Out
If you?re the kind of hardcore NASCAR fans that will revel in the challenge of Career mode, you?ll have an absolute blast with Thunder, particularly now that Tiburon has included a ton of in-game help and redesigned the interface to be massively more usable. On the flip side, more casual players will appreciate the breeziness of Season mode, and the game also scores big with smartly designed mini-games that perfectly mix fast bursts of action with helpful instruction for novices. If you fall somewhere in between, you?ll probably lose interest in Thunder pretty quickly, but overall, it?s delivered another fine season of racing.