interfaces after the games are written. Their linear "race weekend"
paradigm in Nascar 4 is one of the most intrusive barriers to enjoyment
I've ever seen in a simulation. Not only can you not save mid-race, an
unforgivable omission in my opinion, you cannot even restart the current
session without exiting the track and reloading it right back to where you
were before you had to exit. This seven- or eight-click and 20- to 30-
second evolution has become very tiresome to me. A lot of times I'll just
exit the whole damn game rather than sit through Yet Another Track Reload,
just so I can start the race from scratch AGAIN, just so the idiot AI car
behind me can ram me into the wall on the second turn AGAIN, just so I can
exit and wait while the track reloads just to do the whole thing over,
AGAIN.
Since one track load can be used for the whole race weekend evolution
(assuming the player doesn't want to redo anything as there is no redo,
only exit, reload, and start over), the engine is obviously flexible enough
to reinitialize a session without having to exit and reload the track. The
capability is there, why didn't they give us a button pointing to it for no
other reason than to save us from the redundant and time-consuming track
reload? There's currently a "next session" button, why isn't there a
"restart current" or even "previous session" button when all the data
reinitialization capabilities are there as they obviously already are. If
I restart a race 30 times, that's 15 minutes I spend looking at the stupid
"loading" screen for no reason whatsoever other than someone at Papyrus
seems to think that maintaining the integrity of the "race weekend"
paradigm is more important than alleviating the frustration one experiences
when limited by such a linear gameplay design.
Beyond saves and restarts, I don't even understand why you have to qualify
in the first place. There ought to be a screen where you drag names from
the 2001 roster on the left to what grid position you want that driver to
be in on the right. A "randomize" button (the same function
programmatically that currently resolves qual times) could fill in the rest
of the field with the remaining unselected drivers. You could define
whether this was a starting grid or a mid-race restart under yellow
including the number of laps elapsed and number of laps since the lead cars
last pitted. This is the kind of stuff that simulators do best and the
means by which we can extract the most enjoyment from them, yet N4 is
completely devoid of any such functionality. It's unfathomable that the
game designer has decided that the only way I ought to get good track
position in this GAME is by actually going through the motions of
qualifying. Those who enjoy qualifying, as I *sometimes* do, ought to be
able to do so to their heart's content. But it shouldn't be the ONLY
avenue available to get to some quick dirty racing, and the bottom line is
those who don't enjoy qualifying, who bought or might buy N4 just to
experience SOME of the thrill of NASCAR racing and not necessarily every
last painful detail of it, are going to quit playing the game long before
they're going to change their minds and decide that qualifying and all
the other minutia is fun, and that's a deathknell for anyone who wants to
see Nascar 4 prosper.
Nor can you practice critical skills like in-race pitstops or last lap
sprints. How are you ever supposed to get good at the physical and
strategic elements of pit-stopping if the only time you get to do it is
while running a real race? Pit-stopping during a practice session doesn't
have anything to do with what it's like to pit under real race conditions
and the decisions that must be made accordingly. No "what if I'd only
taken two tires that last stop?", "what if I'd splashed off instead of
taking a whole can of fuel -- would I have made it?", or even the simple,
"gosh, those last 20 laps were so fun I'd just like to play them over and
over and over again -- not the whole race, just those last 20 laps"? How
are we supposed to get that kind of experience for real race conditions
when there's no way to go out and repetitively practice those evolutions
under real race conditions? Except for those who have the time and
inclination to make excelling at Nascar 4 a primary objective of their
life, the only thing the rest of us casual gamers can get really good at is
race starts, because that's the only thing we get to do over and over and
over again, whether or not we want to.
It seems the only part of racing that Papyrus wants us to experience to is
how utterly frustrating it can be. Um, thanks, but that's really not why I
buy ENTERTAINMENT software in the first place. Despite its phenomenal new
physics engine, gorgeous graphics, and the "you-are-there" feeling it
invokes like no predecessor before it, I'm finding N4 to be an exceedingly
frustrating experience, all because of some mind-bogglingly restrictive and
short-sighted decisions regarding its user interface.
- Rick