NASCAR 25 from developer iRacing Studios marks the debut of a new era for the sport in the video game space. 

After acquiring the licenses in 2023, NASCAR 25 loops in some of the creators from the teams that brought the beloved NASCAR Heat series back in the day and intends to make a splash with its debut. 

Like many sports games rolling out a first edition, NASCAR 25 will help the entire series sink or swim based on how well it sets down a foundational building block. 

Before anything else, that means authentic gameplay to back up the fully licensed and true-to-life tracks, drivers and more. 

This new era is off to a, forgive the themed pun, but fast start. 

Many sports games go years after a debut, stumbling around while attempting to tack on new gameplay features to get it up to snuff. Not here. This effort nails the most important part in its first attempt, creating simply fun racing. 

The controls here are simple enough, sense of speed is good and the cars feel weighty through turns, making for only a small adjustment period before really improving and retaining plenty of pick-up-and-play potential.

Drafting is surprisingly fun, making pack racing more enjoyable than in past similar efforts. Driver AI for computer opponents not only drafts well when appropriate, but overall provides a nice, fair challenge, too. 

Make no mistake, there’s still some RNG thrown in there to keep things realistic. Every now and then an AI will veer off into a wall or pop an issue that has them limping back to the pits. 

That’s not to say there aren’t problems. The massive upswing in difficulty across different tiers can be a bit much. There’s a nice suite of sliders for those who want to modify the experience, though. 

As a whole, NASCAR 25 really hits on the expected stuff out of the gates in terms of vehicle strategy and how a racing game like this should feel. It’s not attempting to revolutionize anything, rather, just bring true-to-life racing and keep it fun in the process. 

Graphics and Presentation

Like its gameplay, NASCAR 25 isn’t really trying to squeeze every last drop out of next-generation hardware.

But it certainly looks great in a workmanlike sense and does the job just fine. There’s an impressive scale to the good-looking experience when in some of the bigger stadiums and locales, including nice crowd sizes, draw distances and lifelike things going on around the tracks. 

Zooming in on the track doesn’t produce any issues. Lighting and shadows, depending on the time of day, look great. So do close-ups on vehicles, interior and exterior detailing and the vehicle damage system that seems to loosely affect gameplay. 

It’s clear some actual laser mapping and other technology replicated the on-track experience from a gameplay perspective and it is true to form in the visuals department, too, with some notable wear and tear on the surfaces.

Beyond a varied soundtrack, overall sound design is strong, whether it’s the hum of engines, gnashing of collisions or crowd feedback. The spotters calling in information get repetitive quickly, but still feed critical data and provide options. 

On the user interface front (UI), the game does a good job of displaying important information, such as standings, distances from other vehicles and notable stats. 

There’s a nostalgic vibe here, both in tone with the Dale Earnhardt Jr. tribute, to feeling like a throwback to older career modes found in sports games of the past. 

Career mode is, in a word, simple. Pick a series, form a team, customize a bit, and get to racing while juggling a few different mechanics, chief among them reputation and currencies. 

There isn’t really a driver avatar, which is hardly the big deal some might think. The focus, then, goes more on the cars themselves, which is nice. There’s a suite of team customization to really let players put their stamp on things as they progress. 

Reputation impacts sponsors, team finances and qualifying for certain series, among other notables. Factors at play include clean racing, so it’s nice to see things stick on a realistic path for this mode. 

Outside of career, a Championship mode lets players tackle full or shortened seasons without the management side of Career mode. 

Online lobbies are a mess, though. As expected, without major lobby control, 40-player races end up as demolition derbies instead. Not that it can’t be fun, but those who want something more like a competitive simulation will need to run custom lobbies with serious control over adding and kicking players. 

The online suite is a little limited beyond that. One of the notable omissions, for now, is the ability to run a season co-op with other players. 

But that’s a running theme throughout the modes conversation: The must-have barebones are here and that’s good enough. 

Kudos goes to NASCAR 25 for a deep set of stats that play into driver ratings not unlike other sports games. Options and sliders make the cut, too, providing much in the way of player agency over a game that runs quite well. 

NASCAR 25 also hits on what has become the industry standard as far as driving assist options, looping in things like transmission, brake smoothing and so much more. 

NASCAR 25 hits the most important goal of all for what is technically a series debut: It puts down a rock-solid foundation for the future. 

In a way, it’s a little refreshing to pop open a sports game and not get bogged down with near-endless different game modes while attempting to cater to as wide an audience as possible while extracting as much money as possible in the process. 

NASCAR 25 is very unabashedly a simulation racer that is simply fun to pick up and play, with high skill ceilings, should players choose to chase after them. 

It’s always exciting to think about how the series might layer atop a foundation like this, but for now, NASCAR 25 will enjoy quite a deserving shelf life as the new top dog in its niche.