Coming from the same core team as the original Project Cars, we were well revved up for Project Motor Racing, a proper sim racer in a sea of arcade racers and kart games.
Starting your career, you can choose on which continent you want to be based (from North America, Europe or Australia/Asia.) This affects the cost of cars and entry fees. The event costs (travel & repairs) are deducted after each race meeting. If damage is turned on, you soon learn that aggressive driving doesn't pay!
Sponsorships are the lifeblood of your team, and it's worth selecting the ones that offer the best deals, not just the coolest liveries.
Starting a career at the bottom with a Mazda MX5 series, I was surprised how easy it was to spin out. After fiddling with the settings (I set the difficulty to 70%) a bit and using practice laps wisely, I found I could get pole positions and win races.
The game has more telemetry, stats and in-depth tuning options that I have the time to list here, as well as sector & split times on the HUD during all sessions, so if that's your bag you're going to be very happy indeed.
The game continues a pet hate I have in racing games–other than turning traction control, ABS, clutch, pit limiter etc. on or off you can't change the settings once you've started a session–which I've always thought was daft. Fortunately you can change things once a session is over, and can also reduce or add to the number of laps per race. We found that the 0.5 setting was fine for us; this gave us 10 minutes practice & qualifying and 4 lap races.
Using a standard Xbox controller the handling is what I'd generously describe as "tricky", other players have been less kind, said it's undriveable and given up after a few laps. I also have a slight issue with the throttle response, which seems to have too narrow a band when using a controller, with little or no response at the bottom end, and a tendency for cars to lock their rear wheels and spin if you decelerate too quickly. Braking also needs to be smooth, even with ABS on. I soon began to wonder how much testing Project Motor Racing got with standard controllers... Things can be improved with tuning, but should you really need to fiddle around with in-depth settings just to make it possible to complete a competitive lap without spinning?
In-race everything looks and sounds pretty good, the other cars move smoothly and the frame rate is decent. The trackside detail isn't amazing but isn't far behind GT or Forza. Your race engineer is one of the least annoying I've come across, but tends to say the same thing lap after lap if you're leading, even at the race finish. The cars sound great, with some very authentic sounding engine samples.
The in-car views also vary hugely in terms of what you can see (how much steering wheel/driver hands/arms etc) and then I realised that to get a consistent view, the FOV needs to be set for each car individually!–What a faff! I've never had this before in any racing sim because your cockpit view is usually consistent across every car in the game. Again, should you really need to fiddle with the camera view in every car to make it consistent?
While Straight4 Studios obtained licences for cars from Mazda to Mercedes and Acura to Aston Martin, and some tracks have their actual names, some tracks also have generic names such as "Northampton" (Silverstone) and "Derby" (Donington) and Lexington (Mid Ohio) in the U.S.
Although they're not Gran Turismo or Forza standard, visually it's hard to fault the cars (each one comes with a selection of liveries), but the cursory damage, dust and smoke effects are weak at best. I was disappointed to find them entirely missing when I slid off and spun into a gravel trap in fact.
Although we found it to be rather arbitrary the way it works, the yellow flag warning for track limits infringements is rather good, it not only flashes two large yellow lights at the top of the HUD but also tells you how much time you need to give back.
Most gamers will buy Project Motor Racing for the online component, which is fortunate as the AI in the single player & career mode is basic, and hard to pass. They circulate in a convoy, rarely make mistakes, often driving two side-by-side just to make it difficult to pass. They'll also frequently push you wide, and even into a spin if they have the opportunity. Comparing this to the only other sim racer I've played this year, F1 25, the AI feels ancient, unrealistically on rails and just no fun to race against.
The online racing is fine as long as you're a dedicated sim racer, with zero distractions and–of course–have a steering wheel and pedals–but as always, I'm reviewing the game from the viewpoint of a typical gamer with just a controller, a family and all the usual distractions and interruptions.
Apart from the convoy-like AI opponents, the other thing that makes the game feel a bit aged is a lack of a session save, so if you practice and qualify and then quit, you have to do it all over again when you play next.
For the hardcore Automasochists out there, Project Motor Racing includes plenty of endurance races & challenges that last 90 minutes or so. Some challenges even run to around 6 hours, which in my opinion, without a rewind ability, is insane.
To cap all the "normalgamer" driveability issues I found a "hilarious" dead end whereby if you decide to ambitiously start your career driving the legendary Porsche 917 (and why wouldn't you?) then your starting budget isn't substantial enough to actually enter a race! Nice one Straight4!
If you desperately want a sim racer on Xbox I'd go for Assetto Corsa, Assetto Corsa: Competizione or Forza, none of them feel older than Project Motor Racing, they're all friendlier to play and all have less quirky and demanding handling.
A friend of GameCell's that has worked on some of the biggest driving games of all time told us last year that "apart from the big 2, racing sims are dying on console" and going by this evidence, he's not wrong.
Thanks to Straight4 Studios, GIANTS Software and PressEngine.