It's really difficult to submit any sort of completed "review" for this title.
This is because NASCAR 21: Ignition has shipped in a very questionable state, one that cannot be properly assessed beyond telling others to hold off purchasing the game for the time being and listing its’ numerous issues. I’ve been able to complete less than five percent of the races I’ve attempted, due to prominent application stability problems and game-breaking bugs.
While the launch of every major video game often results in one or two glitch videos going viral, the overwhelming number of Twitter posts and YouTube compilations from NASCAR fans showcasing the game falling apart are indeed reflective of the average gameplay experience.
In merely exiting from a race session, changing the track, and attempting to load into another race, the game would generate an Unreal Engine 4 “fatal error” pop-up and crash to the desktop. Lock-ups were common, with the game freezing on me just twenty three laps into a race at Daytona – roughly twenty minutes of gameplay. Others on social media have reported identical instances of crashing, and are also struggling to complete races across all five platforms the game is compatible with.
Scoring issues and other oddities have dominated the few races I’ve been able to partake in past the opening laps. The game for whatever reason cannot handle any aspect of a caution flag instance, and frequently re-shuffles the running order when the cars re-spawn to take the green flag. I have gone from leading the race, to finding myself in 30th, several laps down, for no reason at all.
In combing through the official rFactor 2 forums, it seems issues like these have persisted for several years with the stock car ruleset, and no effort was made to iron them out when using the engine to power NASCAR 21: Ignition. This act alone is quite worrying as it indicates Motorsport Games either believe rFactor 2 is a satisfactory platform to build a game on when it's very obviously not, OR they're not skilled enough to take matters into their own hands and fix these issues themselves.
Spawning into the game world is something NASCAR 21: Ignition struggles with on a consistent basis. The game does not allow you to freely drive out of your pit box, but rather takes the Codemasters approach of skipping towards the end of the lap with the CPU driving, giving you the reigns as you cross the start/finish line. I was alarmed at just how frequently I would load into a session, only to discover my car was completely destroyed and several body panels were freely flapping around. Other times, the CPU driver would fling me into the wall or throw the car into a Scandinavian flick just as the transition from CPU to user occurred.
During caution flag and restart sequences, when the AI is given control of your car, it isn’t uncommon to find the AI driving you straight into a wall, or dragging the brake on a restart allowing all of the AI to shoot by you. Your fellow AI competitors are not spared from this, and I noted several instances of the AI being casually strewn about the track at varying speeds as opposed to taking the green flag in two distinct rows.
Pitting appears to be quite a difficult concept for the AI to comprehend, as they often attempt to enter pit lane at race speeds, resulting in a mass of AI cars outright missing pit entry, spinning across the grass infield section, and triggering another yellow flag. As mentioned above, this breeds an additional set of scoring issues.
While I would like to say there is a “solid base” underneath the litany of technical gremlins, I was pretty shocked at just how much NASCAR 21: Ignition happened to be missing the more I continued to dig for what I presumed to be basic features and functionalities in a racing game no developer would contemplate omitting. Even if Motorsport Games were able to iron everything out overnight, this isn’t a very promising piece of software.
The in-game heads up display lacks a fuel gauge, tire wear readouts, a track map, and the ability to toggle on/off a rear-view mirror – things we’ve taken for granted in racing games dating back to the fifth console generation. There is no functionality for custom car setups; the garage area consists of a single slider that lets you pick from five pre-made “loose” or “tight” load-outs. In examining the game files, these preset setups are stored as a “.svm” extension, indicating there’s really no reason the developers needed to axe custom setup functionality since it very obviously powers the car setup presets in the first place.
When it comes to online racing, custom lobbies do not exist. The simple act of running test laps with your friends in a closed environment, or hosting a private league - as many do on console NASCAR games - just isn't going to happen. Those who spend time creating a custom paint scheme in the game’s comprehensive livery editing tool – a layer-based system similar to what you see in Forza Motorsport – aren’t able to use their custom cars online. Nor can they share them with others.
Basic NASCAR-centric rules are either botched or outright missing. Stage racing, the controversial format in which NASCAR races have been contested since the start of the 2017 season, is completely absent from this game despite being referenced in the pit options menu. Daring to dip below the white line at speedways such as Phoenix and Kansas – a completely legal move in real life - results in a penalty. It's one thing to ship a barebones game, but to completely omit or botch basic rules of the sport is pretty questionable.
There are no options to map any buttons to your steering wheel, and wheel configuration options as we’ve come to expect from both arcade racers and hardcore sims, simply do not exist. You will not be able to configure your wheel rotation, force feedback, or linearity settings and are instead stuck with whatever the game gives you. Face buttons on your steering wheel do not function at any point in the game – you must always have a keyboard nearby or a controller plugged in to navigate all menus and in-race features such as selecting pit options or skipping through the copious amount of cutscenes.
Graphics settings do not save and must be frequently changed, sometimes multiple times in the same gameplay session. Support for ultra-wide monitors simply isn’t complete; while the raw gameplay displays as it should in 21:9, every other mode or in-game cutscene displays with large black bars at both ends of the screen. There is quite a comical issue with the spotter in which there is no delay between each voice clip, resulting in multiple lines of audio playing over each other at the same time.
Based on my experience within the sim racing industry as a former quality assurance guy, I’m very curious as to how this title was able to pass certification tests needed for the game to appear on various online storefronts. The volume and severity of bugs and missing features is reflective of a game still a year out from launch.
Those who have already purchased the game may soon find themselves in possession of a collector’s item. Similar to NBA Elite 11 or Cyberpunk 2077, there is enough fundamentally wrong with NASCAR 21: Ignition to see it on the receiving end of a last minute launch delay, or pulled from store shelves altogether if the negative reception and mass refunds continue to pile up as social media has indicated. In a post-Cyberpunk world, a product like this is no longer tolerated.
While we've seen a lot of not-so-great game launches over the past five to ten years, NASCAR 21: Ignition is really the first one where I questioned what the company's overall motivations are with this title. Coupled with their aggressive expansion into securing not one but four major racing series licenses, the creation of a website to rival RaceDepartment, and listing themselves as a publicly traded company, the overall quality of NASCAR 21: Ignition makes me believe this saga is destined for a courtroom at some point. Something is seriously amiss here.
This is because NASCAR 21: Ignition has shipped in a very questionable state, one that cannot be properly assessed beyond telling others to hold off purchasing the game for the time being and listing its’ numerous issues. I’ve been able to complete less than five percent of the races I’ve attempted, due to prominent application stability problems and game-breaking bugs.
While the launch of every major video game often results in one or two glitch videos going viral, the overwhelming number of Twitter posts and YouTube compilations from NASCAR fans showcasing the game falling apart are indeed reflective of the average gameplay experience.
In merely exiting from a race session, changing the track, and attempting to load into another race, the game would generate an Unreal Engine 4 “fatal error” pop-up and crash to the desktop. Lock-ups were common, with the game freezing on me just twenty three laps into a race at Daytona – roughly twenty minutes of gameplay. Others on social media have reported identical instances of crashing, and are also struggling to complete races across all five platforms the game is compatible with.
Scoring issues and other oddities have dominated the few races I’ve been able to partake in past the opening laps. The game for whatever reason cannot handle any aspect of a caution flag instance, and frequently re-shuffles the running order when the cars re-spawn to take the green flag. I have gone from leading the race, to finding myself in 30th, several laps down, for no reason at all.
In combing through the official rFactor 2 forums, it seems issues like these have persisted for several years with the stock car ruleset, and no effort was made to iron them out when using the engine to power NASCAR 21: Ignition. This act alone is quite worrying as it indicates Motorsport Games either believe rFactor 2 is a satisfactory platform to build a game on when it's very obviously not, OR they're not skilled enough to take matters into their own hands and fix these issues themselves.
Spawning into the game world is something NASCAR 21: Ignition struggles with on a consistent basis. The game does not allow you to freely drive out of your pit box, but rather takes the Codemasters approach of skipping towards the end of the lap with the CPU driving, giving you the reigns as you cross the start/finish line. I was alarmed at just how frequently I would load into a session, only to discover my car was completely destroyed and several body panels were freely flapping around. Other times, the CPU driver would fling me into the wall or throw the car into a Scandinavian flick just as the transition from CPU to user occurred.
During caution flag and restart sequences, when the AI is given control of your car, it isn’t uncommon to find the AI driving you straight into a wall, or dragging the brake on a restart allowing all of the AI to shoot by you. Your fellow AI competitors are not spared from this, and I noted several instances of the AI being casually strewn about the track at varying speeds as opposed to taking the green flag in two distinct rows.
Pitting appears to be quite a difficult concept for the AI to comprehend, as they often attempt to enter pit lane at race speeds, resulting in a mass of AI cars outright missing pit entry, spinning across the grass infield section, and triggering another yellow flag. As mentioned above, this breeds an additional set of scoring issues.
While I would like to say there is a “solid base” underneath the litany of technical gremlins, I was pretty shocked at just how much NASCAR 21: Ignition happened to be missing the more I continued to dig for what I presumed to be basic features and functionalities in a racing game no developer would contemplate omitting. Even if Motorsport Games were able to iron everything out overnight, this isn’t a very promising piece of software.
The in-game heads up display lacks a fuel gauge, tire wear readouts, a track map, and the ability to toggle on/off a rear-view mirror – things we’ve taken for granted in racing games dating back to the fifth console generation. There is no functionality for custom car setups; the garage area consists of a single slider that lets you pick from five pre-made “loose” or “tight” load-outs. In examining the game files, these preset setups are stored as a “.svm” extension, indicating there’s really no reason the developers needed to axe custom setup functionality since it very obviously powers the car setup presets in the first place.
When it comes to online racing, custom lobbies do not exist. The simple act of running test laps with your friends in a closed environment, or hosting a private league - as many do on console NASCAR games - just isn't going to happen. Those who spend time creating a custom paint scheme in the game’s comprehensive livery editing tool – a layer-based system similar to what you see in Forza Motorsport – aren’t able to use their custom cars online. Nor can they share them with others.
Basic NASCAR-centric rules are either botched or outright missing. Stage racing, the controversial format in which NASCAR races have been contested since the start of the 2017 season, is completely absent from this game despite being referenced in the pit options menu. Daring to dip below the white line at speedways such as Phoenix and Kansas – a completely legal move in real life - results in a penalty. It's one thing to ship a barebones game, but to completely omit or botch basic rules of the sport is pretty questionable.
There are no options to map any buttons to your steering wheel, and wheel configuration options as we’ve come to expect from both arcade racers and hardcore sims, simply do not exist. You will not be able to configure your wheel rotation, force feedback, or linearity settings and are instead stuck with whatever the game gives you. Face buttons on your steering wheel do not function at any point in the game – you must always have a keyboard nearby or a controller plugged in to navigate all menus and in-race features such as selecting pit options or skipping through the copious amount of cutscenes.
Graphics settings do not save and must be frequently changed, sometimes multiple times in the same gameplay session. Support for ultra-wide monitors simply isn’t complete; while the raw gameplay displays as it should in 21:9, every other mode or in-game cutscene displays with large black bars at both ends of the screen. There is quite a comical issue with the spotter in which there is no delay between each voice clip, resulting in multiple lines of audio playing over each other at the same time.
Based on my experience within the sim racing industry as a former quality assurance guy, I’m very curious as to how this title was able to pass certification tests needed for the game to appear on various online storefronts. The volume and severity of bugs and missing features is reflective of a game still a year out from launch.
Those who have already purchased the game may soon find themselves in possession of a collector’s item. Similar to NBA Elite 11 or Cyberpunk 2077, there is enough fundamentally wrong with NASCAR 21: Ignition to see it on the receiving end of a last minute launch delay, or pulled from store shelves altogether if the negative reception and mass refunds continue to pile up as social media has indicated. In a post-Cyberpunk world, a product like this is no longer tolerated.
While we've seen a lot of not-so-great game launches over the past five to ten years, NASCAR 21: Ignition is really the first one where I questioned what the company's overall motivations are with this title. Coupled with their aggressive expansion into securing not one but four major racing series licenses, the creation of a website to rival RaceDepartment, and listing themselves as a publicly traded company, the overall quality of NASCAR 21: Ignition makes me believe this saga is destined for a courtroom at some point. Something is seriously amiss here.
