NASCAR 21: Ignition Review

This game is held together with bubblegum and dollar store glue, but I'm still enjoying it somewhat.
I'm playing a cut-down version of the game so far, with an Xbox One controller and moderate assists, maximum visual quality except for the post-processing noise to avoid blurring, no wear, no rules and penalties, races of 15% length. I can't imagine what it would be like to try to play this game as a serious role-playing driver experience.
I've rarely been able to complete two races without having the game crash, mostly while using Alt+Tab. The transitions between phases of play are uncertain or tedious at best, with the control of the car being relinquished to the driver at different moments, at different speeds, different gears, and sometimes face-planting into the wall.
Basically, every event that I play consists of 10 minutes of practice, qualifying, and then the 15% race. This creates smaller bites of the game to rediscover the tracks and the feel of NASCAR after skipping the two previous game platforms for the series.
The Charlotte Roval still sees the AI using the wrong line, and the spotter calls cars going the other way on the other side of the wall, and just like Indy Road Course, the qualifying position is not used for the starting position during the race. Very fun race going through the field to finish in the top 20.
The field at Michigan was spreading in various groups until I decided to pit by myself under green. The skip to pit transition seems to have grouped all the cars back together as if there had been a yellow flag when I got out of the pits. I assume the yellow flags were disabled by my options, but it's not clear anywhere.
The racing at Dover was very fun, lots of side-by-side action, with slow passing taking several laps, some odd pack racing.
The Indy Road Course has completely busted AI with an incredibly slow start, bad pace, and the qualifying not being applied, for an awful experience.
I gave up on Martinsville after not finding a way to adjust the gearing. I can't stand hitting the rev limiter twice a lap, it feels awful.
The pitting is different depending on the track and session, so sometimes you can drive down pit lane, sometimes it makes you stop right after the line and you respawn there after the pit stop, same with taking control of the car. The car setup is a simple slider between tight and loose, which works well enough for using a controller, but the in-race pit menu includes several adjustments, so who knows what's going on there...
This is the most fun I've had with a NASCAR game in a long time, and I'm confident that the extra year leading to N22 Reignited is what the game needed all along, so don't give up hope for the future. As it is, N21 is simply too broken to recommend buying to anyone, but the experience that I describe might just be enough for an eventual sale, especially if more fixes are brought to 21 during the development of 22.

When I first launched the game, it looked really good. The great music and soundtrack match with the improved opening cutscene. Heading into the main menu, it was fairly basic but it got the job done and it looks quite good with the car in the background and some studio lighting,

The problem began when I first went into the control options, there weren't any true options I got to select my wheel and that's it, there were no other options. No choice of shifting, button remap, axis dead zone and linearity, nothing. If you didn't like the settings, you had to deal with them. The same goes for basically every other setting, it's all fairly shallow and not enough for fine-tuning for performance. It was incredibly jarring because the previous Heat game did at least do a decent job at allowing button remaps and setting to an acceptable degree but all of this was stripped away.

I then decided to check out the paint booth as it had previously been a weak point of the Heat games and I was expecting more of the same basic paint booth but I was pleasantly surprised. Sitting in front of me was a proper paint booth, one that resembles those from Nascar 14 or 15 and even the Nascar Thunder games from the early 2000s. There was a lot of customizability from color to decal placement and size to numbers to basically everything one could want outside of going into photoshop and creating completely custom liveries. It was incredibly powerful and I spent a solid two hours playing and creating a custom paint scheme for cars because of how fun it is to use. It is frankly an incredible experience but it is worrying that this is one of the best parts about this game, it was the paint booth and not actually the driving or career experience, of course at this point, I didn't know this but it was soon clear.

I then decided to do some driving in Single Race mode, choosing the 5 of Kyle Larson and racing at Pocono because racing at Pocono was previously an experience that was not great in the Heat games. This is where the first of many crashes happened, it just crashed to desktop after selecting.

I then decided to just head into career mode in order to do my driving there and see what happens in career mode as well. This is where it gets worse. The F1 games share the exact same problem as this, I could choose any team to start my career with which takes away a lot of immersion because as a rookie, I wouldn't be able to sign with Hendrick or Joe Gibbs or Penske especially with the lack of Xfinity or Truck means it was shallow and you are essentially an unproven talent and you would not be able to sign with those teams. I choose Kaulig racing and my career begin with a dashboard of the dates of events and that's it. There wasn't anything else to do except being practice for the Daytona 500 so I did while expecting another crash. Thankfully it didn't happen and I was treated to this flyover view of the track, with a TV announcer introducing the event and it is a much-improved presentation from the previous games. The garage was also much improved with you now sitting in the car and your crew chief handing you a tablet where you can change the setup, look at a live leaderboard of the lap times, and go out on track. The lap time screen is fairly basic with names, car number, manufacturer, and current and best lap time but it is welcome and gets the job done. Set up screen is not overly detailed which is expected of a licensed racing game but it is much better than the previous heat games. The overall presentation feels much more realistic and immersive as a Nascar driver compare to the top-down view of the previous games. Heading out on track led me to my first problem, it put me straight onto the track without the pitlane and the transition from autopilot to manual driving was so jarring that I spun on my first try. I went back to the pit and head back out on track this time manage to catch the car. This was even worse in qualifying where the game autopilot and entire lap and since Daytona have a banked front straight, the transition was incredibly fo me to judge how much wheel I should have already turned when I got the control

The driving experience is much improved, clearly, the acquisition of Studio 397 and having the rFactor 2 physics knowledge is a massive help as the car now feels like a 4000lb stock car. They are weighted and I need to wrestle the car to make it turn but the force feedback is still lackluster, I didn't get a feel of the road condition and it wasn't entirely communicative leading to drive based on visual and audio pretty much entirely which made me quite slow on track as I was being more cautious. The physics are definitely a complete step in the right direction but the force feedback and the jarring transition of autopilot to manual driving brought down what could have been a fantastic driving experience.

The race itself was a problem. I wanted to test the caution system and starting from 16th was a great way to do that although I was in the inside line for some reason which is strange. I wanted to test the caution system so I got myself wrecked and spun to the middle of the track and saw the awesome new deformation and damage model as I wipe out half the field but there was no caution, the race stayed green which is absolutely disheartening. Stages also aren't a thing so I didn't caution there either not to mention crashing can still result in cars clipping and being launched into a low orbit. I love the driving physics but the bugs and glitches mean I did not do more than the Daytona 500 before uninstalling which makes me sad because it could have been so good but once again bugs plague this game and it just didn't allow me to have fun.

Do not buy!! The game is the worst Nascar game ever made. And a competitor for the worst racing game ever made. Motorsports games improved the graphics to be above average for a racing title, while pretty much everything else in the game is hot garbage.

Started playing this since the 2nd update on steam, played it for about 4 hours total, overall enjoyed it, yeah there are bugs in it, but i certainly see a lot of potential, it drives already pretty decent, would like a bit more setup options, and triple screen support is a must these days.
To me the audio is great.

I like the whole nascar experience, the pitstop cutscenes are awesome.

One big positive for me is that the devs recognize there are a lot of issues, and already released 2 massive patches for it, with a 3rd one confirmed to be worked on.
They are actually listening to the community, which not all company's do these days.

People need to give them some credit and patience, it is their first attempt, and i advise anyone to report as much bugs as you can on their support page, everyone can benefit from that.

Overall already quite enjoyable, and it has a lot more potential, you just got to look past the obvious bugs.

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.

In its current state, the game is terrible. How come we are not even allwed to set our controls how we want them? The first thing ms games has to do is fix basics like this. Being able to configure controls how we want and a virtual mirror with an option to turn off mirror completely to help performance. Then they need to work on the physics and such. Right now this game lacks very basic functionality even withe patch 2. Not recommended.

I had quite a miserable experience. I didn't have high expectations, but I expected the game to at least work....and it really didn't for me. Constant crashing and tons of bugs....lots of which were very familiar from playing rfactor 2. It mapped my clutch pedal as my throttle and there aren't in game options to change that. Just absolutely ridiculous. I preordered the $96 edition and refunded after about and hour and a half of frustration. The fact that the game was released in this state is mind-blowing. If they ever get the game to a reasonable state I may try it again, since I could barely make it on track when I owned it. I would not recommend this game to anyone currently....give it 6 months.

I will preface this by saying I am not a NASCAR fan. I don't watch the series at all, but the tracks looked interesting and I was really happy that a new dev was throwing their hat into the ring with realistic physics and nice graphics and pre-ordered.

When I first got the game, it opened in windowed mode, without any option to change the graphics settings.
Okay, great - drag window to full screen and now it's in 1024x768.
Go to settings to set up CSL DD. Not an option, but sure, lets do CSW 2.5 compatibility.
Now, I've got CSL Elite LC pedals and they're plugged in direct. Usually have to rebind them... no... rebinding options. Interesting. Okay.
Launch the game, pedals don't work. Alright, maybe I can bind here - oh look, I can change the graphics settings here. Finally set them to a normal resolution and detail.
But... no option to rebind anything.
Okay, so I'll try my gamepad. Exit the pits, hood flies off.
Restart session, hood still gone. Hit the corner and tap something, spin, car is well damaged. Restart, car is still just as damaged. You have to exit the race to get rid of damage.

Long story short, it's unplayable, messy and unfinished. Controller rebinding should be available without issue and that it's overlooked shows me it's just not a credible racing game.

I refunded it within about an hour of install.