I'm on season 2 of career mode. I'm using a gamepad because I know better than to try to mess with configuring my wheel for this.
The game is miles better than last years. Physics are one of the biggest improvements. It used to be stupidly easy to spin the car out or get spun out by the AI. The car feels pretty planted on to the ground. If you move the joystick left and right, you won't instantly lose the car. And the "pinball physics" from last year are completely gone.
Graphics are better. Still not great. Needs better anti-aliasing support and softer shadows. But they've overhauled the color profiles this year. It's more colorful and lively. Some of the effects are a little overdone, but they pretty well while you're racing.
You can make your own paint schemes now. It's really basic, nowhere near Forza paintbooth levels. But it's on par with Dirt to Daytona's paintbooth and will only get better as they update it.
Menus are a lot nicer. They use a full motion video of color splashed clips from the 2017 season as the background for the menus. It's a really well done video, better than videos the TV broadcasters produce. There's licensed music now, not very good music but y'know. The spotter sounds are better this year too. Last year, there was this super annoying radio static that would play before every spotter message so it's nice to see that removed. Engine noise is better too, but audio is still low fidelity.
There's a victory lane animation now. Not much but it's nice. The pitcrew and driver uniforms are 100% accurate and the victory lane animation shows that off well.
Still not a super detailed tuning setup. Suppose that's what iRacing is for.
The AI do make some weird ass pit strategies though. Still trying to wrap my head around what they're doing there.
V-sync is broken. But that information is being passed on to MGI as I type this out.
Career mode is the best part though. You start season 1 and you don't even have a truck to race in. You actually have to miss out on the first few races of the season and wait for a backmarker team to offer you a 1 race contract, and they're cars are physically slower than the good cars, they only want you to finish in the top 25. If you keep making teams happy with your one off performances, more teams will offer you rides and you'll eventually work yourself into a full season ride. Your first full season, backmarker teams from the series above you will start offering you one offs too, and that's how you work your way up to the top series. Once your in the top series, you can choose to moonlight in the lower two series for fun, just like Cup champions Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, etc do in real life. You earn money in career mode but I'm not sure you do anything with it.
Honestly I'm so happy that we have all three series with a complete field of cars for the first time ever. This isn't the first time that there's been multiple series, but every previous attempt included more fictional drivers than real. Hell, in the later days of EA, the entire Whelen Modified Series was fictional. And then in 2009, EA didn't even license the car manufacturers.
Here are some screenshots.
