Nascar Racing 4

With the right processor and video card, NASCAR Racing 4 can generate visuals that are difficult to distinguish from TV broadcasts. Smoke from burnouts and collisions can hang in the air for minutes, and the new physics model means cars hunker down on their shocks while braking and turning. The tracks are all cracked and pitted, with tire marks and oil trails slowly building up on the standard racing lines. The cars feature immaculate paint jobs that are fully customizable using the included painting tools.

Those shiny cars can quickly lose their luster thanks to the new damage model. Minor bumps and scrapes can take the paint off, while major altercations can leave you with bent wheels, a crumpled hood that obscures your vision, or any of a million other problems. The car's handling changes based on the damage it has suffered, sometimes pulling so violently to the right or left that racing becomes impossible. An added effect of the new physics model is that cars can finally get airborne, making wrecks more realistic than any seen in a NASCAR simulation.

The single-player mode offers computer-controlled opponents that drive realistically, although they can be too aggressive if you're on a line they want. It's much more fun to build some skill in the single-player game and then migrate to online play, where drivers from around the world perpetually challenge one another. NASCAR Racing 4 isn't perfect at this point, but a few patches should correct what minor flaws it has, and it still stands as the best NASCAR simulation ever created. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Completely revamped physics model
• Excellent graphics
• Wonderful online community

• Requires a topnotch computer for best visuals
• Mastering the realistic new physics model can take weeks of practice

Handling your car can be a slight boo-boo, unless you download the patch, where not only will you then exceed in winning some famous races, but become more skilled for multiplayer races.

Just listen to the major BOOM when you smash head on into one of those Nascar cars at 190 m.p.h. We've got some major sound effects!! Many other great sounds, like screeching the tires, tires exploding, you name it.

Also, want to paint your own vehicle? Go to the paintshop. Save a few images from the internet and put them on your car!

If you want, you can operate on your car, tune it any way you want!

That's the reformation of a great Nascar game, people. Bright, sophisticated, brilliant details and graphics and gameplay make this the worthy, leading successor of all the Nascar games out there for the PC.