Project Cars 2 review

With April’s games with gold on Xbox being revealed, one of those games was Project Cars 2 and I always wanted to give the game a chance after playing the demo a long time ago.

Now to put this game in perspective with anything else I play, this is an ENTIRELY different world compared to your Forzas or your Need for speeds. This is a simulator, not an arcade. If you only play arcade racing games, DO NOT bother with PC2 as this is a hardcore sim that will test your patience learning the game.
Although the game is designed and meant to be played with a steering wheel, it’s quite playable on a controller. It’s still difficult, but defiantly not impossible.

As always, I base my reviews on a certain amount of criteria… But this time, I made a slight adjustment to better fit the review to the game. These are the following criteria that I will judge Project Cars 2 on:
-Available content
-Driving physics and gameplay
-Graphix and sound

And just like always, I can’t review multiplayer since I haven’t dived much into it… and with the current pandemic, servers could be more faulty than usual. It’s best to leave multiplayer out so I can give the fairest review I can give.

Without further delay, let’s start the review with available content for PC2… and trust me, there is A LOT.

So what’s playable in PC2’s singleplayer? Well, the game features (without DLC) 180 cars with multiple liveries. Now that may sound like an inferior number compared to said arcade racing games but the strength of PC2’s car roster is that it’s spread over A LOT of car disciplines and classes. From classic F1 cars to NASCAR, from Road cars to modern LMP’s, from GT3’s to rallycross cars and everything in between.

Having this many cars would be a waste if there was no place to drive them, and PC2 has you covered on that front. The game features over 60 locations with a total of 140 locations… That’s a crazy number for a racing game. Literally every kind of racetrack that you think of is there: ovals, real circuits, even historic and classic tracks like the old layout of Spa and Monza.

Now a quick word on the custom race sandbox. It’s amazing in every single way. You can choose the following parameters :
-Weekend structure (practice, quail and race)
-selected track
-weather forecast
-how many opponents (depending on the track)
-timed or lap based
-single or multiclass (up until a max of 4 different categories)
-ETC…

These 3 things is what makes singleplayer already so great in PC2. You can basically make your dream race or re-create classic scenario’s.

Now what about career mode? Well just like in PC1, you can choose to start at the bottom and work your way from there, or you can start at the top up until a certain tier. The highest 2 tiers are locked until you earn a seat in any of those categories. Here an overview of the roster:

There are also manufacturer events that you unlock once you gain enough affinity with a manufacturer, as well as invitational races that unlock once you earn a seat in them.
Once you selected a category to race in, you must choose a championship and you can choose how long that championship is (short season or full). I choose the Ginetta juniors since karts are difficult to drive.
After choosing a championship, you can now freely choose for what team you want to race. Once you choose, you are stuck with it for the remainder of the season.

So yeah… basically you can do anything in singleplayer with a huge amount of content. The only game that features this kind of singleplayer is Forza Motorsport 7 but that custom race sandbox is kind difficult to correctly setup. PC2 it’s sandbox is more user friendly.

The score for PC2’s content: 10/10

Next, driving physics and gameplay.

I’ll be honest, I can’t review the driving physics of the game as I’m not a hardcore sim racer. Therefore, I will take Viperconcept’s word for this. In his first impressions video about the game, I didn’t see complaints about the handling model so it will get a good score.

Gameplay, on the other hand, is easy enough to discuss. On a controller, the game is decently playable but it’s defiantly not easy. My advice would be to leave traction control on the lowest setting, leave ABS on and keep stability control on. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but for a fun experience in PC2 with a controller, doing this isn’t a bad idea.
Next, to learn the game, go to a simple track with an everyday car. That way, you can get a feel on how the game feels and plays. Once you are confident enough to try something faster, try something faster. Keep working from that principal and soon enough you’ll be able to tackle the fastest cars in the game.

The weather system also makes the gameplay very interesting. You can choose what kind of weather you want and you can select the order of it. For example, you can start in the sun but after 10 minutes, a blizzard rolls in… And you can do this on EVERY SINGLE track in the game.
If it rains, the track changes dramatically as water pools start forming, which increases the risk of aquaplaning… which can and will happen. I already experienced it in the Ginetta Juniors at Silverstone. Once the sun rolls in, the track dries as well. If you are doing a long race, this could make or break your race when timing your tire changes during pit stops.

Score awarded for gameplay and driving physics: 8/10

The last subject will be graphic and sound.

To touch VERY briefly on the subject, the game looks very pretty and the cars sound brilliant… Can’t really say much more than that.

Score awarded: 8/10

Total score awarded: 28/30

Now, the question you probably will ask is if it’s worth your time (and money if you don’t have Xbox live gold membership).
You should remember that this is a simulator. People playing arcade games and that do not have a wheel should consider staying away from any kind of simulator game like PC2 because of the difficulty spike that you encounter. Other than that, this is a good simulator racing game that you could invest way to many hours in with that custom race sandbox. Just remember to give the game some time so you can get used to it and you will be fine.