BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Project CARS - PlayStation 4

I was pleasantly surprised by this game! I have been a GT5 and 6 user for years, and recently also bought Drive Club. I usually use a T-300 Thrustmaster wheel with T-500 Pedals as my set up, but the T-300 pedals are ok to use. I confess to also using a controller on occasion in a recliner, which despite some claims by others, can be done well also with this game with the right settings, (mainly with driving sensitivity at 0 and some aids on with a controller). With my wheel, I prefer to drive without assists, (raw) for realism, but turning them on can really help if new at this. There are suggestions on-line as to settings which do help. So, I shall make a few comparisons and state my opinion about Project Cars.This is not a game for everyone. The menu is a bit complicated, you can get confused at first, (it could use a better manual or guide) so it helps to take your time and just play around and you will figure it out. I watched a few you tube videos that also were helpful, such as how to set the level of other drivers in the game, (called A/I). Once you figure it out- you will have a blast! Some complain about the "lack of cars" as compared to GT6. What they don't say is that all 70 or so cars are immediately available and free! This is really important, as my wife spent at least $ 150.00 for my birthday at the PlayStation Network just so I could get to drive a few of the "available nice cars in GT6". They are not there-you must earn "credits" and grind for days even if very good to get the good stuff-it was maddening. One car in GT6 could cost about $50 cash! So, you do not have 1200 cars, (many just duplicates and silly). At least in GT5 you could earn more credits, GT6 seems more interested in profits so I got annoyed though I did enjoy the game overall. In Project cars, you have fantastic cars all up front and free, and all are "Premium" with great cockpit views and working gauges. They look far better than the cars in GT6. Further, the DRIVING PHYSICS are far better in Project Cars, with far better, more realistic handling. In GT6 you do have some road feel, but I find despite others complaining that Project Cars is too hard that when I start to loose control of a car, in Project Cars I can actually recover it easier and react in a more realistic way, IF you catch it quick enough. You FEEL it breaking out and sense what the car is doing overall better than in GT6 or Drive Club. For me, it is almost easier and clearly more realistic as compared to GT6, where you can perhaps get around the track faster by adding silly racing soft tires or making a car artificially lighter, but when you reach the breaking point, you just cannot control it quite the way you can in Project Cars which feels more genuine. It is more reasonable, (I have not done a lot of real racing, but have messed around a bit with cars in the past and know what it should feel like). Project Cars feels very realistic. In GT6, you can build up your cars to the absurd point, such as adding motor staging and tires and make the car "go faster", but it is not realistic. They also end up hyped, overbuilt cars and far from racing regulation. Project cars keeps it real. The handling is FAR better, and for some probably much harder, (such as in the rain), and each car actually feels like a different car, (like in real life). If you go too fast you loose control, no faking it here. I tried it with all assists on for curiosity, and instead of a totally fake feel, it actually applied the brakes and helped keep it on the road in ways that made sense, (you knew it was a cheat-but at least you knew what was going on and it was educational and refreshing, versus sticking to the road for no apparent reason). I have read other reviews of people complaining that they cannot drive well in Project Cars even with assists on. As an experiment, I asked my wife to drive a couple of the cars and she is not a racing game person and was reluctant to even try it. Being the devious husband that I am, I did not tell her I had set the game up on the "real" setting, (cheats off basically) and she had a go at it. She really liked it and drove the cars pretty well, especially for someone who has barely driven such games. Even myself at this point do keep the A/I turned down, (you can adjust it from 0 to 100%, and at 100% - good luck, as it is "full on". I will get there eventually, but it is great you can adjust it so much. The cars inside and out look fantastic also. But perhaps the biggest difference is the SOUND! Oh my, they do sound good, and realistic. I found that on GT6-especially with a recent update, that with the cockpit view it sounded horrible-it got worse on many cars, and in general they sounded somewhat the same or just weak. Project Cars they sound like screaming cars racing down the road, and they each sound unique. Courses: The tracks are great. However, there are I believe 6 coast drives, 3 in California, 3 in France, that are just spectacular. You get to drive and even race on an actual road rather than a track, which is very fun. You can also just casually test out ALL the FREE cars on day 1 on any track or road in the game-no forcing credits and/or levels-this is also great and a welcome change for me. The selection of cars is good, such as Karts all the way up to Formula levels. You will bond with a few for sure. Overall: GT6 is good as to creating "levels" and direct goals of accumulating nice cars-with Project Cars you just get them. The motive/goal of Project Cars is to enjoy driving, you can do a career mode and get a reputation, (I am just starting this and doing the Karts for now while taking breaks and going Solo with the big beasts, such as Formula cars and other beauties). You can also race on-line. I have tried this, and while GT6 may be more organized and clearer as to getting into a match race, it looks bad, the graphics are bad, and the players seem much less mature and ram you off for fun. I have not done much on-line racing with GT6 for this reason. I have only briefly tried with Project Cars, and when I did get on-line, it was rewarding and fun, more professional and better overall. The off-line solo racing has far better other drivers, (A/I)-it is far superior and makes for solo racing fun. So, Drive Club does have very nice weather-but the driving is not very realistic. It's a fun game in it's own right, but I keep coming back to Project Cars for the realism, fantastic driving experience, sounds, the whole driving experience is just great. I also note the weather effects in Project Cars is very good, I don't really care if a few nearly invisible droplets at the outer edge of the windshield might look a tiny bit better in Drive Club if the driving is not good. Drive Club is a fun and somewhat arcade like game, (meaning the handling is not very realistic, GT6 is better on that front. With Project Cars, the effects and overall views, (including multiple in-cockpit views which is a very welcome addition and adjustable moveable menu items inside the car itself) combined with absolutely fantastic handling and sound in my opinion just wipe up the competition on the PS4. I love it and find I am a bit addicted to it to be honest. You are there in this game! Additionally, Project Cars is going to work with Sony's virtual reality headset Project Morpheus, (and for the PC the Oculous Rift) which will probably put it over the moon. I feel my heart pounding just thinking about that. It is true that GT6 will do 3D (not virtual reality-just the glasses) but I find I rarely use it as it is not that well tuned in each car and it gets a bit fatiguing- (though it is neat briefly). I still think GT6 was/is a great game despite the broken promises it made, but Project Cars leaves it in the dust as to about everything, such as the look of the game, the sound of the cars, the visuals and cockpit views, and most importantly perhaps the overall authenticity of the driving experience. Yes, I have experienced a glitch here and there, some entertaining, it is being updated like nearly all games regularly, but it is about perfect and is wonderful. If you want an arcade game- skip this one, but if you want to race- BUY THIS GAME NOW!

First copy shipped from Amazon was an empty case, no disc. It wasn't shrink wrapped, no sticker, nothing. I suspect this one was a "display case" for people working in the warehouse and it got sent to me by accident, but it would be interesting to hear if this happened to anyone else. I contacted Amazon, and they shipped a replacement with free 1 day delivery, so in the end I was satisfied.Unlike Gran Turismo and many other racing games, there's no "grinding" to unlock cars or mods, which makes the single player career mode refreshingly fun right from the start. It features a number of racing disciplines, including karts, GT cars, touring cars, road cars, LMP prototypes, and a few open wheel variants similar to Formula 1, you can start your career where ever you like, however there are special achievements for starting at the beginning and working your way up. Online multiplayer is a blast if you race with the right people, but can be frustrating when lower skilled drivers bump and ram, but that can happen in any public online racing games. Online leaderboards/time trials are extremely poorly done, and in my opinion one of the biggest drawbacks of the game. Best lap times are grouped by car class, so you can really only race one or two cars in any given class if you want to be competitive... and that also means you only get one entry per class at each track. I can't set a fast lap in my favorite road car *AND* the fastest road car, so I have to pick which I'd rather have appear on the board. Car selection is not that large compared to Gran Turismo, however there is enough variety in most classes that it doesn't matter too much, and all cars are unique in their handling so you won't feel like you have 20 different models of the same thing in your garage. Some of the most popular car manufacturers are left out, particularly Japanese and Italian companies seem to have a very small representation. Vehicles can't be modded, but can be tuned... tweaking all sorts of settings including (just to name a few) tire pressures at each corner, brake balance and pressure, roll bar stiffness, suspension height and damping, and much more. The cars also can't be painted custom colors, but they each have a few pre-made "liveries" to allow for some visual variety in races. Physics are amazing, but extremely challenging when compared to some other racing games. The graphics are spectacular, a night race in a thunderstorm on a remote poorly lit track is particularly breathtaking, and watching the sunrise near the end of a 24 hour Le Mans run is equally remarkable. Some areas of the game are not done, and there are a few bugs that can be very frustrating. Normally I would drop my rating for it, but in this case I've seen the game's development team being extremely active with the community in finding and resolving the bugs, so I am confident that this game will quickly be improving.To get the best experience, I would *HIGHLY* recommend playing this game with a steering wheel and pedals. It brings the immersion to a whole new level. Force feedback isn't the best by default, but it's extremely customizable, to a level I've never seen before. The large number of FFB settings can seem daunting, but the community has an excellent collection of "alternate" feedback settings that really clean it up and make it easy to feel the road and the car reacting to it. Unfortunately, entering these settings is unique per car (and even per track if you don't do it ahead of time from your garage), which can become a long and tedious process, but in the end is worth every minute spent dialing in the numbers. I recommend starting with just a few cars settings while you figure out which "set" of FFB settings you like most.Overall, this is the most fun I've had playing a racing game, and I've played just about all of them.

Being a Gran Turismo fan, I've been severely disappointed with Forza and Need for Speed titles. Project CARS, however, shows serious promise, but it needs to fix a few things in my opinion.The Bad:- Controlling the cars: I know this game is meant to be played with a wheel, but so is GT and THAT game plays fine with a controller. Not this one, though. I've spent quite a bit of time with the settings, but still the cars are difficult to control, even after playing for some time. Steering is jerky and braking seems ineffective. To me the cars seem too light.- No tire sound: This may seem trivial, but it's one of my biggest complaints. Hearing your tires squeal as you enter a turn too fast is not only cool, but actually gives you some driver input. And yes, I admit, I like hearing the burnout on take-off.- Not enough cars: GT6 actually has too many ( a lot of slugs that don't need to be in a racing game). But this game is seriously lacking. Almost no American cars, few 'street' or non-race cars (which I prefer), and I'm sure the Japanese car fans are also disappointed. I would love to see them include some American muscle cars, both vintage and late model.- Replays are sometimes buggy, especially regarding the sound. Replays are not quite as good as in GT; for instance, you can only view the replay from your car's perspective, where in GT you can view it from any car, which sometimes can be interesting.The Good:- LOTS of tracks, with beautiful graphics. The 'Azure Coast' and 'California Highway' tracks are great. Has many of the same 'real world' tracks as in GT, but with more variations.- Car 'action': Realistic suspension movement, car sway, etc. Crashes are way more realistic than GT, especially rollovers. In GT, if you roll your car you seem to get into a vortex that stands your car on end and spins it like a top until you want to puke. I just finished a race in Project Cars that involved my car rolling over; just ONE roll, back on the tires with the car rocking on it's suspension. And it looked totally real in the replay. And speaking of crashing, car damage is very realistic; with broken parts eventually falling off. (although, during replays, those parts sometime magically re-appear on the car; a glitch that they'll probably fix.)- Great sound (they just need to add the tire squeal)- Visual 'extras', like leaves flying in the car's wake, dirt clouds being kicked up when going off track or side-swiping an object, all kinds of natural lighting adjustments.- A lot of tweaking available for each car, although a lot different than in GT6. No engine upgrades or add-ons, just a lot of adjustments to suspension, tires, etc. You can change the car's color, but not wheels as in GT.- More options for setting up a race; for instance, depending on the track, you can have up to 30+ cars on the road, which makes for some interesting action. Also, you can dial up the AI cars aggressiveness more than in GT6, which only has 3 settings, 2 of which are useless. You can also decide if you want the other cars to be the exact same car as yours, or in the same class, or of different classes.In conclusion, Project CARS could beat GT (and get a 5 star rating from me) if they added more cars (some Chevys, please) and fixed the twitchy-ness when using a controller. And add tire sound! (make it mutable for people who don't want it) But I have to admit, this game is so good that I'm seriously considering getting a wheel.

After playing this game for a number of hours now, I must say I'm really enjoying it.Contrary to the reports of some other reviewers here, I want to emphasize that you do NOT have to use a steering wheel to control the cars!!! I'm doing just fine with the standard PS4 controller, thank you very much. A little throttle feathering around corners does the job.I have also found that some of the cars seem to have problems with oversteer, so I have adjusted the brake balance on those vehicles according to instructions on the "car setup" page, and that seems to take care of the problem.As you play the career mode, you encounter a surprising variety of vehicles, tracks, and weather conditions. You start out with carts and move on from there.This presents a good deal of challenge, as you find yourself winning in a high-performing car on a sunny day, and then have to struggle to drive some lumpy little spud in pouring rain in the next event.You have quite a number of different views from which to select as you drive; I prefer the "behind the car" view, which enables you to see the upcoming turns from a higher vantage point than when you're behind the wheel inside the car.I also appreciate guiding lines showing your optimum driving path and changing color from green to yellow to red to warn you to slow down on sharp curves. You can turn these lines off if you're a purist, but I find them helpful when mastering virtual roads and tracks.There is also a "weekend" mode that allows you to drive any of the cars in the game on any of the open roads or tracks. As someone who for many years had a Merkur Xr4Ti (not very reliable, but it handled beautifully), I am thrilled to drive the famous Ford Sierra Cosworth -- the souped-up racing version of the Xr4. Yes, I would know that bi-wing spoiler anywhere!I haven't tried the online mode of this game -- it's no fun for a senior like me getting slaughtered by teenage hotshots who have nothing to do but play video games! But if you're one of those young warriors, have at it...To summarize, this is a great Gran Turismo-like racing simulator, and at the current price of around $20, it provides HUGE bang for your bucks. Highly recommended -- and NO, you don't need a steering wheel!

First off, I would like to start with my unboxing video which you can see at the link below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdxiFGvwOgERacing games are my favorite genre of video games, and I was excited to finally play this game after waiting months and months for it to release. I enjoy arcade style and simulation style games, but I was happy to have pretty much anything for my PS4 at this point. As excited as I was, the game was very surprising to me. It has a Gran Turismo feel with the menus, although it lacks the traditional "ownership" aspects, which is important as this is a different kind of racer. If you are used to Gran Turismo, then this game will still be fairly difficult for you. I consider myself an expert driver, because in other games, I enjoy using manual with few to no assists, but I have not been able to do that with this game.At some points, I question whether this addiction to realism actually makes a great game. Sure it's pretty and there are tire physics and so on, but I didn't find myself having as much fun as other games. Strictly speaking gameplay wise, this game is amazing, and it's one of the most realistic games I've ever played. The graphics are purely stunning, and the cars move in ways that make it very challenging. The game also has plenty of assists for you to use, such as simulating the rest of a long race if you get tired. This game gets the highest honors in those regards.But, I must take a star off because the narrative is boring, and almost non-existent, despite the existence of a career mode. If I wanted to mindlessly race in circles, I would just do quick races, but I didn't feel like I was working toward anything in the career mode. Racing games typically have me wanting more, but this one it was too easy for me to put down.As for my recommendation, I do not recommend this to anyone who has not played anything besides Forza, Need For Speed, or other arcade racers. You will find this boring, slow, hyper-responsive, and jarring. Simulation racing fans should definitely pick this up, especially if you just enjoy going fast in some awesome cars.