Nascar is a difficult game to review for us. The rolling thunder of Nascar racing can only be experienced sitting in the stands rather than playing the game. And there's no substitute for the endurance and strategy involved in a real Nascar race. But EA does a pretty good job of bringing what it can to the Xbox 360, although that's not much.

Basically it's smoke and particle effects that really make the Xbox 360 version of Nascar better than previous games. The graphics are much better, not surprising, because this is the first time it's on a next-gen console. You got better looking cars, more realistic tracks, and much better crash animation. Even the engines sound more primal than previous generations. And yes, the cars do suffer the shiny-effect. But this time, it makes more sense because it's based on real physics. So the track's shiny too depending on the time of the day.

There's a huge roster of cars and players for any fan to select. You'll have to acquire licenses to unlock tracks, but there's no career mode, which kinda sucks. Once you learn how to drive Nascar, you'll just be racing over and over. But that's kinda what Nascar is, so we don't mind. There aren't any Nascar legends, which kinda sucks.

The AI stinks. It's a big cheater that tries to nail you all the time. The cars are like some sort of gang more interested in wrecking you than anything else. And you don't have to be in first for this to happen. It's real easy to lose a race if you're not near the head. You can turn off the crash physics, which helps you a little when they gang up on you, but then it wouldn't be Nascar if you turned off the crash physics. You can tune your car to perfection, although with the gang-style AI, it probably won't help much.

The multiplayer is limited to races that you can join. There's no league gameplay, but there are races for up to eleven players and there's the leaderboards. Plenty of tracks, cars, and racers to pick. We still don't like the fact they left out the alcohol sponsors. But this is EA, not Rockstar, so we're not surprised. Basically, if you're a Nascar gamer, you'll have to buy game. There's no other Nascar game, and it's a pretty good start for the 360 version. But if you're not a Nascar fan, we don't recommend this game. It will entertain you for maybe one race, but you'll get tired of the cheating AI and wonder why you're always going around the same track with different names.