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> Results: NASCAR '06: Total Team Control
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Each year EA Sports updates their big sports games with some new features and player rosters. The NASCAR games they produce, officially and exclusively licensed of course, go through the same updates as any of the stick and ball games but there's just not as much you can do with auto racing to fundamentally change how it plays. It's always going to be about holding one trigger to go fast, pulling the other to slow down and turning left and right with the analog stick. With NASCAR '06: Total Team Control, it's clear that the developers were reaching a bit for something to add to make this season's game worthwhile and it doesn't come together well in the end.
The big innovation this year is making the player part of a team. You now have the ability to tell your teammates to block for you, help you draft on the big tracks and even jump in their car at any time to drive the race from their perspective. This is done to emulate the current big team theme in NASCAR where folks like Roush Racing are going out with five cars each week and supposedly helping each other on the speedway. Real race fans know this is a a lot of TV baloney though. When it comes right down to it, the only thing those teammates are doing on the track is making sure they don't wreck someone else from their team. The rest of the time, they're trying to win the race and to heck with the rest of their teammates. Sure, you get some lip service in interviews that they were trying to help the team, but it's nothing like the stuff that appears in this game. Race car drivers want to do one thing every week, win. The controls for this team concept are easy to use. They're located on the right analog stick and you can cycle through selections by just tapping in the four cardinal directions. It doesn't get used much though and you can completely ignore it if you want and still win races just fine. The real innovation comes with the Xbox Communicator. Instead of making team commands with the right analog, you can just say what you want your teammates to do. You can also use the Communicator to tell your pit crew what you want done to the car on a pit stop or ask for lap times from your spotter. On top of that, with the Communicator plugged in, you'll get all your spotter chatter through the earpiece instead of on the TV. Without it, the chatter often drowns out your motor sound which causes a lot of problems when you're trying to gauge your corner speeds. Good drivers can do that by the tone of the engine and having that sound get cut into by a voice is a problem. That makes the new Communicator functions super cool and it's something that would be great to see in other games. The voice recognition isn't perfect, but it's definitely serviceable.  So Tiburon is one for two on new innovations. Unfortunately one feature from past iterations that is retained in this one adds more grief. By bumping other cars, you can make other drivers into rivals. These rivals then try to hit you when you go to pass them on the track. Never mind that you can very easily get turned into them by the crummy AI drivers and their overly optimistic passing. You're still the bad guy. In fact, the game will keep track of your good or bad guy status in Race To The Top mode. You earn or lose fans based on your on-track performance as well as your status with your fellow racers. The biggest problem with this feature is it really messes with the racing. Race car drivers simply don't turn into one another on the track like they do here. Yes, NASCAR has had a lot of well-publicized incidents but it's not the demolition derby that this game makes it out to be. When combined with the unforgiving AI, it really puts a damper on the whole single-player game. There are lots of ways to play and plenty of footage of real NASCAR drivers setting up situational driving modes as well. The entire game is professionally produced but the menus can be a bit overwhelming. There's also a little too much loading time to wait through. Hopping online is one way you'd think you can get away from the AI but that's not the case since most people run races with it turned on. Online drivers also suffer from the same "rubbin' is racin'" mentality of the AI. With ranking tied to on-track performance and no apparent penalties for putting people in the fence, you can expect a lot of disappointment even if you try to race clean. People think hitting others is how it's supposed to work and the way NASCAR sort of promotes that through the TV coverage of the real thing doesn't help either. The cars are pretty easy to control in any mode though and you can dumb it all the way down to where simply holding the trigger and pushing right or left can make you a winner. Even with all the aids turned off, everything from the modifieds to trucks to Busch to Cup are easy to handle. NASCAR '06 Total Team Control is kind of like how NASCAR looks on TV these days. It's really geared toward that audience that's caught up in the Hollywoodization of the racing instead of the nuts and bolts of the real thing. Everything is sort of candy coated and simplified. It also pushes the team aspect so hard that the racing part seems to have been forgotten. If the AI were cleaned up, the silly ally/rival business removed and the team thing made more of a garage issue (how about my teammates helping me with car setup?!), then this whole package would be a lot more tolerable. The way it stands though, it's a game for people with a superficial interest in the sport. It's for those that are only looking for a casual run around the tracks to see the pretty sights of NASCAR and even they are going to be frustrated with the AI when it sends them spinning.  
This is a game that sits better with kids than it does with adults. Kids will enjoy holding down the accelerator and just guiding the car around the tracks. They will still end up getting a little frustrated with the AI, but with all the assists on they can easily get some wins. All of the modes are appealing to younger ages and they're bound to be captivated by the sport's biggest names when taking on the historic challenges.
There's nothing offensive for children and no reason this game can't satisfy any younger child's NASCAR jones. Older kids might be looking for something a little more sophisticated and they can be steered toward EA Sports' NASCAR SimRacing or the much better (and older) NASCAR Racing Season 2003 from the now-defunct Papyrus Racing Games. Both of those options feature more detailed car handling and a lot less of the frivolity that makes NASCAR '06 Total Team Control a game less about real racing and more about the TV broadcast fantasy of the sport. Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: NASCAR '06: Total Team Control |
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