PROJECT CARS 3

“Er… guys? Who replaced my dashboard with Lego?”

- Justin Towell

So. Many. Problems. In fact, the definite end of Project Cars’ pursuit of the hardcore sim market isn’t the main issue. This is intended to be more of a spiritual successor to PS3’s Shift 2: Unleashed, and arguably an action-packed, gamified, semirealistic racer is exactly what the increasingly po-faced genre needs right now. But this isn’t it. This isn’t convincing. At all.

From the impotent collisions with cosmetic-only damage to the uncharacteristically jarring and cheap-looking weather transitions, former high points associated with the series seem downgraded here. Worse, the racing action is unbalanced, both by the upgrades system, which can be cheesed a little, and by the AI, which is downright unfair. Rivals’ cars find inexplicable speed on the straights, discover phantom grip in key corners and sometimes (but infrequently) completely disappear into the distance. But then in the very next race in the same series, you’ll win by seven seconds. No competition is fun for long when it’s not a fair fight.