Nascar '06: Total Team Control
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8.0
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Electronic Arts’ blitz on the gaming industry has been gaining momentum rapidly, and it isn’t showing any signs of letting up. For seven years, the publisher’s backbone, EA Sports, has been bringing racing fans the chance to hit the track with its NASCAR series. Borrowing cars, drivers, events and settings from the real-life phenomenon which it takes its name from, the NASCAR series has produced a long line of decent games, with a new addition to the series arriving annually. Last year’s NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup was easily the strongest entry in the series to come in years, and with such a hard act to follow, NASCAR 2006: Total Team Control, has some ground to cover.
The idea behind Total Team Control is to keep everything that’s worked in the past for the NASCAR series, and then to add in something new and highly intuitive. As the title would suggest, Total Team Control isn’t just about crossing the finish line at the end of every race as you’d be required to do in just about any other racing game - EA created a strong theme this time around, and that theme is made clear from the very beginning of the game: teamwork. Before you’re allowed to dive into any real gameplay, you’re thrown into the middle of a heated race in which your primary driver has been taken out of commission, forcing you to learn the ropes as you switch to another driver on your team and lead him to victory. This introductory sequence serves as something of a tutorial. The game’s manual, on the other hand, which is about 10 pages (including the credits and legal information), seems like an afterthought. Similar to the "electronic manual" trend of PC games in the late 1990’s, console games seem to be becoming increasingly reliant on in-game tutorials, EA titles foremost among them.
Once you pass the initial race and create your driver using the relatively limited customization options available to you, you’ll be surprised to find a game that offers a wide variety of different challenges. There are tons of different gameplay modes in Total Team Control, and while they all generally offer the same gameplay experience, racing games tend to be pretty straightforward in terms of what you’ll be doing throughout the course of the game. All of the basic gameplay modes are present, including career mode, which will take your driver through a year’s worth of races; season mode, which is an individual season as a real-world driver (you also have the option of playing with a friend); and a number of different challenges round out the package. Also available are two different "quick race" modes. If you want to jump straight into a race, you can choose the race now option, which prompts you to select from some basic settings for a single race. Chase for the Cup mode also lets you race a single event, but also allows you to choose your opponents as well.
Total Team Control’s many modes of play are secondary compared to the racing itself, which is the game’s strength. Chase for the Cup didn’t perfect the racing experience, but it did a very good job handling it nonetheless. EA decided not to reinvent the wheel this time, instead giving players a whole new court to play in addition to the standard racing elements - team play. Racing games of the past - NASCAR included - have taken the "every man for himself" approach to gameplay, requiring the player to drive aggressively and use everything at his or her disposal to topple the opposition. Total Team Control, as the name suggests, is different; now, you’ll be racing as part of a team, bringing the NASCAR series one step closer to the real thing.
Since career mode is the intended focus of gameplay in Total Team Control, teamwork is encouraged from the get-go. Unfortunately, despite all of Total Team Control’s efforts to force you into becoming a team player, it isn’t really necessary. It’s not complicated; issuing team commands is a simple affair, requiring you to simply pull the right thumbstick in the direction of a teammates’ number, and then again to choose a command. Commands range from simple instructions such as “follow” to more complicated commands like “let me pass you”. You also have the ability to switch between cars at any time, initiating a mini-cutscene of sorts that warps you across the track and into the car you’ve selected. This is a very neat and original way to change perspectives, and as a result you may find yourself switching between cars just for the hell of it.
Teamwork can be very helpful at times, but in many cases, especially on the default "rookie" difficulty setting, it isn’t necessary. Once you learn how to deal with the admittedly shaky controls and figure out how to make wide turns without plowing into a wall, you won’t have much trouble winning races on your own. First place may elude you at times, but since no one expects a real-life NASCAR driver to win every single race, Total Team Control doesn’t, either. You can still advance your career by consistently placing in the top 5 or even the top 10, although as you would expect, besting all of your opponents will boost you ahead of the competition much faster than coming in second ever would. Longer races also award a certain sense of accomplishment; since most people don’t want to race 200 laps in one sitting, you can choose a percentage of the event’s total laps to race instead. Choosing longer races presents a greater challenge, since damage to your car will start to take its toll and teamwork may become a necessity, but they’re also likely to bore you long before you reach the final lap.
Total Team Control ranks you against other drivers using a number of different ratings. Your overall rating, or "prestige", increases as you win races, but at a very slow rate. Your villain/hero rating, fan rating, and skill points, on the other hand, are very easy to bring up. EA apparently took the hint from the success of games like Fable and Knights of the Old Republic, and so they decided to implement a morality rating of sorts. Villains accrue points by driving aggressively and hitting other cars, while heroes earn points by simply not doing anything that might be viewed as mean. The morality rating has no real effect on gameplay; both your fan rating - basically a calculation how well all those hats with your number on it are selling at trailer park convenience stores - and your skill rating are controlled by performance on the track. Bumping other vehicles isn’t a good way to make friends, though, and frequent abuse of your rivals may leave you with a car that’s much harder to keep in one piece.
Not everything in Total Team Control is decided on the track, however. Communication with your agent and other racers is done using your cell phone (which, surprisingly enough, doesn’t have a licensed trademark on it, which is more than can be said for anything else in this or any other EA game made recently). You can use your phone to accept or offer challenges from rival drivers, or to schedule publicity matches with famous racers like Jeff Gordon, who seems to be the game’s acknowledged poster-boy.
One common thread in racing games that is missing in Total Team Control is an option to customize your ride; most racing games place a strong emphasis on controlling every aspect of your car’s appearance and performance, but this is not so in Total Team Control. You are given some basic stats to play with and a few other choices, but for the most part, the game handles the mechanical work for you. This will come as a relief to many, but will likely disappoint auto enthusiasts looking to create their NASCAR dream machine.
Neither racing fans nor hardcore gamers will find too much to complain about in Total Team Control’s gameplay, but the latter will definitely find a thing or two to be desired with its overall production values. The game’s graphics are dated, regardless of which platform it’s being played on. Fortunately, you’ll be spending more time looking at the pavement and the cars than any of the game’s environments, which are low in detail and range from mediocre to downright ugly. Certain objects and visuals - like signs and advertisements or the fans in the stadium - show a general lack of effort and wouldn’t be out of place in a PlayStation title. The cars themselves are passable, but the lack of a fleshed-out damage model makes them slightly less appealing than they could be.
Luckily, Total Team Control’s lackluster visuals are counter-balanced by its superb audio. In a running EA tradition, Total Team Control sports a huge collection of tracks from well-known artists. What’s even more impressive is the fact that all of the songs were made exclusively for the game, a trend that is likely to catch on with developers who have the money to make it possible. It’s certainly nothing to complain about in this case, with legendary guitarist Joe Satriani lending his talents to the game, performing about half of the songs included (all of which can be turned on or off). About a half-dozen other artists make themselves heard as well. Their tunes are really the high point of the game’s sound, since Total Team Control is surprisingly restrained in its decibel levels. Cars aren’t accompanied by the sort of overwhelmingly loud sound effects you’d expect to hear, and crashes sound rather unspectacular as well, if at least adequate.
NASCAR 2006: Total Team Control will ultimately boil down to your personal preferences as a gamer. If you aren’t a die-hard NASCAR fan, you’re almost guaranteed to find better racing games out there, but anyone who has a knack for making left-hand turns will be in hog heaven here. The game can be rough at first, and there’s not a lot of variety in the racing itself, but the sheer number of settings and scenarios to play through and the online multiplayer (available only through EA) are enough to compensate for the monotony of the gameplay itself. Quite simply, Total Team Control does what it sets out to do: keep its fans happy for another year.
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8.0