For those of you who don’t know, I am a total geek when it comes to sports video games. I absolutely love the day that the newest release comes out. I mark the day on the calendar and celebrate like a 10 year old kid on Christmas every time the day arrives. June 12th was the release day for the newest edition to the EA Sports franchise’s, NASCAR 09.

Let me just start by pointing out that I am one of those guys that has the steering wheel, pedals, and headset. I try to get the most simulated experience I can afford when playing racing games.

NASCAR 08 was a good release because of the additional car setup options. You could tweak everything that an actual NASCAR crew chief would tweak. That being said, if you didn’t have a clue about what to tweak, where and why, the game could leave you extremely frustrated at times. I struggled to find decent setups for hours, and I, like most I’m sure, just really wanted to start kickin’ ass and taking names. “All’s I wanna do is race, daddy.” That’s the first upgrade to NASCAR 09 from last year that I like. The new version gives you multiple options for basic setups that are good enough to win with. Yeah, you can still go in and adjust the spacers on the bump stops and all that. But now you can also select a veteran’s setup package that is fast and challenging and you can just roll with it. You’ll know if you’re not ready for the veteran’s setup pretty darn quickly, but you can always bump it down to the basic rookie setup.

NASCAR 09’s graphics are a much needed step up from 08. They updated all the tracks and added a ton of detail to the cars. The Paint Booth portion of the game takes car design to a level I never imagined. You can now download the wireframe layout of the car and put anything on it. Literally, anything. Photos, text, logos, colors… I’m mean anything. You then upload your design to the www.easportsworld.com website and then grab it from the Paint Booth on your Xbox 360. It’s absolute genius and a total blast to do. Trust me, it’s a huge step in the right direction.

Game play in NASCAR 09 is about the same as 08, but like I stated earlier about the setups, you can be competitive from the start.

The menus and career options are better, but I really don’t need Jeff Gordon walking me through it all. I guess it’s good for the newcomers, but I wish they would have given us the option of having him or not. All they needed was one profile question, “yes or no for Jeff Gordon walk through.” I guess they figured that too many people hated Jeff, and they figured they’d need to force him on you.

All in all, I give the game a 9.25 out of 10. That may change as I dig deeper into the game, but right now I’m really into it. I haven’t tried it online yet, but it has to be better than last year’s mess… it just has to be, right?

Tags: EA Sports, NASCAR, racing, video games