ARCA Sim Racing simulates ARCA racing (didn’t see that one, did you?). Unlike all of the other simulation racing titles, you have to order a DVD in the mail instead of having a digital download; I got mine pretty quickly (next day it shipped and arrived three days later) so the wait wasn’t totally excruciating. ARCA Sim Racing also requires you to have the DVD in the drive, promoting an antiquated form of copy protection. The game features the usual level of support for control devices; I use an analogue gamepad (stop laughing) and it works just fine. You will need something with variable input levels, so keyboard or joystick driving is out of the question. ARCA Sim Racing lacks driving tutorials of any kind, so good luck learning the game if you haven't played a hardcore simulation before. The game’s difficulty can be changed by adding driving aids and toning down the AI strength. All online servers have all helps turned off (except for auto-clutch) so be prepared before venturing online. Dialing in the correct AI level to be competitive takes trial and error; having an automatically adjusting AI based on performance (a feature of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season I really liked) would remove a lot of the manual labor. ARCA Sim Racing features test sessions (private and public) and race weekends to compete against the AI.
There are no season or career modes; odd, then, that the manual describes the ARCA point system. You can adjust (deep breath) flag rules, fuel usage, tire wear, mechanical failure, race type (timed or laps), race length, starting time (for night races), time scale (for the speed at which dusk appears), number of AI drivers, starting position (fixed, random, or through qualifying), and weather, so creating your ideal conditions is simple enough. ARCA Sim Racing ships with ten tracks which offer good variety: superspeedways, 1.5 mile ovals, short tracks, and even a dirt track. The developers plan to add most (if not all) of the other tracks the series runs on during the year. ARCA Sim Racing also includes a lot of the special rules of the series, which mirrors ones found in NASCAR: the lucky dog, only lead lap cars can pit, et cetera. Caution flags are thrown appropriately; last-lap accidents will not necessarily bring out the yellow if they are behind the main pack, and green-white-checkered finishes are a possibility. ARCA Sim Racing also includes a good number of real ARCA cars (including one non-ARCA car), but also has placeholders to round out the field. During each race, the game also records video you can replay and export into AVI format, although the exporting process takes so long (a two minute clip took three hours to render at a decent resolution) that it’s almost useless. While ARCA Sim Racing lacks a couple of small features, it generally delivers a good amount of content.
MINIMUM
Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
Pentium III or AMD Athlon 800MHz Processor
256MB RAM
2GB Hard Disk Space
Nvidia TNT2, GeForce 1, 2 or 3, ATI Radeon 7000, 7200, 7500 or 8500, or Matrox G450 Video Card
DirectX Compatible Sound Card
DirectX 9
MAXIMUM
Windows 7/Vista (32 or 64 bit)
Intel i7 Quad Core 2.8Ghz or AMD equivalent
3GB System RAM (High)
30 GB Hard dDisk Space
nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX / ATI Radeon HD4850 Video Card
Direct X 9.0 compatible supporting Dolby Digital Live
DirectX 9.0 - DirectX 11
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