Project Cars 2 Review: Top Expert Reviews, Scores and Gameplay Impressions
Free of the shackles of a traditional annual cycle facing most sports video games, Slightly Mad Studios took its time with the highly anticipated Project Cars 2 and appears to have a superb follow up to the strong first entry in the series.
Friday's release rebuilds certain areas from the ground up in an effort to pursue the most realistic racing simulation on the market and also innovates in areas like online esports to make the game accessible to all.
So far, the results speak for themselves. Over at Metacritic, the game boasts an 88 on PC and 87 on Playstation 4.
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Below, let's look at some of the notable reviews as they continue to roll in as the game starts to hit store shelves.
A racing simulation striving to be the best possible game on the market needs to excel in two areas—graphics and gameplay.
Writing a review at Trusted Reviews, Simon Miller praised Project Cars 2 as not only having the best gameplay on the market, but also the stunning graphics.
"Instead, Project Cars 2 is a very good-looking game, and captures the dynamic atmosphere you want from the genre. You'll always have that sensation you're traveling at breakneck speeds—there's no point hurling along a highway at 200 mph if it feels like you're stuck on the M25—and the in-car views are especially pleasing," Miller wrote.
Quality graphics on a game seem like an easy checkmark to hit these days, though it isn't the case with a game like Project Cars 2. The high-quality graphics here don't create stutters in the gameplay itself and in-car details make each carefully recreated interior feel like the real thing while never losing that special sense of speed.
Miller gave the game a four out of five stars.
Several details about Project Cars 2 jump out right away. There are 60 tracks, all laser scanned and faithfully recreated. There are 180 cars from nearly 40 manufactures in an effort to massage concerns fans had with the first game.
Perhaps most notably, the game permits players to cycle through different disciplines on the fly like a driver would in real life. This shifting of disciplines was a big talking point for PC Gamer's Phil Iwaniuk, who said switching between the different kinds can make Project Cars 2 feel like a different game outright.
"And the rallycross—boy, the rallycross—no space to think about death when you're doing that, let me tell you. This unprecedented level of simulation is, as you'd expect really, Project Cars 2's crown jewel," Iwaniuk wrote.
There are few greater compliments to a racing sim than praising its immersion and the tangible differences between racing different styles.
The addition of switching during career mode or otherwise is a necessary feature for a game wanting to be a sim. Most drivers switch more than a few times over the course of their careers, so the proper implementation here is a big part of the reason Iwaniuk gave the game an 89.
As hinted in the intro, Project Cars 2 takes a page out of the esports books as it looks to become the premier racing game on the market.
This means custom lobbies with seemingly endless options, a Competitive Racing License assigned to each player to help filter said lobbies and esport features like director and broadcaster responsibilities.
This means everything from licenses to the exact weather patterns in a race rest at a player's fingertips when taking the game online with a friend. IGN's Luke Reilly admitted it is easy to lose time in the mode—fast.
"It's a powerful system, allowing you to toggle all of the various series' rules baked into the game, save your favourite race types, and quickly switch between umbrella settings for the game's nine represented race disciplines," Reilly wrote.
In all, there is the big picture: Strong visuals and immersion combine with almost endless options as a solo or online player to help explain the game's repeated high marks from experts.
For Reilly, the game scored a 9.2 out of 10. With yet another strong review under its belt, Project Cars 2 continues to send warning shots to the rest of its genre.
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