NASCAR Arcade Rush (Xbox Series X)
When it comes to racing games featuring real cars, there are two main approaches game designers take. One is the sim angle, where the cars try to trend closely to how they behave in real life, and the other is the arcadey route, where physics are looser, boosts are often included, and tracks tend to be more fantastical. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing has fans of all ages, but when NASCAR games are made, they often lean towards the sim angle, meaning the particularly young fans can be put off by long races on realistic racetracks. NASCAR Arcade Rush feels like an effort to appeal to those younger fans looking for some more variety and fantasy in their stock car racing, to the point it even indicates its arcadey angle in the name despite never being released in the arcades. Interestingly enough though, despite there being race courses set in car factories or ones featuring an actual UFO in the sky, they don’t often impact the track’s layout or dangers.
In NASCAR Arcade Rush there are 12 unique race tracks that take inspiration from real raceways featured in NASCAR. Big names like Talladega Superspeedway and the Daytona International Speedway are featured, but they are warped into more complex and winding designs that better fit a heavy focus on frequent turning. Rather than every track appearing to be a regulation raceway, you’ll also have some set in more elaborate locations, the Kansas race track taking place on neon lit city streets while the Watkins Glen International track weaves through the waterfall-heavy national park nearby and adding islands floating in the air to boot. The fantastical settings don’t often interfere with the racing though, giant statues and even that UFO mentioned earlier mere decorations. You do find yourself leaping through a hoop of fire but going through it is no different than a normal jump really, and while you get the impressive visual of racing across a clock face at one point, it too boils down to set dressing. The tracks may not feel so exciting once you realize their theming is usually just to provide fun sights like a train behind a barrier wall that drives alongside you, but thankfully this doesn’t mean the courses are without interesting ideas to make them entertaining. The Kansas course actually features splitting paths, only a few shortcuts really existing elsewhere since off-roading is kept in check fairly often, but every course is able to shine some thanks to how they lay out their boosters.
To succeed in NASCAR Arcade Rush, you’ll need to manage how you handle both the boosts on the track and the one you can activate any time by pressing A. The boost your car can activate isn’t incredibly fast but it is very useful, it great for getting back up to speed if you hit a wall or want to pass another racer but it is not so fast it can lead to a huge leap ahead unless you burn through all the available boost you can carry at a time. There are ways to refill your boost though, and this relates to the boosters found on the track itself. Each track features boosters that will give you an immediate speed boost when you hit them or a consistent increase to your velocity as long as you stay within them, but some will also help to refill your on-board boost energy as well. The boost power they provide is fairly small and is meant to add up over time, but when you’re approaching the finish line, there will always be a route off to the side you can take instead where you can get a full boost refill. You can’t boost while in it and it is slower than the main route, but the pit lane can allow for more freedom in using your boost power or give you an opportunity to make a comeback if you accidentally depleted your reserves too much.
The balance in choosing how you take boosters is where NASCAR Arcade Rush finds its depth, especially since they are placed across the track in ways that require some decision making. The optimal racing line for a track’s shape may have a booster or two along it, but oftentimes if you want to hit one you’ll need to take a turn wide or otherwise take potentially risky deviations for that surge of speed. You might be able to take the plain blue boosters at one point over and over for consistent speed, but a yellow booster that can fill your boost power will also be present and you’ll need to quickly weigh if having that extra energy might be more valuable later than taking the fastest route in the present. There are definitely tracks in NASCAR Arcade Rush that can be tight and tricky and other racers can be especially disruptive if they ram you the right way, the game providing a button for a quick reset if you do need to just be placed back on the track safely but it will be a setback still. Thus, while you’re driving at high speed, measuring out your use of boost energy, picking the boosters you hit, and avoiding other racers, you’re left with an involved racing experience that can be quite the challenge if you play it on the Elite difficulty.
NASCAR Arcade Rush only offers two difficulties, Rookie and Elite feeling a bit like a choice between Easy and Hard, but while the Rookie computer racers aren’t complete pushovers, Elite is definitely the more challenging mode and perhaps avoiding a medium difficulty helped to encourage players valuing smart boost use in the races. There are 9 cups to complete in solo play and it feels just enough that familiar tracks don’t grow too old as they’re remixed to fill these sets of four consecutive races, and they do use a scoring system where you get a good amount of points for placing high out of the 12 competing racers but don’t need to get first every race to win the tournament. Time Attack’s trophies also clearly lean towards rewarding excellent racing with their tight time limits for clearing a track, but if you want casual fun there are Quick Races as well as local and online multiplayer.
NASCAR Arcade Rush also features a level up system that relates purely to cosmetic unlockables. When you first start out, you are given a few stock car models that feel in line with what you’d expect out of modern NASCAR save for them only bearing a single fictional brand as an advertiser. As you play more and earn experience, you’ll gradually unlock new imaginary brands, new car pieces like rims and spoilers, new driving suits for your otherwise faceless racer, and even new car models that include less typical designs like a pick-up truck. The unlock process can feel a bit slow even with the bonus credit from winning races, the cup tournaments even having a penalty-free restart option for individual races that can help you ensure you keep earning the most experience possible from play, but it does feel like it is an effort to motivate play beyond quickly clearing the cups and moving on so it at least gives you something to shoot for beyond those tight time trial trophy requirements afterwards.
THE VERDICT: While definitely meant to appeal to NASCAR’s younger fans with its imaginative backdrops that don’t actually impact the races very often, you’ll find NASCAR Arcade Rush still has some entertaining depth for racing fans of all ages thanks to the smart designs of the tracks. Boost management is a crucial part of success as you need to figure out which boosters to take on the course but how to work in your machine’s own boost power, the winding racetracks requiring driving skill on top of good decision making to clear quickly and ahead of the pack. A few more courses could have kept it going for longer, but NASCAR Arcade Rush has found an effective approach to arcadey stock car racing that makes the sport more fantastical but not too absurd for fans of skill-focused racing.
And so, I give NASCAR Arcade Rush for Xbox Series X…
A GOOD rating. While it is fun to imagine a version of NASCAR Arcade Rush where you do need to worry about being abducted by a giant UFO or have to leap across islands in the sky, developer Team6 Game Studios made the wise decision to instead focus on the substance of the tracks over the set pieces. It is nice to have the thematic context of racing through a car manufacturing plant in Michigan but the true challenge needs to come from the shape of the track and what’s found on it, and the booster system is an easy to understand but layered addition that makes the race about more than winding turns. You can take risks to get more boost power or struggle to drive on tougher parts of the track to hit some boosters despite the risk, and the pit lane is an interesting consideration if you do feel you have the right time to use your boosters figured out each lap and can thus make great use of a full refill. Beyond one glitch where some off-roading sent me through the ground and then immediately respawned me, NASCAR Arcade Rush controls in a clean straightforward way that also feels appropriately reactive to collisions to the point they can upset other racers or punish you for being too sloppy. A younger player can probably play on Rookie and find it challenging without needing to really understand the courses while Elite really emphasizes the importance of smart booster use without being too daunting or demanding. A few more tracks could have kept the game going longer, a full set of 16 likely to help the cups to spread out which courses they use a bit better, but for what it offers, NASCAR Arcade Rush still crafted a solid set of 12 that feel distinct both in appearance and what the course asks of you for success.
NASCAR Arcade Rush is unfortunately saddled with a hefty 50 dollar price tag on digital stores when it can often be found for 20 dollars or less in physical form, and it can be a bit tough to recommend depending on its purchasing price. It does provide well designed tracks for its mechanics, but it’s not offering the imaginative track concepts of a Mario Kart game and boosters aren’t exactly a unique idea despite how well they’re handled here. For NASCAR racing that’s more accessible to players of all ages without being shallow it does do its job well, but since The Game Hoard doesn’t factor in the nebulous world of pricing to its ratings, it will be a matter of whether or not that’s enough compared to stronger racers in both the arcadey and sim mold. Find it for a price agreeable to you though and NASCAR Arcade Rush will fill its role as a fun arcadey NASCAR racer rather well.