When you think of old fashioned driving, you are probably too young to think of brown leather driving gloves, a varsity jacket that’s two sizes too small and filled with cigarettes, both worn by a man with a thinning white beard and glasses. It is that or a woman with black leather fingerless gloves, a similar jacket with short sleeves, a Cruella de Vil cigarette holder, and a hairdo from the movie Grease. I’m talking about a time when a 50-something Californian man could drive a convertible without his children from some angsty CW dreck saying “Dad, you’re so embarrassing!” The man that can say “I own a Jag,” at an orgy with the smugness only a man of that time could hold.

Those are the driving enthusiasts right there, those are the men that understand what a V8 and V12 happen to be. Well, I don’t need pills to stimulate a woman with only feigned interest in sex, my hair isn’t grayer than that portrait of a married sex life, and I don’t have two kids that I’d watch be hit by a train with glee. My point is, I’m not the typical motoring enthusiast, I’d be hard-pressed to find anything interesting about a car other than driving it fast. Project Cars 3 is a motoring enthusiast’s kind of racing game, a particular age of enthusiasts as well.

I noticed this in the phrasing and options of the tracks. I know, that is not normally the place to start when your game has cars in the title. My point is, I’ve never heard of this track “Sākitto,” which is odd as it is the Romanized spelling of the Japanese word for “Circuit.” As in Suzuka Sākitto (鈴鹿サーキット) from the F1 calendar, though with some strong differences to layout. The same differences can be said of some other tracks. In France, there is this Azure Circuit thing, and it looks oddly familiar to this tax heaven I’m used to driving around called “Monaco?” This is made stranger only by the real classics with their full names.

The reason I’m starting with a bit about the tracks is, I’ve recently done an article and a video on the problem I have with the F1 2020 microtransactions and in-game store. I love that game for what it is, but I feel time would have been better spent releasing out of season tracks, rather than star-spangled suits and pumpkin helmets. I’m not talking about anything stupid, I’m talking about the likes of the Hockenhiemring which was in 2019, the Fuji speedway, Algarve international, Brands Hatch, Kyalami, Donington, Long Beach, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, and many other tracks of years gone by. Only one of those isn’t in Project Cars 3, but it does feature “The Green Hell” or the Nüburgring Nordschleife.

I can bang an old or new car around in a reasonable time on most of the tracks, all but the Nordschleife. I’ve tried getting a reasonable time on that track with just about everything you could think of and more. Jim Clark’s 63′ championship car, a Ferrari, a Ford, a Jag, a Honda, BMW, Aston Martin, a Lambo’, McLaren, Mercedes, Formula E car, a Rimac, and a Renault. I love and hate that place, it is haunting me in my dreams and I can’t get rid of it, it is fabulous. That is what motor racing and driving fast is all about. You can begrudge the game for a lot, and in a moment I will, but there is something undeniable about that thrill captured in a game.

I’ll quickly talk about the cars. I’ve hinted at some of the names, and there is just a lot. Every sporty road car, hypercar, or track car you could think of (providing you’re not an anorak) is there, almost. Though Slightly Mad Studios do offer three off-brand formula racing cars and a big racing truck of their own; your Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes brands are all missing from the Formula racing cars. It is only the Lotus’ of the 60s-80s that you’ll find, with a single brand of Indycar, and one Formula E car with all the team liveries. Otherwise, you’re driving the usual Jesko, Aventador, Mégane, 911, Zonda, F-type, Mustang, FXX K, and DB11.

The thing about that is how unspectacular it all is. One minute you could be driving an Audi TTS Coupé, followed by a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, but they both provide a wobble if you take them out of a corner too quickly. The Testa Rossa will provide a bit more wobble, but it is still controllable without all the assists. You could swing them both around in circles for hours and hardly notice the difference. Now, my only experience with the series previously was one run down the California highway in Project Cars 2, which was not much of an experience to say the very least.

However, there was a large sense of simulation about it, a feeling that it was the pretender to the Gran Turismo crown. Stepping back to look at both experiences, Project Cars 3 is attempting to please those that like fast cars and hard racing, but it has opened up to a newer audience. Some I know are frothing at the mouth, waiting for me to say it is “casual,” which would work if it wasn’t for it being a racing game tooting classic F1 cars and Formula E in your face. It is probably best described as Sim-racer-lite, with the best possible outcomes of that.

The racing isn’t particularly bad or a horrible experience, it is just made more accessible; possibly a little too accessible for some. As I’ve already alluded, you can turn off all the driver aids for just about any car and swing it about. Nothing particularly bad will happen, I’ve done that with the FXX K at Mugello on the pit straight. It looked like I was filming a Fast and Furious movie, but my point is, even the most expensive and high-performance monsters of cars will be somewhat easy to get to grips with. This is coming from a man who can’t turn off traction control F1 2020 without spinning out.

Yes, if you go into a corner too hot, you will understeer into the runoff area. You can still have moments of shouting expletives as you overcook it while racing wheel to wheel, sending yourself into the barrier. However, unlike most sim racers, everything you’d expect with these types of games seems stripped away: Damage dramatically harming performance, pitstops, and cars retiring from the race aren’t present here. I’ve bashed the Spark gen2 Formula E cars into every wall you could imagine, lost entire sections of bodywork, and the handling and speed are about the same.

While we’re talking about driving the more adventurous cars, the career mode seems oddly slow by a self-induced matter. Of course, you will start off slow in hatchbacks and sporty little compacts, building up to your Jags, Aston Martin, and Mercs. It is the leveling up that seems to falter in the heart of attempting to blast through the career, avoiding the custom events entirely. For each level you gain, several pre-level-up stages fart out in-game money that is used to buy cars and upgrades. Though the higher the level you are, the less likely you are to gain enough experience to per race to match or better the time you put in.

Championships are good ways of playing consecutive races and gaining XP, though even that can be rather redundant later on. Taking some in-game currency to buy upgrades might prove useless, especially when you might need 40-50,000 to buy a new car for one event. You gain more currency – as you would expect – when you are a higher level and through the championship, but those early stages do prove to be a bit of a slog. You are better off balancing between driving in the career and having custom events wherever you like with whatever car you’d like.

This brings me to the custom nature of those events, which provide you two choices. Either you race or practice and if you do the latter, you aren’t gaining much experience other than learning the track. Without a pit to enter, or a place to call it quits, you are losing out on all the valuable experience to go out and buy a new car for the career mode. Even if you’re losing a race, it is better to do the whole thing and bank the experience gained from racing. That’s where it is annoying that you have to leave the race and return through a load lengthy time to do it again.

Gaining a wealth of experience, and in turn, the in-game currency is a key finding Project Cars 3 enjoyable.Tthat’s why it is infuriating that it is such a slog to get anywhere after a few hours. Which is nothing to say of the strong and very well pronounced graphical glitches and possible issues. Flickering glitches either by design or coding errors makes Project Cars 3 look rushed in some cases, with one or two instances of some cars loading with a very low-quality model. It has a graphical style that (if done intentionally) does not fit the game’s straight-faced racer persona.

Overall, Project Cars 3 isn’t bad, there are plenty of awful, emotionless, and bland racing games out there, this isn’t one of them. It may have opened up with a curve towards arcade, but it is still fun if you want to play on a plethora of tracks, quick races, and with a selection of hundreds of cars. The problem is, the distinction it is making between the forerunners of the series and itself, leaves it standing to the side rather than in front of what had come before. It is great fun if you want to race on old tracks in old cars once in a while, not so great if you are taking the game seriously throughout.

An Xbox One copy of Project Cars 3 was provided by Bandai Namco for this review.

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Project Cars 3

$59.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Fun burst of racing fun.
• Wide selection of cars and tracks.

Cons

• A slightly over simplified driving system.
• Very noticeable glitches and graphical issues.