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“ Project CARS 2’s new handling model is a tour de force.

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Power in Your Corner

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“ [Project CARS 2 is] part motorsport magic lamp, part Al Gore’s personal climate change nightmare.

Rain or Shine

“ Tackle tracks in the blazing summer sun, or with the landscape blanketed in snow.

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“ The GT3 class is phenomenal, with almost all today’s cars represented, but there’s plenty of retro love, too.

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Go Loud or Go Home

“ As nice as this game looks, though, it honestly sounds even better.

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I enjoyed the first Project CARS, and I liked the way the touring and GT cars felt in particular, but not everyone agreed. A lot of that is due to the fact that the grip admittedly dropped off a cliff the second you broke traction, and it required a fair amount of finessing to hone the handling to a gamepad. Plenty of people rapidly retreated from the original Project CARS for precisely this reason.Regardless of what camp your tent is pitched in – whether you dug it or you didn’t – my message is simple: come back.On a gamepad, though? It’s simply a different game to the first altogether. It’s just so much better. I haven’t even touched any settings; straight out of the box Project CARS 2 feels manageable and planted. It’s a fraction more numb on turn-in compared to the 1:1 directness you get on a wheel but the twitchiness of the first game is just gone. You don’t need a wheel to enjoy this deep, nuanced handling model; there’s a satisfying, challenging, and most of all manageable racing experience to be had here, regardless of your control method.There are plenty of settings you can massage if you wish, though (and what they do to your controller’s response and feel is way more clearly explained than it ever was in the more obtuse series of settings available in the first Project CARS). It seems like part of a wider, more accessible philosophy everywhere, from the less frantic menu layout, to the calm and informative VO from handling consultant and former Top Gear Stig Ben Collins eloquently explaining each and every aspect of the game as you encounter it. Project CARS 2 is a tremendously deep destination for racing diehards but it doesn’t want to outright intimidate people. There’s even a built-in race engineer that will suggest tuning changes based on the feedback you give it. It doesn’t replace the ability to set your car up manually but it is handy for Cole Trickle-types who need a Harry Hogge to do their car whispering for them.The massive career mode is similar to the first game, with a few positive tweaks. It offers more freedom to choose the exact teams you want to race for in each motorsport series (and more of them in general) and there’s a new “Manufacturer Drives” event list, which allows us to score gigs as regular factory drivers for many of the included carmakers. You’ll be locked into any career series you sign up for but I found the Manufacturer Drives and other invitational events break things up quite nicely. While career mode still allows you to start in any discipline, skipping anything you’re not interested in, the most prestigious series are locked until you earn a seat in them, injecting a better sense of purpose to the game’s solo offering. You can’t just go straight to the GT3 Pirelli World Challenge, or directly into a rallycross supercar – you need to prove you’ve got the minerals in a lower category first.It’s easy to lose giant chunks of time in custom races because they’re instant fun. Here you’re basically a cross between the world’s richest automotive aficionado and some kind of weather genie. Ali Baba had them forty thieves, but did he ever have to race in the Dubai desert during a blizzard? This is Project CARS 2 at its wildest and wackiest – part motorsport magic lamp, part Al Gore’s personal climate change nightmare.Jokes aside, the weather options are the cat’s pyjamas. The original has dynamic weather and time of day effects, but not like this. In Project Cars 2 puddles pool in real time as the rain hammers down and shrink when the sun comes out, dissipated by speeding tyres and dried up by high-temp race cars and the warming asphalt. Nothing about Project CARS 2’s tracks feel static; at times they feel like evolving little worlds, especially over long races. F1 2017 absolutely manages this too, but Project CARS 2 achieves it with many more types of racing.Combined with the fantastic car selection there’s just so much game here for a single transaction, especially compared to its closest peers in the PC space. Stuff like iRacing and RaceRoom Racing Experience may be equally admired and accomplished simulations, but there’s no denying the difference in delivery. Project CARS 2 comes with 180+ cars, nine motorsport disciplines, 29 motorsport series, 60 venues, and 130+ living track layouts, straight of the gate. No monthly subscription fees and no need to purchase a bunch of individually-priced, a la carte cars and tracks to get the content you want. I can’t help but see the elegance in that.Developer Slightly Mad Studios has done pretty well with the AI for all these disparate vehicle types and you can dial both their speed and aggression up and down to find the perfect setting to suit your racing skill. I certainly found myself being unloaded from behind on occasion (but typically only if I braked a fraction too early) and some classes I tested were really struggling taking first corners cleanly on certain tracks. Still, for the most part they’re convincing opponents and will give you room if you force the issue. My biggest criticism in this instance is that Project CARS 2 is a bit heavy-handed with penalties when passing clumps of cars struggling around crowded opening corners, demanding you hand back positions for sometimes unclear reasons (although this too can be toggled off if you’d rather police yourself in these instances).Like its predecessor Project CARS 2 is still a great-looking game overall – markedly so on a hefty PC though still quite handsome on console. There have been subtle improvements across the board, including the rain (which is far more authentic this time around, slithering up your windscreen at speed like an army of tiny, transparent worms). There are some hitches, however – on console I’ve had the occasional instance where the game will hiccup and drop an isolated slab of frames, and there are a few loose ends with the VR support on PC, with the default helmet cam triggering a fever dream of barf-inducing double vision. Thankfully this doesn’t happen with the conventional cockpit view, and the VR experience is otherwise terrific (albeit sphincter-scorchingly expensive) once you switch to it.And those exhaust notes? Just listen to that F-Type Jag above – and this is one of the road cars. You’re allowed to drive it past schools and hospitals. The sound of this thing should only be available in opaque plastic bags from under the counter because it is pornographic.