Welcome to my review and thoughts on the game Project Cars. It's the 2nd game I shall be reviewing in 2019 so let's continue this streak of review writing!

Project cars is a racing car simulation game. It features a multitude of different vehicles and car class types ranging from go karts to high spec endurance racing cars. In short it was a game designed around giving a realistic driving simulation and we shall see if it manages to do so.

Graphics
The graphics in Project Cars are actually rather good. Which in this day and age is almost pretty much expected of any racing simulation game. The cars look nice, the tracks that it replicates in the game are similar to the ones in reality, the only thing that lets it down is that the tracks feel barren of life. It seems pretty pointless to me to go through the effort of bringing these tracks into the game if you're not going to make it a proper race day experience. The game also features a fully functioning day and night system and different weather patterns as well that are executed brilliantly and really make the game more diverse and not as bland looking.

Sound
Believe it or not most of the sound in the game is generic engine sounds, after all it is a racing simulation game so there really wasn't that much to be surprised about. The sounds are good and actually make you feel like you're driving a proper car. The only thing that stands out is that sometimes your race engineer will randomly spout a sentence on how the race is going.. Which isn't a bad thing.. But it does get rather repetitive when you hear the same 5-10 voice lines over and over again. 

Addictiveness
For me personally this is just another run of the mill racing game. If you like driving cars around a track there's not much that this game offers that other games of the same genre don't too. I did complete a 24 hour race in real time... So yes I played this game for 24 hours straight, but I wouldn't really put that down to the games quality, more down to my own levels of insanity.  If you like racing games then yes you would easily be able to play this for a decent amount of time... If you don't then you probably bought the wrong game honestly. 

Story
This game really does not have a story to speak of, but there is a career mode of sorts where you compete in events through multiple seasons and if you perform well enough teams will offer you a chance to drive in the more advanced vehicles. As you progress the races also tend to get a lot longer as well. As I said before there's no story element in the game.. But you can see yourself make a slow incline towards the harder and longer races. 

Depth
The game actually isn't that bad in terms of content. It has a decent Career mode which features some famous tracks and the latest cars. It also has a online experience where you can race against others online. They also did community events online like challenges and just ways to mess around with other players.. Sadly they stopped doing them at the end of 2018. So all in all quite a lot for a racing game honestly.

Difficulty
I actually found this game quite difficult, I tend to play most racing games on the same settings (semi realistic but with auto gear changing and little to no assists) and I never really have a problem with them, however in this game if it starts to rain sometimes it makes driving your car pretty much impossible. Also if your car ever starts to swerve most of the time you just have to pray you don't go flying off the track.  Now I'm used to games where the grip is actually very little eg Rally games for example.. But this game to put it politely decides that sometimes that nice race track is actually a horrible ice rink... It can be rather irritating at times. 

Final Thoughts
Project Cars was a decent attempt at a racing simulation game. It's not amazing by any example and it can be rather infuriating at times especially when you get a certain bug I got occasionally where it just wouldn't register you completing a lap.. But when it does work properly and when it doesn't rain it can actually be rather enjoyable. 

Personally I would not recommend this game however. Simply because it's a few years old at this point and its sequel Project Cars 2 improves on this game quite a bit. 

Quite an accurate review, I agree on most of the things you pointed out (specially that lack of spectator attendance, which bugs me a lot since even PSP games attempt to fill the grandstands with people), but I have to focus on the difficulty.

As you yourself have pointed out, though not in a direct manner, this game was made to be overly realistic. This means that track temperature plays a big role, and if you can't get your tires hot enough then you're like driving on ice. It can be irritating, I know, but it also allows you to play with different tyre compounds and strategies, so in a sense it balances out.

Also, this game uses rain quite well, because the accumulation of water can make you spin out just like in real life. Again, maybe too realistic, even more when tyres can wear out at lightning speed and you find yourself with no tyres amidst a thunderstorm. I was stuck in a race like that for a while, trying to complete it decently, but I don't remember if I actually passed it before I switched to the sequel.

Bugs were also quite common. I found a very irritating one where the engine sounded suffocated, and since I normally don't play with music (I use manual gearbox and thus use the engine sound as reference for shifting up) I had to go on for hours hearing a piece of scrapmetal at over 180 mph.

The Career mode was confusing, since you ended up with such an overheated calendar that you almost had to keep a notepad to know what races you already conquered. Also, seasons could end up being very long, north of 20 races, and given the race distances you could spend a very long time with that one season alone.

With the sequel out there, I don't even know why this game was released as a Playstation Hits. Not like the sequel is perfect, but it's much better and with a lot more content and challenges.

EX Palen : Yeah the career mode can get hectic indeed, i pretty much just tried to remember what i had and hadn't done but it can become rather intimidating if you plan to do every race...