NASCAR 2005: Chase For The Cup

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• Win over the crowd -- the choices you make will define your driver's popularity, which affects your merchandise sales(and your budget)
• Earn Skill Points and enhance your racer abilities through accomplishments in multiple game modes
• Try your hand at the NASCAR Busch Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and Featherlite Modified Series
• Settle bitter rivalries with other NASCAR drivers, with street races in American muscle cars
• Your driver can be a hero or villain - the Intimidator Button lets you pull off moves that lead to post-race confrontations

Product Details

• ASIN: B0002ILSIS
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,197 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup challenges you to battle through a groundbreaking new story mode to achieve NASCAR stardom.

Develop your racing skills and intimidate your rivals on the track with all-new controls. Off the track, force the action with post-race confrontations, and settle disputes with NASCAR stars by racing Americas top production cars through city streets.

Features

• Introducing Fight to the Top Mode - Become a superstar owner or driver and decide where and how you want to race. Develop essential racing skills, increase fan support, and compete in three new racing series as you become the driver that top NASCAR teams are looking for.
• All-New Chase for the Cup - The first and only game to feature the new NASCAR point system. This 10-race championship shootout is available in both Fight to the Top mode as well as its own stand-alone game mode.
• Next Generation Grudges and Alliances - Make your driver a hero or a villain. Force mistakes with the new Intimidation Button or flatten competitors' tires by rubbing fenders (as you risk flattening your own). Rivalries even spill off the track with post-race confrontations.
• Three New Racing Series - NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup expands its racing field with the addition of the NASCAR Busch Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and Featherlite Modified Series. Opportunities present themselves on all levels-you're a few wins away from hittin' the main show: the NEXTEL Cup Series.
• American Muscle Production Cars - Settle bitter rivalries with other NASCAR drivers through the streets in production cars. The top American performance cars, including the Ford GT, Dodge Viper, and Corvette Z06, provide a high-speed, no-holds-barred style of racing far away from the watchful eyes of NASCAR officials.
• Win the Crowd - Fans play an important role in your success. Make decisions that will define your drivers popularity, like whether to participate in the Autograph Session mini-game. Sales of customizable merchandise including Bobbleheads, T-shirts, and Die Cast Cars depend on your actions both on and off the track. Remember, you don't have to be a nice guy to become a fan favorite.
• Earn Skill Points - Connect your skills and accomplishments through various game modes with the new Skill Points reward system. Accumulate Skill Points each time you pass, block, draft, recover, or make a pit stop. You can also improve ratings by passing SpeedZone and Lightning Challenges, or turn in Skill Points to unlock in-game secrets.
• Create-A-Driver - Put yourself inside the world of NASCAR - literally. Customize your body and racing gear or create your own team colors and designs.
• All-New Xbox Live - Chase for the Cup now runs online on the Xbox with up to four simultaneous live racers trading paint against a full field of 43 cars on a single track. With all the different racing series available, along with improved anti-cheating measures, your online racing experience just reached a whole new level.

Product Description

NASCAR 2005: Chase For The Cup lets you feel the action, on and off the track. Develop your racing skills and intimidate your rivals -- then watch as fans react to the drama. Become a superstar owner or driver in Fight To The Top Mode, and become the top driver that NASCAR teams are looking for. Chase For The Cup is a thrilling 10-race championship shootout involving the new NASCAR point system, for all-new chances to show the owners and sponsors what you can do. New Create-A-Driver puts you inside the world of NASCAR -- create your own team colors and designs, customize your body and racing gear Go up against 4 different racers at once, for a new level of online racing

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could've Been Better, September 27, 2004

By 

Team Noodles (Chisholm, MN United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NASCAR 2005: Chase For The Cup (Video Game)

This year's game brought some really interesting stuff to the table. You start the game by racing against Ryan Newman in a street race. You, then, create your own profile. The game includes the Alliance/Rivalry feature from last year's game. You can build alliances with drivers by sharing your draft with them, and in THIS year's game, you can take it one step further with the intimidator feature. Using this feature, you can now get right up behind another driver, and in many cases, cause them to lose control of their car.

The way Thunder Plates are unlocked is great. In previous games, Thunder Plates were unlocked (at random) by simply completing Lightning Challenges. This year, you can actually BUY Thunder Plates. Thunder Plates are purchased with skill points. You earn skill points by accomplishing certain tasks (such as making 5 allies in one race or making 5 rivals in one race), or by playing Lightning Challenges. You can also earn skill points by simply racing. You get 5 points for every second you lead the race, 7 for every second you're sharing your draft with another driver, 7 when you're intimidating another driver, 12 for every time you make a clean pass, and even more if you start out farther back in the pack and make it into the top 5 and, of course, 1st place.

The game also includes last year's Speedzone Challenge. This mode is great for brushing up on your various skills. The different challenges include drafting, passing, blocking, and more.

In addition to Nextel Cup racing, you will find the Craftsman Truck series, Busch series (referred to as "NASCAR National series"), and even the Modified series. The game also includes production cars and allows for some street racing.

There are also fantasy road courses in the game from last year. The Docks, Devil's Canyon, and New York are just a few.

The controls for NASCAR 2005 are also a lot smoother and more forgiving. It almost seemed as though in last year's game, one would find themselves very dependent on driving assists. In this year's game, making mistakes won't cost you the race.

Graphically, 2005 is overall impressive. The framerate is, however, more varied. Going down the back stretch, you will find the framerate is very solid, and very smooth (even when the rear view mirror is on). Going into the turns and a few other random spots, you will find the framerate drops drastically. Also, reviving one feature from Thunder 2002, when you start a night race, you will see the sun setting in an orange sky. By the end of the race, even on 8%, you will see the sky is totally dark.

Now, the bad news and the reason I give the game 4 stars instead of 5. If I could, I would actually give this game 3.5 stars. Anyway, NASCAR 2005 is missing quite a few drivers. Even in the Nextel series, Jeremy Mayfield and Ken Schrader are missing! Pocono Raceway is missing! As mentioned by someone else, there are several Busch and Craftsman drivers missing. That truly takes something away from the game. Another thing is the ability to create a new car and create a name for each driver of each created car. Whatever info you use to create your profile in Fight to the Top mode will be the info applied to every car you create.

Overall, this year's game isn't bad. With all the extra modes, the game's playability will stay longer. However, hardcore NASCAR fans will be disappointed to see drivers and tracks missing.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars EA on right track....next year should be better, September 14, 2004

By 

Keithjb128 "KJ" (Florida) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NASCAR 2005: Chase For The Cup (Video Game)

Since nobody has come out and gotten a real in depth review of this game i figured i would....First off i couldn't wait till this game came out....I waited and waited and when it finally came out i was the first one in line to buy it when Target opened thursday morning...I brought the game home and discovered a few things as follows (bad stuff first):

First, the field may have expanded but there is a noticable lack of licensed nascar drivers that turn the game sour from the start. Where's Jeremy Mayfield? or Kenny Schrader? Those where the first that i noticed. But in the Busch series there are a slew of missing drivers (Jason Leffler being the most notciable) and as well in the trucks (Ted Musgrave?)

Second, EA hit it right on with the fight to the top mode....But there are plenty of faults i could see corrected soon(hopefully) It seems overwhelming to have 4 series and having to run all 4 of them in one year...It could take ages just to finish one season! It took me a week to finish one and i'm currently halfway thru the second....Gameplay in this mode seems too hard and could easily scare the beginning nascar fan away. I've played nascar games since as long as i can remember and this one just seems too hard. Car setups are way to touchy (take out a pound of wedge and your spinning out by the next corner)

Third, EA again is on the right track, but kind of missed it here, with the new Chase to the NEXTEL Cup mode. This mode is plenty of fun but theres a few faults here too. One being theres no two player here, c'mon EA this would be the most popular mode if you hade a two player feature added on! And the other is that this is the only mode where the new point system is in place. I've reached race 27 in fight to the top in nextel cup but kenseth still has a 217 point lead. This bothers me alot because if you're going to have a realistic game, you need the system currently in play.

Fourth, you can only have one season, one fight to the top, and one chase to the cup mode active at one time to each profile. I think this is a HUGE step in the wrong direction on EA's part because in games past i like to have quite a few seasons or careers at a time (one for me, one for me and my friends, one for my friends, and maybe one to sim everything or wreck everyone and see who comes out on top of the caos.) but i cant do that this year unless i want to erase my already in progress season (found this out the hard way)

Thats about it for the bad...theres some more bad but that's just the top stuff that takes from gameplay. Now here's the good:

First, fight to the top, this is where EA has struck gold. Although it has it's faults, it is basically all i've played since i got this game. EA maybe could just make the autograph mini games either easier and less frequent or an option you can turn on or off throughout the game.

Second, the addition of production cars, modifieds, trucks, and busch cars are all great things for this franchise. Although i would like to see more production cars and more places to race them, it's a good start and a good change. All the other nascar series added to the game also are great additions to this instalment.

Third, Dodge Speed Zone is amazingly fun this year, so are the Lightning Challenges (which kind of went off track last year) and i love the addition of Skill Points that you earn for doing certain tasks during the race or doing certain tasks outside of the racecar, and then being able to spend them on Thunder Plates. Great addition that could make replay value quite high.

The final thing is the Grudges and Alliances are very well developed this year...This time drivers wont slam you at break neck speeds, instead, they will bump you and rub you but not too badly (just enough to knock off 10-20 skill points) and the new Intimidator button is just what we've all been waiting for because now if a driver is holding you up a bit, or seems to be jsut as fast as you, you can "intimidate" him and clear the way, be warned though, you can't do this without raising the Rival rating to this driver.

That about sums it up....Kind of a longer review than i expected but hopefully it helps...I recomend renting this game before buying it and even waiting till the price drops to at least 30 before picking up this game. 3/5 stars overall...EA is on the right track with this game....but hopefully next years version will smooth out all the rough edges.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong game, good replayability, only minor flaws, January 3, 2005

By 

Jakeymon (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: NASCAR 2005: Chase For The Cup (Video Game)

Unless you count GTA3 and GTA:VC, this is my first racing game since getting Donald Hill's "Ferrari Grand Prix" for the Mac in the mid-1980's. I don't follow Nascar and I don't know much about other racing circuits, either. So this review is from that perspective.

This is a solid game. I've been playing it on and off for a few months now in Fight to the Top mode and have really enjoyed every aspect of what I've encountered. I think the AI is pretty impressive, particularly in the rival/ally bits. I don't have any problem with the controls just using the xbox controller, though I'm not playing this game for more than 2 hours at a time. I'm sure that a wheel would be handy if you're going longer than that (but since this the only racing game I've got I don't see a point in getting one myself).

I see myself playing this game for a good long time. I like the racing and team management aspects of the game, and the unlockables aren't the typical b.s. you might see in other games. I actually think the graphics are pretty good and I don't mind not having a cockpit view at all (since I think the view that's offered makes up for the lack of peripheral vision you'd have in a cockpit view).

Some of the interfaces are a little clunky here and there, and I'd actually like to be able to get a little deeper into rivalries (like going to other drivers pits and starting fistfights, since they seem to try that with my driver quite a bit) but I must say that for a game that's not hit-you-over-the-head sweet (like HALO 2 or GTA:VC or whatever) this one really sucks you in and keeps you there for the long haul.