Project Cars is a series that will be no stranger to our racing sim fans reading – and now they have something to be excited about this Summer, with the announcement that Project Cars 3 will be released this Summer.
Loved for its realistic physics and graphics, Project Cars has quickly established itself in a genre that was already pretty chocked full of popular racing games, and the third title from the modern racing sim promises to deliver a little more, and something a little different to fans of the series this time around.
The biggest announcement to come from Project Cars 3 is that in this sequel players will be able to upgrade their cars right from the beginning of the game – a feature that has been sorely missing from the prequels of this game. Sure, we have been able to marginally tinker with a car’s overall performance in Project Cars, but now the developers are promising radical performance customization with upgrade paths that include the likes of engine types, exhausts, suspension, chassis upgrades and so on, so that your car becomes much more personalized to your play style, rather than having to adapt to a set driving style.
This also means that players can expect to take their car from the beginning of the game’s career mode right through to its end if they so choose, by making upgrades and improvements to their vehicle via the in-game progression system – which has been very important to the games developers since the beginning of the game, with a player’s sense of accomplishment and progression integral to their vision of how players will enjoy the game (no Battlefront 2 jokes please).
Speaking of career mode, players can expect to find a brand new career mode in the game as well, where they will have to progress through ten different classes of cars (where they will be earning the different upgrade options as well as XP), which will be raced through all sorts of different events.
Don’t feel like playing a certain type of race or event? Don’t worry, the developers have put a new system into Project Cars 3 that will allow players to skip the levels they don’t enjoy by spending in-game currency – something the developers were very quick to point out is solely in-game currency, and not fed by microtransactions.
It’s not just career mode that players are going to be able to earn XP in either – playing competitive multiplayer will also yield rewards, and even placing in a race will payout, but obviously the higher you place, the more you earn. And, before you ask, yes – you can use your upgraded vehicles in multiplayer, so now you can be sure the car that is perfect for your driving style is ready to use even in competitive arenas.
If you are more interested in the multiplayer aspects of the game rather than the career mode, you will be interested to learn there are now three different ways to enjoy it in Project Cars 3 (how suitable). Quickplay is just that, it will put you in a race based on skill-based matchmaking, whereas the Scheduled Event game mode is a much more formal affair featuring races and events from the developer rather than the quick fix action that quick play offers. And yes, there will be the Custom Lobby as well, which will offer the same kind of player-inspired fun that Project Cars fans love, with customizable tracks, weather, cars, and more so that you can enjoy whatever kind of race you want with your friends online.
The games usability has also been refined as well, with brand new camera shake, motion blur and post-processing effects in place to enhance the experience of Project Cars 3 – all alongside an upgrade of the games AI and a reshuffle of the games controller mapping to make the game just that little bit more enjoyable in single-player mode.
Whether or not these changes are going to totally change the way fans enjoy the way they play Project Cars remains to be seen – but we do know that if the series famous realistic gameplay ties in with all of these different upgrade options that Slightly Mad Studios (the developer of the game) are offering, then we could have a very special racing sim in our hands, scheduled to release in the not too distant future – this Summer.