Others feel like a constant struggle to find an impossible balance between force and finesse to succeed, like you’re trying to hammer in a nail with a Fabergé egg. Some are an absolute dream to push to the limit, or to push past the limit and throw around a corner sideways. To wit, I can easily post clean laps with some cars the game lists as the most difficult to control, yet I sometimes struggle with those the game says are the easiest. There’s no doubt that some vehicles just feel better than others, not necessarily because they’re “easier” but because they’re a better fit for how Slightly Mad has abstracted away the imprecisions of using an analog stick and triggers. If I had to point to any single major shortcoming in this core gameplay, it would be inconsistency in translating the experience onto a controller. Once you put in the effort, the realism goes from daunting to liberating, especially, in my experience, with the new rallycross events, where you essentially need to flip off all the assists if you want to have any hope of success. I tend to be a little Potter Stewart when it comes to handling models in racing sims, but Project Cars 2 passes my test with flying colors. It’s a vastly different beast from the first game, and a much more demanding one, but it works. The simulation, the meat of the experience, the tires-on-track bit, is quite impressive.
Let’s start with the positives, because I do want to make sure I give Slightly Mad credit where it’s due. If the original game was a daft supercar, Project Cars 2 is an awe-inspiring hypercar that might singlehandedly redefine driving if it didn’t burst into flames for no apparent reason every 45 minutes. The metaphor still holds true this time around, only developer Slightly Mad Studios has amped up both halves of the formula. In my review of the first Project Cars, I compared the game to the sort of high-end, aspirational automobile that eschews refinement and cuts corners in pursuit of doing one thing-speed-exceptionally well.