iRacing Arcade Review: Is it ever okay for hardcore sim racers to just have a bit of fun?

Let’s imag­ine the fol­low­ing sit­u­a­tion: You are sit­ting in your high-end rig. The 25 Nm wheel­base is hum­ming qui­et­ly, the load cell ped­als are wait­ing for the per­fect pres­sure point, and you’ve just fin­ished a nerve-wrack­ing 60-minute stint in the IMSA series. You suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed your iRat­ing, your shirt is soaked in sweat, and your brain des­per­ate­ly needs a break. But you don’t real­ly want to step away from the steer­ing wheel com­plete­ly either. Exact­ly for moments like these, there is a niche in our hob­by that is often smiled at but is extreme­ly impor­tant: the arcade rac­er. And now, of all com­pa­nies, the devel­op­er of the undis­put­ed hard­core sim­u­la­tion par excel­lence is step­ping onto this stage. We are talk­ing about iRac­ing Arcade. We at SimUl­ti­mate rubbed our eyes in sur­prise, put our teleme­try tools aside for a moment, and took a very close look at the game through our strict sim rac­ing glass­es. Can a game with roots in uncom­pro­mis­ing motor­sport con­vince as a fun after-work rac­er? The answer is a clear but fas­ci­nat­ing yes and no.

Licens­es, Looks, and Liv­er­ies: Real Motor­sport in Minia­ture For­mat
Let’s not kid our­selves to begin with, the visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of this title has turned out absolute­ly fan­tas­tic. The game uses a col­or­ful, almost cute car­toon look rem­i­nis­cent of toy cars, but it runs but­tery smooth even on mid-range PCs. The real high­light for us motor­sport nerds, how­ev­er, is that iRac­ing has brought its mas­sive licens­ing pow­er to the table. You aren’t blast­ing through made-up fan­ta­sy canyons here, but across extreme­ly well-cap­tured, lov­ing­ly shrunk­en minia­ture ver­sions of real race tracks. A total of four­teen tracks are avail­able, includ­ing high­lights like Mia­mi, Imo­la, Bahrain, or the Tsuku­ba Cir­cuit in Japan, which has even been equipped with a tongue-in-cheek “Fun­lop” tire arch. The fleet with eight vehi­cle class­es is also impres­sive. From the small Fiat 500 to clas­sic tour­ing cars and LMP2 pro­to­types to mod­ern GTPs and For­mu­la cars, every­thing is rep­re­sent­ed.

To give the whole thing a per­son­al touch, there is an sur­pris­ing­ly deep cus­tomiza­tion area. You can com­plete­ly cus­tomize the col­ors of your own hel­met, race suit, and car liv­er­ies. Nat­u­ral­ly, we imme­di­ate­ly built a team in the clas­sic McLaren Papaya design, even if the real­i­ty of For­mu­la 1 is some­times painful for McLaren fans. In career mode, things are tak­en a step fur­ther by build­ing your own cam­pus. You unlock work­shops, R&D depart­ments, and garages, which ini­tial­ly feels like a moti­vat­ing mini-ver­sion of Sim­C­i­ty, even though the grind for in-game cur­ren­cy unfor­tu­nate­ly becomes a bit too steep and tedious lat­er on.

Dri­ving Physics and AI: Between Pure Arcade Fun and Bumper Car Frus­tra­tion
So let’s get into the car and come to the most impor­tant part: the dri­ving physics. For­get brake bias adjust­ments, trail brak­ing nuances, or com­pli­cat­ed MGU‑K man­age­ment. iRac­ing Arcade reduces dri­ving to exact­ly three inputs: steer­ing, throt­tle, and brake. On the one hand, this extreme sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is incred­i­bly refresh­ing. It is the epit­o­me of the “pick-up and play” prin­ci­ple. You jump in and are imme­di­ate­ly at the lim­it. To our pleas­ant sur­prise, the dif­fer­ent vehi­cle class­es actu­al­ly feel fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent, which shows us that deep down in the code, the DNA of a real rac­ing game does slum­ber after all. On the oth­er hand, this sim­plic­i­ty reveals a cer­tain empti­ness after a few hours. Where a Mario Kart keeps us enter­tained with drift mechan­ics, boost chains, or items, iRac­ing Arcade offers no real dri­ving depth that one could mas­ter. You ham­mer down the straights, stay on the rac­ing line, and try to sur­vive the chaos.

And chaos is the right key­word here, because the AI oppo­nents on the track show absolute­ly no mer­cy. The vir­tu­al com­peti­tors dri­ve extreme­ly aggres­sive­ly and will push you off the track with­out hes­i­ta­tion. This would­n’t real­ly be a prob­lem in a fun rac­er if the game did­n’t simul­ta­ne­ous­ly use an extreme­ly harsh penal­ty sys­tem. As soon as you exceed track lim­its, your car is throt­tled down to walk­ing pace for a few sec­onds. This feels extreme­ly frus­trat­ing when you real­ly just want­ed to dri­ve a clean race but were pushed into the grass by the AI. The only work­ing tac­tic is to turn the tables and ram the oppo­nents into the penal­ty zones bumper-car style. This is fun in the short term, but has lit­tle to do with rac­ing.

Where the Sim Rac­er’s Heart Bleeds: Miss­ing Strate­gic Depth
But where the sim rac­er in us tru­ly despairs is the absolute lack of fun­da­men­tal motor­sport ele­ments. The game does sim­u­late tire wear and fuel con­sump­tion, which even­tu­al­ly forces you to make a pit stop, but this stop is pure bore­dom. You dri­ve into the pits, your car stops, and you just watch. There is no choice between dif­fer­ent tire com­pounds, no weath­er strat­e­gy, and no inter­ac­tive mechan­ics to speed up the stop. It is sim­ply wast­ed strate­gic poten­tial.

Even more severe, how­ev­er, are the deci­sions regard­ing the user inter­face. For a game bear­ing the name iRac­ing, it is an almost unfor­giv­able mis­take that there are no delta times what­so­ev­er. No time gaps to the car ahead or the pur­suer are dis­played, and there are no sec­tor times. You are basi­cal­ly dri­ving com­plete­ly blind and have no idea whether you are catch­ing up or los­ing time, which makes strate­gic dri­ving impos­si­ble. To make mat­ters worse, gigan­tic, un-tog­gleable name tags float above the oppo­nents’ cars, com­plete­ly block­ing the view of the apex in tight cor­ners. Things like this leave us scratch­ing our heads at the rig.

Half-Baked Game Modes and a Bumpy Mul­ti­play­er
The game modes also feel some­what half-baked in parts. In “Free Play” mode, for exam­ple, you can dri­ve a real qual­i­fy­ing ses­sion to deter­mine your start­ing posi­tion. How­ev­er, if you start a race in career mode, this option is com­plete­ly miss­ing and you always have to start from the very back to plow your way through the field. The AI dif­fi­cul­ty can be adjust­ed seam­less­ly from 0 to 100 in free play, but in the career, there are only five rough tiers. Often you are stuck exact­ly between two tiers: one is yawn­ing­ly bor­ing, on the next you don’t stand a chance. Last but not least, there is an online mul­ti­play­er, but it is cur­rent­ly lim­it­ed to pri­vate lob­bies via code entry. A pub­lic match­mak­ing sys­tem, to just quick­ly com­pete against a few strangers from all over the world, is com­plete­ly miss­ing.

A Worth­while Pit Stop for In-Between?
Our con­clu­sion at SimUl­ti­mate is there­fore mixed. iRac­ing Arcade is a game that some­how finds itself stuck in the mid­dle. It wants to be an acces­si­ble arcade rac­er, but lacks exact­ly those deep game­play mechan­ics that give these games their long-term appeal. At the same time, it car­ries a big sim rac­ing name on its hood, but ignores basic motor­sport fea­tures like time gaps and qual­i­fy­ing in the main mode.

Should you get it any­way? If you just want to turn your brain off after an exhaust­ing league night and throw cute mini-Porsches around real tracks in a relaxed atmos­phere, this title is a won­der­ful snack for in-between at its ask­ing price. But if you are look­ing for a deep rac­ing game with strat­e­gy and pol­ish, you will quick­ly reach its lim­its here. We sin­cere­ly hope that the devel­op­ers will add a bit more struc­ture, pub­lic match­mak­ing, and above all, damn delta times with upcom­ing patch­es!