I have been playing Nascar Heat for quite awhile and have enjoyed it, and I
finally bought N4 out of curiosity a few weeks ago. The installation was not
a problem except that I made the mistake of allowing N4 to install DirectX
8.0, which caused my Thrusmasters pedals to stop working and totally
disabled my Ultraracer joystick, so I had to reinstall Windows 98 to fix
everything since updating my gameport drivers had no effect. Anyways,as long
as a sim has decent physics and good graphics, I am not that picky about
other things if they are not too grossly distracting. My general feeling is
that both of these games are excellent . They are somewhat different in
feel, and yet I like them equally well.
N4 has a nice gritty very mechanical engine sound that I prefer, indeed the
overall feel of the car is very mechanical and cumbersome, and it is a bit
harder to run similar lap times as I can with Nascar Heat, which is a nice
added challenge that I like. However , it is not so much that the physics
model is much more demanding than Nascar heats, since I can run about the
same lap times on the ovals, but on the two roadcourses N4 tracks are much
more demanding. Watkins Glen and Sears Point in N4 have more blind corners
due to more substantial elevation changes than are present in their Nascar
Heat counterparts. I find myself being far more cautious entering turns in
N4 because I cannot see the track margins until the last moment sometimes,
and I have too anticipate the turns before I can see them. In Nascar Heat
the tracks seem flatter and I can easily make corrections if I see that I am
coming into a corner a bit too fast. Consequently, it is easy to get into a
nice smooth rhythm in Nascar heat lap after lap, which allows me to
concentrate a bit more on the A.I. cars and a bit less on my own car, which
is kind of a plus and a minus at the same time. Nascar Heat has far better
graphics in my opinion, they are almost photorealistic in replays, while N4
has graphics that don't look much improved over GPL's but are decent. As far
as one being an arcade racer and the other a sim as I have read partisans of
both games say, I think that they are clearly both sims by my standards with
respect to physics. N4 feels a bit more simlike but it is hardly a huge
difference, it is very subtle. Both games are great, and I intend to play
them both about equally, depending on what flavor of sim I am in the mood
for that evening. If you have the money, I would say buy them both.