TL;DR: A potentially promising sim weighed down by chaotic AI, unfair penalties, inconsistent handling, and last-gen presentation. Fun in certain cars with a wheel, but mediocre overall — and nowhere near the level of Project CARS 2.

There’s a particular kind of dread that settles in your stomach when you’re sitting at the back of a virtual race grid and notice half the cars in front of you are pointed at existentially questionable angles. Mount Panorama is supposed to be intimidating; it’s not supposed to look like a demolition derby being run on a dare. Yet that’s exactly what greeted me the first time I fired up Project Motor Racing, a game that, on paper, should’ve been an instant home run for someone like me. Racing sims are my comfort food. My sanctuary. My “I need to leave reality for a bit and scream at kerbs instead of responsibilities” space.

Instead, Project Motor Racing greeted me with the gaming equivalent of being rear-ended before the traffic light even turns green.

And honestly, that little tableau has turned out to be the most accurate metaphor for the whole experience: the potential is staring you dead in the face, but the execution is facing backwards.

The Ghost of CARS Past

Let’s get this out of the way: Project Motor Racing is very much Project CARS wearing a mustache and hoping nobody notices. Straight4 Studios is Slightly Mad Studios regenerated like a racing-sim Time Lord, and while the logos have changed, the lineage is not subtle. In theory, this should delight me. I enjoyed Project CARS 2 the way some people enjoy comfort binge-watching The Great British Bake Off — wholeheartedly and with snacks.

So when Project Motor Racing positioned itself as the spiritual sequel the franchise never officially got, I settled in with excitement. I wanted to love this game, desperately. I wanted to boot it up on PS5, grab my wheel, and lose entire weekends to the kind of racing you remember years later.

But almost immediately, something felt… off. A little uncanny. Like someone was trying to recreate a beloved recipe from memory, only to forget three ingredients and accidentally replace salt with gravel.

A Career Mode I Wanted to Love (Until I Started Racing)

The opening hours of the career mode actually had me fooled. Choosing from three different starting budgets? Nice. Being able to start my journey in a bargain-bin hatchback or blow every penny I own on a top-class monster car? Great. Multiple career save slots so I can let friends or family dabble without torching my progress? Absolutely chef’s kiss.

For a brief, tantalizing moment, I thought Project Motor Racing might be the scrappy sim we all root for. The one that stands up and says, “Hey, no loot boxes, no subscriptions, no predatory churn — just pure racing, baby.”

But that fantasy evaporated the second I hit the track.

If racing games live or die on their AI, Project Motor Racing needs a medic. Preferably one familiar with blunt-force trauma.

The AI That Thinks You Don’t Exist

I have played my fair share of aggressive racing sims. I adore Super Touring-era chaos. I grew up on V8 Supercars. I love a bit of panel rubbing. But the AI in Project Motor Racing behaves less like competitive opponents and more like a cult of race-line zealots who have taken a vow to ignore my physical presence.

They will:

• drive directly into me mid-corner
• change lanes through my car like they’ve unlocked no-clip mode
• shove me to the gravel as if they’ve identified me as a weak point in the ecosystem

All of this would still be tolerable — barely — if the game made any attempt to tell me where other cars are. But no radar, no proximity indicator, no spotter? In 2025? It’s like sailing a boat with no sonar and hoping the ocean feels merciful today.

And as if that weren’t enough, the game punishes me for the crimes committed against me.

The Penalty System That Hates Joy

Nothing — and I mean nothing — kills the vibe faster than nailing a series of laps, finding your flow, feeling that familiar “oh hey maybe this game has potential” warmth… and then being slapped with a penalty because the AI used your rear bumper as a turn-in marker.

Two seconds. Every time. No nuance. No context.

It doesn’t matter if you were punted off track like you owe the AI money. You touched grass? Two seconds. You got spun? Two seconds. You lost ten places? Here’s two more seconds for daring to rejoin.

And the wildest part? You can cheat your way through the first chicane at the game’s fictional Monza, slow down briefly, and be rewarded with a net gain of fifteen positions and zero moral consequences. If the penalty system has a brain, it’s full of bees.

Handling That’s Half Sublime, Half “Why Do You Hate Me?”

The biggest heartbreak here is that sometimes — sometimes — Project Motor Racing feels amazing. In GT3 cars, on certain tracks, with a wheel, the game snaps into a rhythm that makes you remember why racing sims are magical in the first place. You can feel weight transfers, kerb vibrations, tyre heat cycles — all the nerdery I live for.

But then you climb into a hypercar or prototype and it’s like the physics engine suddenly woke up cranky and decided to reenact a storm at sea. These things dart, twitch, fishtail, shimmy, and lunge like they’re offended by the very idea of driver input. Not exaggerating: some of the prototypes feel like controlling a shopping cart with a grudge.

And on a controller? Forget it. I’ve had more stable experiences trying to eat soup in the back of a moving car.

A Visual Style That Feels More Yesterday Than Today

I wanted Project Motor Racing to wow me visually. I genuinely did. But despite some crisp car models in the menus, everything out on track feels slightly bleached, slightly flat, and very last-gen. Rain looks half-hearted. Damage is more “cosmetic inconvenience” than “you’ve absolutely ruined someone’s Sunday.”

This wouldn’t matter much if the racing itself was phenomenal. But when the racing is already shaky, the visuals not helping makes everything feel more exposed.

A Game That Should Have Been Early Access — But Isn’t

Here’s the frustrating truth: there is something here. Something real. Something promising. The car roster is fantastic. The mod support potential is tantalizing. The bones of a great sim exist beneath the noise. They’re just buried under AI chaos, penalty system absurdity, inconsistent handling, and a general sense that the game should have stayed in the oven for at least another six months.

I want to see this thing grow. I want patches. I want updates. I want the future DLC — especially those Australian Supercars — to shine. And if the modding scene steps up, this sim could genuinely bloom years from now.

But right now? As a single-player racing experience?

It’s just not good enough.