The Create a Car feature ALMOST saves this one
It seems that EA can never get it right with their games, and probably never will as long as they hold the exclusive license to America's top motorsport (thankfully, they no longer have their greedy mitts on the F1 license, now posessed by Codemasters). This year, they seemed to be too lazy...or too tight wadded to acquire car licenses...so they added the create a car feature, making the players make the cars the way they should've been made in the first place.

Now...this feature is good and all...but its about the only good thing in the entire game. Car handling is still far from perfected, even with the inclusion of two different racing styles. The AI are still dumb as rocks, and will give you little to no room, and are almost impossible to work with at tracks where working together is a necessity (i.e. drafting at Daytona...which is a joke in this years game).

Most of the bugs online have been fixed, but EA decided rather than hosting all the custom paintschemes so that all playes could see each others cars, you must be a friend of a player to see his/her customized ride. Major bummer.

My suggestion: if you LOVE NASCAR, and absolutely positively need the most up to date edition, go for it. However, if you are just looking for a fun racing game, I suggest you look elsewhere (Grid and Burnout, while they are arcade racers, are a heck of a lot of fun online).

No more family fun
I made a mistake. Having owned an earlier game in EA's NASCAR series for the PS2, I bought NASCAR 09 for my son's new Xbox360 without looking at the box and learning that it's a 1-Player game.

You see, we used to have a lot of fun racing against each other. But, in this iteration, that's not possible. You can race strangers on-line, but you can't race a member of your own family in the living room?

For what it is, it's okay. The graphics are much prettier than I'm used to, and the driving is more difficult than in the older version. I like the new view that puts you in the cockpit of the car looking at the driver's hands on the steering wheel - the most realistic of the views but hard to use.

It's a decent simulation, but I miss a two-player mode.

playstation 3 nascar 09 is better.
wow i read all these bad reviews for the xbox360 nascar 09 and i am surprised that EA actually put a game out thats better on the playstation 3.don't get me wrong the ps3 game has problems to like some online freezing problems.but the game itself has no problems whatsoever.sounds looks like EA needs to put out a update for the xbox360 game.

Fun but very bugy
The game play is much improved over last year. The 09 version has many more driver assists, so a new player can start racing without continuously crashing into walls and other cars. So this year I'm actually enjoying playing the game. I like the racing in close quarters with other cars, which you don't get to do in most other racing games.

I'm only giving 3 stars because the game has a ridiculous amount of bugs in the career mode. It will say that I haven't met my sponser's goals, and then immediately it will say that I have. I'm continouosly having to go to the paint shop to redo my cars because the game doesn't think I have the right one. It says I can load a car from disk in the paint shop, but no. There are save options, but no load. The game will often lose my paint selection, giving me the awesome gray on gray look. Again forcing me to go back to the paint shop.

Nice attempt EA. Maybe next time you should try doing some testing though.

Nascar Fan
This game will give you an all new respect for the real drivers. This is not a game for the average driver. Even the beginner setting are to much for me. I have both the 08 and 09 games and I do like the lay out of the game and the caracteristics of the 08 game just a little better.