Completing objectives, as well as reaching milestones, will earn bonus XP too, so it’s always flowing.
You earn money as you go, but a lot of it comes from improving your driver level with XP earned from your performance. It takes a while to amass any real fortune, which highlights the long-winded nature of career mode. It doesn’t come cheap, though, and you’ll still need to buy/upgrade vehicles to meet the entry requirements, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless. However, in a bid to remain accessible, it is entirely possible to use your in-game credit to buy access to any locked event or series. Each event has three objectives, and although they’re optional, completing them will help to unlock further events and tiers as you progress. Certain events require specific cars, whether it be a particular model or one from a certain country or time period, which is where the variety comes in. You will need to try new cars throughout the career, though. Or simply buy a new car, building your own garage of vehicles for each class of racing.
You can upgrade it however you choose, from new tyres to a complete racing conversion, even add your own custom livery (again, another first for the series), and take that road car into the GT series.
Much like Slightly Mad Studios’ earlier work on Need for Speed Shift, you’ll start your racing journey in a road car. The career mode is far more varied, and there’s a focus on actually being able to properly upgrade your car for the first time in the Project CARS series. It isn’t just the handling that has had a complete overhaul, either. After switching it off, I could see and feel the car’s back end kicking out, but I can better control it now.
In Project CARS 3, you feel the car rotating into corners more effectively while using it, but sometimes coming with a slight loss of speed. Stability Control, for example, is usually something I personally use as I’ve struggled with oversteer in the past.
Every vehicle feels tameable, and assists are there to help if you’re struggling in any particular aspect of driving. The twitchiness is gone entirely, with steering feeling smooth and precise, whether played with a wheel or controller. Make a mistake and it may still punish you severely, but it is far more accessible than ever before. I won’t pretend that this suddenly makes Project CARS 3 easy. It turned off a number of players, which is probably why the developer decided to overhaul the handling model for the series’ third outing. They weren’t impossible to play, of course, but they were overly twitchy and it was a big problem. The previous games were excellent, but they were designed entirely around steering wheels and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it totally alienated those playing with a controller. Right from the start, Slightly Mad Studios’ new handling model feels great. There are still more games coming, and Project CARS 3 is just the latest in a stellar line-up. 2020 has been terrible in most ways, but racing game fans have had so many rays of light. What a year it has been for racing games.