"Improvement" is a word that can be loosely associated with NASCAR 07 for PlayStation2 and Xbox. But while there are things that make it marginally better then NASCAR 06, none of it is a particularly big deal.

The sheer amount of things to do in NASCAR 07 is pretty amazing, mind you. From simple challenges to racing a full season - and not with just with the Nextel Cup cars, but also the Craftsman's Truck and the Busch series cars (and trucks) - but even still it gets repetitive pretty fast. It's variety, sure, but it's as tedious as turning left until your face turns blue, after which, more left.

Otherwise, NASCAR 07 is very much like NASCAR 06, so much so that if you already own the latter, there's not much reason to buy this latest version. (07 is the only version on PSP, however... and it's a bit better, too.)

The big "new and or improved" addition to 07 is the Absolute Adrenaline feature that adds a speed-blur effect, an attempt to convey a palpable sense of white-knuckle velocity, but instead comes off like a "this is your brain on eggs" commercial that never made it off the drawing board. It's too much of a request to suspend disbelief while at the same time trying to simulate every other exactitude of NASCAR racing.

Controls in 07 are still way to touchy. Driving your car and maintaining your line in a pack of cars is extremely difficult, even if you lovingly, patiently tweak the settings to have it handle perfectly. Of course, as in real life, once you ding another car and make its driver mad, that driver will do everything possible to either block your progress or, worse, try to spin you and take you out of the race--a fair reaction in reality, but virtually it's a stiff penalty for twitchy controls.

You won't have any trouble finding a race online though. At almost any time, day or night, there are always people ready to take you on. NASCAR fans are a sleepless bunch, apparently. But once you get chatting with them you'll likely find common ground in the frustration of only having a maximum of four of you racing at one time, though the game, being NASCAR and all, screams for 43--probably and impossible technical hurdle on these old consoles, but other games can manage 8, 12, 16 multi-players... not NASCAR 07, sadly.

All told, as with Madden offering the only NFL-licensed football games this year (and for a few years to come), NASCAR fans don't really have a choice when it comes to NASCAR games. It's EA's or nothing, so NASCAR 07 is the very best and very worst there is, which averages out to, well, completely average NASCAR racing.