NASCAR Chase For the Cup 2005 is a racing game with all the nuance and subtlety and finesse of real-life stock car racing. That is, it is neither nuanced nor subtle, and it thinks finesse is something the old lady uses to wash her hair. It is supremely uncomplicated. You should expect to do well at it, even if the cooler you have been sitting on all afternoon is approaching empty.

Chances are good that you are not a die-hard NASCAR fan, so a little background is in order. NASCAR is the authority that regulates big-money "stock" car racing in the USA. You know the races with the cars that look like big family sedans all covered with stickers? That's NASCAR.

NASCAR is the beating heart of Republican America. NASCAR is a deeply, deeply conservative thing. Want to know how conservative? This past weekend, in a television interview he gave shortly after winning the EA Sports 500 at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, Dale Earnhardt Jr. used a colourful euphemism for "poo." This, not his victory, was the top story across the NASCAR world. At publish time, his personal web site was still full of groveling apologies for his use of "curse words."

Why is this important to you, the video game player? Here is why. In many motorsport circuits, races are held on a wide variety of tracks. Some are twisty, some are snakey, some are narrow. Some use street courses and others use purpose-built speedways. But there is none of that diversity in conservative NASCAR. There is no twisting. All the races take place on big giant ovals with banked turns. A major NASCAR event is 40-or-so cars all driving around and around in a giant circle for two or three hours, stopping occasionally to get gas and change their tires.

This is good news for you, the video game player, especially if your cooler is nearing empty, because it means you do not need to worry yourself with such trifles as, say, braking. Or steering. It means that racing well is mostly a matter of holding the gas all the way down and also having a vague idea when a turn is coming up, so you can nudge the joystick a little to the left.

It does not require very much attention at all, unless you are trying to pass other drivers, when it requires you to press "B." This "intimidates" them, so that they will move aside and let you overtake them. The "B" button is red and admittedly a little fierce-looking, but it is never all that clear how pressing it makes you such a badass. That is OK. We are all about results.

The game contains all of the NASCAR circuits: the top-flight Nextel Cup, the Busch development series (although it is stripped of the beer name and called the "National" series here), the Craftsman Truck series, and the wee-wee Featherlite Modified series. This means you have many different reasons to race on each of the many ovals included on the disc, and it also means that you can race on all those ovals in many marginally-different-from-each-other vehicles. Or, more to the point, it means that you will spend many, many afternoons atop your cooler before you have raced every race and unlocked every car.

All this makes the game sound boring. It is not boring at all. It is really a lot of fun, in a Zen kind of way. As you lose yourself in the drone of your engine, as you watch the bleachers speed by, as you take the same left turn the same way for the 40th time, you find yourself both excited and relaxed.

Sometimes, for little interludes, you get to race on street tracks in regular street cars. Once you have embraced the ovals, this will harsh your mellow.