Screenshots :.
Race Pro
360
Matt
25-02-2009
"Gulf paint scheme = instant winner."
"Macau is an awesome challenge."
"Real racers use in-car view. FACT. Cough."
"The F3000 cars are bloody difficult."
"A neighbour of mine has an R8. He's a git."
A few weeks ago now I tootled around to a nearby chum’s house and sat for a few hours racing around on a PC racing simulation game, during which time I remembered that I hadn’t touched Forza Motorsport 2 for the best part of half a year. In the same way that Jay loves a bit of the old RTS action (Dawn of War 2 review coming soon!) I am more than partial to the more simulated end of the racing game market, hence my subsequent surprise that it had been six months since I had played what, up to now, had been the 360’s finest racing title. It was at this exact moment that our copy of Race Pro arrived on my doormat, hence much excitement.
See, Race Pro is unashamedly aimed toward the more realistic end of the market. Developed by Swedish bods SimBin (developers of the GTR and Race series on the PC), it makes a few concessions to the console market but still ends up being pretty bloody difficult in all sorts of ways. It’s also not really the best racing game I have played on Microsoft’s ever-overheating console either, but it does a decent job and offers a decent amount of variety.
That variety is the key to how enjoyable the game ends up being, with each different type of car handling in a unique way that challenges you to adapt and take advantage of their various qualities. Hop into a Radical, for example, and you’ve got yourself a superbly balanced, incredibly grippy car that has no trace of over or understeer and that you can pretty much chuck around with abandon and expect it to stick. Leap into a Gumpert Apollo, however, and you’ll find it has more power than grip and has to be glided around each circuit with careful balancing of throttle and brake, with even a small error being potentially costly.
The differences between the cars and the resulting way in which the player is tasked with getting to grips with them is very enjoyable, and adds a great deal of value to the game. The other major plus point is that the game offers you a few difficulty levels to get to grips with the whole thing, with each gradually peeling off a layer of driving aids until you’re ready to go racing without your stabilisers. As such, people who are unsure whether they should make the jump to Race Pro given its simulation nature will find the game to be very welcoming and very willing to help them learn the ropes in an enjoyable manner, so big thumbs up there.
The centrepiece mode is the career offering, in which you sign contracts to race various series and makes in order to gather points that unlock other offerings across a number of difficulty tiers, each of which you have the option of buying your way into for a high cost or undertaking a license test to make entry that little bit cheaper. Things start off gently enough with the ever-awesome Catherhams and the brilliant oversized-go kart nature of the Radicals, but before long you’ll find yourself lodged in European Touring Car and Euro F3000 battles that will require a bit more precision and concentration than you’d have expended originally.
In one way, the progression through career mode works pretty well and rewards you often enough with new content to get stuck into. Where it doesn’t work quite so well, though, is that due to the way the whole thing works by rewarding you points based on your finishing position but not having any sort of championship table, you never really get to enjoy a title dash against your rivals and instead end up thinking about them as mere obstacles separating you from higher points positions. Likewise, having multi contracts for the bigger series where you could race for certain teams would have added that little bit of spice to what ends up being an enjoyable yet rather clinical mode.
Progressing through this lot not only opens up a pretty juicy selection of cars, but also enables you to race around a fairly decent selection of circuits too. There’s no Nurburgring sadly but there is Macau, which is pretty much the street circuit equivalent and requires inch-perfect precision and a pretty brave throttle finger. Zandvoort is also there too in all its slightly neutered glory, whilst Road America, Laguna Seca, Monza and Brands Hatch offer their well-known challenges to racers. There are a couple of not-so-interesting circuits in there, sadly; Germany’s Oscherslaben is about as memorable as a brick wall and Valencia is a rather soulless circuit that F1 teams occasionally test on, but thirteen different tarmac ribbons loaded in there is at least a fairly decent selection to choose from.
Other modes such as Championship – in which you actually do battle in a championship table situation across various series and that could and maybe should have been moulded with career – and time attack are all present and correct, as well as your standard multiplayer affairs across Xbox Live and, in curious fashion, solo console play. The idea with it is that one player takes control of his car and starts a race whilst your buddy sits around watching, and after a while the AI will countdown and control your car and allow your buddy to swap in and have his turn behind the wheel. It’s not a new system by and stretch as Microprose’s Grand Prix series was using it 15 years ago, but it’s a neat way of getting around having to squash things into splitscreen.
It’s a very involving racer, sure, but there are a couple of things that count against it when you’re looking at the bigger picture. One such thing is the opposition AI which, whilst competent at following the racing line and having a bit of a duel with you, can be rather silly and knock you into a spin on occasion for no good reason. The graphical side of things isn’t exactly sparkly either and most circuits lack a bit of character with fairly simple trackside objects, but to be fair that isn’t such a deal breaker and you don’t really notice when you’re in the midst of some hotlapping. Oh, and for what it is worth, the damage modelling isn’t particularly punishing and you can beat quite a bit out of your car before things start handling all fun house mirror.
Generally, though, the product is solid enough to entice you in and keep you racing around for a good while. It’s an exacting task at times and learning to race without the driving aids may take time, but SimBin have allied such niggles by making the game welcoming enough to gently massage less experienced players into proceedings. It might not have the glitz of Project Gotham and, yeah, it’s not as involving as Forza in terms of career, but for anyone wanting a challenging, realistic console racing title then this is certainly worth its share of burnt rubber.
See, Race Pro is unashamedly aimed toward the more realistic end of the market. Developed by Swedish bods SimBin (developers of the GTR and Race series on the PC), it makes a few concessions to the console market but still ends up being pretty bloody difficult in all sorts of ways. It’s also not really the best racing game I have played on Microsoft’s ever-overheating console either, but it does a decent job and offers a decent amount of variety.
That variety is the key to how enjoyable the game ends up being, with each different type of car handling in a unique way that challenges you to adapt and take advantage of their various qualities. Hop into a Radical, for example, and you’ve got yourself a superbly balanced, incredibly grippy car that has no trace of over or understeer and that you can pretty much chuck around with abandon and expect it to stick. Leap into a Gumpert Apollo, however, and you’ll find it has more power than grip and has to be glided around each circuit with careful balancing of throttle and brake, with even a small error being potentially costly.
The differences between the cars and the resulting way in which the player is tasked with getting to grips with them is very enjoyable, and adds a great deal of value to the game. The other major plus point is that the game offers you a few difficulty levels to get to grips with the whole thing, with each gradually peeling off a layer of driving aids until you’re ready to go racing without your stabilisers. As such, people who are unsure whether they should make the jump to Race Pro given its simulation nature will find the game to be very welcoming and very willing to help them learn the ropes in an enjoyable manner, so big thumbs up there.
The centrepiece mode is the career offering, in which you sign contracts to race various series and makes in order to gather points that unlock other offerings across a number of difficulty tiers, each of which you have the option of buying your way into for a high cost or undertaking a license test to make entry that little bit cheaper. Things start off gently enough with the ever-awesome Catherhams and the brilliant oversized-go kart nature of the Radicals, but before long you’ll find yourself lodged in European Touring Car and Euro F3000 battles that will require a bit more precision and concentration than you’d have expended originally.
In one way, the progression through career mode works pretty well and rewards you often enough with new content to get stuck into. Where it doesn’t work quite so well, though, is that due to the way the whole thing works by rewarding you points based on your finishing position but not having any sort of championship table, you never really get to enjoy a title dash against your rivals and instead end up thinking about them as mere obstacles separating you from higher points positions. Likewise, having multi contracts for the bigger series where you could race for certain teams would have added that little bit of spice to what ends up being an enjoyable yet rather clinical mode.
Progressing through this lot not only opens up a pretty juicy selection of cars, but also enables you to race around a fairly decent selection of circuits too. There’s no Nurburgring sadly but there is Macau, which is pretty much the street circuit equivalent and requires inch-perfect precision and a pretty brave throttle finger. Zandvoort is also there too in all its slightly neutered glory, whilst Road America, Laguna Seca, Monza and Brands Hatch offer their well-known challenges to racers. There are a couple of not-so-interesting circuits in there, sadly; Germany’s Oscherslaben is about as memorable as a brick wall and Valencia is a rather soulless circuit that F1 teams occasionally test on, but thirteen different tarmac ribbons loaded in there is at least a fairly decent selection to choose from.
Other modes such as Championship – in which you actually do battle in a championship table situation across various series and that could and maybe should have been moulded with career – and time attack are all present and correct, as well as your standard multiplayer affairs across Xbox Live and, in curious fashion, solo console play. The idea with it is that one player takes control of his car and starts a race whilst your buddy sits around watching, and after a while the AI will countdown and control your car and allow your buddy to swap in and have his turn behind the wheel. It’s not a new system by and stretch as Microprose’s Grand Prix series was using it 15 years ago, but it’s a neat way of getting around having to squash things into splitscreen.
It’s a very involving racer, sure, but there are a couple of things that count against it when you’re looking at the bigger picture. One such thing is the opposition AI which, whilst competent at following the racing line and having a bit of a duel with you, can be rather silly and knock you into a spin on occasion for no good reason. The graphical side of things isn’t exactly sparkly either and most circuits lack a bit of character with fairly simple trackside objects, but to be fair that isn’t such a deal breaker and you don’t really notice when you’re in the midst of some hotlapping. Oh, and for what it is worth, the damage modelling isn’t particularly punishing and you can beat quite a bit out of your car before things start handling all fun house mirror.
Generally, though, the product is solid enough to entice you in and keep you racing around for a good while. It’s an exacting task at times and learning to race without the driving aids may take time, but SimBin have allied such niggles by making the game welcoming enough to gently massage less experienced players into proceedings. It might not have the glitz of Project Gotham and, yeah, it’s not as involving as Forza in terms of career, but for anyone wanting a challenging, realistic console racing title then this is certainly worth its share of burnt rubber.
8/10