I am sure that most people were expecting this review to be Resident Evil 5. However, believe it or not, it was actually supposed to be the new 50 Cent game; a game that I have heard nothing but good things about since it was released. Sadly, it is also a game that I have not been able to find a copy of.

What I found instead surprised me. It’s a game that even I had not heard of before I picked it off of a shelf. It’s called Race Pro.

As the name suggests Race Pro is a racing simulator developed by the wonderfully named SimBin, and is published by those “old-boys-club” members Atari. You probably know of Atari, but you may be a newcomer to the works of the Swedish based SimBin. The cliff notes version is that they were founded in 2003 and have since developed 6 racing games for Windows PCs. Race Pro is their first attempt at a console based racing simulator.

And as far as first attempts go this is not a bad one… provided that you are a racing fanatic like me. The easiest way to sum up this sim is to say that it reminds me of an expensive 5 star restaurant that the unwashed masses could never get into, and (as a member of those unwashed masses) even if I did get in I would be forced to sit by the kitchen, and have all the snooty waiters give me dirty looks.

Race Pro gives no apologies for what it is, and doesn’t ask for your forgiveness, which is something I can respect. However, even as a race fan I feel that Race Pro is very selective of who it wants to appeal to. And just in case you are not sure that would be people who enjoy racing around a track chasing better lap times. Now if you are one of those people, you will be delighted to hear that Race Pro does that very well. The controls are tight and responsive. The mechanics and physics of driving a race car feel realistic, and how they handle is realistically different between all the car classes.

In fact, any race related detail got knocked out of the park. Every race track in this game (and there are a lot of them when you finally unlock them all) is rendered in a level of detail that some people might call compulsive. They also look even better when filled with a wide selection of whips that were ripped right out of the FIA’s World Touring Car Championship, the European F3000, Formula BMW, Mini Challenge and the Caterham cup series to name a few.

The cars themselves are as close to perfect as I think is possible in a game; at least that is true when it comes to the mechanics of driving a car around the track at insane speeds. When racing around at the games highest difficultly level the cars will react exactly like you’d expect them to in real life. This is not some arcade racer were you can just drive as hard as you want and steer by bouncing off of walls like a pinball. Anything but precision driving will get you wrecked. Every corner really feels like a game of chess that requires you to plan ahead before acting to get good results. The option also exists to finely tune your car for the best possible lap times; however, as always with racing sims you will need a degree in rocket science and 5 years experience at NASA to make heads or tails of what half the things do.

That sadly is where the good times end. Simbin has focused so much on making a good racing game that everything that doesn’t directly affect racing around the track is either half done or not included. For example, non-racing fanatics may be turned off by the fact that there is no soundtrack to speak of in Race Pro. The only music in the game is some generic electro-dance stuff that plays on the game’s title screen. However, I could be the only one turned off by that. I may have been spoiled by the music during my bike racing on GTA4′s last expansion.

The voiceovers in this game feel so weak that I think the game would have been better off without them. In the 15 or so hours that I played Race Pro I could only get the game to say 2 things. The first was a warning for breaking a racing rule, and the other was a “congratulation” for winning a race. To say that I was not impressed by this would be an understatement. Especially considering that every line in this game is uttered with all the enthusiasm of a man about to sit down and do his taxes.

There are also no extra modes to speak of: you can practice, run a single race, play in career mode, or race online via Xbox box live. However, all of that is done for the exact same reason; to get around the track as quickly as possible. On top of that there is a very small selection of tracks when you start off; because, many of the game’s tracks need to be unlocked as you progress in career mode. All of this limited diversity at the start could make some gamers feel like there is not much to do in Race Pro at all.

Off the track, there is not much to keep your interest either as the menu system, career mode, and even the race track environments seem to be built for functionality over anything else. Also, most of the information that I needed to know was conveyed to me by boxes of white text that I had a hard time reading on my 27 inch standard definition TV; so like everything in this game that doesn’t directly involve racing, it works, but not well.

Functionality also seemed to be the path the designers took with the game’s graphics. This game is not pretty at all by current standards. Even the nicest things to look at seem a little bland in a world of Halo 3s and Metal Gear Solid 4s. Like everything else outside the mechanics of racing, the visuals of this game work, but they do not impress. Grass looks like grass, and road looks like road; but to be honest they look like the grass and roads I would expect to find in a PS2 game. Not a current generation title.

In the end, this is a good game, but it is not a good game for everyone. Race fans who want a realistic racer should pick this game up for sure because realistic racing is where it truly shines. Like me, it may not be pretty, but it’s good at what it wants to be. However, if you are not a fanatic race fan then you may feel that this game is either not pretty enough or not full of enough content to keep your attention. If you are one of those people I would highly suggest you play bike racing on the GTA 4′s expansion: The Lost and Damned instead. That bike racing is so much fun that it was all that I played for 2 weeks straight, and I only stopped playing it because I had too.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.