I suppose most of you if you had a choice would pick up Killzone 2 over this, heh, but I just picked it up today and I reckon its excellent.
Intro Its SimBin's first outing into the world of consoles from developing their craft of sim racing on the PC in the form of the GTR games. The head of the company is Henrik Roos 4 times Swedish GT champion and former FIA GT racer. And all the access they get from the track gives them accurate data to feed into the physics engine, design the cars and source the engine sounds. GTR was groundbreaking in terms of realism, being able to get into the nitty gritty of driving a race car. The physics engine enabled you to fine tune your setup to perfection, and race arcade or endurance races online against other enthusiasts or against a clever AI, taking into account pit stops and even the amount of grip that builds up on the racing line over the duration of a long race. A petrolheads dream.
However, you absolutely needed a steering wheel and on 'full-sim' mode was difficult to say the least. Spinning out was common for the less accustomed. Since GTR they've made several other sims including GTR2, GT Legends, GT Evolution, RACE:WTCC etc but all have been pretty similar to be honest since Blimey!Games left them.
Race Pro on 360 is their attempt to bring all this to consoles, but at the same time streamline accessibilty, make things easier to control to some extent, but retain that intense feeling of racing in real life through the physics, g-forces and the very immersive cockpit view. Think PGR's incar view but with more intensity from the sounds and sense of speed etc.
Initial impressions They've done incredibly well to achieve the right balance. From my end coming from PC sims, things are easier and more accessible but in a good way, and you still regain a lot of that customisability and handling realism. Coming from console racers you'd have to put Race Pro up against the likes of PGR and GRID, and to some extent those experiences are much more polished affairs, but Race Pro still gives you a similar experience without being covered in gloss like Codies' or Bizzare's efforts and in a way gives you more freedom to just race.
You still get a progressional career mode where you can unlock faster/different cars and championships, similar to something like GRID. You can race a standalone championship such as in real life, competing at different tracks around the world gaining points for wins etc. However, most of the cars are locked until you get them through the career mode. The ones available at the start are the Minis (not super fast but lively and brilliant fun), WTCC cars like Alfas, BMWs Seats etc and one of the Formula 3000 cars. Later theres Formula BMW, GT classes such as the Aston Martins/Corvettes/Saleens/Listers/Moslers etc, and then you get the Radicals, Caterhams, Gumpert Apollos, Audi R8s, Koenigsegg's and Dodge Vipers.
Multiplayer Of course you get your online MP via LIVE (I haven't tried this yet, cos I've moved again and my internet is still catching up with me!) as well as via System Link. Unfortunately theres no split screen mode, but they've done something unique and interesting here. You can still play with two controllers on the same box, but what they call Versus Hot Seat, you both play in the same race, but you take it in turns to control your car (or even the same car) for a customisable length of time say 90 seconds and the AI will control the other car in the meantime. Then it'll switch after a warning to player 2's car and they do the same trying to get as far ahead as they can in the race in their allotted time. Its interesting because it allowed me and my friend to play on a full screen, watch each other as well as race each other simultaneously, which was actually really good fun. In splitscreen you tend to be concentrating on your tiny half of the screen, you almost feel like you're playing alone. Never seen it before and nicely implemented!
The rest There's also time attacks, single races and open practices. You can customise the difficulty ranging from simple arcade handling (you can crash and slide around, but you still need to brake!) to sim level where you need finesse on the accelator, brake and steering use the racing line and consider understeer and oversteer etc as well as increasing levels of damage simulation. And races can be anywhere from 1 to 75 laps with upto 15 opponents. There are 13 tracks from all over the world and weather effects are used nicely.
Its a surprisingly nice looking game too, they've come a long way since they started. I'd say its not as pretty as GRID, but its certainly not a minger.
And the sounds are gritty and loud, the way they should be.
Overall All in all its a solid racer that appeals to sim fans like myself as well as the arcade heroes - which is something that was of critical appeal about GRID when that game came out. Its not as polished and glossy, but it gives you much more freedom to just race and the racing is intense.
Recommended to all petrolheads out there.
Click for screens via IGN
<message edited by choupolo on Mar 01, 2009 01:15>