SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone: Review

Race Pro provides the obligatory display options: Letting you select what you see on the HUD, (track layout, position, lap, gear and speed); the all-important sound settings in case you have a need to make the tire squeal a little higher than the roar of the engine compensate for a sim’s lack of seat-of-the-pants sensation; controller options where you can adjust the force feedback, the sensitivity, and other settings to tweak the response for both gamepads and the force feedback driving wheel. The settings and adjustments for your controller are some of the most in-depth I’ve ever seen in a console racing title — and they are certainly necessary for a racing sim.

The player can select from three levels of difficulty, and each of those can be slightly customized. The lowest setting is Novice, which has all driving aids on by default, easy AI, and automatic transmissions to simplify the driving task. But the player can adjust those settings to turn off individual aids and allow manual shifting while still keeping the AI slowed down. The other difficulty options are Semi-Pro, and Professional. And as with Novice, each can be customized to suit the player’s tastes, although with increasing difficulty certain aids and features become restricted.

If there’s a fault with SimBin’s difficulty structure, it’s that there is too big of a leap between Semi-Pro and Professional, mostly in the AI department. Even for a relatively novice racer, capturing the pole position in qualifying is pretty easy Semi-Pro, and victories by a quarter lap or more against the AI in semi-pro is a regular occurrence. But ratchet up to Professional and newcomers will rarely make it off the bottom rung in qualifying, and routinely bring up the rear in races.

Adjusting the car’s setup and fiddling with the aids didn’t make a difference. Sim Racing newbies will probably find that winning is virtually a sure thing in Semi-Pro, but losing big-time is the order of the day in Professional. That may be a bridge-too-far in difficulty for those just learning the ropes of a racing simulation — or for those who may be testing the waters to see if religious sim-zealotry is right direction to take their gaming hobby.

Tracks

As mentioned in the press release, you get 13 tracks right out of the box. The tracks are truly different, and require different skills and different touches when driving each type of car on them. They are all unlocked, so you can pick which one you choose to test drive first. Some are small and tight, while others let you open up the throttle a little, or a lot. Each track can be played in bright sunny skies, or you can turn on bad weather, grey clouds and rain on each.

Bad weather.

The tracks do look good, and play good but they are light on the bonus scenery, you get fans and emergency workers, and flagmen standing around, but they are limited. But each track serves the over all purpose of giving you a great racing simulation on the Xbox 360. There are some graphical issues, but nothing major. Graphical Pop-ups for example, especially with the shadows from tree’s or pole’s onto the track. And there is also a lot of flickering on distant objects. These do take away from the games looks, as compared to other racing games but should not interfere much with the racing aspect of the game.

Anderstorp

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