Race Pro Review [X360]

Posted February 27, 2009 by Charles McManamy in Reviews, Xbox 360.

While Burnout Paradise is generally considered the best overall racing game on the Xbox 360, for people who prefer their racing to be realistic Forza 2 is currently second to none. On the racing spectrum Race Pro is definitely more like Forza than Burnout and prior to its release, I had hopes that Race Pro could be a good alternative to Forza. Sadly my hopes were dashed once I started playing it.

My initial impressions of the game were generally favourable and I was pleasantly surprised at the choice of tracks, which had minimal overlap with those in Forza 2 and did not include yet another version of the Nurburgring. The tracks looked more realistic as the colours were vibrant unlike the washed out tracks in Forza 2. The only issue was that the main menu screen was a bit bland and could have been better laid out.

Continuing with the positives, the single player game is varied with a number of different modes from the traditional time trial and tournament modes, to a career mode that is used to unlock new cars. This is the first negative of the game in that there are far fewer cars in the game than you might think are present through reading the back of the box.

On the games box it states “350 Ultra Realistic Car Models”, and that  is misleading on two counts. The first count is that the 350 models are not 350 cars, but rather around 30 cars which have different skins. The second issue is that I would not call them realistic; while the tracks look good, the cars are far too “shiny” and look worse than the cars in Forza 2. The customization of your cars is also limited to tuning the cars and deciding which skin you want. There is no upgrading of cars or designing your own skin for them. The colour of your car is also limited to those present in the skin already.

Moving on to the multiplayer. This is where the main problems lie. The first issue is that there are no lobbies in the game; instead you are placed on the track and are left to practice on it while people join. While in one sense this is a good idea and would normally be a good point, the implementation of the idea is poor on a number of counts. The first flaw is that if you are creating a player or private match you are not given any opportunity to invite friends to the game through the menus, instead you have to manually go the Xbox guide, which can prove irritating.

The second flaw is that in ranked matches there are three phases to the game, the practice lobby, qualifying and the race itself. Between these phases you are faced with a timing screen while the game prepares the next mode. Unfortunately the timing screen tells you to press A to continue, which brings you to a menu where the obvious choice is to select Quit. This does not quit the phase you are in however, but rather the ranked match itself.

What the game wants you to do at the timing screen is to press nothing, but just wait at the screen which will eventually progress you to the next phase. There have been some reports of frame rate issues and graphical tearing being present in multiplayer games, but I did not encounter any when testing the game.

Moving past the flaws a solid game emerges, and while the racing style in Race Pro is fairly harsh and unforgiving and possibly more demanding than that in Forza 2 it is still enjoyable to play. The achievement design is fairly good with a mix of relatively easy to get, to others that will take some time, though I personally thought the achievements to host 50 games could cause issues with too many people wanting to host games in order to get the achievement.

The main problem with Race Pro though is that it is competing against Forza 2, which offers such a wealth of little features like being able to upload images to the web, car skin customization, car auctions and the ability to upgrade your cars, that the lack of these features in Race Pro automatically makes the game feel worse than it is. Even so Race Pro is no more than a solid game and one I would recommend initially renting rather than buying.

Tagged as atari, Race Pro, racing, Simbin