Race Pro (360) Impression Thread

[jblank]

Got this yesterday and put about 90 minutes into it. For 40 bucks, it's a decent game......at 60 bucks, I would have felt quite cheated. The game definitely has got some major issues, particularly in regards to your racing "career". The career consists of you taking on contracts, which you have to pay for (or try out for on the lower levels) and then your put into a car, against the same type of car, on 3 tracks. After the 3rd or 4th time of doing this, it got REALLY old. The game doesn't have a whole lot of pizazz or polish, and is really bare bones. I mostly ran online races, but they were extremely laggy, particularly races that had over 6 other racers. I have to believe this was the game and not network conditions on XBL and that was very disappointing. Also troublesome were that some people had apparently got a glitch and they were turning in laps that were 20-30 seconds quicker than everyone else, which ruined the races pretty fast.

On the track, the cars handle great though, so great that I might go so far as to say that it rivals Forza 2 as far as "realism" goes. Graphically the game is pretty average at best, a bit on the dark side, but the sound is full of pops and crackles, something others seem to be experiencing also. Difficulty also seems to be on the low end. At the Pro level with aids on low and medium, I was dusting the field by 10+ seconds and getting achievements pretty quickly.

Should you get it? I would wait. It is bound to be 20 bucks in no time, and at that price, it's a good game, especially if you like to collect achivement points. Otherwise, stick to Forza 2, Grid, or PGR 4, all of which are MUCH better games.

Pros
Handling of the cars
Decent car variety
Price
Easy achievements

Cons
Presentation is nonexistent
Bare bones
No way to race series in Career mode
Popping and cracking sound
Some graphical tearing
Multiplayer is glitched and VERY laggy
Seems to be lacking challenge

[jztemple2]

Was slightly, possibility, maybe considering getting this game. Mostly likely won't now, especially hearing about that three track at first limit crap.

BTW, where did you get the game? My local Gamestop says they haven't seen it.

[PeteRock]

Thanks for the impressions.  This was kind of, sort of on my radar, but I'll stick with finishing up the races I have remaining in Forza 2 as I continue to find that to be by far my favorite racing game.  Test Drive disappointed me, and I had grown tired of the PGR series and never even picked up PGR4, and as I haven't been bitten by the racing bug recently I still have Forza 2 to fall back on.  Odds are if they release a Forza 3 I'll be first in line, but most other racings games always seem to fall short for me, and Race Pro looks like another example.

[jblank]

Was slightly, possibility, maybe considering getting this game. Mostly likely won't now, especially hearing about that three track at first limit crap.

BTW, where did you get the game? My local Gamestop says they haven't seen it.

I reserved it at Gamestop. From what I hear, there aren't tons of the game getting delivered to stores, so it may be kinda hard to find.

[jztemple2]

I picked this up today more in a sense of pessimism than optimism. Guess what? It's actually a pretty good game. I'm surprised, certainly.

First, I'll qualify my opinion as saying this is NOT Forza Motorsports 2 or PGR4, however, it doesn't pretend it is. This is a console version of the PC game. I've played the SimBin games on PC and I can say that the 360 graphics are better; no, not in FM2 or PGR4 class, but pretty decent. Nice reflections, good detail. And (ta-da!) a very nice cockpit view with real dash details, just like in the PC version of the SimBin racing games. If you are an in-car view kind of driver you'll love it.

Menus are minimalist, as is the music, announcers, etc. Again, if you don't compare it to FM2 or PGR4, the interface is just fine; it's easy to use, clear to expectations and not a hindrance.

The Career mode and the need to unlock the cars is... well, I would say irritating, but once I started playing I found that it was not unlike the TOCA series, or even DiRT. You don't get access to all cars at once. Basically, in spite of an admittedly confusing formula of credits and race points, you unlock each set of cars and series by placing in the top three of the previous series. Each series is three races. You can save "credits" by trying out for the contract, or you can just purchase your contract and start racing. Since the track you try out for the contract is also the first track you race on, you might as well try to qualify to get the contract cheaper since it allows you essentially unlimited practice.

The difficulty setting you chose determines the credits you earn after placing in a series.

I've only raced the Mini and the Caterham CSR 200. I did some simple test driving in novice mode, but when I started my career I went to Pro setting and found it to be fun in these cars. I would expect I have an advantage having done so much racing in FM2 and PGR4. I haven't touched the sensitivity settings in the game (I'm using the standard 360 controller) and I'm running the default set-ups for the cars, which appears to be set for a slight understeering setting, which is good for newbies.

I'll play some more and post more impressions, but right now I'm very happy I did break down and get the game!

[marcusjm]

How does it compare to GRID then? GRID is the racing game I plan to buy.

I know these guys have a good reptutation in the PC racing scene but I never buy racing
games on PC, so I wouldn't know how good they are.

[jztemple2]

How does it compare to GRID then? GRID is the racing game I plan to buy.

I know these guys have a good reptutation in the PC racing scene but I never buy racing
games on PC, so I wouldn't know how good they are.

Actually GRID is one of the few racing games I never bought. I'm not into drifting and the rest of the game content didn't seem to be any better than FM2/PGR4.

After some more play I can identify one more point; the AI cars are much more stable. In FM2 you can give them a shove and they seem to fly of the way. In RP (Race Pro) bumping them doesn't do much other than slow them a bit. You can fight them for the line and both of you can avoid spinning fairly easily.

I tried three online matches. The first was over very quickly when "connection to the host has been lost". In the second we ran through qualifying and were almost ready to start... when the connection dropped  .

In the third we safely qualified; everyone qualifies at once, but on their "own" track with no one else on it. We were at Monza and I ended up mid-field. At the start I was able to get to third of eight, then in the first chicane the leaders shoved themselves off the track and I took the lead! Around the Curva Grande I managed to stay in the lead, but at the second chicane I serenely sailed off across the infield and was informed that I had to due a drive-though of the pits. I chased the field around and, since in the pits the game auto-drives for you, I barreled into pit lane at full song. Oops! I got disqualified for speeding in pit lane. Oh well. Anyway, at least it worked.

[jztemple2]

So I've got about five hours into the game. Some observations:

- Over at the Atari EU forum a number people have reported corrupted saved games, so they lost their career progress. Until SimBin fixes this problem, the only solution is to back up to not only the hard drive but also to a memory card. Against my better judgment I went out and bought a used one.

- Pro mode is *really* hard as you get more powerful cars. I am now using Semi-Pro which allows me to win consistently. This might seem like a cheat, but so far I've only unlocked six out of the 33(!) contracts, so you can see that it would be pretty frustrating to run races you cannot win. I've already posted to the Atari forum that they ought to give us an unlock for all the cars if we don't want to grind through the entire career. I'd even pay a little for it as DLC.

- Macau and Porto are street circuits and are so insanely tight that they are no fun to race on. So that bring the acceptable number of tracks down to eleven, and I haven't tried the other street course yet. So I'm not thrilled.

- I'm rapidly losing interest in the game. Unlike you're a real sim racing nut, I'd say that there are enough good racing games out there already.