Race 07 (Review)

Out of all the motoring events and racing leagues out there, the WTCC (World Touring-Car Championship) is by far least boring racing event in my opinion. For those of you who don't think it's all that exiting, keep in mind that I was one of those kids that grew up watching NASCAR, and you can only watch shitty American cars making left turns so often before you get bored with it. WTCC on the other hand, is like the most intense struggle for supremacy I have ever seen in a racing league. Not only does the WTCC have tracks with turns that go LEFT, but ones that go RIGHT as well. This Series is everything that racing is supposed to be. It's Intense, Exiting, professional, and extremely dangerous. To bad the game is sort of boring. :(

Race 07 is actually a sequel to a game called Race™; witch is a bit surprising considering the two are EXACTLY THE SAME GOD DAMN GAME! Literally the only difference between the two games is the way the title menus look, and the addition of Formula race cars. (My guess is that Race 07 is a reboot because the original Race title wasn't very popular.) The Race™ series is a sequel to the GTR series, which was actually pretty popular for it's time, due to all the attention to detail put into the physics and the so called “realism” of the racing experience. The only other difference between the two “Race” titles is that Race 07 has the 2007 championship, and F3000 cars. That’s about it, really. Same cars as Race, same tracks as Race, different campaign. It's nice to know that when this game came out, the people who paid for this game back in 2007 would be paying a full retail price for a game that mine as well have been an expansion pack.

STORY:

There isn't much of a story here. The campaign is just a WTCC series, and that's it. It's a racing game, so if you're looking for cut scenes set to shitty pop music like something you’d see in a Fast and the Furious, movie, that's what Need for Speed games are for.

One good element of the campaign is that it includes vehicles from F3000, which at least ads an extra campaign, and extends the replay ability of the game a little bit.

CONTROLS:

The controls for this game just work, though they might be a pain in the ass to set up sometimes, and the game itself has a hard time remembering the settings that I spent several minutes setting up in the first place, but they do work the way they are supposed to, even if the default control settings for any game pad or racing wheel is like trying to get a six year old to remember the periodic table of elements.. I remember connecting my Logitech MOMO Force Feedback wheel and starting the game with the default MOMO settings, only for the gas pedal to be constantly floored as soon as I start the race! The most frustrating part about it is that the game sometimes can’t seem to just REMEMBER what the fuck I told the buttons to do in the first place. I never know when this thing is just going to forget my fucking control settings, so I have to keep checking the settings at the beginning of the game, EVERY SINGLE TIME. If I forget, I might end up fucking up my race, because the controls would be different than I remember. The GTR series didn't have this problem, and to tell you the truth, this issue started with the first Race title. It hasn’t been fixed yet, resulting in the control setup being the biggest pain in the ass this game has to offer. Even though the control setup may have Alzheimer's disease, when you do set it up, they make the game a lot easier and slightly more fun than it would normally be, thank god.

PHYSICS:

The Physics in this game are OKAY. The tire physics are there, there is understeer, oversteer, downforce, traction, and all of these elements work better in this game than they do in most. I've got no complaints.

CUSTOMIZATION:

The one thing I did like was the options you get when tuning your car. You can adjust everything. Tires, suspension, final drive, aerodynamics, Steering differentials, brakes, tires, and just about everything but the body kit. These things are pretty much a Necessity in a racing simulator. If you can't at least adjust your suspension in a racing sim, you need to start searching for a different racing sim.

Image (Helmet cam is completely pointless.)

GRAPHICS:

You know, I really don't understand how a game that looks this average can require Direct X 9 and 128 megs of ram, while games like Live For Speed and Need For Speed: Hot pursuit 2 only require DirectX 8.1, and 64 megs of video ram, and can look twice as realistic as this game does. Sure, there are games that look worse, and the car models in this game are excellent, but there is literally no need for this game to require DX9 Period. These graphics are just average, and even when I maxed out the graphics options, this game still manages to slow down to almost 40 frames per second on my Nvidia GeForce 8600GT with 512 megs of DDR2 ram, and it still only looks slightly better. Did I mention the fact that my video card crashed repeatedly over 10 times during campaign? What the fuck?

GAMEPLAY:

I must be honest here. If you haven't played a PC racing sim before, or if you are into arcade style racing games like Burnout 2, this game will bore the shit out of you till your bowels are completely empty. Every race starts with a 30 minute practice round, and a 16 minute qualifying round, and if you are still awake by the time you get bored with it, you can always just skip both any time you want. If you are a Ridge racer fan, or some guy that played NFSU2 and thinks that a car that has 410 horsepower is supposed to grip a hairpin turn at over 9000 miles an hour, then you don't have any business playing this game in the first place. Though I may criticize this game quite a bit, I will give credit where credit is due. This IS a very realistic racing sim. This isn't some pussy ass “arcade racing sim” like NFS Shift, with steering assist for little girls just in case you are too fabulous to remember to turn the steering wheel. These physics will EAT YOU ALIVE!!!!!!!! Don't even bring that weak shit to this racing sim. In this game, you better know EXACTLY what the fuck you are doing.

My favorite thing about this game is the AI on the other cars. Even in easy difficulties, the other drivers are actually THINKING their way through the race. They slow down to avoid accidents, and most importantly, they actually attempt to RACE each other. SimBin put a lot of work into these AI drivers and it really shows.

MULTIPLAYER:

Playing Race 07 online is a great way to pass out in front of your steering wheel. :( If you like driving a 30 minute qualifying round, only for every other player in the server you’re in to just quit the game before the race even starts, this is the game for you. If you like a very minimal selection of available online rooms to choose from, (because most of the other available rooms play a completely different version of the game), then you're going to love playing this online. The online play is even more boring than the single player campaigns, and it doesn't help that most of the other players are borderline retarded, and think that flooring the gas pedal just before a tight turn when another driver is directly in front of you will get you laid or something.

One thing that the Race 07's box art likes to brag about is the ability to make your own car skins, which wouldn't be a complete waste of time if every other racer could actually SEE the skin you made. Unfortunately the only way other racers can see your skin in multiplayer mode is if they manually install the skin themselves, which is a complete waste of time. Games like Live for Speed allow you to at least upload your skins to lfsworld.net so that everyone can see it, but since SimBin doesn’t have an infrastructure like that, there is no point in making a custom skin at all.

CONCLUSION:

Even though I like some of the customization here, it isn't enough to make a game fun, and in my opinion, that's what's missing. Even so, this game is a decent experience. A boring looking experience, but I've seen racing titles do a hell of a lot worse than this back in 2007, so I'd take this over some stereotypical Fast and Furious rip-off any day of the week.

The good:

Great car models, Good physics, (good enough,) can add your own music...

The bad:

Adding your own car skins is completely useless since no other players can see them. online play is almost as boring as a trigonometry textbook...