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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Growing up, my idea of a racing simulator was Gran Turismo, but as this 1001 has taught me, there's a much deeper world of race sims out there, and they've got solid ground on which to drive their arguments for being better simulators.
Some of the notable highlights I've been introduced to are GT Legends for some old school authenticity, and GTR 2 for a more modern track day outing, both powering their way to the PC from SimBin Studios, and both getting me to consider putting more time and effort into unlocking their content through their respective career modes.
At some point in the late 2000s, when the consoles got beefier and the potential to make more money elsewhere was mighty tempting, it was time for the PC racing simulators to come into the living room and show players what they were missing by only playing Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport. What were Xbox 360 gamers missing? Race Pro.
Yeah, its name hardly inspires, does it? It's what under the hood that counts, though, right?
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Fun Times
The name Race Pro is so dull that I wasn't even sure what I was in for until I fired it up and saw the developer logos, recognising them and, shortly afterwards, the menu styles familiar from the PC games.
From quick races and longer championships to a career mode where you can work your way towards unlocking everything there is to find in this game, Race Pro looks like a racing game. An utterly barebones, no expenses spared, cheap racing game.
Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport have character, class, and atmosphere. Race Pro has a menu, walls of text, and a complete lack of effort made to entice anybody to play it. It is soulless. Everything you see exists only as a formality because you need to get players from the Xbox 360 dashboard to the racing itself somehow.
Thankfully, Race Pro has it where it matters.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
The 'it' is a racing engine that feels excellent for newcomers and serious simulator enthusiasts alike. Whether the assists on your car or the HUD are on or not, whether the difficulty is high or low, Race Pro feels like its own thing when compared to other console racers, and feels very similar to its PC counterparts, too.
Hopping into the career mode, you pick a team, sign up with them, earn some credits and move on, up through the Mini Coopers, into the Caterhams, and beyond to... well, I don't know what to, yet. We'll get to that.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Multiple camera angles, including some free lock capabilities, allow you to keep an eye on your opponents as you fake to go one way only to outbreak them going the other, the weight of your car shifting in response, or heaving, or sliding off into the gravel trap, whatever it may be - it's a simulator, you ought to take all these things into account.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
Like other games from SimBin, you'll be racing on the kinds of tracks you don't see too often, and in cars that span the decades, from the slow and steady to the hair-raising. But not very many of them...
Frustrations
There are lots of cars here, but if you don't like those found in the World Touring Car Championship, or you don't like Audi R8s, or you don't want to see another Mini Cooper that isn't the OG Mini, then Race Pro isn't going to be the game for you.
Your career mode allows you to drive for different generic meaningless teams but in their cars. When I drove three races in a Mini, my prize was the same Mini. Ditto for the next round of races in the Caterham. There's no going out to a dealer to buy the car of your dreams here, just follow where the menu takes you and race what you're given.
If you want to race something else, on a track of your choice, there is a quick race mode, of course, but if you've not earned the car you want to use in the career mode, you're not racing it, end of. Locking content behind career progress is an incentive to make progress in the career, sure, but sometimes, when you have a racing game that feels great, sometimes you just want to race. Is that too silly an idea?
So you go into the career mode to unlock some stuff. Pick the next category. Pick a team. Agree to a test drive. Achieve the required result in the test drive to sign for that team for a better deal. Race a few times. Finish that section of the career. Move on to the next category.
At no point do you have a team manager introduce themselves to you, or see a pen animate its way across a contract, or read a newspaper headline about the latest results. You don't even hear music or anything to lighten the tedium that is the menus of Race Pro.
You race, you finish, a crew member mumbles "Congratulations" over the timing screen and that is it. Onto the next thing, go on. Unlock it, because someone has to.
Final Word
Race Pro, as a game, is boring. It's lifeless. You might even suggest it's tacky, or shallow, or unfinished. But as soon as you're given control of a car, it transforms into something that can give its competition a run for their money.
The difference between the on-track action and anything else associated with the game is night and day. If you didn't know the history of the developers, and that this is how all their games seem to be, you could easily find yourself overlooking what might be the title that changes how you view racing games, it's that much of a factor.
Like other games from SimBin, I just want to play them and enjoy their attention to detail without having to go through and unlock everything first hand, and I want to do that because the driving is so good and everything else isn't.
It is definitely a title to check out, especially if you're not a PC gamer, but it'll be no surprise to learn that you, too, skipped it for something more satisfying as a whole.
Fun Facts
Some tracks in here mark the first time players were able to race on them on consoles - partly because of their obscurity, one might imagine.
Race Pro, developed by SimBin Studios, first released in 2009.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2009.