On Your Marks

There’s a wide variety of modes to turn your attention to, all being the standard modes you would expect to see in a racer – Practice, Time Attack, Tournament mode, all present. Tournament mode is your main port of call, where we spent many hours trudging through cup after cup, league after league, on our quest to become Grand Master Racer (or whatever you prefer to pronounce yourself).

One thing to note about Tournament is how incredible the AI are. You’ll be ploughing down the tracks in a group of around 20-30 rivals, and they really do NOT want you to beat them. The AI will use every dirty trick in the book, swerving in front of you as you try to pass, giving you a cheeky bump as your cars level up, and veering out of the way to dodge any cars that have taken a turn for the worst and are now placed directly in the centre of the track facing the wrong way.

AI versus Real-Life

However if you begin to feel that racing against Artificial Intelligence isn’t enough, your next step is to take Race 07 for a spin (don’t worry, even more racing innuendos to follow) online. Unfortunately even though there is an abundance of servers to choose from, the majority of them are empty, which is a shame. Upon joining a game, it becomes much like a normal round against bots, except now you cannot just skip the practice/qualifying rounds – they will end after a set period of time, or if everyone votes to move on.

With up to 24 players racing, this COULD have been absolutely immense fun. However, something spoils it and that something is human nature. During the qualifying round you find that certain players will find it funny to purposely get in everyone else’s way and try to cause crashes and the like – funny for them, but not so funny for the player who was just about to complete a record-breaking lap.

It gets even worse when the race finally starts. Within a minute, half the contenders have already given up and disconnected, and by the end of a race which started with 20 racers, there will be maybe 5 or 6 gamers left. It feels like such a waste of time and if it wasn’t for this, the online multiplayer could have been one of the best we’ve every seen for a racer. It’s not really fair to blame this on the game, but at the end of the day, there really is no way you can call the game’s online features fun with this kind of practice happening.

There is a light at the end of the thick black tunnel though. Race 07 offers the user an option called ‘Communities’, in which they can find a group of people who play the game properly and join up with them. There’s also an option to check your World Ranking and see how your driving compares to the rest of the Race 07 world. Prepare to see your finest lap times shattered by some crazy kids with no life.

The View From the Cockpit

The game itself looks nice enough (although you will want to set the graphics to ‘high’ to be able to say that!). The cars look shiny and well detailed, while the tracks seem to have been thoroughly created to keep the authenticity there, although they do sometimes feel a little bland and empty in places.

Having been taken straight from the original ‘Race…’ game, however, means that they are a little behind the latest generation of mind-blowing detail and cannot really be compared to the kind of beauty we see in certain games at the moment. This can be seen quite easily from the ‘in car’ view, where there is a nice bit of detail in the speedometer etc, but the general look of the inside leaves a lot to be desired. Still, it’s a racing game, so you probably won’t be staring at the surroundings in awe very much (although just don’t look into the crowds – they look like they’ve been ripped straight out of a bad 90’s sports game!).