Gamernode: Reviews - Race 07

Race 07

• Race 07
• PC
• SimBin
• Viva Media
• October 01st, 2007

Racing games have really come a long way the past few decades. The early racers such as Pole Position and Sega Rally didn't have graphics anywhere near the realism of today's games, but one thing was evident about these old racers: they were fun.
 

Now, we have the likes of Grand Turismo, Project Gotham Racing, Forza Motorsport, Ridge Racer, WipeOut and others to satisfy our need for speed. Some are arcade versions of racing, while others are sims, and as they say the twain shall never meet.
 

SimBin and Viva Media are trying to change this by releasing their newest racer, Race 07. It's a sim-based racer but offers many features that the casual crowd and non-hardcore racing fan can enjoy such as a simplified method of setting up cars, the ability to get into a race immediately with a minimum of hassle and the ability to mix different classes of cars within selected races.
 

The game is based upon the WTCC (World Tour Car Championship) and offers a wide range of tracks and car classes. (Both the 2006 and 2007 seasons are included.) If you're a hardcore racing fan, you'll drool over the amount of things that you can customize for your car. Setup menus offer everything from suspension adjustments to the fine tuning of gear ratios and everything in between.
 

If you're a novice and couldn't tell the camber of a tire from a toe out adjustment, help is provided by a quick login to your Race 07 community which will most likely have the answers you seek. But if you want to skip the tweaking, you can be up and running and in your first race in a couple of minutes; a few entries to adjust the number of laps, set the type of weather you want, the number of opponents, the AI efficiency, which race and track you want to play and you're good to go.
 

I started my race with the Monza track in Italy. I revved my engine, the "Christmas tree" lights counted down and I was off and running. After a short straightway, I came up on a tight "S" curve and found myself knee deep in Radical Supersport SR3 cars as we all tried to maneuver through the hairpin turns. I followed the pack until I saw a pile up just ahead of me -- two cars had bumped each other and spun out. I gingerly squeezed past the unfortunate drivers and hit the pedal to the metal. After my third lap of a nine lap race, I was beginning to feel that I was actually in a real live event.
 

Unlike arcade racers, where you can take tight curves going at 200mph with your hair on fire, in this racer you have to know the limitations of your car and which curves you can navigate through at high speeds and which ones you have to brake heavily on in order to get through properly. This took a little while to get used to, but the whole idea of this game is to make reality come to life. Arcade racing fans may take the longest time to adjust to this new environment.
 

The guys who did the physics for this game really did a good job. You can almost feel the weight and physical condition of the car and this illusion is passed onto the handling very realistically. In one race, my tires were starting to wear out and I could "feel" the traction break from the rear of the car when I was too aggressive in the turns. Real damage can also be dialed into the game. No longer will you go Scott free by intentionally hitting your opponents to get ahead. Instead, you'll be treated to some serious damage to your suspension or other primary components until you can't even rev up to racing speed -- so racing a clean race is essential to the performance of your car.
 

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