SimBin tries to prove again that they're the kings of sim racing developers.
Following up on the well-regarded GTR and GTR2, the crew at SimBin has crafted another racing simulation for hardcore racing simulation fans: Race 07. Whereas the GTR series focused on the FIA GT Series, Race 07 is primarily about touring cars. Anyone familiar with the Codemasters TOCA series from Codemasters is familiar with these cars. However, this is the FIA sanctioned WTCC (World Touring Car Championship) simulation, which brings together the very best touring car drivers from all over the world to race in an F1-style championship, many on real world circuits not as familiar to F1 drivers.
Race 07 doesn't stop at being a touring car simulation, though. SimBin has also given us a taste of open wheel racing with the F3000 series, and added several other interesting single-model series as well, such as the Caterham, Formula BMW, Radical and Mini series, each with its own vehicle type and handling characteristics.
As with GTR, the goal here is to provide a fully accurate simulation of the vehicles and an accurate representation of each series, featuring three real-world seasons (2006, 2007 and 1987) and their real-world scoring system. There are no frills, minigames or management modes in this game. You are instead given the standard single season championship mode, single race, time attack and open practice.
The game does come with various levels of driving aids to help less experienced drivers get around the course without frustration. But make no mistake: this game is not aimed at the casual racer.
One new feature is a believable weather system. It can be dry, wet or changing, with both light and heavy rain provided. This doesn't just mean that the asphalt is a darker color, either. Real rain falls from the sky and your wipers can be activated to sweep it away. This brings an additional dimension to the game as cars handle quite differently in the wet. You will need to switch to wet weather tires and alter your racing setup and driving style appropriately. As many have found out, cars don't turn as well in water!
The graphics engine continues to evolve from the GTR graphics engine which, if you go back far enough, was used by EA in their now discontinued F1 series for the PC. The bad news is, this graphics engine is getting long in the tooth. It does not scale particularly well down to older machines. By the time you turn off enough graphical options to get a decent frame rate on such a machine, the game looks many years old. Even on newer hardware, reports have been coming in of unwanted stuttering, both on Vista and XP. Even with the graphics cranked up, the game doesn't seem to raise the bar a great deal above past offerings. SimBin should be advised that this graphics engine has perhaps reached the point where it needs to be replaced, if they wish to wow users with visuals. However, if you've got recent hardware, you should find that the graphics are a detailed and pleasing interpretation of the tracks and cars in which you'll be racing. In particular, you will note the fully-animated 3D flag wavers alongside the track, the fully 3D interiors of the car, and even from outside the car you can see the drivers being shaken around, turning their heads, shifting, and leaning into each corner. Of course, the falling rain will also be a welcome addition.
A new feature can monitor your frame rate during the course of a real race, and suggest graphics settings changes to get your frame rate into the target range. Although this is a nice feature, the graphics settings are not as fine grained as I would like to see, so the changes the game makes are just to change the presets to high, medium or low, and not really tweak individual items like shadows or other frame rate killers.
The audio of the engines, cars, and voiceovers is excellent, as it was in GTR2. The development team knows how to create all the sounds of racing and if you've got a good sound rig you will feel like you are on the track. I particularly enjoy the ambient sounds of trackside activity, such as engines being revved in the paddock, cars out on the track in the distance downshifting into turns, and so on. Having been to many racing events, I can tell you that there is rarely such thing as a quiet paddock, and having the ambient noises really makes you feel like you are trackside.
Getting into the gameplay itself, you have to first know that it is all about real racing. By this I mean the kind of racing that can be compared to running a race along a tightrope, trying to go as fast as you dare without stumbling. If you are too conservative, you'll fall back. Too aggressive, and you risk falling off the track or smashing into another car. In hardcore racing games, tenths or hundredths of a second matter, and muscling other cars off the track usually harms you more than helps you. If you want to balance on the ragged edge of grip, lap after lap, consistently improving, this is your kind of game. If not, no amount of driving aids will make this a pleasure for you. Most people are going to need practice, and a lot of it, to become competent at this game. This means learning each track, spending long sessions practicing, tweaking and tuning, and otherwise getting to the point where you no longer need all your concentration just to put in a respectable lap time. If you jump into a race before you are prepared, you will quickly be overwhelmed by the AI, the track, and your own car's physics.
In looking at the quality of the physics engine for this game, I had to ask myself whether the car not only behaved as expected, but whether it transferred that information in a meaningful way to me as the driver. A great physics engine doesn't help me if the game doesn't supply the cues I need to balance the car at the edge of grip. The number one way that Race 07 does this is with force feedback. It is hard for me to imagine playing this game well without force feedback, because the game implements it better than almost every other racing simulation I've played. When you are charging into a braking zone, getting ready to start turning, you should know whether you've completed most of your braking, and whether or not the car is going to grip to get into the apex of the turn. If the car under steers into a corner, you should get plenty of warning, both by sound and feel. In this game, the wheel spring rate will virtually disappear as the rubber of your tires slides along the road with a nice tire scrub noise. You can crank that wheel to full lock with almost no effort, but the car will continue to slide forward. As you straighten the wheel and continue to slow the car, you'll feel the tension increase in the wheel as the tires bite and regain their traction. In this way, you can feather the throttle and adjust steering to find that very edge of grip where you can make your turns without pushing off the road. It is amazing how many simulations in the past have not been able to do this well. Race 07 does it nicely.
Similarly, a condition called trailing throttle oversteer (TTO), is modeled perfectly in this title. Sail around a curve with the revs high, using your maximum grip on all 4 wheels, and then jump out of the throttle. If you don't have all your driving aids on, be prepared for a spin as your rear tires lose their weight and whip the car around. A small amount of TTO can be your friend. It can save you when you are pushing the car too hard into a turn and you need to get it to rotate. You can quickly get out of the throttle, control the rotation, and ease the throttle back on to regain grip and get out of a sticky situation. The relevance to this game is that both of these conditions are modeled quite well, and provide ample audio, visual and tactile feel to the driver. After a little practice, your brain will respond on its own to these cues, and you will begin to feel more and more like you are driving a real car, and not a game. Again, Race 07 models this beautifully, and SimBin should be applauded for getting these very important behaviors right.
Damage is fully modeled in the game; it is not just recorded as a problem to fix in the pits. It will affect your ability to drive the car, with graphical tire deformations and missing bits also implemented. The game manual suggests running into a wall just for the fun of it, to see pieces of the car flying off. You can change the amount of damage sensitivity your car will have as a percentage value, depending upon how masochistic you want to be when going at it with AI or networked opponents.
Race 07 tries hard to put you in the driver's seat as literally as possible. By default, your viewing position is inside the car, where God intended it to be. This does limit your visibility, of course, but the game will do nice things for you, like turning your viewing angle in towards the apex of the turn. You can also adjust your seat position and seat height for better viewing of the road ahead. In the F3000 open-wheel cars, you are literally placed "inside the helmet", where you will see the world from behind your visor, with the top and bottom of your view clipped by your helmet.
The Track-IR peripheral from NaturalPoint is supported, and this is very important as it really lets you look around in the cockpit, bringing your mirrors into better view, seeing that car coming alongside of you, or looking into the apex of each turn by yourself. In addition, the latest and greatest steering wheels and shifters, such as the Logitech G25, have built-in profiles. Clearly, SimBin knows their audience.
Multiplayer is supported and there are various options to get into online games. The game can be installed in an offline or online mode. If you install online, you'll need to register with Steam, which will update your game as needed, supply multiplayer linkage, and licensing. I don't particularly like being forced to use a third party service in order to run my game, but that's a requirement here. If you don't want to license your software with Steam, you will need to install the game in offline mode or just pass up on the game entirely. The game also ships with a standalone server if you wish to host a league or just serve up races for friends.
So the good news is that Race 07 provides a rich racing experience, with 32 real-world racing circuits, 6 racing classes, and all the little details that hardcore simulation fans want.
There are warts, however. Aside from the aging graphics engine mentioned earlier, there are various nits I recorded while using the game. The turn indicators that pop up to help you learn the track should be a positive feature, but I ended up turning them off because all too often, they showed the wrong gear, popped up too late, or not at all. I believe they actually made things worse. There is no out-of-the-box telemetry and lap analysis software integration the way there was with GTR2. It is possible that given the similarities between the titles, the MOTEC software promoted with GTR2 can be used to analyze replays for you from Race 07, but it is certainly not provided for out of the box. The User interface for the game is a little clunky. Many times I've had to click multiple times on a button because the mouse might have slid off the button region before the mouse button was released, causing the click not to register, even though the audio blip happens to make it seem like I clicked. It just seems a little too sensitive. I had to make an effort to keep the mouse on the button and firmly click instead of 'swiping' it lazily like I often do when I'm in a hurry.
Then there are annoyances like the fact that the first time you enter a race with a particular model car, the game will leave the car setup at Default. Default is a non-track specific setup. It guarantees you're not going to be very competitive. Race 07 thoughtfully provides both a wet weather and a dry weather racing setup, but you'll have to immediately go into the setup screen, click Files, click the appropriate setup, and click load, before you even take the track. Why they could not have defaulted to track- and car-specific setups, I don't know. I often forget to change it until I'm out on the track.
Load times are fairly long on my machine. Most of the options are still available once you get trackside, but not as many visual options can be changed without exiting and reloading the track. If your machine isn't sporting a superfast hard drive, loading a track is an indication that it's time to go get yourself something to drink and come back in a few minutes.
The AI of the computer-controlled cars is hit or miss. It is usually too aggressive, both against you and against others. You will find no shortage of yellow flags in your typical race, whether you were involved or not. However, you often will be involved, as the AI shows no hesitation to dive bomb you on the inside of a turn. I found myself driving overly defensively; at least until I really felt I could attack each course. If you leave the door open just a little bit, the AI cars will force their way through. I feel that if the AI cars behaved like this in real life, there would be some penalties and more than a fair share of wrecks caused by it. Some aggression is good, of course. All real drivers have it. But most drivers weigh risk vs. reward and are often content to pressure you into a mistake, rather than just muscling through on the inside.
The adjustable difficulty levels work very well, but as is usually the case, it takes a fair amount of trial and error to figure out what percentage of speed you should be racing against. SimBin has done nothing to add value to the genre by failing to build a game that watches your abilities and sets up races that will give you a good challenge without being ridiculously easy or impossibly difficult.
The game also has a configurable replay system. You can see your best laps, and even entire races. When you do this, you'll find a new feature called "Free floating camera". You can 'detach' the camera and move it around anywhere you like. I have attached a few screenshots demonstrating this at Valencia to see a large portion of the track from the air, which is something none of the standard cameras offer. I even added a screenshot of an F3000 car going down the front straight from a grandstand seat. What a way to scout out a track if you're going to see an actual race and want to find the best seats!
Closing Comments
At the end of the day, if you enjoy touring car racing but have found the Codemasters TOCA series to be too cheesy and arcade-like for your tastes, Race 07 is worth your investment. It is what touring car racing is all about, right down to the weight-penalties given to the winning cars. Online play will help you find others to race with, and all the tweaking, tuning and customization options are there for you. In addition, expect to see other tracks, cars and skins put into the game by modders who have done this for each game SimBin has put out. The game will pay for itself many times over for the hardcore sim fan who treats these games as an investment in a sim racing career. But a title like this is not as likely to win over a casual racer, because little was done to cultivate new hardcore sim racing fans here.
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