Introduction:Pro Race Driver is the latest game delivered from Codemasters that puts you in the driver’s seat of racing machines with a storyline that will raise you to greatness. Well, that was the plan anyways.

The Game:The gameplay for Pro Race Driver is rather lacking. I found the game to be “fake” feeling and offered no good racing experience for someone who looks forward to good quality race games, arcade or realistic. The car felt like it had very cheesy controls. They would have done well to test this game a out a little more and really play other racing games to get a good feel of what a good racing game should be like (Maybe something between Grand Prix 4 for PC and Sega GT 2002 for Xbox)

What this game does feature which would really make it an impressive game is the addition of a story mode. In the career mode you start off as a young race driver, Ryan McCane, trying to make a name for himself in the wake of his accomplished father, who died in an accident during the opening movie scene, and brother. It makes an interesting twist to racing games to see them getting more in depth. In this mode you start off in smaller races and slowly work your way up the field and unlock new cars and tracks. In total there are 42 cars and 38 different tracks to unlock representing a variety of different cars and styles.

Along with this storyline there are a number of other things you can do with the game: free race, time trial, and a cheesy split screen multiplayer (like a trip to the dark ages for racing games). In the free race mode there is a chance to simulate different weather, opponent strength, and things like that to customize your race a little more then is available in story mode.

Graphics & Sound:The graphics in the game were ok for a racing game. They could have put in a few more trackside features and other car customizations so you could spruce up your stuff a little. But, overall the game does feature a pretty good sense of speed and a variety of camera angles that you can view the car with. However, they really have to fix that in car camera that is mounted where your head would be, it was the worst. Talk about a useless view to try and race with! Overall though, it was a little blocky for my taste. With all these new fancy graphic engines around you would think they could have done a little better job. Then again it is a port from the PS2 (scoff).

The sound is ok. It’s a racing game, what do you want for sound? You can hear the engine and the tires squealing. Maybe some customizable music while you race would have been good. That would take away from realism though; it would be a give and take.

Mojo:With the review so far as you can tell it was a so-so game. It wasn’t anything to write home about. However, it could be a defining game for a new genre of racing games with story lines! Which would make it an important step in the game scene. But, that doesn’t really affect the mojo. That just makes it an interesting game. It didn’t make me want to play it much more then a usually so-so racing game.

Lowdown:The lowdown so far is that this game is so-so. If you are into racing games you might find this a good game, or you might find it really lacking. It does have a lot of cars and tracks. It has an interesting story mode. It has the potential to be a good game. I just find it lacking in certain areas (i.e. the actual controls and racing) that make it just so-so. And on that note, if you think you are interested in this game, give it a try first. Make sure that you think it’s a worthwhile investment of your time and money. You will either be pleasantly surprised or, at worst, you will think its just ok…

I am tilting this game’s scores on the gameplay a little, because of how I feel about it. For racing fans it’s definitely worth checking out though, even though I didn’t give it a high score.

Gameplay: 5, Graphics/Sound: 6, Innovation: 8, Mojo: 5. Final: 5