Ford Racing 2 was a pleasant surprise for me. It is a budget arcade game, but the game proved to be a lot of fun. The graphics and physics are good. There’s a large variety of cars, and tracks. The difficulty level settings are more extreme than most, easy is really easy, medium isn’t too difficult for an experienced game racer, and hard is very difficult but still beatable (I managed to complete all career (challenge) events on the hard level, so it is possible). The physics of this game is somewhat settable. The game includes assists in the form of a game mode setting that defaults to standard, which translates into increased grip, traction control, abs braking, and automatic shift. Change this mode to advanced, turn off traction control, turn off the abs, switch to manual shift, and the physics gets a lot more realistic, especially in the higher powered cars. The most realistic car (assuming all assists are off) is the top of the line stock racing car (Taurus class A). Hit the throttle on this car while in a corner and you’re quickly facing backwards. Body roll isn’t visible from the bumper view (the only other view is from behind a car), but it shows itself in how long it takes for a car to take a set and respond to steering inputs, especially on transitions. One of the things I liked about the game physics is power induced oversteer, some of the looser cars (like the Mustangs) drift really nice. Although a bit exaggerated, the game really gives a sense of what’s going on with the suspension, in the way the cars react to (get upset by) going over rises or bumps on the track, sometimes causing a car to go up onto 2 wheels, or going airborne. The response just feels right. The graphics are nice as well. There are some simplified moving objects in the background, but the cars, track, and most of the more noticeable objects are just fine. One interesting graphics feature that you toggle from the game configuration application is depth of field, which blurs objects that aren’t near your car. One of the nits I have about this game is not being able to save the post race replays (other than video capture), especially since the replays are very good. It appears that all the physics that are at work when doing a race, are also present within the replays, (as opposed to some telemetry data that just moves the cars along a fixed path). You can see the cars drift, slide, roll, and leave some rubber on the tracks when pushed to the limit. Replay views are limited to 3 options, with the automatic one being the best, showing the car from various points near or above the track, the other two replay view options are the same as the driver views (bumper and follow). Another nit is no ****pit view with a dashboard. There are only 2 driver views, bumper cam, and follow cam (from behind the vehicle). This seems to be a trend in a lot of racing games these days. I use the bumper cam, and it’s a bit disconcerting to be staring at the wheels and bumpers of trucks all over you in the off-road events. My last nit is no online play, but it’s not that big a deal to me. There are enough venues for online play already, and I don’t need every game I own to have an online play feature. There isn’t a huge number of tracks in this game, but there are enough to make it fun. 6 road courses, 3 desert tracks, 3 dirt tracks, 2 race tracks, and 2 ovals. One of the ovals is a night time track, with some good graphic effects. There are quite a few vehicles in this game. The off road vehicles include trucks, a dune buggy, and a rally car. The road cars include an old 1949 Coupe, a new Thunderbird and variations on the Mustang. The race cars include 2 GT’s, the bizarre looking Indigo, and the stock (think Nascar) cars. My favorite is the top stock car, as it’s the fastest and also most realistic, but unfortunately it can only be driven on the race tracks and the ovals. I wanted to try it out on the road courses as well. The career mode is called challenge. You drive various cars through different type of events. There are 3 variations on a follow the path type of events, two require that you go between posts or drive through hourglass icons to increase the time you have to complete a lap. The other one penalizes you for not following a racing line that appears on a track. Once you learn that it’s best to hit virtually every time marker in these events, it’s not that difficult, even at the hard level (unlike the other events at hard level). One new type of event is the drafting event, where once you’re in the draft of a car ahead, a time bar quickly shrinks, and the car disappears, and you go onto catch up to another car to continue this process, drafting 4 cars within a designated time period. Another twist is duel mode where you have to catch up and complete a lap ahead a series of cars that each appear ahead of you at the start of each lap. The remaining modes are a straight up race with 5 other cars, and a hot lap event, where it’s just you versus the clock on a hot lap run (with a flying start, and 3 laps to beat the time, then again there’s always the retry feature). The challenge mode includes an expert score level. Beat all the events at the hard difficulty level, and you get a 100% expert rating, plus a trophy. Except for the time marker or racing line events, the hard level is indeed just that. It will take quite a few laps to master these events at the hard level. The most difficult is the hot lap events, as you really need to get all you can out of the car and track to beat these times. There’s also another series of races called collection, but you pick the car, track, number of laps, and level of difficulty. You get trophies for winning at all tracks with each event type, but since the number of laps and difficulty don’t matter in this case, it’s not difficult. I’ve also captured some good videos of the post race replays, but the policy here does not allow me to post any links to these videos. I would suggest you check out forums for Ford Racing 2 to find links to these videos.
The game has some great cars if you're a Ford fan. The graphics are good, at least on the track. The further away from the track you get the less attention to detail there is. Most of the missions are o.k., they are ... Read Full Review
It would seem that game sites expect every new game that comes along in all the same old categories to redefine the given category, turn lead into gold, make the dead rise and live again, solve all everyone's personal pr... Read Full Review
