A mix bag of pros and cons for this racing sim

User Rating: 7 | RacePro X360
The physics and handling of the game are quite good, and up there with any other racing game I've played. This has to be the best feature of the game. The difficulties can be set to give a challenge to a seasoned race game driver all the way down to a novice. You can also select different levels of driver aids like ABS and TCS and change the difficulty of the AI drivers. There is a ton of custom car fine tuning you can do, although the basic setup it gives you should be just fine.

There are some problems though. The graphics are good, but not great. There is no 'wow' factor. The cars are well detailed but the environments surrounding the tracks could have used some more work. Personally I found the audio to be a little annoying, instead of sounding really cool like a race car should after a few hours I chose to play without the sound.

The game has an option for a single race which allow you to set all kinds of options when you're in the mood for a quick race. There is multiplayer available over Xbox live in both player matches and ranked matches. I played some of these, and they seemed to run just fine without any lag but the main problem is that there was not many people online at all.

The core of the game is the career mode. It features a series of 'contracts' each which 3 races. You can tryout for a contract or buy it out with credits won, then race in the 3 individual races and win credits as you go. It's a nice concept but the main issue I have is that there was no sense of progression at all. It just felt like one series of races after another, and the credits you win can only be used to buy a contract instead of trying out which doesn't take very long anyways. You unlock up to 3 types of the car (bronze, silver, gold) for each contract based on the difficulty level you chose. It'd be much nicer if you could use credits to buy new cars and/or new upgrades.

The other major part of the game is the championship series. You have a series of races for each car class where you can choose all the options. Each one has a points standings. There isn't a lot different from this set up than career, except it's one season with points instead of a career of contracts.

The AI in the game is not bad but not great either. They are generally very predictable. None of the AI drivers seem to have any personality or unique driving traits that set them apart. A lot of races they just seem to go through the whole race in one bunch. A few times an AI driver would be given a drive-through penalty for crossing the track on a turn, but wouldn't be smart enough to go in to the pits for the penalty and be disqualified.

In essence, Race Pro will please some hardcore racing sim fans with its realistic handling and physics. There are a fairly wide variety of cars and tracks as well. It just wasn't all brought together very well. No sense of progression in career mode, no way to upgrade or buy new cars, and a boring AI. If you want to try a great racing sim for the Xbox 360, I'd recommend Forza Motorsport 2 over this for a much better overall package.