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V8 SUPERCARS: RACE DRIVER (PC)
Codemaster's dynamic racer hits PC
By MARTIN KINGSLEY
 Let's
make this clear from the start: I'm not a V8 fan. I
don't watch it, I don't know who Russel Ingall is; I could, in fact, not
care less.
Yet here I am, sitting
here at my ominous black marble desk, steepling my fingers Mr. Burns-style
whilst listening to Mozart, examining what appears to be…you guessed
it…a V8 Supercars game, cleverly titled V8 Supercars: Race Driver.
It's also variously
known as TOCA Race Driver in the UK and France, and Pro Race Driver in
the US and Spain.
The other thing I should mention
is that I generally don't like console ports, which [haha] V8 Supercars
(V8SC) also happens to be. What a coincidence. Yes, definitely a coincidence
*beats self over head with dead cod *.
Now, it's obvious from the
start just where V8SC's roots lie e.g firmly embedded in the Xbox's shiny
black casing, and this just becomes more apparent as time goes by and
the arcadiness jumps to the forefront of your conciousness, apparent no
matter where you turn.
From the complete lack of mouse
support in the menus to the way in which the steering wheel support doesn't
go much further than rudimentary "rumble pack" vibrations, arcadey
rules supreme.
Forgetting the general arcadey
nature of V8 Supercars for a second, I just want to focus for a few minutes
on one particularly grating section of the game before I get onto the
positives, and it's a very big section, let me tell you: It's called the
Career mode.
Normally, most racing games
wouldn't bother with an actual career mode as such, yet Codemasters have
implemented one, and it's a good one for the most part, finally convincing
the Aussie petrol heads to please stand up and make themselves known by
giving them such tantalising options and rewards such as jumping teams,
competing in overseas competitions and, of course, winning big fat trophies
full of hot cash.
 But, as I said
before beginning this carefully planned rant, it's not all roses, nonono!
When playing in Career mode, the said career you are managing is that
of one arrogant prat known as Ryan McKane and, no, you can't even change
the name.
Now, normally I wouldn't mind
having an avatar for the game, but McKane makes me want to reach in to
my monitor and beat him across his Michelin-sponsored helmet with a tyre
iron.
He's so painfully cocky, not
to mention full of himself and, worse luck, he just gets more irritating
as the game goes on.
By the end, you begin to wonder
why someone just doesn't run him over in the pit lane and save the world
a lot of grief in the long run. Also, his hair is quite, quite horrific,
aesthetically speaking, to the point where McKane putting on his helmet
is a cause for wild applause and much celebration.
Oh, and since we're on the
topic of drivers, I might as well make a point of talking about your competition.
While reasonably intelligent and skilled, sometimes the other driver will
display signs of being Artificially Inane (possibly Insane, too).
This is most evident during
the beginning of the race, where these guys make it their personal goal
in cyber-life to run every single car - both in front and behind - off
the starting line, before braking at every corner about 10 seconds too
early, creating monumental pile ups that, while fun to watch, sort of
detract from the actual racing experience.
For those of us who can stay
relatively sane throughout the cutscenes, the game gets better. On the
upside, V8 Supercars: Race Driver is definitely pleasing to the eye, with
ridiculously high-poly cars, particle FX coming out the ears, high resolution
textures and a very pretty, if somewhat unrelated to reality, damage model
that will see cars shedding parts like it's going out of style (although
this causes exactly nil change as far as actual car performance goes).
 You
could reduce one of these ingame models to basically a steering column,
four tyres and an engine and it'd still drive like a freshly minted Lamborghini
Diablo, despite the actual lack of any streamlining to speak of.
While speaking of cars, V8
Supercars isn't exactly lacking in that department, with roughly 42 vehicles
to choose from and about the same number of tracks, including 7 of our
own circuits, such as Bathurst's Mountain of Thunder, Eastern Creek, Sandown,
and Phillip Island (Huzzah - Ed).
As with all things game-related,
the better the graphics, the higher the system requirements; I wouldn't
suggest anybody without at least 1.3GHz behind the processor and a Geforce4/Radeon
9xxx should start getting too excited about getting behind the wheel until
a system upgrade has been, as they say in the best press releases, "affected".
Now, much has apparently been
made of V8SC's sound effects, but I'm sorry to say that I was totally
unable to hear anything of any substance at all, on account of the fact
that, probably thanks to some lazy programmer too busy playing Solitaire
to actually do their job and recode the Xbox's sound codecs, V8SC doesn't
support on-board sound (the Audigy 2 is in the mail!), producing high
pitched wails and not much else in the presence of an AC'97 VIA chipset.
In all the console ports that
have passed through my machine, I've never seen any ever reject the onboard
soundcard.
Those of you who actually have
hardware sound cards are, according to my pamphlet, in for a treat, but
everyone else who hasn't bothered to separate their sound from their motherboard
will either pass V8SC over or make it a reason to purchase a real sound
card.
 A small extra is
that each of the cars have cockpit views; admittedly most of the 42 automobiles
use generic cockpit models.
But some of the unique cars
(the Mini Cooper springs to mind) have totally different interior designs
which, while not exactly important, add a subtle air of autheticity to
the proceedings, not to mention that staring at a Mini dashboard is just
cool in itself. Bring me my fluffy dice!
So, in the end, V8 Supercars
has more in common with Daytona than Papyrus's NASCAR Racing 2003, or
even Grand Prix Legends for that matter and, while there are lots of things
that probably make this a product to be somewhat cautious of at first,
the hardcore V8 fan will probably buy it anyway regardless of what I say.
However, anyone else just curious
or even slightly fanatical is advised to give this a good pre-purchase
spin via the wellworn rental system before investing their hard-earned
dosh. Add 10% to the overall score if you're a V8 aficionado.
ORIGINALITY 85%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 90%
PLAYABILITY 75%
ENJOYMENT 70%
OVERALL 75%
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