Platform: Playstation 2
Genre: Racing
Publisher: Empire Interactive
Developer: Razorwork / Gotham Games
ESRB: E (Everyone) 
Released: Q4 2003

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Pros:

- Lots of different cars (Over 30)

- Like the inclusion of concept cars

Cons:

- Horrible car physics

- Bad rendering edges

- Long loading times for a PS2 game

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"...the worst driving physics I've ever seen in a racing game."

Ford Racing 2 is one of many racing games put out for a car manufacturer that showcases that company’s prowess, and with the length of time that Ford has been making cars, the sheer number of available vehicles is staggering. Ford Racing 2 takes advantage of Ford’s tendency to build racing cars and concept cars and includes all of them as available vehicles. As with all company-based racing games, the game is more simulation than racing so all thoughts of crashing cars can be forgotten before you pick up the title.

The highlights of this title are showcased under the single player action, so we’ll start there.

After setting up your preferences, you can win cars for the multi-player game by completing challenges with specific cars. The challenges break down into 8 different flavors: standard, elimination, duel, drafting, driving skills, seconds out, racing line, and time attack.

Standard: it’s a basic race against CPU opponents, varying number of opponents, varying number of laps; Elimination – race against opponents where the lowest seeds are dropped from the race at the completion of each lap; Duel: a 3 lap race where you race head to head against 3 different opponents over the same course; Drafting: a race where you have to 

‘draft behind (stay behind the car to reduce the amount of fuel that you expend… very important with American cars, especially in racing or anything that was built in the ‘60s or ‘70s) target cars; Driving Skills: race where you gain time by completing gates; Seconds Out: race where you pick up time bonuses on the “best line” of the track to keep your running time under the track limit; Racing Line: a run where you try to keep your car on top of a green line that runs around the course, if you veer off the line you accumulate penalty time that is added to your time; Time Attack: basic best time race.

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The visuals of the game are a mixed bag with the colors and shapes being all right, but some of the cars seem to suffer from a nasty case of texture smearing where the edges between the background and the cars blend, so instead of a black edge you get a really large distortion zone. Also, to simulate the “sheen” of the cars the gloss is simulated by running white lines across the surface like you’d see if the car were out in the sun except they just look like pixelated lines moving across the car as you drive. The sound is much in the same boat; once you find a music choice that you can live with (the rock music so bad that I had to turn it off in favor of funk) and can get by the fact that the cars don’t pitch change with position (roll down your window and listen to what you hear when you’re in a open road versus near a highway divider… quite a big difference) the sound is passable.  

Game play itself is another series of problems – this game has some of the worst driving physics I’ve ever seen in a racing game. Never in my life has a car fish-tailed uncontrollably at 45 miles an hour on dry road nor spun out at 60. These things just don’t happen in real life, so why should they happen in this game? Multiply this problem across the 30+ cars that are available in the game, all of which have slightly different driving characteristics and you are either going to find a car that you can drive or you are going to become increasingly agitated. Adding insult to injury is the frighteningly long load times for the booting of the disc at the end of each race and you have one of the slowest Playstation 2 games… disappointing in a recent release.

All in all, Ford Racing 2 is a game that you’re going to want to kick the tires on before you pick up.

- Tazman  

(January 20, 2004)

"I know that it's prom and all, but I'm breaking up with you so I can get laid with lots of college chicks. Oh by the way, Happy Birthday!"

            - Rocko (Undergrads)  

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