GAME MODES

CAREER AND RANKINGS

MBRW allows you to set up various different driver profiles - you can select your name (which appears on your cars' license plates), your gender, and your overall appearance by selecting from a variety of driver images in the "Profile" menu. You can also view the profiles of the various AI drivers that you will be competing against offline in career mode. Additionally, you receive positive and negative feedback during races in the form of messages that appear on the bottom of the screen, as well as post-race rankings showing how well you performed against your AI opponents.

The AI is scalable, as are your physics -- when you dial-in100% simulation mode for the physics MBWR begins to shine, exhibiting a lot of the goodness that was inherent to Synetic's previous Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing title. At lower realism levels, MBWR becomes an easily accessible racer suitable for the Need For Speed crowd. Add in the fact that you can increase or decrease the AI skill level, and it becomes apparent that MBWR can be scaled to offer a suitable challenge for a broad audience.

The career mode and rankings aspects are obviously intended to make the career mode more engaging, giving it something of a role-playing aspect, but the execution is rather "flat." With no in-game cut scenes, all you get are static race reports, and your opposition never exhibits (or develops) any discernable personality traits via their driving styles, so you never develop any sense of rivalry against your AI opponents, and the rankings never take on any real meaning within the game.

FREE TRAINING AND INDIVIDUAL RACES

This mode is exactly what it says -- you can train at various tracks, running an unlimited number of laps (up to 99, actually, which is quite a lot, given the size of some of the track configurations). You can also choose individual tracks to race against the AI outside of career mode -- the only downside here is that you must first unlock tracks . . . or you can track down the necessary cheats to unlock the tracks in advance (which is what I finally did after logging about 500 miles' worth of track time in career mode).

MISSIONS

The Missions consist of timed challenges and waypoint-type events run over a wide variety of terrains using assigned vehicles. This portion is slightly reminiscent of the Factory Driver mode in Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed, but I didn't find it as engrossing, comprehensive, or engaging. The missions are not really linked in any way, so they are really more like a series of unrelated "challenges." There are a total of 48 missions in all, but you only start out with a few of them unlocked and accessible, and you must work through them one at a time in order to unlock the rest, which can get tedious. There is a lot of good stuff here, though, ranging from offroad runs to themed challenges, and the replayability of the missions is good. This portion of the game makes for great "fun runs" when you're in the mood to do some sim racing but not in the mood for anything too serious.

THE RACE SCHEDULE (CAREER MODE)

The Race Schedule selection is in effect your career mode -- this is where you compete against the AI players to improve your rankings, and win races to unlock cars and tracks. There's not much to be said about the career mode except that the really expansive (and I mean EXPANSIVE) tracks and environments which set MBWR apart from virtually any other racing/driving sim tend to work against it in career mode.

Even though there are only seven different driving environments (Alps, Australia, City, Japan, Mexico, Nevada, the Test Center, and Hockenheimring), there are so many different variations of tracks (117 variations in all) and quite a few championships (16 total) -- this makes for a lot of variety, but given that there is only one real-world track (Hockenheimring), it can take quite a while before you become familiar enough with the tracks to really compete with the AI.

Add in the fact that most career mode races are 2 or 3 lap events, plus the fact that most of the tracks are VERY long (three-to-five minute laps are not uncommon on some of the layouts), and you may find yourself feeling quite lost early on. That makes for a fun driving experience, but if you've got the AI difficulty level set high and the realism set to max in order to enjoy the physics engine, and then the expansive racing environment runs headlong into the inherent need to become quickly familiar with the racing environment. This is somewhat compounded by the fact that most of the environments tend to model road and street conditions that you might encounter in the real-world, rather than dedicated racing venues, which makes it even more difficult to become quickly familiar with the various "tracks."

Basically, there's no time for sightseeing, but plenty of sights to see -- which seems to make MBWR's method of unlocking tracks and cars even more annoying.