GRAPHICS

The MBWR graphics are vibrant and richly textured; car details are good, and the simulated racing environments are rich with detail -- perhaps too much, at times, given all the things going on in the background (including airplanes, helicopters, and even UFOs on the Nevada tracks), but all of this makes for a lively and engaging sim racing environment, especially when combined with the go-anywhere environments in MBWR.

The in-game ambient lighting can seem a bit otherworldly at times, and the color palette can seem a bit "cartoony" when compared to Papyrus sims or the graphics in Race Driver 2, for example, but there is nothing displeasing going on in MBWR, graphics-wise. If anything, the colors and lighting used in MBWR just serves to give it a unique flavor, and for some people, the lighting and color choices may actually seem more realistic than in some other sims. Personally, I think the graphics in Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing came very close to setting a benchmark for sim racing graphics, while MBWR's graphics tend to appear a bit less realistic. Even so, I would still rate MBWR as outstanding in the graphics department.

GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE

The MBWR graphics engine is a good performer overall -- I originally ran the game on a Duron 950 system using a GeForce2 GTS video card, and the graphics were outstanding and framerates were very good even though the Duron CPU was at the low end of Synetic's hardware recommendations. I did the majority of the testing for this review on the following system:

AMD Athlon 1.1 GHz processor
Nvidia Geforce 3Ti 2100 64MB (AGP@2X texture)
256MB DDR RAM
Phillips Acoustic Edge PCI sound card
7200 RPM ATA133 40GB hard disk
Matshita 2X DVD drive
Lite-On LTR-1610 CD-RW drive

With this system, I experience almost no graphical slowdowns, and MBWR runs very, very smoothly; on more modern hardware with faster processors and graphics cards, MBWR should be an even smoother experience.

INTERNET MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT

As I mentioned earlier, the long-awaited Internet multiplayer patch for MBWR performs very well, although it is limited to a maximum of six players per session. This does lend a certain "club racing" sort of feel to MBWR, but with a maximum of only five other opponents per session, I don't see much opportunity for online leagues to form up using MBWR as the basis. This means that as good as the online multiplayer aspect is, MBWR does not seem to be suited for much other than "pickup"-type races.

PHYSICS

The physics engine used in MBWR does seem to be descended from Synetic's Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing title, which is a good thing indeed, especially with the physics setting at 100% full simulation. As I mentioned earlier, though, the poor sound implementation does seem to work against the physics engine to some degree, because it makes it hard to really gauge when you're at the ragged edge of adhesion. Driving around with the AI difficulty level reduced to around 70%, the driving experience can be very good at the 7/10ths to 8/10ths level, but when you push the cars to the jagged edge and get up around the 10/10ths level, the poor sound implementation will leave you wondering just what exactly is going on, physics-wise.

Even worse is the fact that Synetic has built in an automatic counter-steering tendency into the MBWR physics engine -- something that did not exist in their earlier Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing title. I suspect that this was done to provide the necessary assist for the console versions of the game, but the bad news is that this apparent steering assist is not selectable -- you get counter-steering whether you want it or no, even with the physics set to 100% full simulation, and there is no way to disable it. When you're just driving around, you probably won't notice it, but the closer you get to the edge, the more noticeable it becomes.

What's worse is the fact that sometimes it will actually work as an assist, saving you from situations where you might not have been fast enough to effect a "save" on your own, but this ultimately lead to sloppy driving techniques for me, and I eventually found myself unable to drive effectively at the edge because I had become used to being able to use gentle inputs to correct for slides and such, when in reality it was the game's automatic counter-steering "assist" which was doing the work. Many times when driving at the edge of adhesion, this unwanted "assist" often seems to either get in the way, or it's not fast enough to do its thing when I'm driving in a more "lazy" manner because that's what the game has "taught" me to do. Most folks don't seem to notice that this "assist" even exists, but if you're like me, once you notice it, it's hard to ignore, and it's annoying as heck.

One other annoying aspect of the MBWR physics engine is that it seems to be rather under-utilized; even though there are a wide variety of cars in MBWR, the performance of the varying models is quite often virtually undetectable. There are eight (8) different C-Class T-Model wagons, for example, ranging from the C 200 T CDI to the C32 T AMG, and while the AMG model should definitely be an improvement over the "base" model, there difference in handling isn't that noticeable, even though the in-game Handling / Top Speed / Acceleration graphs indicate that the AMG model should handle much, much better than the "base" C 200 T CDI model (the acceleration and braking is definitely better in the AMG model, though, so perhaps the "Handling" statistic is being used to convey overall braking ability).

Overall, though, despite these minor annoyances, I would have to rate the physics in MBWR as slightly superior than Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed (NFSPU) -- the main problem with MBWR is that it features few cars that are as engaging and as exciting as the cars featured in NFSPU. I still have to grin whenever I fire up NFSPU to take a spin in a 550 Spyder or a 356 Speedster, and even though there is a solid physics engine under the hood, few cars modeled in MBWR offer that level of visceral enjoyment.