Gun games . . . you either love 'em or you hate 'em, right? Well, I was kinda on mixed grounds regarding the issue, actually, as I sorta-kinda liked the original House of the Dead on the Saturn, and I sorta kinda liked Virtua Cop. House of the Dead II has me leaning more towards the love 'em side, though, with its faster, more varied gameplay, and its incredible graphical style.

It's really a shame that Konami's racing title, Enthusia Professional Racing, is coming out just a couple of months after SCEA's Gran Turismo 4. Had Enthusia come out last year its own take on the enthusiast driving life would be more accepted. But with the playing field changed by Sony's entry it feels more like an average racer than anything truly exceptional. And with a bizarre career mode that saps some of the fun out of the game, Enthusia is a game that will be noted more for its uniqueness than its greatness.

With 50 tracks and over 200 cars to drive with, Enthusia holds its own in terms of providing a good amount of variety in races and different types of tracks. The only disappointment is that there are only two real-world tracks in the list: Tsukuba and Nurburgring. The rest of the tracks are fantasy tracks in that include city courses, race tracks, and rally courses. There's even a randomly generated desert course for some extremely dusty racing.

The different tracks in the game have a decent amount of detail in them and they have varying weather conditions which will severely affect the traction in the different cars. There are a few tracks that are pretty mind-numbingly simple to race through, but several tracks sport some decent challenges and, as it should be, the focus is on driving a clean line to get the better times. It doesn't hurt that the tracks should sport some clean graphics and good-looking backdrops. Maybe not completely awe-inspiring, but still impressive.

The only thing missing from the racing through the tracks is the sense of speed. The cars can lose traction and there can be a blur effect that creeps in from the side of the screen, but it still doesn't add up to something that feels solid and dangerous. It's almost as if the gameplay has been sanitized for your protection and is missing out on some of the feeling of danger. In place of this feeling of speed, Enthusia makes up for it with a visual representation of what's going on so that racers can create a mental map of what's happening to the car.

What Enthusia provides for the racing world is a better understanding of the interaction of the tires on the road. This is the much-hyped Visual G System, or VGS, which shows both the inertia on the car as well as the grip the tires have with the pavement. The inertia is represented with a yellow dot inside of a circle. When the dot swings to one side or the other that means that the car is likely to lose control and slide out. Similarly, when the tire icons turn red that means that the tires have lost traction completely and it's time to get ready to hit the wall.


Another trick of the VGS is that of a gray border on the screen that moves up and down with acceleration and deceleration and left to right for lateral inertia. Like the icon system, this is a neat trick for showing off the physics of what the car is experiencing. Unlike the icon system, however, this can be very disconcerting and the game is noticeably better when it's turned off.

In addition to the novel visual system, Enthusia also includes a novel approach to the career mode that is here called Enthusia Life. Each week in the calendar there is a selection of races to choose from. Some of these can be duels, but most of them are against a field of rivals. Either way, the amount of points that can be earned in each race is determined by the odds against the player winning. The weaker the players' car is in the field the more points can be earned. All these points help push up the players' rank in the game and eventually unlock more races.


Author by: Ed Lewis