Pro Race Driver PS2

I picked this up a few months ago at Best Buy for $9.99. This is a pretty damn good game. It's set up as a racing game with a storyline. You play as a driver named Ryan McCane. He's an angry, bitter young man. His father was a famous driver who was killed in a race when Ryan was a child., shortly after Ryans older brother Donnie leaves to become and equally famous driver. This leaves Ryan following in their footsteps and being rather cranky about being in their shadow.

Ryan competes in various race series to advance up the ranks to the ultimate goal of winning something called the Lola Championship. Each series consists of 6 races at various road and oval courses around the world in a variety of cars. Dodge Vipers, Audi TT's, Chevy Monte Carlos. Corvettes, Eagle Talons, Toyota Supras and a crap load of others.

Once you start the game though the story has barely anything to do with it. A few cut scenes between races here and there but they have little affect on the gameplay. The only time I noticed any affect was after you advanced though a few series Ryan ends up competing ina series with his brother Donnie. After a few races you see a cut scene of some new rookie named Nick Landers crashing Donnie and sending him to the hospital. After that Donnie is no longer in the series.

I don't know if all the tracks are real but a lot are, Monza, Nurburgring, Sears Point, Charlotte and Bristol to name a few. The layouts of the tracks are quite varied and the cars all handle differently. The interface to each race series is set up like e-mail, You check it to see if you get job offers from any teams. Occasionally you'll get invites to single day events that feature cars not available in any of the series, a 70's Dodge Charger and a Nissan Skyline were a couple.

Apparently there's more in the game after winning the Lola Championship. I won it last night and the credits rolled so I thought I'd beat the game. After the credits it went back to my e-mail and I had 10 more job offers. I thought it might be starting over but all my records and winnings were still there. The manual says nothing about anything after the Lola Championship. In the final cut scene when Ryan in on the podium with his championship trophy his manager says something about now that he's a champion he can race in a private champions series but you need 8 million bucks to enter. I've got 6.8 million in winnings and it seemed like a meaningless stat since you could'nt acces the money for upgrades or anything. The game just tallied your winnings.

I plan on continuing to play till I hit 8 mil and see if I get an invite to this "champions series". I looked in the free play and multi player mode and there's still about 10 cars to unlock.

anyway... pretty cool game for 10 bucks. anyone else have it?