RaceRoom is the best racing game you've never heard of

[Administrator]

That noise, if ever you hear it, is enough to send you running. The thunderous thrum that accompanies the SLS AMG GT sounds like it's been pulled from the hellish skies of the second world war, though if you ignore the instinct to flee it's enough to tease out a pretty wide grin. Seeing motorsport in the flesh - and in all that metal and rubber and glass that rushes past you - is about the sight, about the smell and, perhaps above all else, it's about the sound.
The emulation of the guttural throb of the 6.2 litre V8 that sits under the elongated bonnet of the SLS AMG GT in RaceRoom, the PC project started by Simbin a couple of years back, reminds you that the Swedish studio always got that - from GTR and GTR 2 through to the excellent Race Pro, the pounding of pistons, of transmissions whining and of the sheer violence of the cockpit has been central to Simbin's simulations.
In RaceRoom, which has overcome its slightly banal name and a troubled launch to become one of the better sims on the PC, there are glimpses of Simbin at its peak. There's the accessibility, and the way it's just as satisfying to play on a cheap pad as it is on an expensive wheel set-up; how the handling is translated sublimely through both. And what handling it is, spread out across a delicious range of thoroughbred racing cars: there are the DTM cars, with their downforce and low-slung lines, that only seem one step removed from the hi-tech of F1, or their WTCC cousins that bounce over kerbs with the kiddish enthusiasm of a go-kart.
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