Live For Speed S2 Alpha (PC)

Live For Speed is a racing game for the PC designed to offer one of the most realistic driving experiences on the platform. It features several tracks with multiple layouts and reversed races, and a number of cars ranging from production hatchbacks to F1 single seaters. Players can race against the clock or in open practice sessions (against A.I. drivers if required) but the majority of the game is formed around racing online.

Driving games tend to fall into two broad categories – realistic simulation and arcade. The latter type requires little knowledge of real life driving techniques, focusing on an easily accessible, fun racing experience. The former tend to be sought out by real life petrolheads, who arm themselves with the best steering wheel peripherals they can buy and then dive straight into the pit lane to start fine tuning their cars before even looking at the track. Live For Speed is definitely one of these.

Live For Speed has a single player mode in which you can choose and customise cars and tracks and race against up to 31 computerised drone cars, but the quality of opposition offered by these AI vehicles tends to be wooden and predictable so most people will quickly start to look at the multiplayer side. This is where Live For Speed really starts to shine – you’ll be spoiled for choice whether you prefer to race in single seater events, drive in knockabout stock car races, take to the drag strip and put down quarter mile runs, enter autocross time trials in stripped down lightweight vehicles, or even go drift racing. Somewhere out there you’ll find a server that caters for you, and even if you only want to drive around sensibly and enjoy motoring you’ll find a series of cruise servers where the aim is to do just that.

There are a huge variety of clubs, leagues and single events geared to almost any aspect of racing you can think of and most are run with the same professionalism you’d expect from real life organisations. Many will require you to start racing in the lower leagues and earn licenses to allow you access to the bigger cars. Deliberate abuse, ramming and generally poor driving are frowned upon and will get you banned from most servers instantly, although there are quite a few knockabout ones where rules don’t really apply. Many of the racers you’ll meet online are exceptionally good and take sim racing very seriously, so don’t be tempted to jump straight into an advanced race series straight away because you may find your lack of ability being frowned upon – go for a starter race (such as one of the production hatchback events or a Fox single seater championship) and find your feet first.

When you sign up for your Live For Speed license, you’re given a login to a site that looks and behaves just like a computer desktop via LFS.net. This allows you to track your statistics and those of other people, contact other players, view race results and reports and upload custom skins so that other players can see your cars as you intend. This is your control panel onto the Live For Speed world, and is streamlined and well designed enough to get you into the swing of things with minimal headaches.

One of the biggest draws for racing simulation fans is the depth and realism of car customisation on offer. To get you started you can choose one of the built in profiles for each car, or you can dive straight in and start to tune everything from differential types and brake forces, to fully adjustable damper and shock settings. Your first attempt will most likely render your choice of car completely undriveable, but after a while (and a bit of research) you’ll discover that the tweaks you make have the precise effect you’d see in the real world, so you can begin to shave tenths from your lap times in much the same way as a real racing driver. Fortunately there are a vast number of forums and guides dedicated to explaining how the various settings work, and if you’re still confused then you can simply download a configuration created by somebody else to try out.

There are plenty of cars to try out too – you have 19 at your disposal including tuned road cars, single seaters (including a replica of the BMW Sauber F1 car), GT racers, a couple of supercars and even an auto-trial focused kart with a motorbike engine and sequential gearbox. Each of these cars has unique handling characteristics and most players find that they tend to race one more than the others. There are multi-class racing servers out there, but with the exception of auto-trials and drift races you’ll generally find yourself racing against cars in your own class.

You’ll have full access to six race tracks, which may not sound like much compared to some games but each track has multiple layouts (all of which can be reversed) so the real figure is closer to 20. Some of these may even be autocross tracks that give you a chance to fit a set of knobbly tyres, jack up your suspension and drive sideways on mud for a while. In addition to this there are three test areas – the car park, drag strip and skid pan. The drag strip can be used for online racing (and there is quite a healthy scene revolving around this) but the skid pan is more for testing your own car, being simply a tarmac area marked with circles of different diameters so that you can test grip and handling adjustments.

The car park is slightly more interesting though. Even though it starts as an empty space, you’re provided with an in-game editor that allows you to place barriers, cones, tyre stacks, chalk marks and many other features so you can effectively create your own trials circuits. Many of the drift servers online use this area to make compact and technical tracks that will really test your setup and car control. I have a drift car of my own based around an 80s Mitsubishi Starion Turbo (named XGT in the game), and I find drifting to be one of the most enjoyable of the online events.

The graphics and sound in Live For Speed are probably best described as effective rather than spectacular. The car models look clean and well put together, and making custom skins is a breeze. Movement is good with cars reacting well to the environment, to the degree that you can see tyres flexing and bouncing over rough ground. All of the tracks have a solid and consistent look, with the South City street circuit being one of the most interesting due to the variety of trackside modelling. The sound effects are smooth and varied, and allow you to accurately pinpoint precisely which type of car is chewing up your rear bumper, but if you want to race in a full series of 32 cars you’ll need to make sure your soundcard can hack it.

The advantage of all of this streamlining is that the game runs exceptionally well on most PCs and doesn’t require astronomical hardware to be playable. The physics engine comes first (which is how it should be) and the driving experience remains smooth and predictable throughout. This also benefits the player during the bigger online races, where lag is kept to a minimum due to the reduced need for eye candy.

Live For Speed is a serious racing game and not one for people who think the keyboard is an acceptable input device for racing. The physics are demanding and the learning curve is steep despite a superbly judged series of single player tutorials that progressively take you through most of the cars, tracks, manoeuvres and racing techniques. Having said that, if you own a steering wheel and want a game that throws away all the silly presentation in favour of a spot on realistic driving experience then I don’t believe you’ll find anything better out there.