Probably what worked against RRV the most was the pure expectation gamers had of the PS2. True, we had seen ample evidence that it wasn't going to raise the ceiling much higher than the Dreamcast, but early signs that the PS2 was in some ways less capable than Sega's swansong console were hard to take. RRV provided some of that evidence with unoptomised PAL code, no antialiasing despite Namco launch stablemate Tekken Tag Tournament receiving just that for the PAL market, bland textures and mediocre lighting and polygon counts.

In many ways, once might expect that Sony's hard-to-program console might have allowed Namco to do what it did with Ridge Racer Type 4 in packaging the orginal game as a comparison to show how far its developers had come even on the coder-friendly 32-bit PlayStation. For R: Racing, the difference is less dramatic, but the new standard is impressive nevertheless. With a full refresh rate and excellent lighting and textures, the lack of antialiasing is about all that R: Racing lacks. However, it should be noted the game still looks markedly smoother than the Japanse version, R: Racing Evolution, we tested in our preview (the screenshots here are still smoother than what you get, however, just like our Burnout 3 preview).

R: Racing also features the best Namco girl yet. Two, in fact, and this time they're not just race queens. Both your playable character, Rena Hayami, and her Italian racing rival Gina Cavalli are among the most gorgeous video game characters ever, without a doubt. Cut-scenes carry the narrative between races while showing off the latest CGI technology in somewhat better fasion than the likes of V8 Supercars 2.

In a nutshell, Rena, an ambulance driver, replaces a crash victim she drives to hospital after impressing the team manager with her driving. It's an unlikely tale from the outset, but then R: Racing is an unashamedly arcade-style work and as such it's a fairy tale of an experience, albeit not without its challenges.

A sexual tension lingers between Rena and her father-figure boss, Stephan. Rena will discover there's more to the world of motorsport than driving, but such digressions from the act of racing are but a prop for the main experience of earning your victories.

As well as circuit racing, R: Racing takes you to rally time trials and drag races. These provide a decent break from the main action but are themselves highly enjoyable. As with everything, the difficulty setting is chosen prior to each event, and while the lower settings are arguably pointlessly easy, hard is hard and more so as Rena's career progresses.

The decidely arcade-style handling set is best tackled using a steering wheel. While the Xbox version allows analogue braking and acceleration via the controller triggers, only a set of pedals will provide the same luxury on PS2. Without the freedom to temper your inputs, keeping your cars under control is that much harder, particulalry as the handling model punishes errors by creating an artificial tendency to fishtail whenever the back end looses traction. The garage option lets you tinker with your setup options with common sliders for each setting. But as Stephan will tell you time and again from the pits, get your weight forward. While most other tips are actually little more than loosely relevant fillers, the oversteering handling model necessitates taking on this advice when cornering.