Enthusia: Professional Racing (2005) Review #blogpost

Enthusia: Professional Racing is a track based racing game that came out in 2005 on the Playstation 2. It was developed and published by Konami. At first this game seems like another Gran turismo copy with some kind of twist to make it completely different. I can’t figure out what that twist is, so let’s find out.
I’m going to start with the opening video. I don’t usually do this, but it’s Awesome, weird and overly dramatic all at once, and that makes it very interesting. Also I quite like the song that’s used in the video

Enthusia: Professional Racing features 211 cars from all over the world, which to me is very surprising, because I thought for some reason that there would mainly be Japanese car manufactures. There is a huge variety of vehicles from little city cars such as the Honda Beat and the Nissan Cube to SUVs like the Volkswagen Touareg and the Land Rover Range Rover. Theres also some mini vans like the Toyota Estima Hybrid and the Toyota Alphard.

You have to unlock most of the cars, which is the worst thing about this game. It would be fine it half the cars were unlocked from the start, but no. So you have to start off your racing carrier with a car that you most likely don’t like Cough Cough Toyota Estima Cough Cough, and try to unlock the rest of the cars in the game. To unlock cars, you have to win a race that the car that you win is in, because when you win something comes up like the wheel spin in Forza Horizon 2 and 3 where you win any of the cars that you beat. In a way I like it, because the car you win is always different, but I also hate it, because it sort of takes the surprise out of winning a car, because you’ve already seen all the cars that you could win.

To start off with, I chose the Toyota Estima, because when I first played Enthusia: Professional Racing I thought “Nice, a hybrid. I can upgrade the engine and the motor and turn it into a practical McLaren P1”. When I got into the game I saw that there weren’t any upgrading options. I was disappointed about that. Although I think I was more disappointed with the fact that I had to do part of the game with a stock minivan.

There are some amazing tracks in the game, with courses set in Cities, on country roads and even in the desert. The tracks are all very well designed, but I think racing through the desert in the Estima is a bit too unrealistic.

To sum the review up, I really like the car list and the tracks look amazing. I don’t like the car acquiring system or the lack of upgrade options. Overall I give Enthusia: Professional Racing 7 out of 10.