Enthusia Professional Racing

"Enthusia? Isn't that a car from Mitsubishi?"

Konami's little rogue project, Enthusia, was sandwiched between the brewing war between acclaimed racing sims Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport. Being the first and only game in its series, Konami didn't have the manpower to exceed the titans in what they did best, which is load their games chock full of licensed cars, tracks, and extramental features. The result is some sort of weird hybrid of Gran Turismo that implements some new ideas on the typical “career” mode and comes off as unique, yet somewhat distracting, in its own right.

Enthusia delivers what you'd expect from the series—pure simulation racing in a handful of economy, sport, and racing cars from tons of real-life manufacturers, such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Chevrolet, Dodge, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Aston Martin, and Alfa Romeo. However, the career mode, called “Enthusia Life” is completely different. Instead of Gran Turismo's typical “race, win money, buy cars, buy parts, repeat,” Enthusia boasts an RPG system of sorts in which the reward for winning races is experience points, which unlock more races, cars, and parts along the way. Cash is no longer an issue as the game hands out rewards for near-perfect driving, rather than just dumping it on you like in Gran Turismo. In other words, if you don't want to work hard, you'll never get anywhere in Enthusia.

How Enthusia Life works is that you begin with a handful of economy cars already unlocked and must pick from one of them and enter a series of races. When you win, you'll gain experience points based on your car's odds of winning and by how clean of a race you ran. See, this is where “Enthu points” come in handy. If you wreck into a wall or an opponent, or run off-road, you lose Enthu points. Run out of points in a race and you are disqualified for a week and fail to gain any experience whatsoever. If you think you cannot beat the next race without running out of points, you can "rest" for a week and refill your points. To gain access to more races and upgrade your cars, you must consistently perform well in previous races, and I need not explain the whole system because it is too complicated for its own good--just know that it involve throwing a lot of numbers around. Instead of buying cars, in each race, you enter a raffle and have a chance to unlock one of your opponent's cars as your own.

There are some inherent flaws with this system. The game takes into consideration the best 9 out of the last 12 weeks to determine your ranking and which races you are allowed to enter. That means that no race can be “forgone” as you can lose your reputation by just slacking off. Switching your car takes a week, which is kind of a pain as you must use it until you are low on Enthu Points and want to rest anyway. The Enthu Points system is a decent way to reduce the wall-riding and bumper cars that was so prevalent in Gran Turismo. However, the system can be so stingy as even AI-responsible collisions reduce your points as well. Generally, it's hard to level up even if you get in a few minor wrecks per race—not to mention that without Enthu Points, the physics is still forgiving and you can wall-ride and bounce off other cars with little risk. And to add the nausea, the car raffle system is irritating. You can bounce around the course, finish fourth, and unlock the winner's car, yet you can drive a flawless race yet unlock nothing. It seems like a lot of work but with not a lot of payout.

Yet what makes Enthusia stand out is its driving system. Just like Gran Turismo and Forza, careful driving, easing on the gas and brake is simply the way to go. At times, you feel a sense of euphoria when you cruise around turns flawlessly. However, the driving engine is, in some ways, more realistic—hence difficult. To accompany this, a tire gauge on your HUD will instruct you on how much of your tires' friction is being used at the moment—too much and the car will lose grip and probably lose control. Even with beginner cars, such as the Nissan Bluebird and Suzuki Cappuccino, the cars tend to slog around and undergo some understeer when you expected it to be a cakewalk. In a way, this is like “racing exercise”—if you get good at this game, you are great at racing games in general. I thought this was one of Enthusia's redeeming features, but if you are less than skilled at racing games, it can be excruciatingly annoying when you oversteer again and again. There is also some motion blur in the first-person view that was not in Gran Turismo or Forza.

Enthusia has a few extra features besides the exhaustive Enthusia Life mode. There's another mode called “Driving Revolution” which throws a couple of rejected license test challenges at you, such as driving through gates at a certain speed. There's also the Free Race, Time Attack, and Versus Mode modes that allow you to race alone or with a friend on any courses and cars you've unlocked in Enthusia Life. These modes have little impact on the course of the game, so they're just for kicks.

Yet the main problem with Enthusia is simply not because of its career mode, but the sheer quantity of features is limited. Gran Turismo 4 boasts 700 cars, Forza 2 boasts 300, while Enthusia boasts just 200. The track number in Enthusia is around 30, and with the exception of Nurburgring, Tsukuba Circuit, and an Indianapolis Motor Speedway lookalike, there are plenty of semi-original courses that feel like a mix of your run-of-the-mill Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo course mixed. Not to mention that the purpose of Gran Turismo and Forza is to just take a bunch of cars out for a spin and do whatever the heck you want with them. Enthusia doesn't really give you that liberty, preferring to put you through a rigorous set of tests to unlock them, which puts a damper on the original fun you would relinquish from the genre.

The graphics are just a notch below Gran Turismo's. Car models are near-perfect at a first glance, but everything in the game, from the cars to the slick interface, doesn't have that polish that makes Gran Turismo so great. Most of the courses are loaded with some sort of flair, such as autumn trees, waterfalls, and building arches, but a few flat textures and low-res background images separate them from perfection. Sound effects of tire squealing and engines roaring, which is satisfactorily expected from this genre. The soundtrack consists of a handful of piano and flute ditties that at least does the game justice by not relying on an official soundtrack (something Gran Turismo has been scolded for), but otherwise, it gets annoying pretty quickly as you tend to hear the same tracks frequently.

Enthusia is a decent game, but with the exception of the driving engine, there's little that you can say that Gran Turismo 4 does better. This doesn't mean it is worthless, but it was released a few years too late. Enthusia is a good buy if you are looking for something different in the genre and have lots of time and patience because it is not for everybody. You can find it in the used games bin for a good deal, so check it out if you must.

Presentation: 8/10 – Most of everything, even the game's intro movie, feels like a cop-out of Gran Turismo 4, but to emulate something that's great isn't that bad either.
Gameplay: 8/10 – Invigorating racing simulation fun with over 200 licensed cars, but a somewhat flawed career mode.
Graphics: 8/10 – Some highly-detailed car models and tracks, but it is nothing that hasn't been done before.
Sound: 7/10 – Some annoying upbeat tempos here and there, but the car sounds are top-notch.
Replay Value: 7/10 – Not a whole lot of modes outside the repetitive Enthusia Life mode, but the game will reward your hard work in due time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/08

Game Release: Enthusia Professional Racing (US, 05/03/05)