Real Racing may even be the best racing game available on any handheld games console to date, it really is that good.

Firemint have hit the iPhone platform with titles that are so good, coding teams at other games publishers are now re-considering their future careers! FlightControl, Firemint’s first title has been a massive hit and Real Racing will I predict be even bigger.

A quick summary of some of the key features of Real Racing are:

• 36 cars, three classes, a dozen unique tracks and five game modes
• Three divisions to play through
• Massive career mode with 57 events to complete
• Six cars on screen
• Touch or tilt to steer, Manual or automatic acceleration and braking
• In-car cockpit view or external camera
• Local multiplayer over WiFi, Online league play, Online leaderboards

As soon as you fire up the game you will be struck by just how good the graphics are, the visual scenery is highly detailed and you get sunlight, clouds and even lens flare as you drive towards the sun.

Once launched and after the opening titles you will be presented with the menu screen, in this case a race car in the pit.  All the options and features are accessed from here.

You can dip straight in and have a quick race, or perhaps try and improve your times on the track with a time trial.  But for most of you it will be the career and Connected options that are played the most.

Firemint have deployed their Cloudcell technology to power the on-line leagues.  Multi-player is restricted to local WLAN games which was an initial disappointment but you can compete in on-line leagues and compare your scores which adds to the enjoyment and has you trying to better your scores time after time.

Play

Select ‘Career’ and you’re presented with the small hatchback car option that will be the steed of choice for the start of your racing career.

One of the key control features implemented in this game is auto acceleration and an adjustable auto brake.  This allows you to dive straight in and enjoy the game play and works superbly.  For the first few rounds of the championship I was able to concentrate on the driving instead of trying to get to grips with new controls.

I’ve mentioned the graphics already but they are more than worthy of another mention.  There are two views to choose from, in-car and chase.  Although in other games I have eschewed the in-car view, in Real Racing it works brilliantly and has become by default choice.  You get to see the steering wheel turn as you navigate the bends and can even see the driver change gear!

Instruments include speed, lap-time, lap number and position and there are plenty of visual cues to allow you to see which way the track turns ahead and the tile to steer option allows fluid analogue steering with lovely drifts and fine control.

Firemint have clearly taken a lot of time over the graphics and the speed.  Even with all six cars on-screen there is no discernible drop in frame rate and the game has proved to be crash free in the many hours we have been playing it since release on Monday.

Sound is another area that has clearly had a lot of thought.  The sound of the engine as the revs rise and it screams to the rev limiter in each gear raises your heart beat and perfectly complements the visual experience.  There is also a selection of Indy Music to accompany your racing although this isn’t to my taste and has been turned off, Real Racing drivers don’t have stereos in their racing cars do they?

All the controls can be customised to suit your particular preferences, you can choose  touch to accelerate, adjust brake assist and you can turn off the assist completely and use on-screen controls to brake.

All of this adds up to the best racing experience I have ever had, instantly playable for the casual gamer, advanced options for the hard core racer and WLAN multi-player.  Fire the game up on two or more local WiFi enabled handsets and you’ll be enjoying your very own multiplayer race action and having an absolute blast.

If you enjoy gaming this is a must have game.

We’ll be giving this a few laps today whilst we await the Keynote announcements later today (6pm UK).

It is a measure of just how good it is though, that having launched it in order to grab a few quick screen-shots for this post and I instead found myself battling through an entire race. You really do have to play it in order to appreciate just how good this is given it is running on a phone!

I haven’t had a chance as yet to explore the myriad of options but the in-car drivers eye view, auto acceleration and tilt steering work very well and you’ll be power sliding through the corners in no time at all.

Enough typing, I have a championship to win…..