And they?re off! It?s all about the thrill of the competition, the potential to make a quick fortune or lose it all, the experience of a day at the tracks, and of course, who could forget the smell? These are just a few of the things that make the sport of horse racing exciting and enjoyable. It?s just too bad that for the most part these things don?t carry over in Global Star's upcoming horse racing management sim game, Final Stretch (already released in Europe by Big Ben Interactive, under the name Horse Racing Manager).

Final Stretch is made up of three very different and very distinct gameplay modes; race, betting, and stable modes. Within each mode the goals are unique and the gameplay is focused towards the different objectives. In race mode, you essentially race a series of competitions, aiming for the highest earnings by the end of the series. You will also have to select a horse and match it with an appropriate jockey. The goal is to interpret the statistics and preferences of each horse, find a set of races that favor those preferences as well as a jockey capable of achieving the best performance from the horse.



As with most management sim games, there is a ton of data for each horse, track and jockey. In this mode, the information ranges from track specifics such as length and soil type to horse preferences and abilities such as endurance, speed, attitude, and track preferences. You also have to consider jockey control styles such as aggressive, adaptable, or ?understanding? as well as their individual experience and career achievements to decide who will be the best choice.

As you can imagine, all this information can at times feel overwhelming. Initially players will find themselves spending considerably more time looking through the stats and preparing for a race than actually running it. Before a race starts, you are given the option of controlling the jockey and horse hands on during the race or simulating the race to simply observe the outcomes of your decisions. If you simulate a race, you?ll go straight to the results and the jockey comments. You can also watch the race as a spectator while the computer runs the race before taking you to the new stats. There?s not much more to this mode, but it is the only mode where you can actually ?play? the game, directly controlling the actions of characters on screen. The races are also the only part of the game displayed in true 3D.



The second mode, betting, allows you play the part of a horse track gambler, without the fear of losing the house. Again you will need to cross reference and compare information regarding weather, track type, race type, and horse and jockey specifics before making your bet. As with real life horse gambling, you can read up on the horses in the latest betting magazines and news reports before a race. You are also given the option of purchasing advice from the bookmakers. Depending on the difficulty level, the race tips are generally reliable and when combined with the other information available, picking a winner is considerably easier than an actual trip to the tracks. Unfortunately the fun of gambling is in actually winning the money. The lack of any actual winnings or an option to expand a series of races into a gambling career makes this mode a little disappointing.

The third mode of play, stable, is by far the most complicated part of the game and is also the mode that offers the most replay value. In this mode you take on the role of a new stable owner, founding a stable from scratch and controlling every aspect of its operation. Stable mode combines aspects from the betting and race modes, allowing you to race any horses you own and bet on any race you are entered in. However in this mode you are also responsible for everything from choosing a location favorable for you stable and its purpose, hiring staff, feeding and training horses, expanding your facilities, managing the books, and much more. You will even have to keep an eye out for any news articles or classified ads offering sales on horses or buildings or listing proposals from other owners wanting to rent boxes on your stable to house their horses.



The gameplay in this mode is even heavier on the statistical analysis, requiring you to pay attention to not only the horse?s stats and preferences but also to details as minute as the individual components of their diet, amounts of each fed to the horses, and even the effect any changes has had on their health. You will have to manage the morale of your employees and strategically purchase new buildings to increase the efficiency of your training programs as well as the prices for renting your boxes. You can choose from several potential money making methods including raising horse to an international competition level, becoming a successful breeder, or even becoming a famous stable owner, allowing you to make your living off of the training and rental fees. It?s obviously extremely detailed as far as the statistics and decision making goes, but unfortunately it relies heavily on the use of your imagination to perceive the results of your choices. This is common to management games, but it?s also the major draw back of this game.

While the developers have paid a great deal of attention and time to providing detailed data and calculating the results of manipulating so many different factors, they haven?t spent much time at all on the visual representation of what is going on. Although this is also entirely common for any management sim game, it is still very frustrating and disappointing. You will never see the horses participating in any training, but will instead see a calendar displaying the type of training chosen for each month. The employees are given names, but no faces since you never actually see them. You are allowed to choose colors and patterns for jockeys who represent your stable, but the models for the jockeys are identical. The stable and buildings purchased are only represented by a shoddy 2D overhead image which has pathways for buildings regardless of whether or not they have been purchased yet.



In the end, the list of things that fall short seems to greatly outweigh the extensive detail and realism of the charts, numbers, and data given. This ultimately makes for a rather dull and even grueling playing experience. The game quickly turns into more of a job that a game and while if you fail, you obviously have nothing to worry about, if you succeed in any of the modes, you have nothing to gain either. Although there are predefined objectives you can achieve in stable mode, there is no real conclusion to the game. Also, as mentioned in the introduction, the things that make raising, racing, or betting on horses exciting and enjoyable are only figments of the imagination in this game, leaving the average player wondering what the appeal of all this is supposed to be. The graphics are mostly substandard and rather disappointing. The music is a combination of jazzy, funky, dance beat type stuff, although there is an option for importing your own mp3s. For the most part, the music is vague and forgettable, but there is however one track with a noticeable and poorly edited loop point and another that is simply way out of place. The one that doesn?t seem to fit is an ambient electronica trance number but for some reason it features a guy feigning paranoia in an obviously artificially ghettoized voice. He simply shouts, mutters, and whispers things such as ?TRUST NO ONE!!!!? and ?The world is an illusion, we got paranormal activity going on? Is this all there is?? Not only is it extremely laughable, but it hardly seems appropriate for surfing through statistics and trying to manage a stable. The manual is extensive and entirely necessary to make sense of all the data and sadly, it?s about as much fun to read as the game is to play. There is a multiplayer option available through GameSpy, but it can?t do much to make up for the rest of this experience.

So is the game horrible? No. It?s actually an intriguingly unique concept and is very admirable for the effort and level of statistical detail put into it. While the average gamer will most likely find this title to be heavy on the stats and short on the fun, for fans of this genre, it?s got a lot to offer. If you are a true horse racing junkie, a habitual gambler, a general fan of management style games, or even if you?ve ever just wondered what it would be like to run your own stable, you might find this game to be fairly enjoyable. In the end, perhaps this was the intent of Cyanide Studios with this title, but hopefully next time they?ll make it more accessible to the rest of us.