As I wanted to see how does high budget advergame look like, I googled for BMW game and found advergame Pace – Pursuit across Europe. First impression of website was stylish, clean with a little nostalgic spirit of black and white photos.

BMW Pace website

Pace is an advergame with highly stylized graphic and video inserts, featuring three BMW models: BMW 1 Series, BMW Z4 M Coupe and BMX 5. First one is free, while others can be bought with earned credits later in game. Cars can also be modified in a garage, adjustable parameters are suspension, steering responsiveness and wheelbase. After that you are good to go. Game offers two modes of play, first is single player which can be started right away and other is multiplayer option which requires registration. Player can also create his profile and enable listing in leader board.

Garage modifications

Game features different tracks, parts of the road connecting four cities: Lisbon, Paris, Berlin and Prag. After narative prologue and nice video of selected car, you get to see gameplay. It continues black and white style of graphic, with lot od details of enviroment. Shamefully you don’t get to see your selected car in action but rather two meters. Details of road itself are rather poor and pixelate, but this is a flash based game after all. If you drive off the track you might get nice video inserts and there is a nice video waiting you after you finish it.

Pace - gameplay

BMW offers nice driving experience to players worldwide, the concept is great and the game visualy combines with promotion of BMW brand perfectly. Developers put much attention to details and style. Perhaps if gameplay was as detailed, it would even increase popularity of the game. It would be also interesting to check bandwith requirements, but on 10Mbit line it ran smooth and didn’t take much of preloading. As an advergame running in browser I think overall impression is good and should put Pace in top advergames. I think it will satisfy average player, but more demanding gamers should look elsewhere.

Pace – Pursuit across Europe can be found at http://www.bmw-pace.com/pace/.

Adver-Gamer rating: 9/10