Credit where it's due, Italy has contributed to world culture more than most. Their pizza and pasta goes down a treat, they can warble an operatic ditty with aplomb, and their Mafia's the scariest one there is. Even their scooter-mounted handbag thieves are that little bit quicker than their Spanish equivalents.

One area of culture our Italian friends haven't had much of an impact on yet is the world of video games (Mario doesn't count as he's technically Japanese). But Milestone is trying to sort that out with Racing Evoluzione - a game whose very title threatens to give the racing genre a wake-up call.

The main draw for single players is the Dream mode, which offers a frankly huge number of races to plough your way through. The idea is that you are the head of a racing team: you can design your own car, enter races, and develop new cars with the proceeds of races won. As you progress, races get harder but yield more rewards for your burgeoning team, the rise of which is documented in little scenes between events.

When I started my company, my only employee was an overly enthusiastic, bum-licking mechanic; now, having worked my way up the leagues, Team Attaboy has a fit receptionist out front, trophies on the shelves... I don't seem to have the option to sack the grease monkey, though. Thing is, all this talk of running your own company and designing your own car is a trifle misleading. What really happens when you design your car is that you're given the opportunity to give the go-ahead to one of a few blueprints, and the ever-servile mechanic goes and makes it for you. In other words, it's just a glorified car select screen - a bit disappointing, really.

Still, the Dream mode scenario does provide a nice framework to what might otherwise have been a fairly unremarkable racer. As your reputation grows, one-off races crop up from time to time - whether it be because a newspaper wants to compare the performance of a few choice cars, or because another manufacturer has ripped your car off and you want to prove the original is the best. Even so, don't go thinking Racing Evoluzione offers the same kind of single-player depth as something like Gran Turismo or Sega GT. It doesn't.

Driving games are like salads, though; it's the quality of the ingredients that really counts, not the fancy French dressing. And Xbox owners have had a lot of great salads over the last year; you need to have some very good ingredients to convince them they need another.

Racing Evoluzione does offer some good racing, but it's more meat and potatoes than haute cuisine [Okay, enough of the food analogies - Ed]. As a yardstick, the handling model feels rather like Project Gotham Racing, but there's something lacking - you don't really get much sense of traction between the car and the road. It's not terrible, but doesn't make for a particularly distinctive, memorable experience. To compound matters, the sense of speed borders on the sedate at times, especially when compared to the likes of Burnout.

Both of these problems are less noticeable when using the in-car view, and the speed does eventually get better after more cars have been developed, but that takes ages.

Average handling and a relatively sluggish speed would bury most races, but that isn't the case here. Of course, it helps that the whole thing is so lovely to look at - for Racing Evoluzione offers some of the prettiest courses you'll ever drive through. Stunning waterfalls tumble down immaculate alpine passes, skyscrapers glisten in a dusky sunlight, and balloons are released into the air as you pass by a bank of spectators. There's loads of detail, and it generally looks lush throughout - top marks there.

But gorgeous scenery aside, it's actually the racing itself that keeps you playing. Even at the start, you've really got to be paying attention if you hope to win a race. It's quite refreshing to have a racer that demands so much concentration right from the beginning. You have to race hard to gain places, making it correspondingly satisfying to pass a couple of rivals on a well-taken corner.

The thing is, as you get used to the game, it becomes quite a bit easier to win - the difficulty level seems pitched fairly evenly for a long time, despite the fact you're moving up the leagues. This can make the experience feel a little flat, bland even - something that's made worse by the repetition of the track environments. Racing Evoluzione features loads of track variations, but not a huge amount of different scenery, and bit by bit it all starts to get rather samey despite the attractiveness of the roadside furniture.

Then there are tiny little niggles, that may or may not irritate, depending on your disposition. A rear-view mirror would have been handy, particularly from the in-car view; and why do you always start on the back of the grid, even if you won the previous stage?

Evoluzione feels a bit like a tenth album from a mega-successful band. It's slick, well-produced and polished, but there's something missing - the raw energy of a truly brilliant racer is replaced here by a feeling of a game simply going through the motions.

1. Some great visuals
2. Fun, intense racing

1. Unsatisfying handling
2. Races begin to feel too similar
3. Don't really get to design a car

Power
Gorgeous, detailed courses look great and give the old graphics chip a bit of a workout.

Style
The fact you are supposed to be head of a racing team is woven into the presentation very well.

Immersion
Concentration is required to get to the front, meaning that the races fly by...

Lifespan
...but it does start to feel very samey after a while. Still, there's loads of racing to be done.

Summary
It may lack a bit of spark and fails to deliver on the promise of running a race team, but it's a solid, enjoyable game.