Firemint hit a goldmine with the Real Racing game for the iPhone, and fresh off its success, the developers have decided to develop a separate game solely for the iPad. And so, Real Racing HD was born.

With the success of the first Real Racing game for the iPhone, it only felt right that an iPad version would follow suit. After all, despite the overwhelmingly positive reception for the iPhone game, it had one very important factor going against it: the small screen of the iPhone made it a nightmare to control for those with enormous fingers.

Taking all those things into account, Firemint released an iPad version of the hit racing game to quell all those worries aside. What you have is a game that takes all the elements of Real Racing and moves it to a larger screen, making the graphics so much better in the process, and the gameplay much more playable for those who couldn’t enjoy the iPhone version.

Details after the jump.

Graphics

The graphics of Real Racing HD is far and away better than its iPhone counterpart because of obvious reasons. One of them being that the screen is much larger and much more defined than the iPhone game. One thing you need to know is that the game isn’t really high-definition, especially if you’re standards for what HD should look like have been visibly skewed by playing your PS3s. Real Racing HD for the iPad improved on just about every graphic aspect of the game. The tracks look more real and panoramic, the cars are better, and the car's interior looks to have been retouched as well.

Controls

Unlike the iPhone version, Real Racing HD takes advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen to give you more room to operate. One of the things we didn’t like with the iPhone version – as with any other racing game in that platform – was the cramped feeling you get when you play it. If you happen to suffer from fat finger-itis like us, you'll need to know that it made it even more difficult to navigate. With this game, you won’t have that problem, unless of course, you have those Shrek-sized hands, in which case, well we can’t really help you.

Acceleration in the game is automatic so you won’t have to worry about that. Same with braking, which you can set to full or partial assist depending on your preference, although there will be certain races in the game where you’re going to have to do it on your own by touching on the corners to brake. As for the steering, that’s where your iPad becomes a simulated steering wheel, tilting to the left or right depending on how your race goes. Here’s a tip: steering works better when your iPad is positioned parallel to the ground.

Gameplay

Real Racing HD comes with a number of game types, including Career, Quick Race, and Time Trial, among others. Quick Race and Time Trial are what they say they are: simple races that you play when you’re just killing time. If you want to become more immersed in the game, you don’t play these two types. Instead, you hook up with the more detailed and lengthy Career Mode.

In Career Mode, you get your choice of more races and tracks, allowing your performances to be saved on your profile and shown online for the whole world to see. These races are similar to a lengthy season series and you’re going to need to be on top of your game to be able to post good times and get higher rankings. The better you are, the more sparkling your profile is going to look. The more you play and the better you get, the races in Career Mode become more and more difficult with higher spec cars being introduced to give you a real challenge. It’s not the hardest racing career mode to finish, but it’s by no means peanuts either. You’re going to have your hands full from time to time, which is good, because that’s where the challenge is at.

Pricing

The only downside that we can think of with the game is that it comes with a pretty steep price for an app: $9.99 at the App Store. You can probably get more games with 10 bucks, but when it comes to racing game apps, quality will always trump quantity, especially if you picked up a couple of horrible games. Real Racing HD is by no means a horrible game, so if you won’t mind spending 10 bucks for it, you’re not going to regret it.

Awesome Scale

Score: 9

One of the best – if not the best - iPad racing games on the market. A car-loving iPad owner should have this game in his iPad by default.

What Do The Others Think?

IGN's Take: "This is one of the iPad’s top racers and if you have not played it on the iPhone, you will not regret downloading it for a second."