Bought this last week. Graphics are excellent. Sound is ok. But it has some problems that could have been easily avoided had a little more effort been put into the key aspects that make a good racing game imho - mainly views and controls.

What I don’t like:

1) Choice of views. There are 4 (from memory) views, and only two are really usable, and all appear to be non-configurable.
2) The default view looks like it’s at the point of view of a truck in terms of height. As a result, the track width looks smaller than it really is (claustrophobic, esp. on the nurburgring).
3) Yes, they thankfully put in a cockpit view. A pitch black cave. Yes, that’s right, you can’t even see the interior. Also, the fov is so wide that you can’t see where you’re going. Forget all this sensation-of-speed view ideology, this is a ’simulation’, and a crucial point is to be able to see where the road goes so you can look further ahead. The least they could have done was put in a lightened bitmap for the interior and I wouldn’t complain.

4) When doing a new driving challenge, the default is an automatic gearbox. You have to manually change it for each and every challenge/car if you want the challenge to be more challenging (as each one is really easy to get at least bronze in). I’m not sure if the same goes for buying new cars.
5) The controls are very well programmed, but they are unable to be tweaked. Pedal positioning is programmed, and visible on screen at any time when driving, but the rate of change of throttle off/on cannot be changed. Viper Racing (PC 1997) got this right and did it very well twelve years ago. For manual cars, even using the duration of the gear-up button press should be used so that the user can practice matching revs during gear changes.
6) The same goes for steering. I don’t want the steering to go close to full lock as soon as I hold my finger on the left/right button for ~0.5 seconds. I’d like to see anyone do that in the same time in the cars without power steering.

7) Like the rest of the GT series, there is minimal difference between cars in terms of handling.
8 ) The physics setting ‘professional’ is poor. In FWD cars, oversteering by utilising left foot braking is not handled in the physics. Full throttle and steering left/right on grass/sand at more than 50kph does not spin the car.
9) The AI are really slow, sloppy and unaggressive. They even cut corners by going off road (eg many turns at Laguna Seca. I’ve only done 5 races so far and bored already.

What I do like:

1) TT and the ghost function. I haven’t tried multiplayer but I reckon that should be excellent.
2) Being able to perform burnouts. Oh wait, I’m thinking about how NFS stopped this function after NFS2, forget this. I don’t care about such functionality, as there are no drag strips.
3) The best thing about the game which drew me to the buy was the range of locations and attention to detail for each location. It’s an excellent on-the-go way to learn new real life tracks. However, due to the problems with sub-standard physics, and inabilty to tune inputs and views (which is required to enjoy every corner), I’m considering returning the game.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Media, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.