The Mess-Hall Blog

Bought this from Asda, £15 platinum. Now I did like the demo, but it took a while to get used to the car, but once I did, I easily beat the AI. Well, except for drifting.

The Game:
It’s a has to be one of the best racers I’ve ever played, close to reality, and satisfying as hell getting the car around corners.
I’ve driven several cars, the most memorable being a porche 911 GTIII, I could’nt drive it to save my life, the first lap was appaling, started in 8th, dropped to 12th in the 3rd corner. Struggled badly for the rest of the lap, with under steer, over steer, and terrible cornering. But then something magical happened, I was too fast into a corner (I thought so anyway) and it just stuck perfectly all the way around, then it hit me, the porche wants to go VERY fast around corners, suddenly I knew how to drive the car, and started pulling back positions after position, finally got a 6th finish, not bad considering the other leaders were in near F1 capable cars.

There’s various race modes,
Grip Racing: The usual type of racing around track, beating oponents, coming 1st 2nd or 3rd, earning cash, buying cars and creating your own race team, this will take a while to complete, it’s fairly big in scope and includes a 24hr Le Manns.

Drifting, (The Meat of the game) trust me, this is hard work, but damned good fun, and a fantastic payoff when you get it right.
Drift GP: Race against one other opponent and beat them to move to the next round.
Drift Battle: Street racing and drifting, with style playing a big part too, and you also need to beat them by drift score and placing 1st.
Freestyle Drift: You get 2 runs and your scores combined to beat the other drivers.
Downhill Drift: Japanese downhill track, a la “The Fast and the Furious – Tokyo Drift“.
Touge: Head to head racing on Japanese country lanes.
Pro Touge: Same as above, but one race up and one race down – WITHOUT TOUCHING YOUR OPPONENT.
Midnight Touge: Anything goes, open roads, collisions allowed.
Endurance: Do I need to explain that Le Mans is not about breathing?
Demolition Derby: BRING IT ON.!!!!

The Game plays brilliantly, with different types of cars that actually feel very different, not just where and when to break, but how fast you can corner, how much damage they sustain, how fast they go, and how they react to being thrown around the tracks.
Sounds is spot on without annoying background tracks getting in the way. Menu music is very Depeche Mode, but relaxing and not overbearing, again unlike other games that hit you in the face with their rock tracks.
Graphics are great, but like KZ2, they tend to blur when wiggling from side to side, this makes cornering a tad difficult at times, as the bend entrance can blur into the scenery. As for the scenery, it’s better than a lot of driving games, but wooden at low speeds. The instrumenttion is good and not all over the place, it wont interfere with your driving.
The input from a joypad is excellent and very spot on, some games can feel a bit wooly, imprecise in comparison.
The replay feature is the second best I’ve ever seen in my life, only beaten by trackmania sunrise (pc only). It has all the usual transport controls, angle and car options, and the obligatory “Cinematic” sequence, which looks amazing btw. But it does’nt have a save feature, a BIG minus. Would be nice to have bragging rights, send your replay to a mate, let him see how clever you are

Almost forgot about “Flashback”, if you fuck up a corner/manouvre, and you will, you can press select, rewind the instant replay, and hit square to try the one again, good feature, and you are rewarded for NOT using it too.

I’m enjoying this a lot, and I can see it lasting a while to, what with so many modes, and a 12payer online, it has legs too last. Shame there are no trophies, and none have been added retrospectively either, so the whores out there might not want to play for long.

Summary:
It’s quite indepth, once you get past the first few races, and really start earning enough money to start your own team. The replay is a must for any racing game, and this is a damned good one, but you need to be able to save them (Codemasters take note).
Graphics are amazing, but let down by the blur that can hamper cornering.
Sound is spot on, and no annoying tracklist that will just end up being turned down anyway.
Control is great, no problems there at all.
Plenty to keep you busy, you wont finish this in 24hrs :secret_laugh:
Overall a great game to look at and play, with just some minor flaws, that wont have you throwing your joypad at the TV.

I score this 8 out of 10, let down by the blur and inability to save the replay.

HD Video:

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