couple of hours, it's been a letdown. It seems every since
NFS3, EA keeps giving up less and less options. They did give
us custom controls once again, but you can't change the default
driving view, MPH or KMH. etc. You can choose map on/off and
tach on/off...that's it. You can't choose weather or race
tracks in mirror mode or even backwards. Speaking of the
tracks, the designs are terrible! 80% of them are nothing but
90-degree turns. I almost swore I was playing Test Drive 6!
Also, there are no point-to-point tracks as in the original NFS,
even though the box says there are. Traffic is only available
in the Test Driver mode, as far as I can tell. There is no Hot
Pursuit mode, except for the chase mode, in which you have to
keep away from a single cop car. If he catches just one, the
race is over! There's a capture the flag mode, but with so
many criss-cross routes, it's hard to tell where to go.
The evolution mode is pretty good. You start with an older
Porsche, and enter either a tournament or weekend race. You can
now repair the suspension, engine, etc. separately, and you even
have limited setups. What sucks, is when you make adjustments
to the car, the bar graphs don't change, so you can't tell what
effects they are having!
There is now a qualifying mode, but it's a complete waste. You
race two whole laps, which is often the same length as the
race! When you are qualifying, you may come upon another
opponent. Weird. As I said qualifying is a waste as the cars
are all bunched together at the start, like formula One. You
can easily pass all three of them in a few seconds. Yes,
there's only three opponents. :-( Another odd thing is you can
either choose a novice race with less points awarded or an
expert race for more points. Although there are only 3 others
cars, you are really competing against the cars in the expert
mode for points as well! So even if you win all of the races in
novice mode, you can't win. WTF? Payouts are nice, and I was
able to buy another car right away, and enter a few more races.
The tourneys and weekend races are limited to vehicle type, so
you will eventually have to buy one of each to enter them all.
The test driver mode has you driving thru slalom courses marked
by cones. I passed the first two after a short while, but the
third one made no sense at all. You have to drive down a
divided stretch of mountain road. If you don't go in between
the cones in the specific order you'll reach the end, and have
to turn around. I drove back and forth for five minutes aiming
for the arrows, but never did finish!
Another gripe is the screen font. The number 1 looks just like
a 7. grrrr.
The tach's are nice, though. They change appearance from model
to model. Another possible glitch is the fact that I could
never get the cars to shift up to its highest gear when driving
an automatic. I was driving a 928 or something and I had it
past the redline in 5th, but it wouldn't shift to sixth! Using
a manual *** works fine, BTW. This problem happens in all
models.
Graphics are pretty good, but the signs that have the arrows on
them telling you which way to go often are not drawn-in until
the last minute. You'll end up slamming into a wall often. The
sense of speed is incredible. If you're driving a 911 GT3, you
are driving so fast, it's hard to react. There are numerous
breakable objects; in fact there are too many. Again, is this
Test Drive 6 or NFS?
Luckily I got it at EBX, so I'll probably get the PC version,
which has gotten rave reviews, and if $15 cheaper anyway.
Oh yeah, apparently there are no vehicle upgrades, either. :-(
Life is what you experience between racing games.
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