Got the game this morning. I did not buy GPM1 after reading all the
bug reports that were posted and so I come to this game completely
un-biased.
Packaging is very good with a sturdy box, thicker than usual to
accomodate the free 1996 FIA official review video tape (90 mins
running time). The manual is the same style as GP2 at about 90 pages.
I have only read the quickstart section so far which is quite sparse
and makes early play heavy going.
The interface is the same as GP2 with recent pictures as backdrops to
the menus. They have seen fit to only use 256 colours which is a big
pity as the quality suffers altho it is 640x480. There lies my other
main gripe, having to reset my win95 scheme back to bog standard every
time I want to play it. How many users still run at 640x480/256 with
todays monitors and video cards?
It looks as though there is a lot to get into and in three hours play
I have not seen any obvious bugs. The main problem I have found is in
finding out what went wrong with one of your cars when it goes out of
the race. The message usually says something helpful like 'Alesi is
out of the race, reason unknown' and it would be nice to be able to
access the car status screen (lightening bolt icon) to seen what fell
off the car, but all the icons are locked off when a driver goes out.
The 'Helicopter view' as stated on the box is a con, it is simply a
zoomed in window on the section of track where your car is, very
blocky it is too.
All the drivers are there EXCEPT Villeneuve and Irvine (Nicola Larini
is driving for Ferrari next to Schumy, JV is replaced by a made-up
name).
The Stirling Moss commentary is pretty crap. It consists mainly of him
reading out the leaderboard every so often and the sampled names do
not fit together very well, MPS should look at EA's work if they are
going to try this, I expect to be switching it off real soon... When a
driver enters the pits the game freezes whilst the CD loads up a
short, low quality AVI of that car (this can be switched off for
certain drivers so you can still see them for your team).
There are many, many icons to learn and a customizable toolbar to help
with them.
Overall, so far I am impressed. If only they could integrate it with
the GP2 engine to allow us to watch the races using the camera
director feature. I guess we will have to wait for GP3 next century
for that:-)
"There are NO coincidences" - Jeffrey Sinclair