(Part Preview, Part Review)
I'm amazed at the outpouring of negativity surrounding SimBin's "GTR" (for
the FIA's "GT Racing") by people who haven't played the game...even some
from people who haven't bothered to play the demo! And among those who have
actually played the game, a lot of the complaints are picayune, like the
game doesn't strictly follow the FIA's insanely complicated rulebook, or the
track marshals' booths aren't the regulation size.
The truth is, it's a great game. Yes, it has some rough edges, and thus far
it's only available--legally--in Germany (time-frame for U.S. distro: Feb.
or March), but no, it's neither broken nor a simple mod of EA's Formula 1
Challenge (altho SimBin has licensed ISI's "Motor 1" physics engine, along
with all that rococo FIA livery). The bottom line is that GTR comes closer
to an authentic racing experience than anything else that doesn't require a
Nomex driving suit and a 5-point seat harness.
I've driven almost three thousand laps of GTR, both online and off, for an
assignment from Car and Driver, and as someone who's put six years into GPL,
beta-tested a myriad of PC and console games, and raced both real-world cars
(Trans-Am, SCCA Nationals) and every kind of racing simulation there is
(beginning with Dave Kaemmer's original Indy 500), I'm here to tell you that
GTR is the best thing to come roaring down the track--for car guys as well
as computer geeks--since Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2003...and GTR makes NR2003
seem positively crude by comparison.
Through the good offices of Ian Bell, who oversees SimBin's development team
in London, I was able to obtain a pre-release of the English-language
version, eventually patched to ver 1.2.3, and I've since unofficially
downloaded several 3rd-party tracks (including a 24-hour version of the
mighty Nurburgring). To put it plainly: I love this game. Yes, it's got
more bugs than the Okefenokee Swamp in August (the menus are a mess, the
replay system is frustrating, the multiplayer is iffy, and there is a
surfeit of small annoyances), but overall it's hard-core: deeply immersive,
very satisfying, and full of promise. Sure, I signed a NDA, but Ian said I
can vent my impressions of the game, so here goes.
First of all: the cars. There are a slew of them, from the mundane (a
gaggle of Porsche 911s...altho a 3rd-party GT1 is lurking in the wings) to
the exotic (the widely-unknown Gillet Vertigo Streiff, a Belgian bolide
named after an obscure French F1 driver of the 80s) to the awesome (the
Corvette C5-R) to the sublime (a trio of Ferraris) to the ridiculous (a BMW
*hatchback*, ferchrissake, and a neo-deco Morgan 8 Aero that looks like
something out of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"). The Morgan not
only looks funny, it sounds funny: when you spin the key it coughs fitfully
to life, belching and spluttering like the 18-cylinder radial of a P-47
Thunderbolt.
Arranged into a bewildering array of mismatched FIA-sanctioned classes (the
Morgan competes against the C5-R), the 18 or so cars in GTR all feel
different, handle different, sound different, and have different
personalities. Surprisingly, the front-engined cars are easier to drive
than the rear-engined cars, but among the Big Guns, only the front-engined
Prodrive Ferrari 550 Maranello and the theoretically antiquated Viper GTS-R
are able to keep up with the fleet Saleen S7-R (tricky to drive) and the
surprisingly muscular Lamborghini Murcielago (a pussycat to drive).
The Corvette C5-R is also a sweetheart to drive, despite its brutal looks.
The C5-R ver that comes with the game has an overly fussy paintjob, but as
with most of GTR's cars, you can download alternative skins, including that
of the famed # 63 Corvette that won its class at Le Mans. The Lister Storm
that was in the "press" demo along with the Morgan is still there, and a
blast to drive, if not quite competitive.
My favorite car turned out to be the oddly-named Vertigo, which looks like a
cross between a Panoz Esperante and the old wooden-chassis Marcos. The
Vertigo is powered by a 342-hp Alfa V6, but it's really no match against the
bigger cars in its class. A sweet ride, very smooth, no vices, no drama,
easy to wheel around the soaring, swooping Nurburgring. And despite the BMW
Z3M's econo-car looks, it has 380 horsepower under the hood and enormous
tires and is capable of great big hairy powerslides. The Morgan, with its
460-hp BMW V8, is also a hoot to drive (even if it feels like it's still got
a sliding-pillar suspension with about the same front-end geometry as a 1936
Volkswagen). It's a great ride; all elbows and a**holes. The only thing
missing: a silk scarf.
The best thing about GTR is probably the sounds. This is the first sim
where the cars sound like cars, not a bunch of disparate .wav files
ham-fistedly juggled by the game engine to produce car-like noises. The
engines sound like what they are (L4, L6, flat 6, V6, V8, V10, and V12), the
gear-whine is true-to-life, the on-and-off throttle response is correct, and
the slicks don't squeal like passenger-car tires, they scuff the way they're
supposed to (and skitter when pushed hard). Even axle-tramp is modeled. At
least it's all good from inside the cockpit. The outside "car-by" effects
are less convincing, and the sound of the AI cars is reminiscent of Peter
Ustinov's mouth noises in his immortal "Grand Prix of Gibralter" from 40
years ago.
And the tracks? As Jon Stewart would say, "Mmmm...not so much." The 10
tracks that ship with the game replicate those on the FIA's GT Championship
calendar, but other than the modern Spa, they're either emasculated,
chicane-infested versions of once-great tracks (like Monza), or boring,
dull, flat modern tracks (like Magny-Cours). A trickle of 3rd-party tracks
(sure to become a flood) includes several versions of the Nordschleife
(nobody's got it right yet), a terrible version of Le Mans (somehow running
endlessly downhill, like an M.C. Escher painting), and two really neat small
tracks, Sweden's Falkenberg and Germany's Norisring. The most dramatic
scenery: the 24-hour race at Spa, where you go from day to dusk to night to
dawn to day (not smooth segues, unfortunately - there are awkward pauses for
scene changes, as if in an amateur theater production ). Driving at night
is a new experience...and particularly harrowing.
The cars don't simply drone around these these tracks like marbles in a
chute. They feel alive. They interact with the surface. The tracks
themselves are wildly uneven, in some places billiard-table smooth,
elsewhere washboard bumpy, especially in the braking zones. You can feel
the suspension working and the tires dancing. The grip changes not merely
according to the temperature (and weather - rain is modelled), but, as the
track "rubbers in" and marbles build up, from your first practice laps,
through qualifying, to the duration of the race itself. "Intense" just
barely begins to describe it. There's so much going on that's missing from
other sims: the exhaust headers spit flame on the overrun, brakelights
flash, clag clatters against the undertray, and you can use an IR
head-tracker to look around the cockpit.
Until something better comes along, the best test track is Spa, and the
critical turn is Eau Rouge. Depending on which car you drive, and how it's
set up, Eau Rouge can either be a dream or a nightmare; as graceful as a
Patty Wagstaff hammerhead stall or as scary as going over Niagra Falls in a
kayak. Doug Arnao, a real-world racer (he won an SCCA Solo Championship in
a wicked tube-frame Porsche) who helped me write "Four-Wheel Drift" (the GPL
strategy guide), and formerly a denizen of this forum, has tweaked GTR's
physics model and was responsible for the default setups, which are aces.
Also in the credits: over 200 FIA-licensed drivers whose input was solicited
for the driving model, and a couple dozen real-world teams who vetted the
gameplay.
The gameplay involves competing with up to 56 reasonably well-behaved AI
cars on the track (the starting grid at Spa goes back up and around La
Source) or up to 30 cars online. Theoretically. Most of the online races I
saw had less than 20 cars. I've seen up to 60 servers on the matchmaking
s/w that comes with the game, and the pings were usually in the 100-125
range. Most of the servers have been in Germany, obviously, and while
SimBin seems to have licked the old ISI problem of the game pausing for a
fraction of a second whenever a new player joins (now you can only join
during practice, not qualifying or the race itself), there remains a bunch
of stubborn anomalies in the Net code, steadily being erased by Ian Bell and
his staff of code monkeys in London. There have been several patches,
updates and "hot fixes" since the game was first released, including a
"save-game" feature that works in mid-race, and while not all the problems
have been solved (or even addressed), I get the distinct feeling that SimBin
cares about their customers and is working hard to make them happy.
What more could you ask?
Well, they could lose the reviled StarForce protection scheme.
--Steve Smith