Geeze... so then why did they give it a "70"?
That would be like doing a review of the game of Chess and giving it a
low score because it takes "hours and hours" to become proficient at!
There are more driving games than you can shake a stick at- go ahead,
get a stick and try it!
I haven't read the article, but going on what you say, PC gamer has
missed the boat here.
Fair enough. I love the sim, but let's face it- this was true. I had
to buy a Voodo2 board to run the thing, and the box completely mislead
me.
But regarding the "games" comment- I think that is the whole review in
a nutshell. PC Gamer reviews games, and doesn't like the fact that
auto simmers don't call their things games. I mean, I didn't see it
either, but do you think PC gamer gave Longbow this bad a review when
it came out? Longbow was no easier than GPL, and there really was no
mode that made things truly easy. It took hours and hours to figure
out the***pit and control the aircraft.
I think PC Gamer is predjudiced against Papy.
GPL is state-of-the art; I can't even use any of my other sims
anymore- even Papy's old ones. Suggesting that Papy is pompous is a
low-shot; they've made an amazing simulator, something that has now
made all other simulators obsolete in my book. And then PC Gamer
claims that it is mediocre because it doesn't make itself easy for the
masses. Does it pretend to? No. So how can it be criticized for that?
It is like criticizing Papy for *not* selling out for the potential
money it could have made as an arcade game like NFS.
PC Gamer is predjudiced against Papy, that is clear. PC Gamer wants
lowest common denominator games, and GPL wants to create real
simulations. One has to ask- is it m***(or even legal) to use Hill
or Clark's name and then give a menu selection to make them run slower
than they really did on these courses, or give you elective advantages
to beat them? That is what PC gamer wanted, sounds like.
And even all that aside- how could GPL ever hope to compete with
arcade titles as an arcade game? Every detail of the game was given to
subtlety and precision. And given that there are probably 200 arcade
racers on the market, is there no room for one real, no-holes-barred
sim? They could spend the article criticizing the fact that the box
doesn't make it clear that a good indication of hardware was not
given, ... and perhaps even that it isn't clear enough to them on the
box that this is a simulation and not a game. And then give it a 95%.
But they simply have no grounds to give the sim a mediocre score;
better to give no score, because this score says nothing. The game is
a *zero* for someone looking for a game, and a *95%* for someone
looking for a sim. 70 says nothing.
So then I guess the review deserved something up in the high-90s.
It is ironic that the aspects of the sim that make it endlessly
appealing to simmers are the key issues PC Gamer lowers the rating
for.
My criticisms of the sim- it crashes and disconnects too much in
multiplayer mode. The setups saving/deleting system is (like NASCAR2)
too tedious. No dates associated with best times (I know we're
supposed to be racing 30 years ago, but you've got to think of
something- I can't tell when my best times were done. How about a
"time from present" number?), automatic saving of race details and
times in a default file (multiplayer always tosses me to the newspaper
before I get a good chance to review).
Oh, and of course, this is a program that requires special hardware.
That info must be included on the box. That was certainly a ***
surprise for me.