All who love playing racing games (especially F1) on PC will know the legendary GP series. This series was almost single-handedly created by a man who is supposedly a perfectionist. His name is of course Geoff Crammond and he is without a doubt one of a few PC gaming geniuses today.
But don't be deceived by that claim, because GP3 is far from perfect!
It main flaw is in my opinion the PITSTOP. And I must use "caps lock" on the word pitstop, because I am very angry and disappointed that someone like Mr. Crammond can start selling a game in the 21st century which has some components that the games in the 80's had!
The pitstop is just terrible and it is made very sloppy. I wouldn't expect something like that from anyone today, especially from someone like Geoff Crammond.
The pitstop in GP3 is, you won't believe this, 2D!!!
OK, you might be very pleased with the 2D gameplay in the Worms games, but in todays PC racing games, that is just unthinkable. And besides that, everything concerning the pitstop is awfull, the graphics, the functionality, the lack of some key information etc.
And believe it or not, this is just the beginning...
The crowds in the game aren't really the crowds, if you ask me. They look like a Commodore 64 made color carpet.
Forget about the graphics in the crowd or any signs. And if you would want the crowd to move, you would be really pushing it...if the crowd would actually look like a crowd of people, I would say, they all had a stroke...
What about the flags, you ask?! Well, you get a few flags, basically only two, the green flag and the finishing flag. You can forget about all the rest.
If you a person who enjoys playing racing games in an arcade style, meaning you rather use external camera views, you will be REALLY disappointed with this game, as I was too! The external camera view, believe it or not, offers NO INFORMATION. If you are driving the car in an external camera view, you won't know what speed you are driving at, what lap it is, which gear you are in, what your best lap is, nothing! A real disgrace!
The only saviour here is that you install a so-called GPX Patch, which will display almost all the things you need in an external camera view. And the timing is being measured by TAG Heuer, so no need to worry about the correct times.
The only bad thing here is that in order for you to use this patch you will have to run GP3.exe through the patch program each and every time. Well, you can't have everything?!
The cockpits of the cars also aren't an eye candy. They look very old and ugly. But again, if this really bothers, you can install new cockpits from the www.grandprix3.com. But I warn you, this isn't so easy...
There are also some minor things in the game that bothered me. That is the car-crane and the people on the course.
If you have an accident and can't continue, your car must be removed from the course, right?! Well, usually the car-crane does that, but in this game, believe it or not, the car-crane is invisible, hehe... It's like some strange invisible force is lifting and removing your car from the course. Quite incredible...
And the other thing is the person who removes the car after an accident from the actual road. He doesn't walk like a human being, no, no, he dances off with your car, literally!
He moves like John Travolta while removing your car from the road...hehe...you must really see it to believe it!
Well, after some funny or not so funny sides of the game, depends on how you are looking at it, it's time for the good things.
The first thing that I would like to mention is that while all the drivers in the game are real F1 drivers (yes, even Schumacher, Hakkinen, Villeneuve etc.), all the stats are from the 1998 season. That is quite disappointing, because the game was out in the mid 2000. That means that some drivers while in real life are a part of some team, in this game, they are a part of another. And the cars, being quite different, especially in horse power and speed, it can easily happen that you favourite F1 driver will be driving the slowest car.
The graphics of the car, roads and scenery really are some of the best in the todays PC racing games. You can set the resolution up to 1280x1024, while the color depth selection in the game doesn't exist.
But what good are graphics if the gameplay isn't any good?!
And while the realistic behaviour and driving (which some argue) is on a very high level, I am very very disappointed in the AI, that is in the driving of the computer drivers.
I know that Michael Schumacher and Jean Alesi are in real-life the best examples of nut-driving, but the way the drivers in GP3 drive is just ridiclous! Each and every time, and it doesn't matter if you are driving on "rookie" or "ace" level, the drivers will for no apparent reason try to push you off the road. And that doesn't matter if your car is twice as fast as theirs, or if you are a lap ahead.
They all drive like maniacs and believe me, that is not a good thing, because sometimes you can't even finish the race, and that is not because you don't know how to drive!
In many aspects the EA's F1 2000 is a better game. Many say that F1 2000 focuses too much on trivial things, many say that this game is just too stressfull on the computer, but the fact is that F1 2000 is the first F1 game EA has ever made, and a damn good opening it has been, if you ask me.
And it doesn't matter, at least for us, the people who just enjoy playing these games, who comes out on top, EA or Geoff Crammond or maybe someone else. For us, the only thing that matters, is that we finally get as real a PC F1 game as possible. And soon!
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