Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli review (PS3)

It must be some kind of rule.

You can't have everything in a game.
Take for instance Race Driver: Grid. This is one fantastic game. But there's a lot missing from it: saving replays, pit stops and most importantly a decent handling model.

Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli on the other hand does have a really decent handling model - it just seems not to be connected to anything you might describe as a videogame.

Invasion of the car-nerds

Oh Harry you don't know anything about car games. You just don't understand the rules. Games with a more serious approach to car handling aren't allowed to have any fun surrounding them. You must gain your fun from the pleasure of weight shifting into a corner and powering out. They don't put a CD player in an F50 and this is the same thing.

That's rot.

Why can't we have our cake and eat it. Where is it written that we can't have a decent handling model and a really fun game. Transplant the handling of Ferrari Challenge into GRID and you'd have the best racing game every released.

As it stands FR is pretty dull and awash with many design mistakes.

Can't spare me ten minutes?

Take for instance the subject of race length.

This is a GT game and as such races are based on a timed length (plus one lap) rather than a set number of laps.

I've nothing against the concept. In fact I quite like it. Except I'm not given the option to select races of ten minutes in length.

Why is this annoying? Because in the early stages of the challenge mode (the game's rather dry career) the AI is so shockingly bad that it really doesn't take any effort to pass them. In a 15 minute race you'll be in the lead after say three or four laps and will then have seven minutes of time to build up a pointlessly huge lead.

At five minutes the race isn't quite long enough to allow you get from last place to the front of the grid.

Sure you can attempt to get pole position in qualifying. But it's here that the AI drivers seem to shoot their collective bolt - putting in blazing lap times that are very hard to beat, before driving around like mobile chicanes in the actual race.

The speed of the AI improves later, but it's frankly pants to play the game for hours and hours on end before it becomes challenging.

That Handling Model

But there's plenty to enjoy in the game. The handling is good and up there with Forza 2 and Gran Turismo. Don't believe the hype that it's as good as the big grown up and dull PC racers it is trying to emulate. It's jolly good stuff none the less even with a pad (I didn't have a wheel to hand for this review sadly).

The tracks are great too, with an interesting and wide selection. A real shame then the game makes you work so hard to unlock events such as Spa though as a good sandbox racer wouldn't impose such restrictions on you. "You are not allowed to enjoy those tracks yet," the game implies. "First you must race many a dull 15 minutes against the world's slowest AI drivers."

The presentation is good - though replays fall into the same problems as GRID, with very little in the way of options for watching your races. Graphics overall are good rather than giving that "wow" you might hope for. The circuit graphics look like something from a DX8 PC racing game. Actually they look remarkably like one of the developer's earlier F1 PC games.

The cockpit view is very poor. The kind we saw years ago when developers would fill the screen with the car interior and leave very little road to look at in a tiny space on the middle of the screen. That's not how our vision works. Codemasters seems to get this - look at the cockpit view in Colin McRae: DIRT for an example on how to do this well (but not much else).

The car models are wonderfully shiny though. Engine notes seem rather muted for a Ferrari game, but the tyre slip effects are sensational and really transmit to the player the state of grip.

Yawn

Drumming up the excitement to write this review was as hard as drumming up the excitement to play more of Ferrari Challenge. And this was after I spent my own money on the game as someone somewhere in the Royal Mail seems to have nicked the review code the PR company sent us.

Ferrari Challenge is competent, fairly pretty with a rather good handling model. But it's so very dull to play. You might argue that "Adventure, excitement, a jedi seeks not these things" and that a real racing fan should get the joy from just playing such a good handling model.

But that's not good enough. We're not here to review one aspect of a game, but the total package. And in that terms Ferrari Challenge fails. It's a noble failure with much to admire, but it is still a failure. All very well harping on about the handling then have to contend will really terrible damage modelling.

Here's a clue to racing developers right now. Go play Race Driver GRID, copy that, but put in the good handling that Codemasters forgot. Count your money.