Group S Challenge

I have often wondered just how developers go about making a quality racing game. They all blabber on about the physics that they can attach to each wheel of the car, but just how do they actually make it all enjoyable to drive? It seems to be quite a fine art that can take some time to master as many racers end up being complete pap. Indeed, it took the makers of Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast a complete overhaul of the physics to get it playing well.

Capcom have not had much luck with racers recently, especially with Auto Modellista not living up to it's early promise. Project S Challenge is their latest attempt at putting things right. To me, the likes of Gran Turismo are a complete bore. The use of realistic handling just totally puts me off, as it seems to come at the expense of everything else. Give me arcade handling any day of the working week. Group S caters to the likes of myself, which will no doubt annoy car nerds who own an Xbox. All I can say is "good!” - as anything that annoys other people will get the thumbs up from me.

Here is our new model

Capcom have managed to blag the use of numerous car names from all over the world with the likes of Ford, Lotus, Chrysler, Nissan and Audi all present and correct. Sadly, this seems to have also brought in the usual 'indestructible car' request from the manufacturers as well. Driving 100 mph into a wall does as much damage to the cars as a gerbil farting on the windscreen would. As ever, the grey men in suits manage to spoil the fun for everyone else.

One way to describe Group S is that it takes the structure of Gran Turismo and combines it with the handling of Project Gotham Racing. Another way would be to say that it takes some of the Gran Turismo stuff and then bungs it in with what someone remembers of the PGR handling, when they played the beta version, that they downloaded from Kazaa when they were drunk. But more on that later.

The main part of the game has you starting out with a small amount of cash with which to buy a car and then competing in the races to win more cash for more cars. When you first start out you can only start in the Group C league, with the Group B, A and S races being unlocked as you progress.
Each car can be upgraded to a fair degree to give it a bit more petroleum-powered oomph, though you will often wonder if it actually makes much difference.

Looks ain't everything ya know

Given the rather limited nature of racing games, the developers usually strive to make their product very attractive to the eye. I have a feeling that this lot looked at the Street Fighter II team still using the same sprites from the Sega Saturn era - and thought that using that train of thought would buy them success. It isn't that the game looks particularly bad, but it doesn't really look all that good and many of the cars lack detail. The courses are all street based with lots of high rise buildings, but none of it looks very spectacular.

Perhaps the worst part of this is the amount of slowdown in the game and even pop-up. Whilst the occasional bit of slowdown on the odd corner is acceptable, it happens far too frequently in this game for it to be something that was missed by the testers. It isn't just limited to corners either, as it can often happen on long straights when you are in last place. The pop-up isn't severe and you only get it on the very long straights, where you can see far off into the distance, but the fact it is there disappoints.

Pretty much every single sports and car based game on the Xbox allows the use of custom soundtracks, but for some reason Group S doesn't. This is a small but not insignificant omission, and it is baffling to say the least. The use of custom soundtracks in Xbox games is something that I am a big supporter of because bombing around a course with "Smack my Bitch Up!" booming out is great. To top this insult off, the in-game music is pretty dire. The first tune that played was some horrible hard house/gabba-lite rubbish and I nearly cried. Some of the music later on in the game is fairly good, but much of it is just pants. One oddity is that the music that plays during a race is far louder than the music in the menus. It is just bizarre to finish a race with some thumping beats, and then be confronted by some very quiet and cheesy Japlish music in the menus. The car sound effects are ok, although nothing amazing.

The handling system is king in racing games, and this is one area where Group S does quite well. As I touched upon before the handling is similar to Project Gotham Racing and given that I love that game to bits this is a good thing. Annoyingly, the handling just isn't as good and you don't ever have a feeling of complete control over your car. Hitting a barrier brings about a nasty sense of uncertainty, as you will either stop dead or bounce off it. You can never second-guess what will happen, as it seems to be rather random and is buttock-clenchingly frustrating.

Buck Rogers in the driving seat

Perhaps the biggest killer is the robotic AI of your opponents. They will never, ever crash or spin out and they take each lap perfectly. They also seem to be completely unaware that you exist, and will often attempt to drive through you when going round corners. Needless to say you always come out worst off when this sort of thing happens and it stinks. Oh, and every single race only ever consists of a whole two laps. I kid you not, every race is only two laps long. It isn't as if the courses are very long for Pete's sake, and even in the Arcade/Quick Race you can't set it for more laps. I reckon that someone left a Post-It note on the designers monitor saying, "make races 2 laps long HA HA!" on April 1st and it was taken seriously.

Talking of the courses, there are only about five of them. Sure, each time you race them you might have to take a slightly different route but this is just lazy. It ain’t 1996 any more! I have to say that buying cars has also been made rather awkward. When browsing the cars on sale, there is no way of quickly comparing the specs to your current car and it doesn't even tell you which 'group' the cars belong to either. Going through the menus can also be rather tedious as each time a little 'help' window pops up in between each screen which gets on your nerves after a while.

When I first started playing this game I was actually rather impressed. I immediately took to the handling and for the first hour or so I was getting really into it. Soon after this, the faults started to appear and so did the frown on my head. It's a damned shame really, because this title had the potential of getting an eight out of ten. However, with the almost two-year old Project Gotham Racing surpassing this in every way (and being available on budget), not to mention its amazing looking and online playable sequel due before Xmas, this really has no right to be begging for your cash. In fact, even Dreamcast owners with Le Mans and Metropolis Street Racer would feel conned if they bought Group S.

As to what the 'S' stands for, I have my own suspicions...