So... GT comes out on the Playstation 2, after a little wait. Was it worth it, or should you have saved your money and stuck with GT2? Want to find out?
First the bad news. There are less cars. Then again, GT2 DID have 595 cars and in GT3 each car took 2 weeks to model. So there's only 180-odd to play with this time out - inevitably leading to less variation. Although it must be said that in GT2 a large proportion of the cars were Imprezas. The next bad point is very region specific. We European users - that'll be Europe, where ALL the current Formula One teams are based - get shafted on cars. In Japan and North America they get 6 different F1 cars, whereas we get only 2. Further to that, Europe is the only region where extracting the "hidden" cars is impossible - non-European users can use their Sharkport or Action Raply-type device to drive the Porsche 911, the Nomad Lamborghini Diablo and a pair of Stratoses. Stratisi. Strata. Whatever. Lastly, there are a few graphical glitches and the new-improved AI is bloody stupid.
Now the good news. Those 180-odd cars? They look great. The circuits? They look great. As you'd expect from a GT game, nearly everything is a Playstation first for graphics - and even now 18 months after it's release there isn't a racing game on ANY format that can hold a candle to it visually. The cars drive pretty much as you would expect and sound, to the untrained ear, spot on (although the 1969 Gulf GT40 and 1998 Panoz GTR-1 sound the same. Not bloody likely). The races can be hard, although there is a quick route through as always. In the case of the PD Cup, the races can be VERY hard indeed. There's certainly more than enough here to keep even the most unemployed of us occupied for well over two weeks, and the rest of us who can't manage more than a pair of hours a day will take easily a month to finish. After that of course there's the online time databases to take on, online racing and hybrids which all help to extend the longevity. In fact, the only time this game will become redundant is when GT4 comes out. If there was no GT4, this would last a VERY long time indeed.
So is it better or worse than GT2? Well, it's better, of course. It could do with a few more cars,
and the lack of race modification is irritating. And it's clearly the game that the rushed GT2 was meant
to be - it's much more of a polished product. Should you buy it? Of course! There's another 12 months
before we see a GT4 release deadline go past...
Go back to the GT3 index.