Software : GTR Evolution

Rating: - Needs a Update.
The game is good. but needs improvment in graphics , a future update will be needed.

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Rating: - The best racing simulation game on the planet!!!!
The title of this review is not an understatement.

I got this game in October, 2008 and became completely immersed in it. I'm going to tell you up front that you cannot effectively play this game without a Racing wheel/pedal set. I played it with an XBox 360 controller for two months and as soon as I got a Thrustmaster Universal Challenge Racing Wheel/Pedal set, I learned the true meaning of car control. There are things you can do with a wheel that you just can't do with any other controller when it comes to racing games. Trust me. You must get a wheel to play this game. I'd suggest the Thrustmaster Universal Challenge wheel (which is what I am using at the time of this review), but the upshift and downshift levers are plastic and will brake like mine did (I had to remap up and down shifts to buttons on the wheel, which wasn't a problem)and this wheel measures 8 inches compared to the Logitech MoMo. Haven't had it long so I can't tell you how it holds up over the long haul, but since I practice daily and race weekly, I may find out sooner than I think. You want the MoMo for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are that it has steel paddle shifters and a sequential gear shift. But back to the point of this game.

The Graphics are amazing and the realism is astounding. You're going to want to download and install STEAM to get the full use of this game when you go racing online. Single player is fun but the REAL fun is when you join a racing league and race against other racers online. That is where this game shines and kills other Racing SIMS. This game's only competition comes from a product made by the same guys. That product is GTR2.

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Rating: - great driving game
GTR Evolution is great fun. First comes the good stuff. Great simulation. The physics and the graphics are great. Lots of different tracks to race on in lots of different cars. No limitation of what car on what tracks. All the cars have different handling and speed characteristics. Lots of different damage settings. A custom season mode to create your own season as long or a short as you like with any of the tracks in the game using any style of car set you like VERY COOL. Adjustable race length settings. Lots of different views to drive from including an in-car view. The types of cars range from street cars open wheel formula BMW and Formula 3000 to sports cars and popular GT cars. Now for the stuff I don't like. No career mode to start a low level of racing and work your way up the latter. Fewer options on setting the strength of the AI drivers. GTR1 and GTR2 had both speed and ability to set for AI drivers. GTR Evolution just has skill level. When you put the skill level down lower the AI drivers go slower and they spin out more too. In the older versions they could drive slower with higher skill levels making it harder to pass them. I have not used it online so I do not know how it works for that. If you like road racing simulators especially European type racing IT IS A MUST BUY!!! One other thing the game needs is a car telemetry section so you can set the car up better. With out it you have to guess a lot and it takes more time if you want to get the most out of the car you are using.

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Rating: - Fun to play, but has a convoluted implementation
Since the game play details have already been extensively discussed in prior reviews here, let me discuss what I consider a major flaw in the implementation of GTR Evolution that not one reviewer has covered.

The game comes in four parts:

1) Steam
2) GTR Evolution Offline
3) GTR Evolution Online
4) Race 07 Dedicated Server

Installing ALL aspects of this game eats up approximately 9 GBs of hard drive space!

The Steam application is used to look for online games (not just GTR Evolution games) as well as chat with your buddies and everything else, except the kitchen sink (basically, it's another version of GameSpy bloatware). You MUST install Steam in order to play online.

GTR Offline only contains the game made for offline playing and there is no way to play online once you have loaded this version of the game. Instead, you have to exit the offline version and load in the online version of the game. This is a ridiculous implementation and the first time I have seen such a convoluted design in a game. The load times are horrendous! I have a 4 hard drive (7,200 RPM) RAID array and it still takes a fair amount of time to get the game up and running.

GTR Online is the EXACT SAME GAME as the Offline version, except it contains the Multiplayer menu option. It seems that the designers want you to think you have to install the Offline version of the game in order to play a Championship, but this simply isn't true. You can play the exact same Championship in the Online version of the game as you can with the Offline version (Championship mode has nothing to do with being online or offline). The silly thing is, if you start a Championship in the offline version, the online version can't see your saved progress (and vice-versa). So, you can actually have two entirely separate Championships going, one in the offline version of the game and the other in the online version of the game (remember, being "online" has absolutely nothing to do with the Championship mode).

Here's the really STUPID part of this whole mess... If you launch the Online version of GTR Evolution and have the audacity to actually host a game you are LOCKED INTO PLAYING THE SAME TRACK OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND... well you get the picture. There is absolutely no way to change tracks if you host this way. You need to stop your server from within the Online version of the game and start a new server with the next track you want to race -- your buddies will also have to rejoin your server. Pure genius programming. What you have to do is...

Install the Race 07 Dedicated Server application. Basically, what this does is launch a window on your desktop where you select the cars, tracks, rules for the races, etc. that you want to use on your dedicated server. This is a stand-alone application and has no relationship to actually playing the game yourself. Once you launch the Dedicated Server, which takes forever to get up and running on my well-equipped system, you then have to launch the actual GTR Evolution Online game and look for your dedicated server (either in the LAN or Internet areas of the interface -- LAN will give you a better ping to your own game, obviously). Here's where the fun really begins... The dedicated server will always start at the first track in the list of available tracks that you have set up and will go through them one by one in order. There is no way to tell the dedicated server what track to start with or to simply be able to pick a specific track you want to play at any given moment. Instead, what you have to do is either step through the tracks in order from within the Online version of the game or go back out to your desktop and step through the tracks one at a time until you get to the one you really want to play. Here's the real gotcha -- every time you change tracks from either within the online game or the dedicated interface on your desktop, the system loads each of the tracks into the game, even if you don't want to play that track -- too bad for you. So, here you and your buddies are sitting and loading maybe 5, 6, or 7 tracks in order to get to the one you actually want to play. Guess what? There's no way to go BACKWARDS in the list of tracks you have selected to be available! Let's say you have 10 tracks available and after playing the first two you want to skip to track 8 in the list. You have to skip, one track at a time, up 6 tracks to get to number 8 (all the time loading in each track as you go, which is a lengthy process). Now let's say you are on track 8 and want to play track 7, LOL, guess what again? Now you have to loop your way up to track 10 and start at track 1 until you get back to track 7. Yikes!

One more thing... once you select a specific car to race online there is no way to switch to a different car unless you exit the server and rejoin (selecting a different car at that time).

Finally, I absolutely love playing this game. It is a total blast to race your buddies online and the graphics are awesome, but the implementation of the game as a whole is one of the most retarded bits of programming I have ever seen and I've been playing computer games (console and PC) since the early 1980s. Buy this game and enjoy it, warts and all, but just be thankful it's a budget title and you didn't lay out $50 for it.

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Rating: - The Devil on Steroids GTR Evolution
The Simbin development team are synonymous with the racing simulator genre and their latest incarnation, GTR Evolution, is a visual and aural feast of fire breathing car racing mayhem on some of the world's more challenging tracks.

Disappointingly, for fans of GTR2, Evolution is more of an add-on of Race 07 rather than an upswept stand alone version of GTR2, nevertheless there is still plenty in this package to get excited about. All of the tracks from Race 07 are present, but so are some reverse options and most excitingly, the Nurburgring. Oh, and the game advertised on Amazon is the complete version, you don't need to purchase Race 07 as well.

Visually and aurally, the game is suitably impressive. The tracks are highly detailed and with a good force feedback wheel you'll feel every bump, off-camber curve, and that rather uncomfortable feeling of: how fast can I go around this corner I'm not really familiar with on the "ring"? It's a simply superb game for this, the elevation issues of not being able to see over the brim of a hill are exciting at over 200kph, then there's the car leaving the ground. You really, really feel like you're racing.

As mentioned the cars are highly detailed. From the open wheeled ground hugging F3000's, through to the mighty GT cars, which spit and skid their way around the tracks. For most of us it's the GT cars which bring the most delight and there are several wild rides to choose from. The acceleration of the Koeniggsegg is hard to believe and the Gumpert Apollo, is simply insane. I was grinning from ear to ear like an adolescent and then I tried the Aston Martin DB9R. Quite frankly the thing sounds like the devil on steroids, it is pure car pornography. It howls and screams like a mutant wounded werewolf, nothing else on the track sounds quite like it. Banging down through the gears one feels like the sequential box is going to explode and really it is this attention to detail which separates Simbin titles from race pretenders. It's as close as you can get to real racing without really racing.

GTR Evolution is not quite perfect however, there are some minor issues which do hamper your complete enjoyment. The first of these is the total absence of some of the GT cars from the previously mentioned GTR2. The new cars are all good and well, but conspicuously absent are the Ferrari's and Porche's. Perhaps licensing issues with these manufacturers were an issue, but it is this which makes the game feel more like an add-on package: it's certainly not GTR3 regrettably.

The game menu's are somewhat arcade like and definitely the set up of the cars is less involved than GTR2. This will limit the enthusiasm of die-hard race fans. Like Race 07, the pit lane experience is less enjoyable and the clunky interface to make adjustments in the pit lane, such as repairing damage etc, is a pain in the butt. This is due to the sprint race format bias and you need to create a pit profile to allow auto repair etc. I can see where the developers where coming from, but I find it a little annoying.

The other big complaint is the amount of CPU and graphical processing this game requires. I'm running an intel 3.2ghz dual core chipset and a fairly middle of the road nvidia 7600GT card with 256 mb of DDR3 RAM on WinXP with 2gigs of RAM. This beast of a game soaks that up like a sponge with no diffculty. The ability to readjust setting to accommodate the games demands to your system is fairly coarse compared to GTR 2. Thus, when the physics of the racing are compromised, the whole driving experience is also. You can make adjustments, but there are some issues which I need to email Simbin about.

Due the sheer size of the files the game takes a while to load up: on occasion I've found it simply hangs. Adjusting settings in the set up program - a pregame menu ala GTR2 - I have found similar issues. I suspect these are problems with the copyright protection software which can leave you wondering if anything's happening as you stare at the hard drive activity light. It's annoying.

Let's return to the positives however. Okay, the game is a beast, but what a beast of considerable enjoyment when you're flying around the Nurburgring, which is quite possibly my favorite track. It's intensely entertaining and in the month I've owned the game I'm still getting to grips with it. Like the previous franchises, there is hours and hours of entertainment here.

So, a lot of the traditional GT cars are missing, but there are plenty of new cars to choose from, the Seat Cupra for example is a lot of fun and did I mention the Aston Martin? Yikes. I've thoroughly enjoyed blasting around the tracks in all manner of cars and been deeply satisfied with the realism the game offers, especially wet racing with the wiper swishing about in front of me and the tail end stepping out. Ooops! Opposite lock, left foot on the brakes ease off the throttle briefly, then ease on the power again.

Although it's not GTR3, there is plenty of entertainment and for the price point it's well worth it. No doubt patches for the game will be forth coming to iron out the kinks, for now I have no trouble reccommending the purchase, just for the Nurburgring and the devil on steroids ride that the Aston Martin brings.