I've been playing a fair bit of this low profile Wii racer, and i'm happy to say it's a fairly solid racing title, and will likely remain the best of it's genre Wii will have for the next year at least.
The highlight of the game is easily how great the controls work. The development team spent most of their time on this game refining the controls, and it shows. After playing hundreds of hours of racing games with the PS2 analog stick, this feels like an absolute dream. It's very smooth and there is a lot of customisation available, with 6 different control options and over 100 sensitivity adjustments. The steering wheel that comes with it is perfect, it feels surprisingly comfortable and stable. One thing I thought would be an annoyance with the way you hold the controller is that the power button would be easy to accidently press down, but i haven't actually hit it or had a scare in my 20 or so hours of gameplay so it seems to not be an issue. The menus are navigated with the dpad and there is no pointing at all.
The gameplay isn't as deep or complex as a realistic racer like Gran Turismo, it doesn't strive for complete realism but you couldn't call it an arcade racer either. Most of the sharp turns will have you sliding your back end out at the end of the corner in a half drift and wrestling with the wheel to keep straight. It's a very easy game to jump into and feel good at straight away, starting off with only the really slow cars unlocked makes it even easier. The AI is quite good and unlike most other robotic racing AI they'll actually ram into each other and occassionally they'll miss a corner, hit a wall, or go onto the grass. It has a flawless multiplayer mode for up to 4 players which has lots of potential for fun.
Championship Mode is the main single player game, there's quite a bit of meat to this, with around 40 cups and required license tests. Quick Race is self explanatory, as is Time Trial. Unfortunately you can't choose how many laps to do as 3 laps is the maximum you can do in any mode. Time trial is like Mario Kart where you only get three laps, and it counts fastest lap time and best overall 3 lap time. The replay mode offers a neat feature of being able to play two replays at a time to compare driving styles.
The cars are VERY customisable, from upgrading engines it goes as far as offering 8 different types of horn and being able to choose any colour that exists. However there is no need to upgrade anything if you're not interested in this, since you can win all the championships with one of the 82 standard cars. You can set your car to drift then have a go at the Drift Combo Mode, where you try and do as many consecutive drifts as you can on one of the three tracks open in that mode. It's quite challenging to even do two in a row at first, but a lot of fun when you get the hang of it.
The graphics are technically very dated, some things in the background look like they've been taken out of a GBA game (and they very well could have been, looking at the developers history making GT Advance games). The cars look nice, the framerate is 100% stable with 11 other individual cars on screen, and there are no glitches. There's a fair amount of views you can select and one of them is first person, despite this not being mentioned or seen in any media at the big game sites.
The sound does the job and the music ranges from one absolutely HORRIBLE track that will actually make you drive faster so you can stop listening to it sooner, to two average tracks I hardly even notice, to one great track that actually pumps me up and enhances the experience! They are all techno-ish type tunes. Yes, there are four music tracks in the game. Music can be turned off.
Overall, if you are interested in this game and really want a racer on Wii, this game delivers. It's the best the Wii has to offer for now, and with no racing games on the horizon this wouldn't prove too bad an investment, I am glad someone has stepped up right off the bat with a game like this and MTO has done a great job in showing that the Wii is capable of fantastic racing controls. I'm both confident and relieved that Wii has a great future in racing games and now that GT Pro has proven it works, other developers shouldn't be scared of hopping on board.
I wouldn't recommend GT Pro Series as a full price purchase unless you're really sure you want it, but if you do take the plunge you'll find a solid racing game with below average presentation and great controls.
Topic: GT Pro Series (Read 2364 times)
