GT64

 N64, GT64 (1998) game

Another game this year I found to be far too easy. I wasn't expecting much, it was from the early part of the console's lifespan, and I didn't get much! Not that it was terrible, it was functional, but it was only a small order of magnitude higher in technical proficiency than the Lotus games on the Amiga. They were only a few years previous, produced in the same decade ('Lotus Turbo Challenge II' and 'Lotus III,' at least), but there's the same kind of squealing turns and slide out of the turning circle at high speeds. The trackside architecture is far more advanced, but the reality is for most tracks it's easier to simply bash into the side barriers round hard corners than brake. Road racing tends to be more basic compared to the interest from rallying through bog and mire, spinning up mud and rainwater as you go, but it can also be purer - just the racing line and responsive tyres as you weave into the fastest route for the next corner on a hard surface. The game certainly gave the impression of hard simulation from the Set Up screen before each race which allowed various attributes of the car to be tweaked to suit road conditions, but I was glad to find there was an auto-adjust which selects the best setup for you as I have no interest in all those technical details. Same with the gears, I always go for Automatic.

It also feels sim-like with the insistence on Qualifying for your place in the starting lineup, and one thing about this game is it is trickier to overtake vehicles - you can knock into them and push them off line a bit, but equally they're adept at speeding past you if you head into any grass verges or take a corner too wide. Despite the simulation trappings it's definitely an arcade experience to the extent that I usually prefer an in-car view in racing games, but found this easier with an external view (just like the old Lotus games!). Not that I needed anything to make it easier, as aside from the early tracks featuring grassy roadsides which slowed me down significantly, I had no trouble beating the game in short order on the Normal difficulty. Hard mode took a few more attempts, but once you know the tracks you can win most even on that difficulty (and the ability to save between each race helps), so it was a very short-lived experience. I got it as part of a bundle on ebay, so this was just a bonus, I've always loved the racing genre, but the N64 had plenty of contenders from the two 'Top Gear Rally' games, 'World Driver Championship,' 'V-Rally Edition 99' and 'F1 World Grand Prix,' to all kinds of other racing types in the real world ('Excitebike,' '1080º,' 'Wave Race' ), to sci-fi ('F-Zero X,' 'Extreme G,' 'Wipeout,' 'Star Wars Racer'), to fun runs ('Mario Kart,' 'Diddy Kong Racing,' 'Top Gear Overdrive'), so this one would have had to stand out to be counted. In a word, it was fine, but there was nothing to it.

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