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GT Legends
'a new legend is born'
 Developer: Simbin
Publisher: Atari
Official Site
Category: : retro sim racing
Platform: PC
Might look like: GTR with retro look
Date posted: 7 October 2005
Written By: Fretbol
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Introduction
The sixties, the era of great music, legendary TV series, long hair and crazy clothes.
I've often envied my parents generation. After all, who wouldn't like to be young in a time where bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd ruled the pop charts and you could cruise around in your fathers good old Ford Taunus?
Those classic cars are another great thing from the past. How much I admire the sleek look of those brand new Ferraris and Lamborghinis, those historic race cars just make your heart beat faster. Unfortunately, those cars have vanished over the years, and modern cars look more and more the same now. Luckily for us, Simbin's upcoming race game GT Legends (GTL) recreates the thrill of racing those classic beauties on your pc.
Simracing enthusiasts never had a lot of choice when it came to historic race games.
Apart from the legendary GP Legends, there hasn't been anything worth mentioning. With the retail release of Simbin's GT Legends today, this will soon change.
GTL, Simbin's second title following the immense successful GTR, recreates the FIA Historical Racing Cars Series.
This game may just be what so many historic racing fans were waiting for all these years.
Game menus & options - That retro style
One of the first things you will notice when starting up the game is the retro feel. The menu style, the colours, the music, it all has this sixties retro look & feel. The in game music is rather neat, but if you don't like it, you can always turn it off.
When you take a look at the menus, you will notice that the arcade mode featured in GTR is missing in GTL. Instead, the player gets to choose from 5 difficulty levels, going from beginner to pro-mode. The first 2 modes are quite easy, you get to drive against weak AI cars and there are a lot of driving aids enabled to help you keep the car on the track. When you choose the third level (amateur) however, the GTR feeling comes back again.
You still have some driving aids like ABS in this mode, but the racing is quite challenging from now on. The 2 highest modes, semi-pro and pro mode are offering the real deal. If you select one of the latter modes, you better have a good steering wheel and a lot of patience.
  
Championships - Cars & Series
GTL recreates the current FIA series for Historical Racing Cars, the FIA European Challenge for Historic Racing Cars and the FIA Cup for Historic Grand Touring Cars. There are 27 different car types included, and when you've purchased every car in all its liveries, you will over 90 cars in your garage.
At the start of the game you only have 2 cars in your garage: the Mini Cooper and the Lotus Cortina. The Mini Cooper is a lot of fun, but is quite simple to drive. The Lotus is a lot faster and trickier to drive.
You start your GT Legends career in the Cup Series A ( startup cup ). After you've won some races and earned some money, you can purchase other cars and compete in the next challenges. You will need to win a bronze, silver or gold cup in order to proceed to the next series.
The Career Mode consists of 5 series: Cup series A ( startup ), Cup Series B ( 60's Touring Cars ), Cup Series C ( 60's GT Cars ), Cup Series D ( 70's GT and Touring Cars ) and finally Cup Series E ( FIA GTC Championship and Special Events ). At certain points in the careed mode, you will win an exlusive car which can't be purchased from the car dealer. Exlusive cars include the Mercedes 300 SL, Ferrari 275 GTB, Shelby Daytona Coupe, Porsche 906 and Ford GT40.
The further you get in the career mode, the more powerful the cars become. While you get to know the game driving a Mini Coopers or Lotus Cortina, you will soon be taming cars like the Lotus Elan, Austin Healy, Ford Falcon or Ford Mustang. If you manage to unlock the next cup stages, you will have to challenge beast like the Corvette, AC Cobra and DeTomaso Pantera. At the end of the line legendary cars like the Porsche 906 or Ford GT40 are waiting to be discovered.
GTL offers 11 different tracks, including newcomers like Imola, Mondello Park, Nurburgring, Dijon-Prenois, Hockenheim and Zolder. The rest of the tracks - Anderstorp, Monza, Spa-Francorchamps, Magny-Cours and Donington - were already featured in GTR, but they all look a lot better.
Most of the tracks are drivable in shorter club versions as well, so there's plenty of track variations to choose from. A bit dissapointing however is the fact that the outstanding Gmotor2 engine doesn't suppport rain or variable weather yet. This is a step back from GTR, but maybe this feature will be added in a future patch or expansion. The dynamic day-night transitions are a treat to the eye however, and now we can finally drive all the tracks during day and night, with wonderfull lighting effects as the sun goes down in the evening and the lights around the track light up.
Taking the classics onto the track
A garage full of classic racing cars in so many varieties has to offer a lot of different driving styles and feeling as well. In this aspect, Simbin have truly made an impressive effort: every car has its own unique sound, cockpit, interior modelling and - most important of all - handling.
When it comes to sound, this game will blow you away. If you have a decent speaker set, you better be prepared to get a lot of complaints of the neighbours. The splendid roar and growls of classic beasts like the AC Cobra or Ford Mustang, mixed with the sounds of exhaust popping, transmissions whining and tyres squealing make you feel you're racing a real car. Each car has its own distinctive engine sound and when you're racing around on a track, you can recognise which car's approaching you by the engine sound. When you hear something like the GT40 or Pantera breathing down your neck you will know what I mean. This game offers the best sound I ever heard in a race game. The sounds in GTR were great, but Simbin has done even better in GT Legends.
Another point where Simbin added a lot of attention to detail is the interior of the cars. Every single car in the game has it's own unique interior, with accurately modelled dashboard and steering wheel. If you prefer to race using the chase cam view, you will notice that the HUD display is showing the speed and RPM dials of the real life car, instead of the same HUD for all the cars. The drivers finally got visible limbs now, so you can see them turning the steering wheel, shifting the gears, pressing down the accelerator or brake pedals etc… When you use the exterior vieuws, you can see them moving their head and limbs through the windows. Little details like this add a lot to the feel of the game.
The exteriors of the cars look as good as the interiors, each car has its own specifique design, and some cars like the Corvettes are available in different configurations ( hard-top or cabrio version, different spoilers, hoods etc … ). The exhausts are smoking, the headlights pop out during nightfall, etc…
  
When it comes down to recreating the feel of driving an actual race car, GTL hasn't got much competition. Only a few games like Richard Burns Rally or the legendary Grand Prix Legends come close tho this one. If you take a car out onto the track without using any of the driver aids, you are in for a thrill. A great benefit of classic cars is that they are a lot more fun to drive than those modern race cars. The cars in GTL feel at their best when they are slipping and sliding through the corners.
The game isn't easier than GTR, those cars were just more forgiving than the modern cars in GTR. You can get away with a lot more small mistakes now, but this doesn't mean that GTL is easy: this game still is a full hardcore sim.
The AI are behaving a lot more realistic in GTL as well. The stupid AI manoevres in GTR have had a lot of criticism, but the competitors in GTL are a lot harder to beat. They defend their racing line, they take a lot more risks at overtaking and they can do some very surprising actions at certain times. When you slow down for a corner, or if you spin off the track, they do a much better job avoiding you as well. They do get caught up in crashes and accidents however, and now and then you will see them making mistakes as well. All in all, the AI in GTL is a big improvement and adds a lot of realism to the game.
On the downside, the damage model doesn't seem to be a lot improved. There's the occasional bumper getting loose, headlights being smashed out and other parts flying off, but its still possible to drive away after a serious crash. Tyre wear seems to be pretty rare in the real life historic races, but the damage model could have been better.
If you take a look at the setup screen, you will notice that it doesn't have as many settings than the setup screen in GTR, but classic race cars just don't have as many setup options as the current race cars. The setup browser is included in GTL is as well, so less talented people will be able to download a good setup from the real setup wizards in no time.
Multiplayer - Netcode
Its hard to say if the netcode of GTL is better than the one featured in GTR.
Since the game hasn't been released yet when testing, there are only a couple of people online at the moment. Online play seems to work flawless, but we will have to wait for a full field of cars online before we can comment on this aspect.
Simbin claims to have rewritten the netcode and has limited the number of players online to 16. This can be adjusted in the player settings file so it's possible to race with larger fields.
A dedicated server option is included as well, one of the most missed options in GTR.
Conclusion
In my honest opionion, GT Legends is the best race game I've ever played. It looks great, plays great and is insanely fun! The new career mode is really addictive without becoming boring or repetitive. The large number of cars - all having different styles and handling - should allow any kind of racer to find something to suit his driving style.
If you don't find anything you like in this game, than you've either got a problem with the basics of car racing, or you're a total nitwit ;)
The game should be released TODAY in most retail shops, so we'll soon know just how good Simbin has made this game.
-Fretbol
Ratings
Manual:
/ % |
Graphics:
97% |
Music & Sfx:
90% |
GamePlay:
97% |
|
This game scores
 
on our 5-point Rating System
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