Got the game this morning. I did not buy GPM1 after reading all the
bug reports that were posted and so I come to this game completely
un-biased.
Packaging is very good with a sturdy box, thicker than usual to
accomodate the free 1996 FIA official review video tape (90 mins
running time). The manual is the same style as GP2 at about 90 pages.
I have only read the quickstart section so far which is quite sparse
and makes early play heavy going.
The interface is the same as GP2 with recent pictures as backdrops to
the menus. They have seen fit to only use 256 colours which is a big
pity as the quality suffers altho it is 640x480. There lies my other
main gripe, having to reset my win95 scheme back to bog standard every
time I want to play it. How many users still run at 640x480/256 with
todays monitors and video cards?
It looks as though there is a lot to get into and in three hours play
I have not seen any obvious bugs. The main problem I have found is in
finding out what went wrong with one of your cars when it goes out of
the race. The message usually says something helpful like 'Alesi is
out of the race, reason unknown' and it would be nice to be able to
access the car status screen (lightening bolt icon) to seen what fell
off the car, but all the icons are locked off when a driver goes out.
The 'Helicopter view' as stated on the box is a con, it is simply a
zoomed in window on the section of track where your car is, very
blocky it is too.
All the drivers are there EXCEPT Villeneuve and Irvine (Nicola Larini
is driving for Ferrari next to Schumy, JV is replaced by a made-up
name).
The Stirling Moss commentary is pretty crap. It consists mainly of him
reading out the leaderboard every so often and the sampled names do
not fit together very well, MPS should look at EA's work if they are
going to try this, I expect to be switching it off real soon... When a
driver enters the pits the game freezes whilst the CD loads up a
short, low quality AVI of that car (this can be switched off for
certain drivers so you can still see them for your team).
There are many, many icons to learn and a customizable toolbar to help
with them.
Overall, so far I am impressed. If only they could integrate it with
the GP2 engine to allow us to watch the races using the camera
director feature. I guess we will have to wait for GP3 next century
for that:-)
"There are NO coincidences" - Jeffrey Sinclair
>Got the game this morning. I did not buy GPM1 after reading all the
>bug reports that were posted and so I come to this game completely
>un-biased.
Sorry to follow up my own post, but before anybody else says it, yup,
that first paragraph is one hell of a contradiction:-)
I got this wrong too. Irvine is in there, Larini is test driver for
Ferriari. No JV but you can edit the names anyway.
Three hours later and it's history, man.
"There are NO coincidences" - Jeffrey Sinclair
Next century for GP3 - thats optimistic :)
Rob
>>Got the game this morning. I did not buy GPM1 after reading all the
>>bug reports that were posted and so I come to this game completely
>>un-biased.
Please more, more, more comments.
Is it also by Edcom or they changed their name? :) I guess on the
second day you should be able to report some bugs... Do your cars run
out of fuel with 20+ laps of fuel left as soon as you tell them to
drive harder? Do your cars lose a whole lap when they lap a trailer on
the start/finish line? Are there a working wind tunnel and
production/research facilities that _actually_ speed up
production/research?
I loved the idea so much that I spent countless days convincing myself
that GPM was playable :( To no avail.
Totally silly question I'm afraid: there were rumours (or was it on
the wishlist?) that GPM2 might interface with GP2... Nah... Can't
be... Tho after the GPM fiasco (GPM - the BC3K of F1 management
simulations:) GPM2 was also unlikely.
Karim
Sincerely, Karim
----------------------------------------
Please double any reply with an e-mail.
My ISP loses them less often :(
>>>Got the game this morning. I did not buy GPM1 after reading all the
>>>bug reports that were posted and so I come to this game completely
>>>un-biased.
>Please more, more, more comments.
>Is it also by Edcom or they changed their name? :)
If you mean Edward Grabowski Communications then yes. Must admit I did
a double take when I saw that on screen, thought it was a wind up!
Haven't noticed any of these so far. More limitations that bugs. IE
Irvine retires during warm-up, the only information I have about the
incident is that. I don't know what caused it, whether he's injured or
what. The system always just says 'reason unknown'. He wasn't able to
start the race and I had to buy a new chassis afterwards so I guess he
must have totalled it. This is stupid.
The wind tunnel is there but I cannot say if has much effect,
basically it seems to be used for adjusting wing settings to predict
track speeds.
Also I noticed in practice today that switching from a full tank to a
near empty one has no appreciable effect on lap times!
I think I have to say that if you bought the first one, you won't like
this, it's too much like a data disk I suspect. However I didn't so at
the moment it is quite enjoyable. I am fast running out of cash though
and no sponsors seem interested.
Oh, and all the tracks 'look' the same to me on the main racing
screen.
"There are NO coincidences" - Jeffrey Sinclair
