Hello!
Yesterday I went to the World PC Expo here in Tokyo and amongst all the
huge and lavish corporate stands I managed to find the UbiSoft stand.
There were a few Toshiba MMX200 PCs set-up in the area and two of them
were running F1 Racing Simulation with Thrustmaster Formula 1s attached.
I had never played the much-talked-about French 1-track demo before,
since my home PC doesn't have a 3Dfx card, so I thought I'd have a go.
The person before me had left the car stranded on the grass somewhere so
I just continued driving where he left off. I thought I was on the back
straight before Parabolica, but when I encountered a left-right-left
chicane I realised I was somewhere else. As I kept on driving I thought
'this is nothing like Monza - how unrealistic!' until I realised I was
driving around Imola! I drove another lap and then exited to the menu
and sure enough this demo had all the tracks! So in the next 15 minutes
or so I tried about half of the tracks - including Melbourne, Monaco and
Spa. Some of the races were wet and the rain effects looked incredible!
Monaco was particularly impressive with highly detailed buildings and
scenery. Needless to say, I caused a massive first corner pile-up when I
raced there in the wet!
Overall the tracks looked superb with differently coloured tarmac on the
different tracks and great scenery and sky. The pitstops were also cool
with the animated pit crew changing my front wing after I'd crashed into
a barrier. The throttle and brakes were slightly dissapointing, though,
with them not being very responsive. The car felt lazy and under braking
it was difficult to brake smoothly. The car slowing down seemed to
happen in an exponential way, i.e. little speed decrease initially and
suddenly the car almost stops. I hope they fix this somehow...
I asked the UbiSoft rep about a Japanese release date and he said
December but expected it to be late.
Cheers,
Tomo
