Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli Comments by Dan Whitehead

There has just been a lengthy developer post on a couple of forums (http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthrea...) - a patch is in testing (and with Sony's validation procedure afterwards it's going to take a couple of weeks before it's ready), and it promises both various fixes, including online, several AI improvements (plus difficulty settings) and force feedback strength adjustment.

As of right now I'm really mostly missing the latter, but even the overly strong force feedback with my G25 isn't stopping me from being pretty much ready to declare this the best game yet for console gamers who have been longing for a proper sim.
Way better than Forza 2 in my opinion - both the handling model and the actual racing - and also better than GT5P, because frankly the AI (still) stinks in that game, and for obvious reasons it's very light on content, at least in terms of tracks.

@Zerolight - You don't race a real car from the bumper cam so if that feels faster than the in car view then it isn't the slightest bit realistic IMO. I always judge a racing game's sense of speed from its dashboard view ideally or its external camera (bonnet or third-person if not available) as I find the bumper camera annoying in that it restricts my ability to see corners properly due to being too low. I can't understand why anyone would play a racing from the bumper camera myself.

what got GT5p? because to me THAT wasn't more than a 7/10.

just a little heads up, bought this game thinking it was a hardcore sim. oh dear, complete and utter garbage. graphics are awful so to the sound.

turned of all assists and driving aids, never spun the car once.

this game offers nothing to either arcade or sim gamers

forza2 is still in pole position, whereas ferrari challenge crashed and burned on the first lap

avoid this wreck

Indeed, it's somewhat shocking that a company that does nothing but driving games can't seem to master the art, despite some 20 attempts to do so. It doesn't help that the single-player structure is both a bit old-fashioned and rather fragmented. Hopefully they tackle the control aspects. Yet despite all of this, the game has something special going for it. Better blog about this one just like with autopartswarehouse. And well, got really interested with its nice interactive tutorial.

@Darren - you obviously didn't read my last post at all, which explains exactly what I'm referring to when I say bumper cam is almost always more realistic feeling. Maybe go back and re-read it.

That said, having now bought Ferrari Challenge, I do find that this particular cockpit view feels pretty good. Certainly better than stuff like Dirt and Grid who'se cockpit views show too much of the cockpit that wouldn't be in your focal view. It's still not as good as GT5P nor F355 Challenge in that respect though. However it is the only way to play this game, if only to hide the dismal visuals somewhat, and somehow the cars handling feels off when not in this games cockpit view anyway.

What I will say is that the whole menu system, interface, and livery editor is a shameless, uglified, rip-off of Forza 2. Embarassingly so. I'm surprised they've not had a visit from MS's lawyers. However the game plays rather well, once you get passed the visuals, the framerate, and a game engine intent on masking every corner in murky pixels. It's good enough that I'm going to keep it, and challenging enough with all the aids off to be fun. Whether I'll still be playing it when Race07 hits the 360, or Blimey's Ferrari Project hits undisclosed next gen hardware remains to be seen.