Sorry to double-post but I wanted to give my impressions on the game for anyone that's interested.
Demo gives access to a quick race at Portimao with any car you like. Reaslim includes tyre wear, car damage, ABS, TC etc. Laps up to 14 I think and wet or sunny weather setting, as well as grid place choice. 4 or 5 difficulty settings from easy to legendary.
Start with the starts. Actually really good compared to a lot of games. Playing on hard I didn't find I could overtake everyone in to turn 1 like other games, might change at tracks with tighter first corners but I think they did a good job here. Unfortunately no lights, a countdown 3,2,1 though you have to change into gear there's no tension because you know exactly when you will be going.
The driving lies somewhere between arcade and sim. You can certainly tell they are used to bikes, the handling isn't quite up to scratch. Even with ABS off I didn't manage to lock up the brakes at all. I like the way the cars feel pretty unstable at high speeds and it's easy to lose control if you're not careful. One of the best parts in the tyre wear, which seems to be scaled, so even on a 5 lap race the tyre indicator was yellow and I could drastically feel the change in performance. To start I was really hammering around the track but the last couple laps got increasingly tough. Whether aggressive driving aggrevates tyre wear I don't know.
One positive is the fact there on 19 cars on track. I really enjoyed battling in the midfield, even if I did only finish 10th it was exciting stuff. The Ai is pretty competitive and I was surprised by how quick they were to overtake me when the oppurtunity arose. A big problems is that the views are pretty bad right now. 2 exterior views no problems there. 1 hood, 1 go-kart style low to the ground. The hood view is terrible, really high up, like driving a van rather than a race car. Plus there's no control to look left and right like there is on the exterior views so it's difficult to keep track of your opponents. Another negative is the AI on lower difficulties, it feels like they chose to slow the cars down on just 2 corners. So at the fast sweeper at the end they are really slow and you could overtake 2 or 3 at one time. And coming into turn 1 they braked far too early, even at the start line. There were no problems on the highest difficulty level though.
It's easy to see why this is the series they chose to start car games, with a lot of crossover tracks from SBK. But it's clear there's always going to be a lack of content, not too many tracks and the single set of cars. So for me this will all come down to price, I'll keep an eye on it because I really did enjoy racing amongst 19 cars on a console for the first time in ages.
