GTR 2

Ben Mansill is looking at you when he says: 'If you only buy one racing game this year, buy GTR2.'

The new god-king of racing sims is here. This monster looks fast, drives fast – immensely fast – and is hard enough to make sim-heads feel elite, yet driveable enough to attract arcade racers ready to graduate.

There’s a purity about this game, and it all stems from the legitimacy of the developers. You see, SimBin is a hardcore bunch of crazy Swedish race nuts, led by a proper GTR racer. The huge success of the original GTR has given the company the impetus and dollars to push on with a sequel. The new game seems identical to the original until you have a bit of a poke under the bonnet to see what’s different.

The most noticeable change is the handling of the humungously over-powered European sports cars. They’re… well… easier to drive. Now, that doesn’t mean ‘dumbed down’. And it certainly doesn’t translate to ‘GTR was so unbelievably hard to drive it scared off millions of dollars worth of potential customers, so we’ve tweaked it so even leadfoot gumbies can at least get a car around a track without coming off on every corner.’ Only a cynic would say that.

What SimBin does say, is that the ‘low-speed handling’ has been ‘improved’. You can feel it, too. SimBin also says that tyre characteristics have been fully reworked – something you can definitely feel. Carry too much speed into a corner and you can sense the tires scrub and skate against their grain. It’s a beautiful thing.

What hasn’t changed is the devastatingly good physics you get. Never have cars felt so fast, so powerful, so imbued with mass and momentum. Driving them is as easy as pretending you’re driving a real GTR car (if you find that hard to do, just close your eyes.. something we don’t recommend when driving a really car, mind you). There’s no rubbish with learning the ‘driving model’. These cars handle like the real thing. So yes, you need to practise before you can put in a good lap.

The GTR series is built around ferocious race versions of mostly European super cars, though a few Japanese and US cars are thrown into the mix. Worth super-special mention is the sound, all sampled from the real cars. You’ll just sit there grinning ear-to-ear even as you idle in the garage with a bubbling 700HP race V8. Floor it and you’ll just sit there laughing to yourself.

Enemy AI is the best ever, and could teach Codemasters some manners. The AI cars are aggressive and fast, yet fallible and while occasionally bullying, never suicidal.

The whole package is superb. It is as much a joy to race the AI as it is to just sample the many cars and get good at each of them.

If you fancy yourself as any kind of racing sim fan, or car nut, you simply must get GTR 2. It’s the wood in gaming’s pants.