Grand Prix Legends (PC) > Reviews > The Legend Continues - HOORAY

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	Excellent - very playable game
Originality	Excellent - very original
Graphics	Good
Sound	Excellent - makes full use of my speakers
Difficulty & Complexity	Very complicated and extremely difficult

Advantages:	Superb physics, massive user community, cheap, speed bug fixed !
Disadvantages:	Very hard, no official support

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

(NB: Updates are at the *end* - and you do need to read *all* the way!)

Grand Prix Legends is, without question, the finest racing simulation commercially available, and has been since its release way back in 1998. And "simulation" is the operative word here. This is not some PlayStation arcade game that you can "win" within a weekend - this is the pinnacle of driving games.

It's an unusual game, because you are not driving the latest electronic-gizmo-filled F1 or rally car. Instead, you take the wheel of a 1967 Formula One car, at classic (and dangerous!) circuits such as Spa, Silverstone, Zandvoort and the awesome Nurburgring (14 miles, over 180 corners). These 1967 cars have almost nothing in the way of driver aids - you control the car through corners more with the throttle than with the wheel. Just because they're over 30 years old, though, doesn't mean they're slow - if you have your car set up right, you can top 200mph on some circuits, and the *average* at Spa is over 150mph.

The most common objection to GPL is that "it's very hard". Yes, it is. This is a game you have to put everything into - it will take you several hours before you can complete one practice lap at racing speed. But that very difficulty is what makes it so rewarding when you get it right - there is *no* other racing game I have played (and I've played loads) that gives anything like GPL's feeling of fulfilment and satisfaction when you really nail a lap.

Another thing that puts GPL into the "hardcore sim player" category is the amazing variety of setup options - how many other games are you where you can set the number of clutches or the rear differential settings? And as you get better, you'll be able to feel (there is a patch available to add Force Feedback) even slight changes, because of the extraordinary physics engine.

Ah yes, the physics. GPL's great glory. This game has absolutely superb handling and car physics - the slightest mistake can send you spinning off, but if you're quick enough you can power out of trouble. Or not. You really have to play the game to understand, but the realism of the physics is something that really enhances the game's enjoyment.

As for sound and graphics: the sound is superb - the roar of a Ferrari V12 or the burble of a 16-cylinder BRM really gets the juices flowing - though the graphics look a little dated now. And "out of the box", the game only supports 3dfx or the ancient Rendition 3D card, although patches are available for extra support.

Of course, the "hardcore" nature of the game is also what meant that it didn't sell well. Papyrus, the original developer, have now stopped supporting GPL - although there is a patch on their website for OpenGL and Direct3D, as the original game was Glide or Rendition only. However, the *unofficial* support for GPL is enormous. New cars, new tracks, new sounds, utilities... the list goes on. The centre for all this activity is the Usenet newsgroup rec.autos.simulators - GPL is easily the most discussed game there.

Multiplayer: yes, that too. Unlike the modern F1 games, "multiplayer" doesn't just mean LAN - you can have 20-car races over the Internet, even with a basic dialup modem. Go to www.vroc.net for masses of detail on this - the thing that makes GPL even more astonishing. You haven't lived until you've held off a late-race charge for 10 laps of Watkins Glen.

So: if you have any interest at all in "proper" racing games, you must have this. It really will change your gaming life. Oh, and it's under a tenner now as well. Is that Castrol R I can smell...?

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UPDATED - 14/5/01
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Things have changed a little in the GPL community since I wrote this. The main change is the public release of various track-creating and editing utilities. It's still a hard slog to create a new track, but nowhere near the monumental task it used to be. This has, inevitably, resulted in a lot more tracks being released - Castle Combe and Le Mans are both imminent. Thankfully, the quality remains generally very high, as pride in one's creation means a lot.

The other change is that GPL is not the only "proper sim" in town any more. A lot of the American racing sim fans were seduced by Nascar 4 (also from Sierra), and for some weeks GPL lost its long-standing place as "sim with most posts on rec.autos.simulators". The interesting thing is that this has changed again recently, and a significant number of people have "come home" to GPL. It's quite extraordinary, but, three years after release, Grand Prix Legends *still* stands alone.
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UPDATED - 19/5/01
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Requiem for Legends?
====================

We had thought it would last forever. Such an obsession as we had never known, tearing at our hearts with its half dark nature. An intensity of emotion unrivalled in our long and chequered relationship. And yet, and yet... there is a darkness approaching, almost beyond vision, but no less menacing for all that. No more than the faintest smudge on the far, far horizon, but ominous as nothing before....

GPL has a problem. A bug in the low-level routines means that, when running on CPUs with a speed of over about 1.4GHz, GPL can no longer keep track of real time. And so the game becomes unplayable. OK, so very few people have chips that fast as yet, but remember that GPL has already lasted three years as the dedicated racer's sim of choice: the "oh, never mind, you'll have grown bored with it by then" argument most assuredly does not apply here. So, the options are:

1) Abandon GPL to its fate. But what else would we do? The only credible potential rival, World Sports Cars, is many months, perhaps years, off.

2) Get Sierra/Papyrus to fix the code. They did it for Nascar 4, after all. But that is a newer game, and commercially far more successful. It says something about the GPL community that some people have - seriously - proposed a whip-round (say $50 each) to raise the $50,000 that would be needed even to make Sierra/Papyrus take notice. Personally, I'd be prepared to spend that much. But how many more would?

(***UPDATED 23/5/01 - Papyrus have actually done this - without the $50,000! See below!***)

3) Fix the code ourselves. This would entail writing a patch - altering the underlying code would be clear copyright infringement (but see option 6, below). It would be a hell of a job, but one or two of us might just have the ability.

4) Use a slowdown program. These certainly exist, but most are for DOS and none have yet been found that would work for GPL. The trouble is that, by its very nature, a game like this requires perfect timing, especially in multiplayer.

5) Buy a second-hand PC for GPL. Again, it's a sign of just how much loyalty GPL inspires that shelling out several hundred pounds on this option is even being discussed. If all else fails, I think some people will do this. But will there be enough to keep the community alive? I doubt it.

6) Persuade Sierra/Papyrus to make the game open-source, so that option 3 above would be far easier. This may seem fanciful, but it happened with Quake. Some on the newsgroups believe this is the only viable option.

I apologise for going on for so long, but GPL really does mean that much to me. I have made genuine friends from it, something I can't say for any other game. And the thought of seeing all this collapse is devastating. Still, one must be optimistic - other hammer blows have been overcome in the past (for example, the dreadful 1.1 patch, which almost destroyed the game's reputation by messing up its timing), and one must have faith that this one will be overcome too, somehow. Somehow....
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UPDATED - 23/5/01
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Well, this is quite extraordinary. GPL's developers, Papyrus, have released a patch to fix the problem mentioned above. Already. Only an unsupported beta, but that's not usually a problem with this company.

All I can say is: how many games companies would bother to do this for a three-year-old game that wasn't a sales success? Not many - the likes of UbiSoft would probably slap a "cease and desist" order on themselves for releasing an unlicensed addon... (actually, this isn't so funny - Ubi are getting tough with addon sites, which will *not* endear themselves to anyone).

What this shows is that Papyrus are made up of racing *enthusiasts* rather than accountants. The chairman of Liverpool FC said recently "first and foremost we are not a business, we are a football club" (startling to hear in this day and age, but very refreshing). The same mentality seems to prevail inside Papyrus. It doesn't help their balance sheet any, but I'd be willing to bet that they have among the most loyal supporters of any developer.

OK, folks: get out there and buy GPL to say "thank you". If you've already got it, buy another copy. If you've done that, get a third. GPL is the world's greatest racing sim, and Papyrus have an extraordinarily fine record of listening to its fans. They deserve a *lot* of recognition.