GTR Evolution

Packed full of options and upgrades. GTR Evolution is an exciting and thrilling ride very close to the real thing. Featuring mainly European cars, tracks and drivers in SimBin's stand alone and addon to Race 07. Unique to GTR Evolution is Nurburgring Nordschleife. No other game on the market has this deadly track.

You select a flag and career name. These follow you around your races. Selecting R-Cade™ Extreme brings you almost straight into the race. When first on the track you'll see the cars rev high and accelerates fast. The corners are sharp and come at you fast. There not easy to handle with little experience. Foot to the pedal on a long stretch is fine, but huge breaking will be needed for particular turns, which are identified on the screen as a green, blue and red arrow along with the turn number. Checking your speed is essential. It might not look fast, but hitting a hairpin turn at 200km/h will leave you sliding forwards off the track and bouncing of tire walls. Breaking and accelerating while turning will leave you spinning on the grass, the car needs to be perfectly straight with gentle care taken when applying the pedals. Tyres wear easily, trying to drift around the track sideways will leave you with little grip at the pivotal moments.

Following the other cars is a big help, watching how much they slow down gives an understanding of how these corners are meant to be handled. This will keep you on the right track whilst gaining a good position. It will take a few practice laps, but in no time you can quickly enter races expecting a podium finish on an easy difficulty.

Entering a Race Event you can pick 11 tracks from the 2007 season, 10 tracks from the 2006 season all arranged by date. Another option is GTO Evo. This event is the choice of three long distance races of over 20 kilometres, compared to the regular tracks of about 3 to 5 kilometres long. An Extras option gives 20 tracks, most repeated but with small differences like extras corners or in reverse. Next, selecting a class. Choose from formula 3000, minis, dodge vipers, there’s an incredible 23 classes to look at. Choose a driver and team then allocate your preferred racing settings including difficulty, weather, amount of laps, opponents, and gearbox. The first race screen is the practice race. Getting to know the track is important as you won't face unexpected surprises later. From here you can view the timing of each driver on this track, session information and weather, car setup includes all settings a pit team would expect to encounter such as roll bar, tire compounds and pressure, springs, cambers, casters and ride height settings. Pit menu presets and standard game options are also available here. After the practice is a qualifying event, with the same car and pit options, then two main events. Championship is 11 events in the same format as Race Event. This should give plenty of entertainment before completing.

The goal for the developers is certainly the realism. The serious music (which I swear I've heard before) suits the mood needed. The vehicle handing is fairly accurate to what you would expect on a real track at top speeds. Hitting the walls too hard will give you lasting damage with your pit crew informing you of problems. Testing this was simple. Travelling in the Formula 3000 at top speeds of 253km/h and heading straight into a wall didn't reduce the car to a small cube as you would expect. Nothing fell off or snapped, but there was a kindly reminder that there was a suspension problem and an aerodynamic problem as a result of this killer crash. Winning the race after this wasn't a problem either.

The graphics are smooth for most modern mid range gaming setups. There is lots of fairly well detailed background to enjoy and the vehicles have somewhat nice shadowing and lines. As mentioned, the music is a serious tune. The roars of the engine from different angles are what you hear when in the stands at Grand Prix race events.

GTR Evolution offers itself as a serious game for enthusiasts for the racing genre. Featuring many events and classes, there is enough packed in to keep you entertained.