Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 4 (PC CD)

NOW THE BAD NEWS!

This game is seriously bug-ridden. I have a high-spec computer (Athlon XP 1700, 512MB RAM, NVidia GeForce 3 128MB, 60Gb Hard Drive), and yet GP4 constantly crashes to desktop for absolutely no reason. It gets extremely annoying, especially when you're one lap from the end of a race, only for you to be staring at your desktop again.

Also, for some utterly bizarre reason Geoff Crammond made all the default setups with SEVERE understeer. If you disable steering help completely in the Controls section, you will not make any of the corners. This means that you will NEVER get as quick a lap time as the other cars. If you alter the setup to try and counter the understeer, you will invariably spin off. I have tried and tried, but it is almost impossible to get a truly neutral setup.

The pit stops can become strange as well: if you lose a nose cone, for example, when they change the nose you will gain a brand new nose on your car, only for that to be removed and ANOTHER one stuck on instead! There has also been the odd case where the suspension is being repaired (a bit unrealistic there!) and they don't put another wheel on. This is rare, but very strange nonetheless.

Damage is also slightly worrying in terms of realism. If you get a puncture, your car immediately slows down and stops, without any visible damage to the tyre, and as mentioned above you can lose a whole wheel, suspension and all, and still get another one stuck on in the pits. Then there's the retiring itself: you cannot withdraw from races at all, even if you're in last with no hope of finishing, and when you pull off the track, your driver cannot get out of the car, even when the engine is billowing smoke and flame! If they are making a Grand Prix 5, they really need to address these problems, as they are rather obscure.

Finally, the penalty system employed is laughable. If you cut a corner, you are given an immediate black flag (which in real life means disqualification!) and you slow down to about 70mph. If there is a huge accident, there are no safety cars, and I have NEVER seen a red flag used, even with the largest of accidents. There are also no drive-through or stop-and-go penalties, which prove that despite FIA approval, the GP4 team do not understand the penalty system at all.

All in all, this is a pretty unrealistic game, and despite numerous advances in graphics and motion-capture, I was disappointed when I played this. If you are a serious GP fan, you will still buy it, but for the rest of us, it may be a good idea to consider other games.

Personally I like to find a balance between frame rate and resolution. So, I opt for the 1280x1024 option and reduce the trackside detail slightly, turn on static environment map, turn off reflections, cars to max, trackside to medium, trackside only in mirrors, no bump mapping and set pit crew to highest detail.

Ok, now for the wheel. This as usual can be a pain in the ... Since XP came out, the support for older sidewinder wheels has diminished. But, it does work perfectly with GP4, steering on X axis, accelerator on Y and brake on IRZ. Save you settings and click ok. Calibrate it and you're done. Now you notice that the menus jump around all over the place (as with many games). Just press the accelerator down to half way and it works sweet (note, Simergy patch please, it works as it should in the pits so why not in the menus).

Well chaps, the verdict.

1. Its worth the 30 odd quid just for the enhanced graphics alone. For those people who have faster machines with good graphics cards (sorry to all you who have 2MX's - they ain't gonna cut the mustard I'm afraid, well maybe at 640x480. I would love to see it running on the high end Geforce 4's).

2. The pit crews are cool as!

3. The game play is pretty much as all other GPs, thats top class BTW.

4. Has crashed on me a few times, so patch please!