Grand Prix 3 (PC)

If you want an excellent Formula 1 game that is as realistic as you can get on the PC, then this is the one. The graphics are superb, although you do need a fairly meaty PC to take full advantage of them, they are customisable to allow it to run on a lesser machine (more later). All the tracks, teams and drivers are as they were during the 1998 Grand Prix season. First the graphics, they are almost photo realistic, each car is modelled individually and look just like their real-life counter parts (even down to the numbers, advertising and the colours of the driver’s helmets). The level of the graphics can be adjusted to suit each individual computer ...

It's now been over a month and a half since Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 3 was released in the UK, and still it remains at the top of the games charts. So is it any good? Veteran PC owners will remember 'Formula One Grand Prix' from 1992; that game, like its 1994 sequel 'Grand Prix 2' also reached the top of the charts. But is Grand Prix 3 selling on merit or reputation? Recently, F1's Mr Ecclestone has been handing out F1 licenses to anyone who has the money to pay for them. Recent F1 games include EA Sports' F1 2000, Psygnosis' Formula One '99 and Video Systems' Grand Prix World. All these games are playable, and EA ...

This game has come under a lot of criticism, particularly from fans of the original game who complain that despite being in development for over four years, it is nothing more than a minor update to the previous version – more Grand Prix 2.5 than 3. But while this complaint may be somewhat justified, Grand Prix 2 was still far superior to any of the many, many F1 games which followed, so a tweaked version of Grand Prix 2 is not necessarily such a bad thing. So what exactly has been changed? One of the biggest omissions from Grand Prix 2 was that it didn’t have variable weather – it was always totally dry. This has been rectified for this ...