A legend in its own laptime (Grand Prix Legends (PC))

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	Grand Prix Legends (PC)
Date:	07/08/01 (1068 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unmatched driving experience, Huge user community, The noise of the Ferrari V12!

Disadvantages: Very, very steep learning curve, Can get expensive in the long run!, In-game menus are a little bit cumbersome

Update at the bottom!
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Now here's something unusual: a game company that actually takes some notice of its customers. Not the publisher - Sierra - whose attitude seems to be that they might possibly think about doing something else when they've finished NASCAR 27, but the developers - Papyrus - who have most certainly gone above and beyond the call of duty in supporting this superb game, despite its highly disappointing sales (40,000 is the only figure I've seen; I have no idea how accurate that might be).

An example: back in May, it became apparent that there was a bug in the low-level routines, meaning that, when running on CPUs with a speed of over about 1.4GHz, GPL could no longer keep track of real time, making the game completely unplayable. At the time, remember, GPL was already getting on for three years old. Even on the Usenet newsgroups, most people thought that the last grains of sand were draining from GPL's glass (though a sign of its fanatical following was that a proposal for us - the fans - to fund a bugfix, out of our own pockets, was seriously considered).

Barely a week later, all was once again sweetness and light. Papyrus made available, via their website, a patch to fix the problem. Unsupported, of course, but it worked and the job was done. Our lives were not over after all. Not that we should really have been that surprised, I suppose - ever since the game's release, there has been a steady stream of patches for force feedback wheels, graphics cards and various little tweaks. The chairman of Liverpool FC said not so long ago that "first and foremost we are not a business, we are a football club" (which was rather startling to hear in this day and age, but nevertheless very refreshing). The same mentality seems to prevail inside Papyrus (though not, as I say, inside Sierra). 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. They deserve them.

Let's move on to the game itself, then. As far as I'm concerned, Grand Prix Legends is, without question, the finest racing game commercially available, and has been since its release way back in 1998. Not perfect, of course, but a good deal closer to that ideal than any other simulation on the market. And "simulation" is the operative word here. This is not some PlayStation arcade game that you can "win" within a weekend, and a good thing too if you ask me - this is the absolute pinnacle of driving games.

GPL is an unusual game, because you are not the pilot of the latest electronic-gizmo-filled F1 or rally car. Instead, you take the wheel of a 1967 Formula One machine, at classic (and, for the most part, insanely dangerous) circuits such as Kyalami, Silverstone, Zandvoort and the awesome Nurburgring (14 miles, 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. Classic F1 racing is anything but slow-paced.

The most common objection voiced about GPL is that "it's very hard". Absolutely. This is a sim you have to put everything into - it will take you several hours (at a minimum) before you can complete one practice lap at anything like racing speed without ending up in the Armco (what little of it there is!). 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 snap up pretty much anything I can find in this genre) that gives anything like GPL's feeling of fulfilment and satisfaction when you - eventually - really nail a lap.

Anoth
er 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 (the v1.2 patch, among other improvements, adds support for Force Feedback - make sure you download it from www.papy.com before you even start driving) even slight changes, because of the extraordinary physics engine.

Ah, the physics. GPL's greatest 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, as the case may be. (Actually, if you're driving the Lotus, it'll probably have blown up anyway by this time.) You really have to play the game to understand (annoying phrase, that, isn't it?), but the realism of the physics is something that really enhances the game's enjoyment. Realism? Well, all right, I'll come clean - I've never actually driven a 1967 F1 car (not fair!), so it might be the wrong description... but I don't really know what other word to use - everything just "feels" right, and surely you can't ask for more than that?

The sound is quite superb - the roar of a Ferrari V12 or the burble of a 16-cylinder BRM really gets the juices flowing, and if you don't like the original engine noises, you can (as with pretty much everything else in GPL) replace them with others more to your liking. It does have to be acknowledged, though, that some of the graphics look a little dated now. And "out of the box", the game only supports the ageing 3dfx or the fantastically ancient Rendition 3D card, although - again - effective patches are available from the Papyrus website for OpenGL or Direct3D support.

Of course, the "hardcore" nature of the game is also what meant that it di
dn't sell well (as mentioned at the start). There is no longer any official support for GPL - although of course Papyrus keep things ticking over, it would appear out of sheer enthusiasm. All is not lost, though, as the level of *unofficial* support for GPL is enormous. New cars, new tracks (the Le Mans Sarthe circuit is astoundingly good), new sounds, car editing utilities... the list goes on. 99% of it is free, as well. The centre for all this manic activity is the Usenet newsgroup rec.autos.simulators - GPL is easily the most discussed game there (occasionally to the annoyance of fans of other games, it has to be admitted). Lurk for a while, though, as GPL, as with all obscure cults, has its own secret language, and it'll help you no end if you know what to expect from an "alien" (a very top driver) or an "FD car" (a hybrid F1/F2 machine).

Unlike the current slew of modern F1 games, "multiplayer" doesn't just mean LAN (when will the likes of Geoff Crammond - leant on [fairly heavily I suspect] by good ol' Bernie - stop pretending that smooth Internet play isn't possible?). You can have excellent 20-car races over the Internet, even with a cheapo 56K modem (like mine). Go to www.vroc.net for reams of detail on this - the feature that makes GPL even more astonishing, if that were possible. You haven't lived until you've held off a late-race charge for 10 laps of Watkins Glen. Oh, yes, forgot to say - VROC is also entirely a user-written addon.

The manual that comes with the game is fairly short and sweet, though pretty informative, but what you really need to read is the other book: "Four-wheel drift". This is written by Steve Smith, former editor of the US magazine Car & Driver, and it is utterly superb. Almost 100 pages (on CD in some budget editions of GPL) of highly detailed and very useful advice about the characteristics of the various cars and tracks, about how to set up yo
ur machine, about racing skills... you name it. About the only thing missing is any mention of Ferrari - what gives, as they say? You've guessed it: it's that long-established gamers' bugbear, licensing problems. "Four-wheel drift" was written before contracts were agreed to use the Ferrari name in the game, so Smith decided not to risk having to pulp the thing and start again. Sadly, two companies - Cooper and Honda - wouldn't grant permission, so "Coventry" and "Murasama" are there as not-at-all-similar-honest replacements. Is there a patch to "correct" this? What do you think, eh?

As with most games, the "required spec" on the side of the box is hugely optimistic. Apparently, you can play GPL on a P166. Well, doubtless you can, if you enjoy games that run at three frames per second. I have a Celeron 500 with a Voodoo 3 graphics card, and even with that setup I can't turn everything on at 800x600. Frame rate is all in GPL - the maximum is locked at 36fps, and you should aim for that at all costs, as an even slightly jittery car makes for considerably more opportunity to examine the greenery at close range. RAM isn't a particular concern unless you want to record entire races with the (excellent) replay feature - I had no problems with 64 megs, and even 32 should be fine. If you want to race online (and you do, believe me), make sure you have a hardware modem - WinModems are renowned for their bad performance in GPL. Oh, and do make sure you use a steering wheel, won't you?

So, to sum up: if you have even the slightest interest in what might be termed "proper" racing games, you really must have GPL. It might be almost geriatric in PC terms, but it's still at the very top of the heap. Grand Prix Legends really will change your racing life, not to mention emptying your pockets as you pour upgrade after upgrade into your computer (many - and I mean *many* - pe
ople have spent several hundred pounds on this electronic drug). Oh, and provided you can find the thing (it's on the Sierra Originals label - GAME is often a good bet) it's available for under a tenner now as well. Is that the sweet smell of Castrol R...?

UPDATE 20/02/2002
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Six months on, and my opinion hasn't changed: GPL is still the sim that leaves the rest gasping in its wake. And the extraordinary commitment of the user community is still apparent: I mentioned in my original op that a collection to fund a bugfix was considered; that turned out not to be necessary, but a general fund in appreciation of Papyrus (GPL's developers) was set up, partly to encourage them to write something other than NASCAR games (some hope), and that raised some hundreds of pounds.

The game itself has apparently just been re-released by Sold Out at the princely sum of a fiver, and at that price it would be criminal not to buy it. (Actually if you're any sort of sim racer, it'd be criminal for you not to have it already, but still...) I haven't seen it in the shops yet, so I don't know if it includes any useful patches (probably not). GAME or EB are the places to look.

Development of third-party addons continues apace. There are some very high quality circuits available (free, natch): Croft, the Lausitzring, Bathurst (very hard but very addictive) and a superb rendition of Castle Combe to name but four. Given that there are now over 150 tracks available, sorting them out can be a bit of a nightmare - thank heaven for the new GPL Tracks database at http://magnust.d2g.com !

I've also (finally) been dipping a toe into the world of track editing. This isn't for the faint of heart - a hex editor is no longer a necessity, there is a *lot* of number crunching to be done - but the rewards are well worth the considerable effort required. I've only made a simple banked oval so far, but
driving round it is a great feeling! Having said this, making a model of a *real* track of a good enough quality to release publicly is very hard indeed, especially when your audience will certainly contain people who know it well, perhaps even raced there!

To sum up, then, GPL retains its position as the prince of hardcore racing sims. NASCAR 2002 has little interest to most European games (and hey, I want to turn right sometimes!), and the "Holy Grail" of sim racing - World Sports Cars - still unlikely to appear soon, if at all, with continuing rumours of splits between the authors and their publishers. No, if it's a convincing and gripping driving experience you want, then Grand Prix Legends remains the leader of the pack.

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