r u emotional (Driving Emotion Type-S (PS2))

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Product:	Driving Emotion Type-S (PS2)
Date:	24/05/01 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: umm,

Disadvantages: all

With the disappointment that Gran Turismo 2000 (which has now been labeled Gran Turismo 3) won't make Christmas, PS2 fans were left with a void to fill, and Square's Driving Emotion was the closest game that would fit in that gap. But is it worthy to fill such a gap? Well no, quite frankly it stinks and here's my reasons why.

Driving Emotion features a plethora of well known real-life cars, from manufacturers such as Honda, Mazda, Subaru, Porsche, and Ferrari, but to name a few. This is probably what makes you think this game is trying to follow in the foot steps of Gran Turismo, but beneath the cool looking exterior lies a dimwitted circus chimp just pretending to be clever. You start the game at the bottom of the car class ladder, and gain faster cars for winning races. Eventually you will be able to get your grubby mitts on a slew of GT class cars, if you can be bother to actually persevere with that game for that long.



The single player mode is severely lacking in any kind of structure. Each circuit has four classes of race, if you win the race the next class is unlocked. There is absolutely no sign of any kind of ladder or league, which leaves you feeling there's actually no purpose to you racing. Winning one race isn't quite as exciting as battling you way through a season of races and just scraping through to win the championship in the final race. To make matters worse you have to wait for around 30 seconds for each track to load, which gives you plenty of time to contemplate whether or not to reset your machine and load something better, like Konami's Mahjong 2.

The game only features a grand total of six tracks, one of which is the famous real-life Japanese circuit - Suzuka. Although six of those tracks are only based 3 locations, as each one of them features a short and long version. The tracks do actually look quite impressive, the night time ones in particular, but are let down by a certa
in graphics feature...



Escape thought it would be clever if they use the PS2's speed blurring effect, but went a little over the top. When using the in-car view absolutely everything is blurred, including the hands on the wheel. Though oddly enough if you used the exterior view (the only other view available btw) nothing is blurred, but alas it's nigh on impossible to actually control the car using that perspective.

Now the area of the game that really stinks to high heaven is the handling of the cars, specifically their wacky steering. Let me explain; with every other driving game known to man, when you pull left or right on your controller - whether it's a keyboard, pad, or steering wheel - your car will turn. When you let go of the stick/directional pad/wheel it is in essence centering the steering wheel. Now what Square have done is try to create some crazy new form of steering which, although the game is supposed to be some kind of sim, mirrors absolutely nothing on this planet, which the exception of maybe fairground dodge'ems. This is how their version of "steering" a car works; you pull left of your Dual Shock thumb stick for 2 seconds and let go, in the thought that your steering has centered and the car will now be traveling forward in a straight line. But, instead your car continues to turn left. To center the wheels you must pull right on the stick for 2 seconds to cancel out those 2 seconds you spent pulling left. What the developers have in fact done is rather than the controller simulating the wheel, it simulates what the hands on the wheel are doing. What makes this even more confusing is that the steering wheel and hands displayed on screen actually do center when you let go of the stick, giving the illusion the car will be traveling in a straight line, which isn't the case. This basically knocks the game's fun rating down to zero, as you're spending too much time trying to get yo
ur head around the strange steering rather than actually racing.



The Bottom Line...
Who ever made the decision at Square that this game was fit to be released should be flogged or even worst...made to play this damn game! Even with its lack of tracks, this game could have been quite fun if it had "normal" handling, and they got rid of the awful speed blur. Now I at least know what the "S" stood for in the name - SHIT!

Summary: