The ‘next five years’ thread reminded me that the demo for this is out now. If you had avoided the original due to Starforce, you’re in luck; this demo doesn’t use it (and the final release won’t, as far as anyone knows).
Unfortunately the demo doesn’t include any samples of the new driving school tutorial feature, so it plays a lot like the original GTR demo just with better graphics and (supposedly) better AI and physics. They can kick my ass pretty badly, anyway.
I think I still prefer the cars and progression mode from GT Legends, though. I just can’t handle the ultra-powerful modern cars as well. GTR2 is supposed to be track-compatible with GTL though (some people have come up with hacks to let you use GTL tracks with this demo), so there should be plenty of choice for both.
I’m not really into the racing scene but I downloaded this so I can give my old MS force feedback wheel a workout. Now that I think about it the last racing sim I was really into was Microprose’s World Circuit which was probably the best racing sim for its time. BTW, what’s THE sim to get for F1 racing these days? How about Indycar?
Bummer the GTR2 demo doesn’t support multiplayer as a QT3 racing session would be cool.
F1 Challenge '99-'02 is generally considered the best, though it can be hard to get hold of. There aren’t any newer ones since Sony has the license now, and their F1 games have only been released in Europe for the PS2. Yay for exclusive licenses and region lockouts.
There are F1 mods for other games, but they’re just not the same. It looks like there have been a few IndyCar games, but I haven’t tried any of them and they don’t seem to have particularly good reviews.
(Trivia: GTR actually started out as a mod for F1 Challenge’s predecessor, F1 2002…)
Live for Speed (ignore the silly name, it’s nothing like Need for Speed) has a fully functional demo with full multiplayer support. The demo comes with three relatively slow beginner cars and one track but is functionally the same as the licensed version. The demo’s popular enough that there are actually demo racing teams and several demo racing leagues.
I downloaded the LFS demo and was a bit dismayed you can only drive 3 shitty cars. Was kinda hoping there would be at least one sexy and fast car to toy around with.
