Auto Modellista Review

But how do the cars feel? Frankly, that has to be the most disapointing part of the game. It doesn’t control very well at all. You always feel like you are driving on ice as your car always wants to slide. I could often take hairpin turns and just hit the control pad in the right direction and the car would slide around the curve so much I wouldn’t even need to brake, but on the other end of the curve it would completely stop or make a few spins. When you do try to drive correctly and brake, the same thing often happens. You will be spinning a lot when you are in a race with lots of turns. It’s kind of difficult to get used to the controls as you’re never sure of how your car is gonna react. It might be because the physics engine wasn’t done correctly, who knows, but it should have been polished a lot more as I really thing this is the one thing that hurts this game the most.

If you can get used to the controls though then your gonna have lots of fun. This is actually the first time in a racing game that I took the time to tune my car before each race. Since I don’t know much about cars I really liked the fact that they added something that nearly tunes your car automatically for you. There is a setting for each of the game’s races and all you have to do is select a balance of like if you’d prefer to have more acceleration or a better maximum speed. You can off course still tune everything yourself but for those of us who don’t want to take the time to do it the auto tune ups are a great addition. You also receive e-mails telling you how to drive better and how to tune your car so that you can get better results and it is quite interesting.

When you’ve completed Garage Life though, and it’s not very long, you still have the arcade mode left where you can race any races that you want or play multiplayer with one of your friends as it only supports 2 players. You can also edit your replays if you’ve decided to save them but I didn’t really spend much time with that. There’s also time trial if you are into that kind of stuff, but like I said earlier, the meat of the game is the Garage Life mode and that’s where you will be spending nearly all of your time.

The game, as I also mentioned, looks wonderful. The cel-shaded graphics really make this game stand out from the rest, and since I love cel-shading I fell in love with the graphics immediately. The cars look great and the environments are really nice. You’ll be racing in cities full of big buildings with lights everywhere that make some nice lighting effects. Some races are also outside of cities with lots of trees and changing seasons. You’ll sometimes be playing in summer and then in autumn and the color of the leaves will change and so do the textures as you’ll find leaves on the ground and the lighting will also be a little different with a more orange feel to it.

You car shakes when you press the gas button to start it up and it makes some nice little effects when you powerslide. There’s also smoke and dust depending if your racing on asphalt or dirt and you’ll see the water splashing behind your wheels when driving under rain as well as every raindrop hitting the track. Another really cool effect is the sense of speed. White lines will appear all around the screen to make you think that you are going really fast and the screen also seems to stretch a little as when you break hard the effect completely dissapears.

Sound is kind of disapointing though as the engine noises don’t sound realistic at all compared to other games I’ve played. The same can be said about the rest of the sounds in this game but it might be something the developer wanted because they wanted it to suit the game since it already doesn’t look realistic because of the cel-shaded graphics. The anouncer will really get on your nerves, even on the first race as he really gets repetitive and doesn’t say anything interesting. The music was good though. It’s kind of a mix of soft music that is really bad, but with some stylish techno music and what sounds like some kind of techno-rock music, but nothing to heavy though. I had listened to the soundtrack before playing the game and I thought it was great.

Since there aren’t that many good racers on the GameCube, this game could be a good choice, but at the same time I’m not sure if I should recommend it. Most people were really dissapointed with it and it seems to be a love it or hate it game, but most people hate it. Since it can easily be finished in one day, it might be more of a game you’d want to rent unless you really fall in love with it. The graphics look great, this game has lots of style, but the gameplay really suffers and in the end it is what should be the most important part of a game. It is also too easy which might be why it is so short. If Capcom had taken the time to really polish it it could have been a great racing game, and I’m really hoping they’ll revisit it and give us the game we should have gotten in the first place.