Auto Modellista Review

In a bold move that surprised everyone, Capcom, the company famous for it’s fighting games as well as the Resident Evil franchise, decided to produce a racing game. Capcom might not be seen as a company who develops racing games, but the same thing applies to Squaresoft and they did make a racing game for the PS2. Capcom does have the necessary ressources to produce a great racing game to go head to head with the others though, but did they succeed?

The answer would be a big yes, and at the same time, a big no. It’s kind of difficult to decide because I’m not exactly sure what kind of racing game it’s supposed to be. Is it a simulation or an arcade racer? Games like Burnout or Ridge Racer are definitely arcade racers and it’s easy to see. This game though has licensed cars from 17 manufacturers as well as the possibility to fully tune your car with real car parts. At the same time, it has cel-shaded graphics which give it a cartoon look and make it seem less believable. The game is also very forgiving as you can run into walls and other cars and not really lose major speed. Same can be said about the driving experience; it feels more like an arcade racer disguised as a simulation, and I guess that’s the main problem with this game as it seems the developers were never sure of what exactly they were doing so you get a mix of the 2 which feels kind of weird at times.

Nonetheless, I had a very nice time with this game. From the moment you boot it up and see the cel-shaded graphics you fall in love with it. It really looks amazing! I never thought seeing real cars in cel-shading would be that great! Everything in the game has been given a cartoon look. The menues are colorful and really look like the kind of menues you’d expect from a cel-shaded game. They are very slick and cute and easy to navigate.

So on the presentation side of things I don’t think it could have been much better. Everything in this game works well and cel-shading is used to it’s full potential, and Capcom tried to give everything racing fans would normally look for in a racing game. They went ahead and got licensed cars from 17 car manufacturers all around the world like Acura, Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Mazda… The list is long and the selection is great! For all of you racing fans on the Cube who wanted to drive real cars than you will be very satisfied with this game.

Off course, all of the cars are fully customizable. Heck, you even get to give them a name! In the movie Gone in 60 Seconds all of the cars had a name and in Auto Modellista it’s the same thing, except YOU get to name them all. It can be helpul when you save lots of cars in your garage and want to remember which one it is. You can tune your cars by changing parts of them like the hood, mirrors, wings, wheels or by adding little touches like adding stickers on it, changing the color of the different parts or by changing your license plate number. You can off course change motor, computer, tires, reduce wight, etc to upgrade the performance of your car and get better in races.

Another cool part of the game, even though it is kind of pointless as it doesn’t do anything but look great, is the garage. You decide between 3 styles of garage and then you get to put whatever you want in it. There are nearly a hundred items available (most need to be unlocked) that you can move around however you like and create your own personnal garage. You’ve got oil tanks, shelves, buckets, tire racks, tool boxes, and something like 50 posters that you can hang anywhere. Like I said, it doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the game gameplay wise, it’s just there for you to put whatever you want in it and have fun.

This is all available, of course, in the main mode of the game called Garage Life. This is the meat of the game. You get to choose from all of the cars available and then race your way in the 7 levels of the game, each featuring a different number of races. Each race also has a certain difficulty level and each one unlocks certain things like new cars, new car parts or new stuff to put in your garage. Most of the tracks are repeated in more than one stage though, but sometimes you’ll be racing it backward and in a different season so it feels a little different, but not that much. There are also dirt tracks, but most of the time you’ll be racing on asphalt in various cities or circuits.