You know you
are in for a different kind of racing game when the first thing you see
in the opening movie is the close-up profile of a giraffe. With these
games I expect to be assaulted by squealing tires, roaring engines, some
blaring rock and rollsomething garish and flashy that screams racer
right from the start. Instead I was watching one of Africas cuter,
quieter, and stranger animals. But then, GTC Africa is a strange animal
in and of itself. A bit too temperamental for the casual gamer, and a
bit too simplistic for the hardcore racer, it is a decent game that
could have been great.
GTC Africa
combines rally style driving with competitive circuit races. In other
words, it is a rally racer that puts other cars on the track to compete
against you. This is fine by me. I get a kick out of the loose and crazy
handling of a rally car tearing across the dirt, but I am not a ticking
clock kind of guy. I need an opponent to jostle with.
This game
doesnt just play with the rules of rally racing, however. In fact, GTC
Africa is vast array of different side steps of convention. Rather than
taking the "bigger is better" route, throwing a hundred or more cars and
infinite possibilities for customization at you, this game has taken a
much simpler approach. There are nine cars to choose from: the
Mitsubishi Evolution, Subaru Impreza, Pontiac Vibe, Grand-Am, and
Firebird, and Ford Mustang, Cougar, Focus, and Escort Cosworth. There is
no customization (unless you count choosing between manual or automatic
transmission). And forget racing for trophies or cash; you are vying for
the approval of your team.
Gameplay
consists of Championship, Challenge, Single Race, Practice, and 2-Player
Modes. In Championship Mode, you begin by choosing a team. Each team has
its own selection of cars, decorated with the team colors, to choose
from before each race. There are three rounds of competition: East Coast
Championship, North South Challenge, and African Tourwith nineteen
different circuits in all. In each race, you compete for points (first
place is ten points, second is six, and so on) that earn you a place in
the league table. The racer with the most points at the end of the round
is the winner. You must win to move on to the next round. (Sounds a
little like kart racing, doesnt it?) If you perform well, and do not
damage your teams car during the race, you will increase your standing
within the team and are allowed more time to complete the next race. If
you perform poorly or damage the car, your popularity will decrease,
along with your time limit. Your status is represented by a percentage:
50% indicates indifference from your team, anything higher is positive,
lower is negative. (Sounds a little like high school, doesnt it?)
Challenge Mode is a bizarre collection of mini games that include racing
around an oval track while trying to catch up to or stay ahead of your
opponent, uphill and downhill mountain runs, and more. The other modes
are exactly what you would expect.
The real
draw of GTC Africa, however, is the locales. The continent of Africa
contains some of the most beautiful and varied landscapes in the world,
and the game takes every advantage, creating some of the most unique
racing circuits I have ever seen in a video game. You will race across
sweeping plateaus, up and down steep hills, and encounter every kind of
terrain imaginablegripping tarmac, loose sand, grass, dirt, mud,
iceoften all on the same track. Take the Kenya course, which begins on
a winding dirt trail up a hill, your journey punctuated by a grand
waterfall, then takes you into the thick of the jungle, the slippery
track taking several tight, ninety degree plus turns, only to then open
up onto the baked dirt roads of a desert. Or the Tanzania race, which
takes you up a ferociously steep and icy incline, then back down to the
barren, sandy desert, and up again. Many of the courses are a completely
different experience, not only from the other tracks in the game, but
from any other game on the market. Be sure to read the information given
to you on the loading screen slates. Not only do they pass the time and
give you a geography lesson (I now know that Libya boarders the
Mediterranean Sea between Egypt and Tunisia, is home to Red Castle and
the Assai al-Hamra, has a population of 5 million, and its capitol is
Tripoli). They also provide valuable information about the conditions of
the upcoming track. For instance, in Zimbabwe the conditions read: short
tarmac section with dirt track descending into a twisting, muddy gorge,
then winding sharply through the country side. Once you know that, you
can at least prepare for the wild ride to come.
Graphically,
the game performs all over the place. The landscapes can be gorgeous,
overwhelmingly so at times. The waterfalls are rendered with rainbows
and spray. There are boggy depots, open plains, and mountain vistas.
Many of the levels are populated with native wildlife. The effects are
there, too. The game does a good job with dust, flying mud, and blinding
sunlight. Yet, the drab textures and constant shimmer over every detail
make it all pretty unconvincing. There are aliasing problems everywhere.
And the different graphical elements do not blend very well. The cars,
which are nowhere near as pretty as GT3s, are too shiny and rendered
without a lot of weight on the screen. They do not match the shimmering
landscape at all, which in turn is incongruous to the near
photo-realistic sky. It looks like three obvious elements were placed on
top of one another without any care taken for continuity.
The sound
is abysmal. The engines sound like toys and when another car passes you
their engine blares obnoxiously and then disappears. The soundtrack is a
muted, repetitive blend of techno and poorly replicated African song.
Those who have gotten used to games that take advantage of the PS2s bag
of audio tricks will be sorely disappointed.
There are
many gameplay issues that drag down the fun-factor as well. For
starters, the funky kart style point system can be frustrating. As there
are no rewards for individual levels (except that you unlock the courses
in single race and multiplayer modes), and second place in the round
equals failure, it is possible to play through a great deal of the game
and come up empty handed. The AI is very uneven, going from vicious to
oblivious, perfect to incompetent in the blink of an eye. Given that
this is a rally racer, your car is surprisingly encumbered by off-road
terrain. You are fine within a few feet of the track, but stray any
further and you will go from 150mph to 30mph almost instantaneously, and
your car will handle like crapmuch more so than you would expect. Plus,
your car gets hung up on the most idiotic background elements. Hitting
small shrubs and tall patches of grass will stop you dead in your
tracks. And it is curious that, although vehicle damage is calculated at
the end of each race and factored into your team standing, it does not
affect your cars performance, nor is it ever seen. Roll your car onto
its side and it will right itself--almost instantly.
In the end,
GTC Africa may have played a bit too much with the conventions of the
genre. The point and popularity system incorporated into the
Championship Mode is unique, but may be a bit much for racing fans to
swallow. And although nineteen different courses are a lot when compared
to most games, nine cars divided among the teams are not. The set up is
simple, but the execution can be frustrating. The courses themselves,
however, are some of the best to ever grace a video game. Strange,
diverse, and intense, these are tracks that every racing fan must
experience. And by that virtue, GTC Africa is a highly recommended
rental, though I would refrain from purchasing the game until trying it
out.