ECTS: World Sports Cars

When we first saw screenshots of Empire Interactive's World Sports Cars in May, we were understandably skeptical - after all, the car and track models looked so detailed that we doubted the game's ability to run at respectable framerates on any kind of affordable PC. However, at ECTS, we got a hands-on experience with World Sports Cars, and are happy to report that the game was running very smoothly on a 450MHz Pentium II-equipped machine.

We drove around Monza, the site of the next F1 race, for a few laps in a number of cars, including the Lotus Esprit, the Panoz, and Mercedez. However, the McLaren GTR was noticeably missing from the version we played. On the other hand, the Honda NSX has been added to World Sports Cars since the game was first shown at E3, and it handles as nimbly as its real-world counterpart. The NSX was one of the few cars we were able to keep from spinning around corners, and is modeled to look just like the real thing. Even the track itself contained a lot of detail, arguably more than any other racing game to date: We were able to leave the main track and explore the paddock area and high-speed oval within the circuit. Even the individual garages have been accurately modeled. Tony and Chris West, the founders of West Racing, promise that all 12 tracks in the game will have the same level of detail as Monza.

From what we could tell, the game's control still needs some work, as a great deal of effort was required in steering, braking, and acceleration to get any car moving in the speed and direction we wanted it to. Damage modeling hasn't been implemented yet either. However, with eight months of development left, there's plenty of time to tweak the finer points of the game.

World Sports Cars is scheduled for release in mid-2001.