Sega GT 2002 Preview

The Sega GT series was birthed during the Dreamcast days to provide Sega's last hardware platform with a Gran Turismo-esque racing sim. The genre had taken on a much more important role on consoles ever since Gran Turismo's commercial success on the original PlayStation. Developed by Wow Entertainment, Sega GT was a capable entry in the genre that covered all the requisite bases needed to sate DC owners looking for some racing-sim action. For the second installment in the series, Sega GT 2002, Wow is once again being tapped to fill a similar void in the Xbox's software library. We recently had a chance to try the game out in its current state, and we were pleased by what it had to offer.

Sega GT 2002's selection of modes is a mix of old and new. The game features four main gameplay modes--Sega GT 2002, chronicle, quick battle, and time attack--plus a replay studio. Sega GT 2002 is the meat of the game. It's basically a career mode that starts you out with a small stash of money and challenges you to make something of yourself. The mode offers you a straightforward assortment of race and shop choices to refine your driving skills, earn precious cash, and buff up your car. There are two race types to participate in: official and event. Official race is broken up into groups of three or more races. As you clear each group of races, you'll be able to take a license test and move on to the next group. You'll be rewarded with a decent amount of prize money and new cars, in addition to the aforementioned license, for your efforts. Event race lets you enter an assortment of races to earn significant chunks of cash, win assorted prizes such as trophies, and unlock new cars for purchase.

The garage lets you change the car you're currently driving, tune your vehicle, take your newly tuned car on a test run, and put your car up for sale. You'll be able to check out the awards you've collected and the pictures you've taken of your racing exploits. Checking out your prizes also lets you have a look around the interior of your garage, which will change over the course of the game to reflect your career. The trophies and prizes you've won will be displayed in the garage view, as will any pictures you take of your car during replays. Additionally, you'll be able to purchase items to spruce up the garage's decor if you're into getting your feng shui on. Speaking of the shops, you'll find three of them to visit in the game. The car shop will let you check out the cars available for purchase and sell off any excess cars you have lying around. While you're actually able to adjust (that is, "inflate"), your asking price for a car when selling it off in the garage, the car shop tends to give you a set price. The parts shop offers a wide selection of parts and procedures to help you squeeze every ounce of performance out of your current set of wheels. For the budget-conscious racer, the game also provides a used-parts shop that offers a changing assortment of previously loved car parts and items to decorate your garage.

As for the other modes in the game, the chronicle mode is a new addition to the Sega GT series that offers a stripped-down collection of challenges using classic cars. You'll start by picking a car from an assortment of vintage cars such as the 1970 Corvette Stingray and the 1961 Jaguar E-Type. After you've made your selection, you'll be entered in a series of races against other classic cars. As you complete each race, you'll be awarded points for placing in the top three. If you earn enough points, you'll be able to use them to upgrade one part on your car. It's a unique challenge and an engaging test of skill.

Hitting the Road

Quick battle offers two players the chance to compete against each other in split-screen competition. You'll even have the option to watch AI-controlled cars race against each other, which actually helps give you an idea of how to tackle some tracks. Time attack lets you pick a car from any of the game's manufacturers and try to get the best time on a course. To help you on your quest, you'll be able to choose from normal or light-tuned versions of the cars for a boost in performance. Finally, the game's replay studio lets you play around with replays you've saved to your Xbox's hard drive. You'll be able to play them back as you normally would after a race and edit them by using one of seven filters on the footage. Once you've finished, you can save them to the hard drive and dazzle your friends with your innovative editing skills.

Graphically, Sega GT 2002 is coming together pretty well. In previous showings in Japan, the game had been an uneven mix of slick Xbox special effects and aliasing weirdness. It's good to see that the game has been cleaned up since then. There is still some graphical shimmer in the distance, but it's not as bad as it was. Fortunately, the stars of the game--the cars--look great. The vehicles feature an impressive amount of detail thanks to the high-polygon models, which feature little touches such as environment mapping and reflective surfaces to give them that extra layer of polish. The various tracks are well done, featuring the expected variety of settings, including a city, a countryside, a forest, and so on. Special effects like lens flares are on hand to help set the tone for the time of day and add atmosphere to the proceedings. Chronicle mode makes particularly good use of special effects to give its races an old-school feel--every race will start off in a monochrome sepia tone that gradually builds up to full color during the race. We would have liked to have seen a few more moving objects in the background to keep things from being too static. Aside from the odd blimp and the flashes from spectators' cameras, there's not too much going on around the tracks. On the plus side of things, the game's high frame rate is very easy to love.

The game's sound is solid, featuring faithful re-creations of the sounds of the various cars in Dolby 5.1. The minimalist approach to ambient sound for the various track environments keeps things pretty quiet in the game. The in-game music is hit or miss. The menu screen tunes are in the same vein as the maddening lounge-game-show hybrid from the original Sega GT. Fortunately, Wow has included the option to import your own music into the game for the actual races.

In terms of control and handling, the game is fine, although it still feels a little floaty. You'll be able to choose from one of five preset controller configurations that work well. We tended to favor using the triggers for acceleration and breaking. The game will offer the standard assortment of camera options for a racer--multiple views for your car and a "look back" button.

From what we've seen so far, Sega GT is shaping up pretty well. The game's various gameplay modes should offer gamers quite a bit to explore. The massive roster of cars--more than 120 from a wide array of manufacturers--should be enough to please most anyone. The graphics are looking sharp, and the game itself is pretty fun to play. We'll admit to missing the original game's carrozeria (car factory) and the ability to make our own cars from scratch, but the chronicle mode has a charm all its own. Fans of racing sims eager for a meaty challenge will want to keep an eye out for the game when it ships this fall.