Tons of fun to drive. Tons of fun to listen to. Tons of fun to look at. Falls apart in the finer points.
BUT...
Despite Gamespot.com's review, the damage model blows. I can't tell you how many times I've bounced off a wall, hit one head on at high speed, or used the rear of another car to help me brake into a turn, only to end up with either no damage at all, or barely a busted front wing (with the car still drivable). Six full-length races so far, and only in one of them did one single AI car manage to get a DNF. And the safety car - never have seen it on the track.
Strike One
HOWEVER...
My biggest complaint is in the save game "feature". For some reason, my control setup is never saved. Every time I start the game, it reverts to keyboard and I have to remap all of my controls for my Logitech G27. This gets old after awhile, and will definitely impact replay-ability for me. As well, yesterday I ran the Canadian Grand Prix. A full race weekend, a good 5 hours invested. Tonight I sat down to run the next in the schedule, only to find that the game somehow "forgot" I ever ran the Canadian Grand Prix and when I hit "Career", it plopped me right back into Practice 1 for the Canadian Grand Prix. Grrrrrrrrrrrr!
Strike Two
THE FINAL STRAW...
I bit the bullet and re-ran the Canadian. I was fast in P1, P2, and P3. First round of qualifying I was at the top of the chart - first time yet and pretty excited! Time expires for Q1 and guess what - disqualified! For no apparent reason! DSQ and no explanation - now I start at the back of the grid. Really?
25 laps into the race I come around a blind chicane to find Fernando Alonso parked sideways at the exit. No yellow flags waving, nothing. I have no time to react, and t-bone him going about 140 mph. Yeah, you guessed it, no damage to my car. But worse - I immediately get a blocking penalty because the guy behind me is now stuck and can't pass. When the accident begins to clear up and cars start driving off and carrying on, I then get hit with a passing under yellow penalty - say what? Yeah, maybe I passed Alonso (he ended up being that 1 DNF I was telling you about) because he would not move - are you kidding me? Two drive-through penalties later, I am so far out of contention I'm just mad. Maybe this is what Codemasters gives me for the accident instead of the appropriate damage that they obviously don't know how to model.
Strike Three
TO SUM IT UP...
The game is really fun to play, fun to look at and fun to listen to. But, when you constantly have to reset controls, when you have invested 5+ hours in a race weekend only for it to magically have "never happened", and then have such weak damage modeling and such a sham for rule enforcement with phantom disqualifications and two drive through penalties for being a hapless victim of a wreck, it is hard for me to give this two thumbs up. I honestly have lost the will to continue on with my "Career" - this game will just end up being a random play for me - when I need to feel some speed now and then. I don't see how anyone (including Gamespot.com) can give this a "super" or "great" rating if they have really spent any time at all in formulating an intelligent review. I give it a 7 for the "fun" factor, but it won't hold my attention very much longer given it's problems. That's bad for $50 bucks... :(
Back to something a little more serious now, back to iRacing...