With its budget price tag and a title that misleadingly alludes to licensed cars from only one manufacturer, Corvette Evolution GT is a game that you could very easily overlook. That's unfortunate, because while Corvette Evolution GT isn't the best-looking, the most realistic, or even a particularly accessible driving game, it boasts a number of interesting features and rewards perseverance with more than enough enjoyable racing to justify its asking price. You won't find any online support here, and the game's split-screen options for two players are limited. Corvette Evolution GT's single-player career mode is a lot of fun, though, and this really is a game that gets better as you spend more time with it.
There are a couple of reasons why Corvette Evolution GT doesn't make a great first impression. First, very few of the game's 35 licensed cars and 28 tracks are available to play within the quick race mode from the outset because they need to be unlocked in the career mode. And second, the role-playing-game-style character progression that's used for your driver means that you start out with frustratingly low vehicle performances and handling. You'll be able to spend points to upgrade your driver's skills, though, and as you do so you'll notice a marked improvement in the behavior of each and every vehicle that you take the controls of. Driving aids such as traction control, antilock brakes, and an automatic transmission make driving more bearable at the start of your career, and only the most skilled drivers among you are likely to be competitive with all of them switched off.
You'll be guided through your career by a series of horribly dubbed and amusingly overacted tutorial videos from professional race driver Gabriele Tarquini. These videos and the brief driving tests that accompany them do a good job of familiarizing you with some useful driving techniques and some of Corvette Evolution GT's most interesting features. The tutorials covering fast laps (try to drive fast), overtaking opponents (get in front of other drivers), car damage (don't crash so much that you kill your car), and drafting (tuck up behind opponents for a speed boost) are unlikely to teach you anything you don't know already, but they're very brief and at least give you an opportunity to get a feel for the handling characteristics of some different cars. The more useful tutorials are those dealing with driver intimidation and "the tiger effect"--features that won't necessarily be new to you if you play a lot of driving games, and especially not if you're familiar with Valcon Games' previous racer, Alfa Romeo Racing Italiano.
The intimidation gameplay mechanic lets you put other drivers off their game simply by staying close to them when they're in front. A meter displayed above the opposing driver's vehicle will give you an indication of how confident they are, and if you manage to drain it down to zero, you'll force them to wobble all over the track and, occasionally, to spin out completely. The effect is exaggerated rather than realistic, and it can result in absolute carnage when all eight of the drivers in a race are intimidating each other around the first corner, for example. Intimidating opponents is a fun way to earn experience points for your driver, and it's certainly more interesting than "racing" against Gran-Turismo-style drones. Opposing drivers are also able to intimidate you, at which point your screen will become blurry to the point that it's quite difficult to see where you're going. This can get very frustrating if it happens repeatedly within a short space of time, but it certainly gives you a good incentive to put some distance between yourself and the driver behind you. While attempting to deal with being intimidated or pushing your skills to the limit in an attempt to escape a pursuer, there's a good chance that you'll end up crashing or spinning off the track, and that's where the tiger effect comes in. Like the "unwrecking" mechanic in Full Auto, the tiger effect lets you rewind time to avoid making mistakes that you've already made. The amount of time that you can rewind and the frequency with which you'll be able to use the feature are determined by your driver's hindsight and anticipation skills, which are just two of the nine attributes that you can spend experience points on improving.
Corvette Evolution GT's RPG-style character-advancement system is surprisingly deep and takes into account not only your experience points but also your playing style, your choice of team, and the gear that you're wearing. Before your rookie season gets underway, you'll be tasked with choosing a style for your driver that affords you bonuses to the attributes associated with it. If you choose to play as a "harrier," for example, you'll find that your driver's intimidation skill increases quite significantly. The team that you choose to drive for won't affect your performance in any way, but you'll benefit from multipliers that are applied to experience points earned for completing certain tasks. Some teams reward you for clean laps or drafting, while others want to see you intimidating opponents or finishing races without taking any damage. Gear such as helmets, gloves, overalls, and boots will become available as you complete championships, and as you progress through your career, your driver will inevitably end up wearing an outfit that bestows him with some significant attribute modifiers.
Each championship in Corvette Evolution GT consists of a handful of races that you're free to attempt in any order and as many times as you like. To progress to the next racing class or season, you'll need to earn a podium finish in every race, but you'll unlock better items for your wardrobe if you win all of them rather than settle for second or third. Typically, each season of your career will task you with completing three or four different championships, starting out in hot hatches or roadsters and finishing in grand touring or racing cars. The learning curve is very good for the most part, but each race is specific to a certain type of car, and you'll find that, just occasionally, the combination of a challenging track and a vehicle that isn't particularly well-suited to it (along with wet conditions on some occasions) can make one or two of the races far more difficult than those that come after them. The unpredictable behavior of your opponents means that every race is different, though, so it rarely becomes frustrating having to attempt the same race over and over again, particularly since you'll be earning experience points and improving your skills the entire time.
Although the numbers aren't huge, there's plenty of variety to keep the game interesting in Corvette Evolution GT, as far as the tracks and cars are concerned. You could be racing a small Volkswagen or Renault through the streets of London or Barcelona one minute, and the next you might be at the wheel of a Zonda or a TVR at Hockenheim or Laguna Seca. All of the cars exhibit different handling characteristics, but it shouldn't take you long to get used to any one of them, especially if you spend some experience points on improving your driver's steering precision, throttle control, and brake timing skills. The car models are undoubtedly the best-looking part of the game, but they're not nearly as detailed as those in some other PS2 games, and the cosmetic damage that they suffer after crashes and collisions isn't very convincing, either. The circuits are nicely detailed for the most part, but their quality is inconsistent where visuals are concerned. Specifically, the tracks that re-create real-life circuits are well done, while those that are set in caricatures of big cities are generally less easy on the eyes. You'll have plenty of time to check out the scenery in Corvette Evolution GT, as well, because the game's sense of speed is sorely lacking, especially when you're at the controls of a less-powerful ride. The in-game sound doesn't help much, either, since many of the engines sound underpowered and aren't in the least bit satisfying to rev while you're sat on the starting grid.
On paper, then, Corvette Evolution GT is a wholly unimpressive game that's best avoided. In practice, the game is greater than the sum of its parts, thanks to both its engaging career mode and the artificial intelligence of CPU-controlled drivers. It's unfortunate that more comprehensive multiplayer options weren't included, because racing against a single opponent with all of the tiger effect, intimidation, and driver attributes stripped out of the game just isn't a lot of fun. Corvette Evolution GT isn't a game that can be recommended unreservedly, but if racing is your thing, and you're not averse to the idea of enjoying a game that looks and sounds exactly as you'd expect one with such a low price point to, there are far worse things you could do with $15 bucks than pick this up.
Corvette Evolution GT's RPG-style character-advancement system is surprisingly deep and takes into account not only your experience points but also your playing style, your choice of team, and the gear that you're wearing. Before your rookie season gets underway, you'll be tasked with choosing a style for your driver that affords you bonuses to the attributes associated with it. If you choose to play as a "harrier," for example, you'll find that your driver's intimidation skill increases quite significantly. The team that you choose to drive for won't affect your performance in any way, but you'll benefit from multipliers that are applied to experience points earned for completing certain tasks. Some teams reward you for clean laps or drafting, while others want to see you intimidating opponents or finishing races without taking any damage. Gear such as helmets, gloves, overalls, and boots will become available as you complete championships, and as you progress through your career, your driver will inevitably end up wearing an outfit that bestows him with some significant attribute modifiers.
Each championship in Corvette Evolution GT consists of a handful of races that you're free to attempt in any order and as many times as you like. To progress to the next racing class or season, you'll need to earn a podium finish in every race, but you'll unlock better items for your wardrobe if you win all of them rather than settle for second or third. Typically, each season of your career will task you with completing three or four different championships, starting out in hot hatches or roadsters and finishing in grand touring or racing cars. The learning curve is very good for the most part, but each race is specific to a certain type of car, and you'll find that, just occasionally, the combination of a challenging track and a vehicle that isn't particularly well-suited to it (along with wet conditions on some occasions) can make one or two of the races far more difficult than those that come after them. The unpredictable behavior of your opponents means that every race is different, though, so it rarely becomes frustrating having to attempt the same race over and over again, particularly since you'll be earning experience points and improving your skills the entire time.
Although the numbers aren't huge, there's plenty of variety to keep the game interesting in Corvette Evolution GT, as far as the tracks and cars are concerned. You could be racing a small Volkswagen or Renault through the streets of London or Barcelona one minute, and the next you might be at the wheel of a Zonda or a TVR at Hockenheim or Laguna Seca. All of the cars exhibit different handling characteristics, but it shouldn't take you long to get used to any one of them, especially if you spend some experience points on improving your driver's steering precision, throttle control, and brake timing skills. The car models are undoubtedly the best-looking part of the game, but they're not nearly as detailed as those in some other PS2 games, and the cosmetic damage that they suffer after crashes and collisions isn't very convincing, either. The circuits are nicely detailed for the most part, but their quality is inconsistent where visuals are concerned. Specifically, the tracks that re-create real-life circuits are well done, while those that are set in caricatures of big cities are generally less easy on the eyes. You'll have plenty of time to check out the scenery in Corvette Evolution GT, as well, because the game's sense of speed is sorely lacking, especially when you're at the controls of a less-powerful ride. The in-game sound doesn't help much, either, since many of the engines sound underpowered and aren't in the least bit satisfying to rev while you're sat on the starting grid.
On paper, then, Corvette Evolution GT is a wholly unimpressive game that's best avoided. In practice, the game is greater than the sum of its parts, thanks to both its engaging career mode and the artificial intelligence of CPU-controlled drivers. It's unfortunate that more comprehensive multiplayer options weren't included, because racing against a single opponent with all of the tiger effect, intimidation, and driver attributes stripped out of the game just isn't a lot of fun. Corvette Evolution GT isn't a game that can be recommended unreservedly, but if racing is your thing, and you're not averse to the idea of enjoying a game that looks and sounds exactly as you'd expect one with such a low price point to, there are far worse things you could do with $15 bucks than pick this up.
