First look: Group S Challenge

Capcom showed off a build of Group S Challenge, its upcoming racer for the Xbox, at its press event yesterday. The game features a host of licensed cars and tracks set throughout the world and graphics that strive for realism. Although the final details on the manufacturers that will be included in the game have yet to be revealed, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Audi, TVR, RUF, and Renault will be featured in the game.

The game will offer two gameplay modes. The first, circuit, includes three types of games: championship, line, and duel. Championship is a career-style game that challenges you to start in the lowly C-rank competitions and work your way up to the mighty S contests, earning cars and cash along the way. Line is a tutorial in which you'll attempt to race through a track while following a line denoting the best path to take when racing. In addition to teaching you the best way through a track, the game will also let you earn points. Finally, a duel game lets you race against a human or AI opponent. The second gameplay mode, arcade, lets you race with any car in any racing class. You'll also be able to load the custom cars you've earned while playing in circuit mode. In addition, the game features a replay theater that lets you check out saved replays of your races and edit them with a variety of effects.

The gameplay in Group S Challenge is coming together pretty well. The cars are fairly responsive and do good job of conveying a sense of speed. The championship game should offer a meaty challenge, and the line mode is a smart way to ease people into the gameplay.

The graphics in Group S Challenge are impressively detailed for the most part, with environment mapping and nice touches of lighting on display. You'll find the occasional chunky shadow and a few other low-level rough spots in the real-time shadows, but, considering the game's early state, Group S Challenge looks pretty sharp. The cars feature a good amount of detail, and the various tracks set throughout the world in places such as Monaco, Tokyo, and Australia are about on par with the cars.

So far, Group S Challenge looks promising, especially since the game is Capcom's first attempt at a realistic racer on the Xbox. Hopefully the team working on it will have time to implement some of the features that have come to be expected of Xbox racers, such as custom soundtrack support and so on. Group S Challenge is slated to ship this spring for the Xbox.