Group S Challenge Impressions

Capcom's new racing game, Group S Challenge, falls squarely into the simulation side of the driving genre. It lets you select from a number of different cars in five different car classes and race them on tracks in environments such as the Shibuya prefecture of Tokyo, Monaco, and a beachfront area called Surfer's Paradise.

The game has a wide collection of cars, broken up into different ranks. Among others, the game contains the Camaro SS, Corvette Z51, Viper GTS, S7, Mustang Cobra R, Lotus Esprit V8, RUF CTR2, RUF RGT, Honda NSX Type S-Zero, Mitsubishi GTO Twin Turbo, Lancer Evolution, Mazda RX-7, Nissan Fairlady Z, Skyline GT-R, Subaru Impreza, Subaru WRX, Subaru Legacy B4, Toyota Celica GT-Four, Supra RZ, VW New Beetle, and a Ford Focus.

The game drives like your average driving simulation, with access to gas, brake, a hand brake, and gear shifting. The cars control pretty well, and the game has built-in modes that help you find an optimal driving line.

Graphically, the game has a realistic look to both its cars and its environments, though some spots of the game are perhaps a bit washed out. That, however, may have been due to the television sets used in Capcom's booth. The game has three camera positions. There's your standard third-person driving mode, a normal first-person mode with a rear-view camera, and a first-person view that puts a small window in the corner of the screen that shows a TV-style vantage point of the race, changing angles as you pass by the track's set cameras.

Group S Challenge is planned for release on the Xbox later this year.