While still billed as a sim, the game sits somewhere left of the often grueling Gran Turismos in the genre spectrum, so while it has a realistic driving model, it's also a lot easier to pick up and play. With the Ferrari license it almost feels like a glamour version of the private racing culture – what billionaires would get up to if they felt like some street racing. Bruno Senna, nephew of the great Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna and racing champion himself has been brought in to help fine tune the handling of the vehicles, and combined with System 3 president Mark Cale's apparent obsession with the car brand, we were assured authenticity of the experience offered in the final product. The whole Ferrari catalogue will eventually be playable in the game, and many famous circuits and locales have been included in which to race them, although we were only able to play on two circuits in our demo.
The racing is tight, but fun
Being slightly out of practice at more realistic driving games, we started our demo on one of the easiest settings, and began a singe race with regular road cars, albeit powerful ones (being Ferraris and all). The AI on this easy setting was pretty easy to deal with, the other dozen or so cars on the track all took a regular, safe line around each bend, and we could even do the old Gran Turismo trick of plowing into them to take corners tighter. Only only problem - Ferrari Challenge has damage modeling, so our beautiful F355 was now all beat up and had lost a side mirror. We're not sure how System 3 managed to convince Ferrari to allow their cars to be beat up in the game, but while it didn't seem to change the performance of the car in our demo, it definitely added incentive to drive a more traditional line! As the laps went on the AI behaved in a believable manner, we even saw a couple of instances of two AI controller cars in a tussle, unfortunately prohibiting a pass we had lined up. We played with a couple of different cars in our demo, and while they were similar in class (being at the early stage of the game), there were major differences in handling. Driving guide lines similar to Forza appear on the track suggesting the best line you can take and where to let off the gas and brake based on their colour.
It was definitely fun, and Ferrari Challenge also has the looks. Resembling Gran Turismo more then anything, the cars were very nicely modeled, sharply textured, and moved very realistically thanks to the physics model, and from the leather interiors to the shiny company logo on the bonnet it was almost fetishistic. The tracks are as detailed and well textured as those in any game. Weather affected the race quite materially, the Red Ant guys were keen to show us an icy day on the track, but while the fog looked nice we were more than happy to have our traction back, thank you. We noticed that the scenery could also be damaged, as we left various scrape marks on barriers after some 'creative' driving. We also had a quick fiddle with the customisation options, which allowed for various paint jobs and sponsor logo placement. Nothing too spectacular, but another bullet point for those into that sort of thing.
The car modeling is up there with the best
We also had a chance to check out a recent build of the DS version of Ferrari Challenge. Probably due to a combination of third party reluctance to commit to the platform early on and a first party focused elsewhere, there has still yet to be a good semi-realistic racer on the DS. There's no technical reason a platform more powerful then the PS1 of N64 (which both had their fair share of great racers), yet 2005's Mario Kart DS still stands head and shoulders above any other racing effort on the platform almost three years since its release. Ferrari Challenge won't quite challenge Mario Kart on a technical level, but even in the unfinished build we played it was definitely more solid then the vast majority of third party racers on the system.
The same tracks and vehicles were recreated in the DS version and while obviously scaled down, everything was easily recognisable. It looked a little plain, with very little in the way of lighting or particles, but the engine was solid, glitch free and it ran at a steady framerate. And it was surprisingly fun, even after jumping straight off the PS3 version. It reminded us of the earlier Ridge Racer games, with a slightly odd 'bumper car' feel to collisions between vehicles and tight turns with less drift then most racers these days. Playing with the d-pad still feels great for racers, tapping to edge around bends works just as well as it ever did.
From our quick observations, it also looked like the DS game will feature almost all the content of its console brethren, with practices, time trials and a full championship mode. There were also single and multicart multiplayer options for four players that we didn't get to try.
Decent racing on the DS? Gasp!
Overall we were impressed by both versions of Ferrari Challenge. While we didn't try the Wii version, we're hoping it's also good, since that's a system that really needs such a racer. Keep an eye out for our reviews of each version in a few weeks.
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