| Driving Emotion Type S The driving genre on PS2 is getting hotter all the time, can this keep all you driving enthusiasts quiet until the real driving simulator, GT3 arrives? The exact moment you load Type S in to your console you notice the dated presentation and there is not an opening sequence in sight, which is disappointing, but the in game racing tells a different story...... Like the famous Gran Turismo series Type S has a lot of real cars and manufacturers, which include Mazda, BMW, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, TVR, Alfa Romeo and the surprising appearances of Porsche and Ferrari, it really is a battle of the giants and expense. The game works on a division system, starting off in the lower divisions your obvious aim is to reach the much higher divisions to do this you have to finish first on every track on all four divisions, Divisions 1,2,3 and finally GT, the good news is it starts off quite easy but the bad news is it starts to get harder as you go along. The first class has the slower cars and the other three classes get faster, The GT class is where the supercharged cars come in. The tracks ooze with a lot of detail and even resemble some of the GT series tracks, lighting is also very good in the night stages etc, the clouds look well like clouds, crowd stands and advertisement boards litter the track. The cars are also beautifully graphically designed with no glitching or rough edges to be seen, ok maybe not as good as the gorgeous GT3 but still they resemble there real life counterparts down to the ground, while we are here I'll tell you about the in car view, which is very nice and wobbles around as if you were really racing down a raceway, the drivers hands seem to move ok with all the animation that they require, it actually feels like you are sitting in the driving seat. Like the GT series, Type S has no bodywork damage on the cars which is a real shame as the developers would have been more then capable at great looking crumpled bodywork by the looks of things, but again that is down to those corny manufacturers who have more money then most of us. The actual races are very exciting, you and the five opponents are closed together in a hard to break pack with some devastating consequences and a lot of sweat on your face as you rip round the courses. The handling isn't the best but I must say it isn't the worst either, all the cars seem to steer round corners heavily and tend to steer towards the walls even on straights, but this odd handling can actually be tamed with time and patience, it's frustrating but worth it at the end of the day. At the end of each race you get a fantastic GT type replay with GT type views with slight not GT jerkiness, which looks weird. Driving Emotion Type S is a greatly put together road racer that will entertain for at least a couple of days, The similarities with the GT series are obvious but lets face it, it is the benchmark to most of us anyway and i'm not one of you.Chris Wigham 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 |