Play-mag Preview SUPERCAR CHALLENGE
It comes to something when a developer actually broadens its range only to find a fraction of their former audience to contend with, but in all likelihood that’s what Gateshead-based Eutechnyx will discover with Supercar Challenge. After all, aiming for the specific niche of best Ferrari videogame can at worst put you second behind whatever version of OutRun was last released. Even if Ferrari Challenge had been garbage (and, thanks to some pretty impressive AI and solid driving mechanics, it wasn’t), you’d have the non-arcade homage to Italy’s finest manufacturer all sewn up. As soon as brutish Murciélagos and achingly beautiful Aston Martins nudge their way in, however, your game stops being another piece of merchandise for enthusiasts to store away with the Ferrari baseball cap and that glass Michael Schumacher drank from once, and takes a bold step into the broad, and highly competitive, arena of the racing game genre.
Luckily then, a host of improvements look set to pique racers’ interest. The range of vehicles, while not exactly overflowing, makes all the stops you’d expect – from the elegant McLaren F1 to Bugatti’s Veyron. In total, 40 vehicles will make the final build, each susceptible to damage modelling that will ruin all of that lovely reflection rendering currently beaming from every inch of bodywork. Aside from this most major amendment, effort has been made to lay down the welcome mat for fans of less full-on simulations.
An Arcade mode, normally the stopping point of accessibility measures, has been distilled further into handling settings simply entitled ‘Assist’, which make the act of pretending you’re in a powerful car easier than holding your arms out in front of you while yelling "brum, brum!". So far as difficulty goes, you understand – not that many people would talk to you afterwards. In truth, Ferrari Challenge was a serviceable racing game lost in the crowd; a spring release for its sequel could see some success.
