GTI Club+ Hands-on Preview

There are some titles from your gaming past that slip from memory, for whatever reason lost in a mass of video game highs and lows. One such title was Konami’s street racing arcade title GTI Club, which out of nowhere was shunted back into our concious shortly before Games Convention 2008 when Konami booked us in for a hands-on play session. Suddenly we were filled with memories of rally cars racing around a free-roaming city environment – which back in the mid ’90s was somewhat of a revolutionary feature. Skip forward to 2008 and Burnout is the king of the open-word racer, so is there any space for for Konami’s Sumo Digital developed PSN title, GTI Club+.

PSN has certainly raised the bar in terms of what gamers expect from downloadable console titles, and thankfully Sumo doesn’t appear to have disappointed with its hugely enhanced port of the arcade classic. Going into the demo we were expecting something akin to a high resolution PlayStation game, so were pleasantly surprised to be presented with a racer which certainly doesn’t look out of place on the current crop of consoles. The game’s been in development for around a year and is looking very sharp, with 720p visuals and a solid 60 frames per second promised for its November 2008 release. Audiophiles will also be pleased to hear that Sumo has created a new 5.1 audio mix for the game, including a remix of the coin-op’s music by Atjazz.

As impressive as the visuals were it’s the gameplay that really stood out for us, with our Mini Cooper screeching around the Cote d’Azure environment just as we remembered. We’re sure going back to the original game would paint a different picture, but Sumo has done wonderfully well to make the driving model immediately accessible and unquestionably entertaining – something we don’t always see in modern racing games. The open-world environment does at first feel a little enclosed, but progression through the game will open up more of the map in which to race, with a host of short-cuts available to shave precious seconds from each lap time.

With such a solid base to work from it’s also great to see Sumo adding plenty of new game modes into the PSN title. In addition to your standard arcade play, the game will feature eight-player online support both in race and Bomb Tag modes. In Bomb Tag cars must offload a bomb to another player before it explodes. This mode is perfectly suited to the open world and could become a firm favourite in the game’s community. Online game modes will also be supported by worldwide leaderbords and ranking lists. The only slight disappointment regarding multiplayer is the lack of any single-system play via split-screen.

The original’s four-car roster has been expanded to include a host of vintage and modern vehicles, with players also having the option to customise their rally cars with bespoke paint jobs and decals. Don’t be expecting Gran Turismo or Forza type car tuning though; this is a pure arcade racer that doesn’t get bogged down with the fine details.

GTI Club+ might only be a downloadable PSN title, but Sumo is aiming to fully support the feature set of the PS3. We’re promised support for both Trophies and Home, with the two working together to provide a 3D GTI Club+ Trophy to display in your virtual trophy cabinet. This will be awarded once all the game’s Trophies are gained. Players will also be able to come together in Home and launch multiplayer GTI Club+ game sessions, a feature which many full retail titles are still unconfirmed to support. PlayStation Eye owners will also want to dig the camera peripheral out from under their bed, with the game allowing players to take four snaps of their mug which will be flashed up on screen during the action.

We were also told that the game has been created in a modular fashion to easily enable new content to be added via downloads from the PlayStation Store. This will include regular car and livery packs and additional game content to ensure players aren’t left with a stale gameplay experience post release. No pricing specifics were revealed, but Konami says they won’t be expensive.

Sometimes remakes see the light of day and we wish the original had been left in the past and not destroyed cherished memories of then classic games. Thankfully we have no such wish for GTI Club+; Konami and Sumo look to be onto a winner. It might lack the cool of Sony’s upcoming WipEout HD and the hype that surrounded Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, but come November we expect gamers will be having a blast on the Cote d’Azure.