Evolution GT Review

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, no… not another bloody racing game.” Recognising that the genre is over-saturated, Evolution GT chooses to sit somewhere outside the conventional mould. Rather than concentrating on Gran Turismo-style car pornography or super-accurate GTR-style simulation like its competitors, Evolution GT chooses to try and do something different. It doesn’t just simulate the car; it simulates the racing driver, too.

Racing drivers are a special breed. There’s something wrong in their heads. They don’t have the same sense of fear or self-preservation as a normal person. So whilst the average Joe would start braking for Donington Park’s Old Hairpin at around 200 metres and take it at 70mph, a racing driver would brake at 75 metres and take it at 100mph. As you can imagine, simulating the level of belief and trust that a racing driver has in their car is very difficult, and the way the team at Milestone have gone about it is undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of the game.

Yes, SCAR‘s much-maligned driver RPG system is back, only this time, (on the whole) it works, thanks to a comprehensive revamp of the AI. A word of caution here, however; if you don’t think you’re going to be able to buy in to the concept of a game primarily simulating the driver, rather than the car, you’re probably going to want to steer clear (excuse the pun). But that would be a shame, because you’d be missing out on a truly unique racing game.

It would be very easy to get hung up on the RPG element of the game, but to do that would unjustly ignore the work that has gone into the other aspects of the game. Firstly, Evo GT is absolutely lovely to look at. Both the cars and the tracks are beautifully modelled. The inner city tracks in particular are very well designed, with a nice mix of slow, fast and medium speed corners. The handling physics are uniformly superb. You can feel the sluggishness of the front-wheel drive cars like the Seat Leon compared to the brute power and twitchiness of rear-wheel drive supercars, such as the two versions of the Pagani Zonda and the Mercedes CLK GTR. Things get even more challenging when you add rain. Players of Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix series will know exactly what I’m talking about. Getting the power down onto slick tarmac without wheelspin, in even the weediest of cars, is truly an art. Evolution GT‘s wet racing is the best in the genre for years. There’s nothing quite like powersliding your way around a Milanese roundabout, using the lack of adhesion due to the surface water to help keep the throttle and steering balanced. The arcade mode is also a joy, though whilst the initial learning curve is pretty steep, once you’ve progressed through a couple of seasons in the career mode, you may find that the AI becomes a bit of a pushover. Curiously, this last statement only seems to apply for the inner city tracks and for a couple of the countryside tracks. The AI is superb around the dedicated race tracks (Albacrete, Laguna Seca, Hockenheim, etc), so much so that in the touring cars and supercars especially, you may find that it’s you who’s being left thirty seconds behind the leader on a three lap race…

The career mode forms the core of the game and is worth sticking with, despite any reservations generated from a truly toe-curling tutorial (which you only have to sit through once, thankfully; if you’ve completed it with one driver, subsequent drivers you create can skip it entirely). A career consists of four seasons. You pick a team depending upon which manoeuvres (such as slipstreamed “cunning” overtakes, or fastest laps) you want to get experience point bonuses for. As you progress through the races and seasons, tougher tracks and better cars are unlocked, which can all be used later in the practice and arcade modes. It’s important to realise at this point that a Level 1 driver can (theoretically) still do the same lap times as a Level 40 driver. It’s just that the game doesn’t give you as much help when you’re Level 1. Remember that the game simulates the racing driver, not just the car. Since the game can’t delve into your brain to give you better hand-eye coordination or speed up how fast your synapses fire, instead, it converts the experience points you gain via racing into skills. You can then assign these to make you better at timing your braking or steering more precisely, for example. To provide a level playing field, the AI drivers accumulate experience points according to the same rules you do, so in theory, the best driver should always stay ahead of the curve. It’s a great theory and would work, if it weren’t for one slight problem.

The RPG system can be exploited by sneakier players to accrue experience at much faster rates than the AI drivers. This can be done by deliberately driving slower than normal, so you can draft and intimidate drivers for practically the whole duration of the race, before nipping into the lead with quarter of a lap to go, rather than trying to race from the front. Of course, staying in the pack does expose you to a greater risk of getting intimidated yourself (which blurs your vision for a few seconds, to simulate the driver’s level of stress), but again, more tactically astute drivers can get around this too, by intentionally dropping behind the driver intimidating them for a few seconds. So whilst the RPG element has been improved over its previous incarnation in SCAR, it’s by no means perfect.

If you play the game honestly, however, it’s a challenging and rewarding experience with plenty of longevity and replay value. Whilst it might not have the depth of car variety a game like Gran Turismo has, nor the hyper-realism a dedicated simulator like GTR has, Evolution GT does contain sufficient elements from both, mixed with its own original blend of driver simulation to make it an interesting proposition. The lack of online multiplayer is disappointing, though this has been sensibly reflected on the PC release by its mid-range price point.

It would be churlish to criticise Evolution GT for trying to be original and stand out from the crowd. The RPG structure of the career mode means that the game won’t appeal to everyone, so you should bear this in mind before handing over your cash. It’s also unfortunate that not all of the innovations work quite as well as they should do, but the core game is sound and it has the looks and handling physics to sustain long-term enjoyment. The arcade and practice modes will probably be where you spend most of your time, once you’ve unlocked everything in the career mode, and there’s a terrific amount of fun to be had hurling Renault Clio V6s at the apexes of corners of the London or Berlin tracks, bouncing over curbs and taking about five feet of pavement at the same time. Turning off the driver aids and switching to the bumper camera when you get the more powerful cars (notably the Zonda and the Corvette Z06) also adds to the fun, making it easier to drift around turns in full-on power slides.

Despite its shortcomings, I’ve taken a bit of a shine to this game. It reminds me a little bit of my first car: a 1.4 litre Renault 5 GTL. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the best looking or best handling of cars, and undoubtedly did little for my street-cred, but it had character, was fun to drive and could more than punch its weight on the motorway. And you know what? Sometimes that can be just what you want.