Video Gamer is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices subject to change. Learn more
Tourist Trophy has been hailed as the Gran Turismo of the motorbike world, but that’s a rather lofty claim. Gran Turismo isn’t for everyone, but it’s undoubtedly one of the premier driving (see what I did? Not racing) franchises available. For Tourist Trophy to match Gran Turismo it would have to be very impressive indeed. While it comes close – this is from Polyphony Digital after all – it falls short in a few areas.
Before you read any further it’s worth noting that unless you’re a fan of driving simulations and bikes, this isn’t for you. While Tourist Trophy might not model riding a bike 100 per cent accurately, it’s by no means an arcade-style riding model, with real care and attention needed if you’re going to make it around a corner. The fact that it’s bikes and not cars simply ramps up the difficulty another notch, as pulling off the perfect lap in a bike is very different to screaming around a track in your souped up Nissan Skyline.
With that little warning out of the way, Tourist Trophy is an impressive game. You can ride over 120 bikes on more than 30 courses (although this includes slight variations of the same courses) and there’s a substantial Tourist Trophy mode to work your way through. Rather than competing in events for cash, you compete to win bikes, either through race events or challenges. The race events are pretty self explanatory, but the challenges are a little different. You’ll generally have to maintain a certain lead over another rider for a set period of time or until you cross the finishing line. With your rider often starting some considerable distance behind the target, these challenges can be very tough, especially as slight slip-ups will end the challenge – crash, cause your opponent to crash or come off the track, and it’s challenge over.
Before you even start the quest to complete all the events and challenges that the game offers, you’ll need to prove yourself in the riding license tests. For anyone remotely interested in bikes, the first two licenses are formalities, but the two more advanced set of tests take a little more effort. Bike riding experts will no doubt pass with flying colours, but for the rest of us the latter tests will be a real struggle. You don’t have to pass all four licences to compete in events, but you will have to pass them all eventually, so tackling them all at the start isn’t a bad way to go about it. It’ll also set you up well for the races ahead.
I’ve used ‘race’ numerous times already, but in truth the racing is Tourist Trophy’s weakest aspect. Your opponents don’t exhibit much in the way of human-like AI, and tend to stick to the racing line at all times, occasionally taking a corner slower than usual, but never taking a risk and taking a corner too wide. The Gran Turismo games are the same in this respect, and because of this you more often than not feel like you’re in a time trial with other riders on the track, rather than a proper race. The sense of riding a bike at high speed is great, with the high-end bikes starting to shake when they hit their top speed, but as a racing experience Tourist Trophy is very disappointing.
Tinkerers will be glad that a certain amount of tuning can be performed on the bikes, and that your riding style can be tweaked, with both having an affect on how the bike handles. Even so, the tweaking isn’t as detailed as you’ll see in Gran Turismo 4 and you can’t upgrade your bikes with new parts. One of the most pleasing parts to the Gran Turismo games was being able to take your cheap Skyline and spend a fortune on parts to turn it into a beast. With money not being a part of the Tourist Trophy mode, upgrades would have had to be won, but it would still have been preferable to bikes not being upgradeable at all.
The Tourist Trophy mode isn’t all the game has to offer. If you just want to take to the track and compete against AI racers, the Arcade mode lets you get right into the action. Two players can also compete against each other via split-screen. With the Gran Turismo games lacking online play, it’s not surprising that online play isn’t present here either, but it’s still disappointing. Bike aficionados will be pleased to see that the photo mode from GT4 is also available in Tourist Trophy, so you can take snaps of your beauties for everyone to see. The lack of bike customisation sadly makes this feature less worthwhile than it was in GT4, though, as the bikes don’t feel like your own creations.
Technically the game looks and sounds great. This is pretty much Gran Turismo 4, but with bikes, so its technical prowess is hardly surprising. One downside to this is that most of the tracks have previously been seen in the Gran Turismo series. They look great, but long-time fans might find them a little too familiar. Bike sounds are equally as good, and the soundtrack is fitting, if not spectacular. As with Gran Turismo, damage modelling is non-existent, and while it’s not something to overlook, it is something that Polyphony Digital fans are used to. Anyone expecting the 1080i and 480p display setting options found in the US and Japanese versions of the game will be in for a shock, as they’re nowhere to be seen in the PAL release. A little annoying, but the game looks great anyway.
All in all, Tourist Trophy is very close to being the game Gran Turismo loving bike fans would have wanted. Racing isn’t the game’s strong point, and customisation is sorely lacking, but the selection of bikes (even though those on offer are very Japan-centric) and wealth of tracks makes this something of a must for motorbike fans. The learning curve might be a little steep for casual racing fans, and the racing can be somewhat dull, but for people who like nothing more than to look at bikes all day long, there’s little better.
