GT Racers PS2 Review

“You get what you pay for” is a timeless phrase that has some real meaning to it. When it comes to budget titles, gaming is as much of a culprit as cheap aftershave or perfume and smells just as bad. We reviewed Oxygen’s Formula Challenge earlier this year and proceeded to give it a paltry 3/10, definitely a contender for worst game of the year then. Does GT Racers fair any better?

First impressions don’t bode too well for this one either, as the lingering cheapness of such titles is instantly apparent here. The visuals are decent but laughable for a PS2 game and would be much more at home on a PlayStation. Textures are rough and blurry up close and the pop-up is just abdominal with skyscrapers suddenly appearing out of thin air. At least the speed is respectable enough as you bomb through city streets in your super car.

The handling is very arcade like but a little inelegant for such exotic motors, in fact things just feel that little bit over responsive and tighter controls would have been welcome. Fortunately there is some set-up options available but throughout the championship you’ll have to sacrifice other attributes of your motor to get the most out of where it counts, although set-up options for an arcade racer is quite a no no from us anyway, even if the tweaking does happen to be pretty straightforward.

There are five city circuits available, which includes London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and New York. The circuits are well designed for the most part, but this is still no substitute for what is a rather dull racer with little excitement and lesser soul. In fact the only true excitement comes when an AI car randomly spins out of control, which looks spectacular and couples as a wakeup call.

There is a Quick Race option (for one to two players) to dive straight into the racing or alternatively there’s a Championship mode. The latter presents you with three different championships, which each hold ten races. You race through the five tracks and then you do it all again at night time, it’s really quite sleep-inducing, even the lively music is horribly repetitive and you’ll hear the same track again and again, which makes it even more painful, our ears were almost bleeding.

Not as bad as Formula Challenge by any means (marginally better), but GT Racers is still one uninteresting racer, which feels so much of a lesser game in comparison to most of the competition. There are plenty of other racing titles that can be picked up for a similar price, which have a lot more personality and excitement. GT Racers is not a recommendation then.

3/10

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