SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: GT Legends

Thankfully the annoying way GTR constantly needed to know what difficulty level I was driving has been done away with in GTL. You set your difficulty level and then it stays the same until you change it. Naturally you can't change it once you started a cup but you can change it between cups.

The various difficulty levels are:

"Professional" with full damage, the fastest AI, and no driving assists
“Semi-pro” with the AI being just a notch slower than in “pro”
“Amateur” offers medium damage, medium AI, and some driving assists
“Novice” and “Beginner” offer minimum damage, slowest AI, and almost all or all driving assists

You can enable or disable all driving aids in all the difficulty levels in game once you have selected the level at which you wish to compete and go sit in the car by pressing the function keys. F1: Automatic gearbox, F2: Automatic clutch, F3: Steering help, F4: Braking help etc. This only works as long as you increase the difficulty, you cannot select professional difficulty, and then enable all driving aids. Thank goodness for that.

If you're an experienced sim racer you should be able to hop into these cars and find yourself at home and fairly comfortable within a few races. Newcomers might find that easing into GTL works better by gradually removing driving assists that are provided.

In order to expedite this review I chose to start off with the difficulty settings at amateur level but with all driving aids including auto-clutch switched off, so I could progress quickly through the many races and try out all tracks and cars. As we shall see later, some features like damage are connected and interrelated to the difficulty level chosen.

While the sailing was relatively easy during the early stages of my career I did encounter some fierce opposition when having to beat a Porsche 906, a DeTomaso Pantera, a Porsche 911 and other assorted fast cars with my little Escort RS. There is no room or time for playing around when racing five-lappers, and the level of concentration needs to be constantly high even at amateur level, so I was a bit apprehensive as in Cup E I bumped up the difficulty to Semi-pro to try my hand in 20 lap races. It went quite well, and as long as I knew which way the turns went I could drive my way from 24th and last on the grid to take the win.

Hopefully you can see by now that testing all possible combinations is not realistic in terms of getting a review written and published within an acceptable time frame, and thus you may find that there are some items we just did not have the time to find, cover or double-check.

Replays

Nothing has been changed since GTR in terms of the interface. You can choose to disable or enable auto-capture of replays of races and hot laps. If you wish to save a specific replay, remember to rename it before going to that particular track again.

Where the replays impress, is when you look at races after driving them. You appreciate once again the beautiful models from the hands of Gustavo. Details like the exhaust smoke coming from every car as they get ready for the green flag at the start, the shadows of the cars being cast in a very natural and realistic looking way, the way the cars move on the track, the tire-smoke as the human driver brakes hard into the corner locking up one of the front tires, and the sheer mind boggling number of cars as they scream toward you in the TV camera view. With action like that on your monitor, it is hard to tear yourself away from it and start another race.

As in other ISI-based sims, once you leave the cockpit of your car there is no returning to the cockpit in that replay and you cannot jump into the cockpit of other cars.

Sounds

Car sounds: The exterior car sounds are very good. In-car sounds seem a bit less impressive but none the less they do the job. My AC97 onboard sound card probably didn't let me hear the sounds at their best either.

When driving you can clearly hear the opponents and when you hear a snarling engine note in your close vicinity there's no mistaking it and you know it is a Corvette creeping up on you, even without looking.

You have no radio messages from the team like in GTR. That is because radios between pits and cars are not allowed in the FIA GT and TC championships (thanks to D. Wright for pointing this out). As a consequence warnings for cutting the track are in writing on your screen, and not given over the radio like they were in GTR.

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