Originally published in CompuNotes Issue #59 on November 30, 1996.
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Publisher: Requirements: 486, 8 MB RAM, 2x CDROM, SVGA MSRP: $49.95 |
Sierra On-line's success as a maker of adventure games for the computer has enabled it to gobble up a number of smaller game companies like Impressions and Papyrus. Papyrus single-handedly revived the genre of realistic sports racing with Indy 500: The Racing Simulation, published a number of years ago by Electronic Arts. Back then 640K of RAM of was the limit and you were hot if your computer had EGA graphics. Papyrus updated Indy 500 two years ago with Indycar Racing, adding VGA graphics and a number of tracks other than Indy to race on. Then they upped the race car simulation standards with the release of Nascar Racing, which featured gorgeous SVGA graphics and killer sound effects. Papyrus then decided to revamp Indycar to include the new graphics and look from Nascar Racing, and released Indycar II. Indycar II was actually released last year - fall 1995 to be exact, but has now been redone and enhanced for Windows 95 users. Thanks to Microsoft's DirectX drivers, the glory of Indycar racing has been brought to Windows. And its quite a ride, if you have the horsepower.
Running Indycar II under Windows 95 requires a lot of horses under your computers hood - Sierra/Papyrus recommends at least a Pentium-60, with 8MB RAM and a Vesa Local Bus Graphics card (or better). Consider this recommendation a bare minimum - i.e., you can play the game, but only with all the eye candy turned off if you want a semi-decent frame rate. Consider at least a Pentium-120 if you want most of the candy on. And, if you love racing simulations, you will. Crowds fill the grandstands, and the glass of the pressbox shines in the sunlight. Smoke fills the air after a crash, and you can see the damage where you and a fellow racer bumped fenders. You can customize the graphics to fit your horsepower, turning off graphics you don't care about (like the horizon) and keep ones you find appealing or necessary (like smoke and skid marks). Luckily, if you don't have the horses Sierra has included the DOS version which can be played from MS-DOS mode and doesn't require nearly as much muscle. It does have a few glitches - you may have to unload your mouse driver in order to be able to customize your controls (I had to, and the Readme.txt file lists this as a known problem). The Windows 95 version doesn't offer anything that the DOS version does, with the exception that running the Paint Shop is easier from Windows than DOS. Yes, that's correct, you can paint your car with the color/graphics scheme of your choice, even adding your own fancy graphics to create your own hip race car. You can even paint your pit crew's uniforms to match - a really slick touch.
If you've played Nascar Racing, then you know what to expect. Driving is as realistic as it can be on the computer screen. All of the rules of Indycar Racing are adhered to. Cars drive differently on different tracks, and must be modified appropriately. Take off with a full gas tank and the car will handle one way; as the tank empties the performance will shift, sometimes dramatically. Put the car in the garage and monkey around with the shocks, wing angle, engine, and gears to find the right combination or simply load the Ace setup provided by Papyrus. Tires squeal through corners, the engine complains when over- revved, all of the right looks and sounds are here. My only complaint with Indycar II is the same with all racing simulations - I can't feel the car, and therefore I can't tell what the car is really trying to tell me. Sights and sounds only carry me so far - when I'm driving, I react not only to what I see and hear but what I feel. I can tell when my car is skidding long before there is any accompanying sound. That isn't to say that Indycar II isn't fun - it is - but it takes a lot of effort and practice to learn how the car handles and how to anticipate what's going to happen to car before it happens. You will have to practice, practice, and practice if you really want to excel at this game and compete with the big boys.
There is definitely a lot here - this is no overnighter (i.e., a game
mastered within the first 24 hours of purchase). No less than 15 tracks from
around the world are provided, although the most notable Indycar track - the
Indy 500 - is not among the tracks presented. Although no mention is made of why
it was not included, I would imagine that it was for the same reason that the
Daytona track was left off of Nascar Racing - somebody already owns the rights
to create racing simulations using that track. Bum deal, but the tracks
provided do comprise a multitude of different challenges. Once you've mastered
the tracks individually, you are ready to attempt to complete an entire season,
going for the Driver's Championship. To complete this will require a major
effort on your part - you must race at all 15 tracks. This includes practicing,
qualifying (to set your starting position), and then completing the race
itself. You can cut this somewhat - you can skip the qualifying round, and the
game allows you to customize what percentage of the race you actually want to
complete (all the way from 10% to 100%, the maximum for realism). Along the way
you can expect all kinds of yellow flags for accidents, as well as car problems
of your own. What I'm trying to say is that this game is not for arcade jockeys
- to win at Indycar takes a major investment of time. Be prepared. In a way,
this is actually very nice. Think about it - would you rather buy a game (at
$50 a pop) and master it overnight, discarding it after a month, or would you
rather have a game that you'll be playing a year from now? Oh, and by the way,
I forgot to mention that Indycar II supports multiple players! You can play by
either direct connection or over a modem (the soon to be released Nascar II
will feature multi-player ability over a LAN or the Internet). So Indycar II is
a game that you can be expected to enjoy for a long, long time. Racers, start
your engines!
This review is © copyright CompuNotes, 1997. All rights reserved.