The Formula One car racing simulation of the complete Grand Prix season featuring all the circuits, all the teams, all the drivers and all the cars reproduced accurately as licensed by the FOA, the sport's governing body. Featuring Driving Aids for rookies, Quick Race, Non-Championship Races and the complete Championship Season with full qualifying and practice days, pit stops, complete car set ups and data logging. Grand Prix 3 - (1/4) Author: Mugwum Developer - Microprose Publisher - Microprose System Requirements - Pentium II 266 or equivalent 32Mb RAM 100Mb Hard Drive space 4x CD-ROM Drive 2Mb DirectX 7.0-compatible graphics card Straighten up I think it was about three years ago that I first discovered the dominatrix that was Grand Prix 2. Geoff Crammond’s seminal Formula One racing simulation still stands strong today, although graphically it’s been on the falling edge since 3D card evolution started speeding up in the middle of 1998. Back in the day it was all you could do to try and prise me away from Monza and Silverstone, and the game was so versatile that despite winning season after season and getting my lap times down to inhumanly low numbers I kept on playing, chugging away on my P233 until my eyes bled. Well not literally, I did have some limits. As such I’ve been quietly awaiting Grand Prix 3’s arrival with baited breath. Could Crammond really win us all over again, would I be able to put up with the 1998 track data, would the new graphics engine put me off? Thankfully, after an eternity of waiting the time has arrived to assess the alluring pseudo-sequel for real, and it has to be said, Geoff has done a simply stunning job of it. The ease of use is unheard of - I loaded her up on my uber gaming rig and the game immediately proposed to decide upon the optimal graphics settings for me to be going on with. I could alter these at my discretion if I so wished, but having now tested the game on several PCs I’ve come to the conclusion that it hits the spot with a very small margin of error. The Cars Are Literally Flying! Graphically Grand Prix 3 is a very impressive beast. The new OpenGL options look beautiful and really show where a lot of the development time has been spent. The cars and tracks look like an extension of GP2, insomuch as they are at the pinnacle of available graphics technology, again. Each car has been lovingly recreated in line with the 1998 data Geoff Crammond and his team were supplied with. Any physical alterations to the chassis since then have not been included - in a way this is the key to GP3’s success; once the data was selected no alterations or updates were made to it, and as a result this is the most perfect depiction of the 1998 Grand Prix season ever seen. EA Sports and co. can go take a running jump methinks. Imagine what Formula 1 looks like on the telly. It looks and sounds like that, with two flaws. The cars are intricately detailed, right down to the LCD screen on your steering wheel (which controls your driver aids and keeps you up to date on position, number of laps and other important data) and the trackside bits of bumper and other victims of your swerving antics. As for the audio, well what can I say? The engine revs, the brakes screech, the tyres burn and the cars clunk as they crash and burn into one another. It's a Formula 1 race, and with the volume up and a decent sound card you will not be disappointed in the slightest. It does have its flaws though as mentioned; firstly the pit crew and track staff are all sprites and look very out of place. I can appreciate why this step was taken but I would at least have hoped for the option to have 3D character models. Bah. The other issue is with the rain. For the most part the weather effects are very agreeable (and important; you had better learn to take them into account), with fog and smoke from crashes and the like, but the rain looks rather disappointing. Thankfully though there is only one British Grand Prix, so you don’t have to see it too often. That was a joke incidentally. Oh shut up.