V8 Supercars 3

very playable...but AI is not great on arcade. Play on ProSim on hard and its a much better game. Online is very competative with good racers. Practice 1st singleplayer until you can beat prosim hard, then go online. :-)

I've just been reading the review by "Dan" and can't believe my eyes. I disagree with a lot of things that a lot have people have said about this game. The magazine reviews, game retailers and website reviews that scream praise for this game and completely ignore the fact that it was supposed to be a racing simulator, not an arcade smash up derby. The truth is that this game is a racing simulator gone wrong. The graphics, not only on the Xbox, but the PC especially make any self-respecting techie wonder why he/she has shelled out so much money on that extra RAM and top end video card that it is an insult to anyone's intelligence to sit there and say that there are "stunning" or "superb" graphics, when the whole game looks bleached of most of the bright colours any race fan has come to expect at an event in any racing discipline. What made the situation worse for a multitude of Australian racing sim fans was the fact that Codemasters put the originally planned release date back five months after the release of GTR, a true simulation in every respect of the term, which raised the expectations of most of us who believed that Codemasters' programmers had had the fear of god struck into them by this particular sim being released and that the reason for the delay was because they were heading back to try and make their sim better than GTR. Unfortunately that clearly wasn't the case. Codemasters seem to have some how confused the terms quality and quantity. Yes, it must be nice for some to race lawn mowers and monster trucks and even I must admit that including the go-karts was a clever move, because let's face it, that's where a lot of this generation's greats started out, but seriously, there is only so much you can put in your sandwich before you can't physically fit it in your mouth to take a bite. If you put too much garbage on your disc, the quality begins to dwindle. 'Rick', the character that Codemasters have flogged to death, even after they discontinued the "Ryan McKane saga" is annoying, to say the least, after listening to the rantings he floods the player with during races and in between. This character not only becomes harder to tolerate in this third installment, but falls completely out of the realms of credibility, especially in an age of professionalism of the sport, where these days with the coverage we get of these disciplines, we clearly see that the guys in the garage aren't there to heckle the driver, but to ensure that the car is set up to fit the track and his/her driving style like a glove, or get it as close to it as possible within the restrictions of the category. Unfortunately though, Codemasters seemed to overlook one little thing. Those of us who do take our racing simulator quite seriously. You see there are a lot of people that buy these simulators, not unlike the Formula 1 sim fans, who love the sport and know that this is the closest they will ever come to being able to partake in it. It is an escape from reality where the player can race against the real drivers on the real tracks and at least have a pinch of how it feels to race at the top level as their favourite driver. Yes, it's only a game, but when you drag something that people in this country love into it and don't do it the justice it deserves, because you're too busy trying to cram every type of racing there is bar slot racers and billy karts, that's where you lose credibility and customers. I have had a copy of every race sim Codemasters have released, Toca touring cars 1 & 2, Toca world touring cars all the way through to V8 Supercars 3 as well as the Colin McRae rally sims and as far as I'm concerned, they should have stopped at V8 Supercars 2. That was the simulator that was. It had the new damage engine, it wasn't too overwhelming in its choice of disciplines, the gameplay was better and the graphics were of a better standard. The worst part about V8SC3 is that to showcase their new, improved damage engine, they completely ignored the rules of motorsport and turned the whole thing into a smash up derby. The first thing you notice racing in the V8 series is the fact that the artificial intelligence will run you off the track or belt into you at any chance that presents itself. If a V8 Supercar driver behaved in that manner, CAMS would pull their licence so fast that even the people at AVESCO's heads would spin, while they were trying to dish out the fines. If you are going to drag reality into a computer/console game, do it properly for your own sake at least. The damage engine is something you only want to see in action if you truly make a mistake, but trying to race with a field (not the full field either, which sucks) of AI drivers who just want to collide with your car to demonstrate this 'wonderful new damage engine' takes away more from the game that the poor graphics and audio do. Codemasters ignored the little things to try and squeeze more in the box, unfortunately the bottom has fallen out of the box this time. They couldn't even manage the new front end of the VZ Commodore. Clearly because they have kept VY's in the Development series, but where on earth they got the sound samples for the Commodore's is anyone's guess. They sound more like a postie bike and if you added the squeaky brake sound, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference! In closing I will go back to my comments about racing sim fans and F1 sims as a whole in saying that the reason they work is because the only thing they leave out is the smell of a Formula 1 meeting and you can turn the volume down a bit. I sold my PC version of the game after playing it 3-4 times, as I was disgusted in the quality/gameplay. I will be vary wary about buying anything Codemasters put on the market ever again, as an extended wait for this one made the anti-climax quickly turn to a feeling of being ripped-off. If you attempt something big, be mindful - it's the little things people are going to pick at.

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