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Ferrari Challenge Review
Jon Wilcox
05/07/2008
The Prancing Horse races onto the consoles, but can System 3's title stand up the likes of Gran Turismo...
Based on the fifteen-year old real world Ferrari Challenge, System 3's racer arrives on a raft of platforms, aside from the notable absence of the Xbox 360, as the latest racer to arrive on the scene in recent years. We've already had the limited Prologue version of Gran Turismo 5, not to mention Race Driver: GRID to satisfy our petrol-head urges in 2008, and that's without the ongoing popularity of more arcade franchises like MotorStorm, PGR, and SEGA Rally.
Ferrari Challenge definitely belongs in the same camp as Polyphony Digital and Turn 10's franchises, with a sliver of sim and customisation options that lift it above the scant offerings from some of its contemporaries. However, with the racing league about as well known as the meaning of life, does the game firmly rely on the pedigree of Ferrari a little too much?
TVG got behind the wheel of System's racer to find out for ourselves...
Pedal To The Metal.
No example of car porn is complete without some sort of pretentiously dramatic music, Top Gear has been doing it for years, and Ferrari Challenge is no different. Following close up shots of the Bruno Senna Team's F430 with a choral accompaniment to boot, the game roars (or more accurately, whimpers) to life and the racing can begin.
Despite the addition of Trophy Challenges and Arcade mode, the bulk of the gameplay is found in the main Challenges mode, which takes players around the three main championships of the real-world Ferrari Challenge. Featuring the names of the Trofeo Pirelli teams, which nobody will have heard of outside of the Ferrari hardcore, players race around the three championships in a bid to reach the main event, the World Finals. Amongst the Silverstones and Monzas that make appearances in other racing franchises, Ferrari Challenge also includes some of the lesser known circuits such as the Homestead in Miami, throwing in at least a level of originality into what is a jam-packed genre.
It may feature a showroom's worth of Ferraris from across the marque's history (fifty to be precise), but the emphasis during the early part of the Challenge career rests solely on a single model, the F430. There's little else in the garage until the game kicks in properly however, so it you're expecting to race in anything other than F430, there's some bit of track time to be had first. Race weekends feature a single qualifying round followed by two races of fifteen minutes (or a dozen laps), and it's a relief to say that it's actually a challenge to get close to the front row of the grid. Qualifying isn't an exercising in padding, at least not in Ferrari Challenge, and the competition from the 15 other cars that make up the race weekend is thankfully steep.
Not So Much Prancing, As Snoozing.
An exhilarating sense of speed with absorbing AI opponents and an immersive atmosphere are three mechanics that appear in the very best racers, but sadly the same can't be said about Ferrari Challenge, which could almost be marketed as a cure for insomnia. It's not that there's a lack of a challenge to the races, that would be somewhat ironic given the game's title, it's just that the experience doesn't capture the breathless pace these vehicles perform at. This is partly down to the visuals, which lack some of the motion blur effects that modern racers have featured in recent years, making Ferrari Challenge feel more like a PC game with the visuals turned to 'medium'.
Damage is also an area found lacking in the game, which is perhaps a little understandable seeing that it only features a single marque; Ferrari won't have been thrilled to see virtual incarnations of its speedsters wrecked in high-speed collisions. That's not to say damage is left out entirely; superficial damage is included, with bumpers and bonnets flying off the car, together with paint and windscreen damage to boot. It's a balancing act that's just about pulled out, and goes a lot further than even Polyphony's exemplary offerings to date.
By default, there are a lot of assists switched on, including traction control, stability control, a dynamic 'Forza-style' racing line, and ABS, all of which serve to reinforce a clinically sterile experience. Being the hardened racing professionals that we are however, we dialled them back a few notches, allowing the under-steering properties of the cars to kick in earnestly like a toe poke to the crotch. Twitch gameplay thankfully pulls the game back from the depths of total despair when the assists are turned off, but that also hinders the feeling of speed to be had, and at some points the races grind to near-halt.
Off The Track.
Aside from the lengthy season on offer with the trio of championships across Europe, Italy, and North America, Ferrari Challenge does have a few other features that'll delight the hardcore fanatics that pick up the game.
A livery and paint shop that would look and feel familiar to any veteran of Forza Motorsport is thrown in, allowing gamers to customise the look of their fleet, and will no doubt get used by some of the hardcore enthusiasts. All the while, the Trophy and Time Trial gametypes do pretty much what they say of the tin, adding more Ferrari goodness - though that's pretty irrelevant if you're a Porsche fanatic. A more unusual addition to the gameplay is a Top Trumps-style mode, where players pick and choose various aspects of Ferrari's back catalogue from the Enzo down to the 1949 125S - it certainly says something when this tacked on feature is nearly as much fun as the main game.
Naturally, multiplayer is also bundled into the Ferrari Challenge experience, with up to sixteen players over PlayStation Network, and four player racing with a single cart on Nintendo DS. Compared to the sometimes rigid performance of the AI, at least the prospect of taking on human opposition injects some much needed personality to the experience.
Describing a racer as a dawdling and lethargic experience just shouldn't happen, but that's exactly what Ferrari Challenge is; enthusiasts for the Prancing Horse will nonetheless lap it up as a competent interactive ad for the Italian Stallion. But for fans of the genre, the experience just doesn't deliver the over-the-top car porn offerings of GT5: Prologue or the high speed thrills of the arcade thrills of PGR. It's the racing genre equivalent of purgatory.
Sixteen player online.
Assist tweaking is a must.
