GP500 demo by Infogrames Melbourne House/Hasbro Interactive Review by Stu Brown

Full version available:
"The UK and German versions mastered on Sunday - they should be in the respective shops by the end of the month. French, Spanish and Italian versions will be out next month."

At last sim racing has a 2 wheeled title to really pop a wheelie over! It made me happy to see that Microprose are publishing this one too with their reputation for polished Grand Prix sims on 4 wheels. Much of the credit though must go to the team at ..... for their development of this sim and their attention to detail even includes getting Kenny Roberts Jr. and the team at Suzuki to test ride it for accuracy.

This is the way it should be with the FIM license you get all the riders and teams, plus accurately modelled tracks and of perhaps most importantly bike physics that leave you with a feel good factor... and wanting to come back for more. WARNING - this demo is addictive!! The demo has been created with an emphasis on making sure it works and is stable and by all accounts from keeping up with the gp500.net forum this seems to have been very successful. I have experienced no crashes or lockups of any kind in many hours of play.

The demo lets you ride at the Mugello track which has a good combination of very long straights, heavy braking zones, sweeping turns, chicanes and hairpins. A good choice for the demo to allow you to experience a cross section of corner types.

Control
The menu's for this are simple and easy and allow a great feature of being able to have seperate configs for wheels, joysticks etc which comes in very handy. I for one found myself trying wheels, joysticks, gamepads, RC controllers.... anything and everything to find something that helped to make for a more immersive experience. In the end although it did not truly feel right to me I actually found a wheel/pedals was the easiest way to make progress.

In their efforts to make the simulation as complete as possible the developers even included the option to have all the rider leaning controllable manually although in practice this just requires you to have more fingers and buttons than is practical to use. Nice touch, but probably best to leave it on full-auto until such time as you want to add it.

AI
The now normal boasts of individual rider characteristics typical of sims these days was once again bandied about for GP500 so with a critical eye I made sure to look for this when I first ran an AI race. The demo has an 8 rider restriction, but my concerns lasted no further than the first couple of laps where the AI really did race each other hard, taking different lines, spinning up the rear, aggressive passing and even unforced errors. The collision detection balance seemed about right to me too so that you could bang elbows without much more than a wobble but any significant contact would pretty much guarantee some dirttracking if not a good slam into something hard and immovable. Another plus to the AI is that they race with the same physics as you do, so you wont get any ridiculous moves that some sims suffer from.

Graphics
Very smooth, even on relatively slow PC's. The bike/rider detail is very nice and the black skid marks left on the tarmac from enthusiasitc throttle use would stay there reminding you of trouble spots. This however is where the compliments end for me as the rest of it was pretty lame and really left something to be desired. A little cartoonish for my liking and it missed the touches like having a darker racing line on the track and even crowds in some places on the track. This is one area that I truly hope is brought up to the standard of much of the rest of this demo for the full release, because currently it lets it down a bit. Not enough to spoil the great feel of this demo, but quicly noticeable when you start having a good look.

Sound
On the good side the bikes all had a disctinctively individual scream to them which sounded half decent. For my tastes though it all sounded a bit too screamy and not enough low frequecy sound leaving it sounding more like 125's than 500's. I'd like to hear this "beefed up" a bit for the full game and the same goes for the sound of the bike scraping along the tarmac when you drop it.

Multi
All the mulitplayer options you could want including TCP/IP for internet play which is what I did my mulitplayer racing and I guess what most of us will be using. It was very easy to set up in ICQ so you could quickly find and start races using the growing list of racers at gp500.net. 4 human riders allowed, but you could make the field up to 8 by adding AI if you wanted to. Good enough to at least get a multiplayer experience, but this limit will is just set in the demo and should be improved for the full version. The gameplay was ok, but nothing special. I use an ISDN line but still expeienced a little warping although this is more likely down to net congestion than bad software.

Physics
While there is both arcade and simulation mode available in the demo I never took more than a quick look at arcade. Give me the real deal every time with all the bells and whistles so this review concentrates on the sim mode because thats where The Pits is at. It will likely take you 30 minutes or so to get the hang of this mode, but the reward for it is well worth it! For those not familiar with bike racing the feel on 2 wheels can take some getting used to if you've always been a 4 wheeled fan. You need to throw out what you think you know and take a new approach, and its this very fact that makes this sim challenging, entertaining and refreshingly different.

Having spoken with guys doing beta testing they tell us that the pyhsics model in the demo is not as advanced as the final product will be, but all the essentials are in there. Open her up too early and the rear will spin up leaving darkie, overdo it and you'll quickly have the tail wagging the dog and send Mick Doohan highsided in spectacular fashion. Likewise if you go in too hard on the brakes you'll begin to raise the rear wheel and if you start to turn too hard, too soon you can feel the front end getting away from you. Its very easy to pop a wheelie coming out of slow turns or off the start line too even if its not the quickest way around the track.

Compared to EA sports Superbike the physics are in a different league. There is enough of a feel to the front/back end letting go on you for you to be able to ride the bike hard and really start to throw it around once you have a few hours practice under your belt. Just remember to take it easy for the first couple of laps while those tires warm up. Superbike would just let go wildly with no real warning and allowed you to run silly laps by just spinning the rear up to get around the turns quicker. There is no comparison.

Comprehensive setup options will be in the full sim, but are not included in the demo. However for anyone wanting to play with the bike's physics the files to do this can easily be found by using PKzip to extract the files and have a play around.

Conclusion
All in all this is by far the most promising 2 wheeled sim we have seen to date and by the way the demo plays we look to be in for a treat. The important stuff is all there for those that like their sims to be sims. Regardless of the "never done before attention to detail" this sim just feels right and left me wanting for more with AI that you can have a real blast racing with. The eye candy and sound could do with a bit of attention, but I feel sure this was down to keeping the demo filesize reasonably sensible. I'd choose a sim that plays well over one that looks pretty everytime. Gets a thumbs up from me!

Featurelist
The PR for the full GP500 states inclusion of the following features:
Simulation or Arcade Mode