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Editor's note: This is an early impressions piece, based on a few days' play with Project Cars. We'll be posting our final review in the coming days, once we've tested the game on fully populated online servers.What a couple of weeks it's been in racing games. Last week, Codemasters' Dirt Rally came out of nowhere to revive the spirit of ColinMcRae and Richard Burns Rally, and with them the idea that a stripped-back dirt-track time trial - no bells, no whistles, no desperate extreme sports makeover - could make a thrilling racing game. Meanwhile, over the last few days I've been playing Slightly Mad Studios' Project Cars, released this week - and it reminds me of nothing so much as Codemasters' TOCA Race Driver series. It's 2005 all over again, we're on a blustery airfield in the middle of England, there's an overwhelming smell of burnt rubber and it's raining. This, if you don't know it, is a very good thing.
Admittedly, the peculiarly unglamourous glamour of grassroots motorsport may not translate that well if you're not a fan of the real thing, or of the games that simulate it, like TOCA or SimBin's GTR and Race Pro. Perhaps this is why Project Cars has puffed itself up slightly as a pretender to the twin thrones of Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo. There's been a lot of hype about its (admittedly impressive) graphics tech, with shots and video showing off sumptuous weather effects and gleaming models of exotic street-legal hypercars like the Pagani Huayra. The extensive track list includes scenic point-to-point drives along the Côte d'Azur and the Pacific Coast Highway. These are the familiar trappings of an aspirational CarPG.
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