Le Mans 24 Hours is a true product of just Marketing. Announced as a great game, it really is - at best - a very modest arcade racer.
This is a Nissan with its lights on... It looks OK standing still, but you'll probably have more fun driving a LEGO car, or something.
This is my car - Konrad team is your best first choice. This car can throttle up to 259 kph, but a real life Porsche revs up faster than this one... How realistic.
The A10 is a very friendly combat aircraft, great for ground targets.
Detail of the debris out of an enemy aircraft hit by a rocket.
Again, too much hype, for nothing. Le Mans 24 Hours [LM24H] was previewed and reviewed as a rave racing game. More than its "playability", LM24H was / is announced as officially licensed by the real life organizers of the world famous car marathon. It is said that the track's model is obtained from thousands of photos of the real thing and that every single car has a performance tuned up according to real data.
It looks like a simulator right? WRONG!
This is really ridiculous. This is an average ARCADE racing game:
- Throttle and brake share the same axis, meaning that you can't brake and accelerate at the same time. Oh oh oh. Ask any professional racer, from kart to F1, what happens inside the car, and everyone will answer you that there is no way of driving fast, if you don't understand the simultaneous use of the pedals.
- Engaging "rear" gear is a question of pressing the brake pedal! Did these guys ever drive a car?! In every single car, if you want the car to move, you must press the throttle pedal! NOT the brake pedal! Laughable!
- By default, the game is absolutely UNPLAYABLE, if you use a steering wheel, like I do [MS Force Feedback Wheel]. The thing is that, by default, the X and Y axes sensitivity is pushed to the max, meaning that dropping a feather on the wheel will be enough to spin the car... and that applying the same force to the accelerator, will burn half of your tires. You MUST fine tune these sensitivities to your device, or it really is impossible to have fun.
- You can crash the car dozens of times. No problem. The car may have graphical modifications, but it will handle exactly the same way! Again, did these guys ever had a scratch on their real life cars? As you might know, it suffices to hit the sidewalk to have a vibrating wheel at even modest speeds.
- The car's models do have graphical changes when you hit objects, but these changes are ridiculous! As the models don't really deform, they just change the textures applied to the polygons (which aren't many), resulting in crude looking cars.
- There is tire wear, but you'll soon understand that it is not realistic at all: from what I could feel, it mostly happens when you touch the curbs or go out of the track. If you never do that, it doesn't really matter if you spin 100 times or do 1000 meters long burns. Ouch...
- When your tires blow, you automatically receive a "race over" message. You can't even try to drive the car to the pits!, even when it is just a single tire, plus your steering just stops responding. Argh!
- When you choose to race as a "professional", at least when racing with GT2 cars, you'll - almost for sure! - be the last one on the grid. You WILL qualify badly. BUT, during the race, lapping slower than you previously did, will suffice to grant you a podium finish, even ahead of some GT1 cars... isn't that strange? :)
- There is a car "setup" option... but it shouldn't be called like that. It really is just another options menu, where you can choose auto / manual gear, traction control and brake help. Ah ah ah!
On the end, as a modest arcade game, LM24H can be enjoyable. The force feedback is fun, the graphics are good looking, there is diversity on your adversaries, and after enough tweaking it will be playable.
But we can't forget this is year 2000 and many months ago, Viper Racing and Sports Car Racing already offered MUCH, MUCH better experiences. Of course, the ABSOLUTE KING on the racing front remains GP LEGENDS! If you have never tried it, you are just losing the single car simulator that does simulate. GP2 is a joke, when compared to GP LEGENDS.
LM24H is just plain ridiculous, if compared to the king.
Back to USAF [Jane's United States Air Force]
After patching USAF, I didn't have the chance to board the F15, F16, F117, A10 and the other featured dream machines. What a shame!
Well, last night that changed and I did experiment what is new. There are many fixes, related to specific hardware problems. For example, some people with a Voodoo 3000 and SB LIVE! cards, had flashing cockpits or sound problems; such problems are now something of the past, although the SB LIVE! still cuts some engine noises, when you frequently switch from after burner levels.
There are several Pentium III improvements [good] and an overall joystick sensitivity decrease [bad].
Your wingmen Artificial Intelligence has improved, and they can now engage targets at a distance over 15 miles.
That is it.
USAF 1.02F patch [12278 KB]
Rear view would be useful, if this was a simulator. Unfortunately this is a kind of ridiculous racer, and IF you are looking back, that can only mean that you will be doing dirty maneuvers to difficult the driver behind.
Boom! This is what happens if you damage your car too much. It can take you some 20 frontal collisions @ 250 kph to manage it, though. Again, how realistic, eh?
GP Legends is some 10 trillion times better than Le Mans 24 Hours. It really is. Racing games should have learned from it. There is so much crap on the market, that it does feel we are going back in time.
The first "RED FLAG" mission gets you inside three different planes, blowing up a very much fortified enemy airbase.