The entire car could fit on the curb...
Grass is no fun, but... the whole game is of no fun itself, so why bother?
Nice view, but terrible gameplay. COMPLETE crap.
Ford KYA 97 is yours first car, when "playing" Ford Racing. The revs are ALWAYS on the redline, plus it can jump from 6th gear to neutral, and hit the walls with no damage!
Beware! The Games Industry is very corrupt!
It is a great shame what is happening to the games industry. Long gone are the days when you could buy a magazine and read an accurate review of any software or hardware piece... nowadays, it is very rare to find a 100% honest opinion, and everyone feeds on you and me, the anonymous Joes, who believes some reviewer and goes for his advise!
The worst thing is that the disease has spread to the top popular websites, who simply don't dare to publish blunt articles.
While this horrible scenario wasn't born yesterday, 2000 starts with too many examples of how terribly wrong the games industry is going. I remember a recent edition of the european magazine PC-Format [UK edition] - once a great fountain of cool advises, now the worst demonstration that everything that goes up / grows big, comes down / grows mediocre - where the editor writes that "do not buy any game we don't review!, as it is a probable rip off"... this sentence shows the current spirit of the games industry, and some people are stupid enough to let it show!
The current games industry spirit is "scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours". PCF's editor is just the tip of the iceberg - he is just trying to send the warning to publishers: "support my magazine, or else!". But publishers are also sending him a warning: "give rave reviews to my games, or you will NOT review the next releases!"...
Again, someone will pay for the money the major players are not spending! Guess who?- The final consumer.
Today I tried two games that are a COMPLETE DISASTER, a COMPLETE CRAP, ABSOLUTELY UNFINISHED SOFTWARE!, and yet they got reasonable reviews on every single magazine that sells worldwide! The games I am talking about are Psygnosis F1 99 and Elite's / Empire's Ford Racing. Read what follows.
F1 99 [you'd better play Barbie]
Oh oh oh! This must be a very back joke! Do you remember the original Psygnosis' F1?, which was kind of an hit on the Playstation, years ago? Well, it was / is a much better game, than this stinking F1 99 thing.
The first thing you'll notice with F1 99 is the ridiculous graphics for the wheels! It absolutely looks like you are driving with some barrels attached to some irons... how awful! And then, there is the case of the game's box, which promisses you a "cockpit view", but delivers a fake perspective with a bitmap with no steering wheel (but showing the aforementioned barrels)!
OK, but graphics are of MINOR importance! Things get worst when you try to drive the car... I wonder how can this product reach the shops! The steering wheel sensitivity is so high - and NOT adjustable - that you can almost drive the F1 with just the strength of your mind! It suffices to slightly touch the steering, to get the car doing 180 mph turns, with the ease you hold a feather! Gosh! ARGH!
F1 99 is so, but SO UNREALISTIC, that you can feel that it was published without any kind of playing tests! For example, when you press the brakes stronger than you would press some butterfly's wings, the car will spin around one of the front wheels and stop in a matter of 100 meters, no matter the speed you drive. Ouch! Ouch!
This is pure crap. This is very bad. Very, VERY bad! Don't get near it.
Ford Racing [better go on foot]
I was so unhappy with F1 99, that I was firmly convinced that Ford Racing would be much better, no matter how bad :)
In fact, installation and hardware setup was easier and everything was looking good, from moment zero, except that I couldn't choose more than gear-up and gear-down, in the steering wheel configuration. But because many games now auto-recognize all the wheel's axis, I didn't worry about it, and launched myself at a Ford KYA, 1997 version!
Graphically, Ford Racing is better than F1 99, plus is transmits a much higher sense of speed! When you are driving at 60 mph in a Ford Kya, you get as excited as when doing 160 mph on the Maclaren F1! Great realism, eh?! Of course the excitement I am referring, is the same you get when nearly sleeping, on a cold winter night...
The brutal shock comes when you finally try to control the KYA: it simply is a so SH*TTY experience, that on this one, I have ZERO doubts about NOT A SINGLE PERSON having tested the game with a steering wheel! HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?
If I had to choose between F1 99 and Ford Racing, I would go for F1 99! This just tells how bad Ford Racing is! It is a ZERO. A TOTAL ZERO. IT IS NOT A GAME - it is graphics that twist when you input something...
F1 99 and Ford Racing are some of the worst games ever released on the PC! Their programmers might know about Glide, OpenGL and DirectX, but they didn't have time to release a game, and never tested the most probable device to be used with their creations: a steering wheel.
What a shame!
Cockpit view? What a laugh! This is a bitmap, with no animated steering wheel, and a pair of barrels, on the front.
F1 99 simply doesn't get prettier than this.
Side views might look nice on this 110 pixels wide JPG, but they lack finesse and detail, when playing.
Ford Racing is even worst than F1 99. This game is such a failure, that I would classify it in the same class of M25 Racer [vomits!].