Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends Review
Hold your horses, this racing sim is only for those who love the car brand
Part of the difficulty problem lies within the gameplay itself. The Shift 2 engine (if you recall from my Shift 2 Review) was already rather unremarkable, but here it falls to budget levels. The controls and driving physics feel a big sluggish and a bit touchy, but can be OK once you’re used to it. But the game is not really a simulator that it tries to be – cars still feel like they begin to drift way too easily. AI (much like in Shift) is completely sterile and has little interest in anything but following the race line. Bump them, and you’ll be looking the wrong way in about half a second thanks to overdone collision detection. Control customization options are minimal, and you can’t even select driving assists. Once again there are just three difficulty settings for controls, and they dictate what services (ABS, traction control, etc) will be turned on for the player.
You can head online as well to meet up with other Ferrari enthusiasts – of whom there are apparently not many. Through our few weeks with the game since launch, there’s been barely a soul online to race against, and the few matches that we managed to get into consisted of mostly AI opponents as well. You can create your own race settings, limit the number of CPU opponents allowed, but at the end of the day it’s just an online race that offers nothing new. There is also a ghost system that sees you trying to beat best lap times by other players, and put yourself on global leaderboards.
Perhaps the biggest reason for anyone to take a drive in FRL is for the cars and tracks. Okay, I should clarify – that reason is authenticity, definitely not the technical visual quality. As mentioned, the car selection is extensive and all the vehicles were reproduced with care and attention to detail (though I don’t claim to be a historical Ferrari expert). All cars feature in-car views as well, and while these are also nicely done, they are held back by the technical visuals. To say that Ferrari Racing Legends looks average is a bit of an understatement. The Shift engine was obviously scaled down for this title; there are no day/night variations or weather effects to be had. Damage models look ugly and very basic. The trees and grass alongside the tracks often look downright awful, being low resolution and minimal variety. Similarly, seating structures and spectators are very basic and often simply motionless. The sound design is equally scarce, as there are barely any menu tracks and no in-race music at all, leaving you listening to repetitive engine and tire noise, a generic race supervisor on the radio, and with spectators also being dead silent.
What could have been a worthwhile spinoff title turned out to be anything but. Although all the elements are there – an epic car brand, experienced developer, and a solid engine – the end result is much less than the sum of its theoretical parts, as each of those elements seemingly lost their qualities somewhere along the way. Ferrari Racing Legends is mediocre in almost all aspects, save for authenticity of the cars and tracks. And as such, its only appeal is to the hardcore Ferrari fans that can put the dated visuals, uneven difficulty, and unrealistic simulation behind them. Those who fall outside this category, and are looking for a solid modern racing sim, should leave this title in their rear view mirror.
Our ratings for Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends on PlayStation 3 out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
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