It's been said many times that you're not a true car enthusiast until you've owned an Alfa Romeo. There's a certain trial-by-fire that needs to be overcome, and if you're lucky enough to survive your Alfa catching fire, then you're somehow imbued with the ability to comment on other marques with an esteemed air of confidence.
Personally I think that's rubbish. Anyone who has ever owned a British Leyland vehicle can tell you more than enough about poor workmanship to keep you bored at any social event. I rather think the more expensive cars out there would be more beneficial in teaching us a thing or two about the art of driving, and none more so than Ferrari.
Founded in 1929 by Enzo Ferrari, a man with a famous distaste for customer relations, this Italian car manufacturer quickly became synonymous with high quality and high speed motoring. Many of us can only dream about one day owning a Ferrari, even one of the really cheap ones that cost a fortune to maintain. Happily, in this age of electronics you can buy a large television set, a console, and with the right level of squinting you can almost imagine you're driving the real thing.
Ferrari Challenge has been developed to complement the actual racing series of the same name, and primarily features the Ferrari F430 as the competition vehicle. Publisher System 3 announced back in March last year that they'd scored the exclusive license to promote the Ferrari brand through the medium of video games, and I rather like what they've managed to achieve.
The initial screen sets the tone, quite literally, as haunting Italian operatic music plays amid a montage of seductive Ferrari footage. It's unashamedly car porn; but don't be fooled, this isn't simply a massive marketing campaign designed to push you towards buying all the Ferrari merchandise you can possibly afford (i.e. a cap and perhaps a pen), as there is actually a good racer underneath all the ceremony.
You can jump straight in with a tutorial that will test your ability to withstand Tiff Needell's voice, although you may learn a thing or two about driving as well. Once you've tired of being belittled by Tiff, you can review your tutorial results, ignore them completely and head straight for the full racing options.
You're probably going to spend the most amount of time on the game's single-player challenge. This consists of the time trial, arcade, quick race and challenge features, and really the majority of this is standard fare for any racing title. For example, time trial requires you to beat existing lap records, quick race will throw you straight into a 16-player show-down, and the Challenge feature will start your career progression and allow you to unlock new cars and tracks.
There are fourteen tracks available in the Challenge mode, with a further two unlockable tracks spanning North America, Italy and Europe. For the most part these tracks are faithfully rendered, with bright visuals and satisfyingly accurate lines, and probably one of the best features is hitting the apex of a corner and feeding the power on at just the right rate to avoid the back stepping out. The AI is decidedly pedestrian at first, although there's no sense in getting complacent as about the same time you get the hang of the controls the difficulty will begin to ramp up.
The F430, similarly, is exciting enough to begin with but sooner or later you'll grow tired of it and want something a bit different. The Challenge mode won't allow this, so if you want to unlock the other fifty models you'll have to try the other single-player modes.
Ferrari Challenge is remarkable in a number of ways, perhaps the most significant being that it really shouldn't be. Developer Eutechnyx doesn't exactly have a fine track record (pun intended) in quality racing titles (other games they've signed their name to include Big Mutha Truckers, The Fast and the Furious and Pimp My Ride), so it's somewhat confusing as to how they've managed to make the handling so accurate, especially given the relatively short production time available to them.
This is not a game for the arcade fanboy, this is a serious, balls-to-the-wall Ferrari simulation that just happens to look a lot like an arcade game, something that's rammed home to you on every single corner. There is no room for error, miss your breaking point by even a couple of metres (which you will do, with or without the comprehensive driving aids) and you will end up in a sandtrap, feeling inferior as you watch your competition sail merrily by. Pretty much the same way you feel in real life when you see a Ferrari drive past, actually; the simulation really is that good.
The multiplayer isn't much to write home about however. There's no split-screen multiplayer, so unless you're on a LAN or wish to stick around long enough to join an online multiplayer game you'll be stuck with the AI. Not a bad place to be though, while you wait you can even play a game of cards with the computer, betting as to which pictorial image and statistics will come up trumps in a points-based battle. Nifty.
Ferrari Challenge is a well-rounded driving package, and even though once again we find ourselves playing a modern racing simulator with inconsequential vehicular damage, the level of attention paid to the handling and overall accuracy more than makes up for it. Great fun, even if it is a bit anti-social.
