GT Legends was released back 2005 by SimBin Studios, who have since released a handful of other racers. The game includes over 20 tracks based on real world racing venues with more custom designs, and there are a few difficulty settings ranging from beginner to expert. Some races will require Pit Stops, such as the endurance races. There is online and offline multiplayer, although I could not connect to the online servers. Due to the game's age, I expect that the online server capabilities are no longer supported and it did take some finagling to get the LAN MP working.
You start off the game like most racers, even in today's standard; with a really crappy C class vehicle, little money, and no way to really gain enough cash to pay for another vehicle for a long time. You start out with a little red Mini-Cooper and begin your quest to be number one through dozens of custom real life race tracks. If you are familiar enough with the tracks already, you will not run into any major surprises. You will have track turn indicators letting you know if you were coming to soft turns or sharp ones, and there were a few turns that felt like they popped out of nowhere.
The Endurance races feel really well as there are time cycles that go with them and you can modify the speeds of day-to-night times as well. Outside of the endurance races, you will also run into daytime and nighttime courses, so keep your headlight button handy for those night tracks!
There are 95 different vehicles to unlock, with different team skins, and sounds. For the collector out there, this is where you will spend most of your time. Money is a challenge to come by until much later in the game, but once you get there, you will be happy.
The Garage feature allows you to look through all of the vehicles you unlocked and check their stats. I was impressed looking at the vehicles seeing the high res detail that was originally built into these models.
There are also all the usual suspects of camera views as well. You have the cockpit, bonnet, bumper, and chase cam to suit whatever your drive style may be. You can have the gauges on and off the screen, and your lap timers are available in different setups.
If you come in First, you can also watch the rest of the race in TV or Monitor mode and watch the other vehicles place. The game also tracks Replays as Best Laps of each race and those are available to view in the Replay of the Main menu. This can eat up HDD space if you still run a smaller drive, or one with little space, but the Replays menu allows you to change what is saved.
Do not let the game's age deter you as it can "keep up with the Jones' ". GT Legends is definitely something to add to your library if you are a racing enthusiast. It should take roughly 7-8 hours to do the 25 challenges, and you may want to tack on around 9-15 more hours for the vehicles; in the easiest game mode. Expect a much longer play through in the higher difficulty settings as the first half in Expert took me around 7 hours because I needed to hit the Pits and the AI was smarter.
See you on the grid!
Review Note: The reviewer received a copy of this game for free. This does not affect the content of the review or its final grade.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Each vehicle class handles pretty well. With a steering wheel or good analog stick controller (PS4 or Xbox One), you can tune your sensitivity even more. Force Feedback and vibration all have viable options and work great.
The graphics handle better than expected for a game released in 2005. With everything set on High/Full on an nVidia GTX 1060, it blew my mind how well the game actually looked. The downfall was the limitation on what they could do at the time with video RAM as the game looks barren at times.
Everything sounded as well as it could have for a game made more than a decade ago. The vehicles made different sounds, you heard the crowds, etc. Nothing spectacular, but this is a racing game.
I didn't sleep. I played the game for hours trying to get all the cars and challenges unlocked. This game was really well done, and as a racing fan, I was very pleased with an older game doing so well to keep me entertained.
PROS / CONS
- The game does not look 13 years old.
- Classic GT vehicles.
- Great track design.
- Not enough vehicle customization.
- Online MP doesn't seem to work.
- Feels abandoned as even Steam doesn't record your playtime anymore.
