There are some nice visual tricks littered throughout the game. You can catch the glare off of the back windows or rear view mirrors of the cars ahead of you and you’ll even notice a slight haze in front of you as you gain more and more speed(the same effect used in
Jet Set Radio and
GunValkyrie). The sun is another impressive element, instead of utilizing the clichéd lens flare effect that everyone was using in the late 90’s,
GT 2002 sends a bright light towards you, kind of like what happens when you’re driving in real life. It blocks your view and serves a distraction to your racing.
Like most of the other Xbox racing games,
GT 2002 supports user play lists as a substitute for the generic racing music. There’s a problem though, it doesn’t recognize all of the playlists on my hard drive and even worse, I can’t make my own custom play list. It only allows you to select one of the soundtracks on your hard drive. The sound effects make up for this though, they’re all very well done and seem true to their real life counterparts. Couple that with true Dolby Digital support and you have a grease monkey’s dream.
There are a few other modes included; you can participate in a single battle against CPUs or other opponents. The beauty of this mode is that you can use your vehicles that you built up in the career mode. You can finally prove once and for all if your Civic Type R truly is better than your friend’s Nissan Skyline. If you just like to watch then you can set the game to have the CPU race against each other. This is the mode that you’re most likely to see running in the demo machines at EB and Gamestop.
Another great addition is the Chronicle mode in where you take a classic make and race through six stages in succeeding years. For instance, you can choose the Skyline path where you’ll start out in 1970 and move up all the way into the 21st century. It’s a great way to showcase the evolution of today’s most popular vehicles. Another neat trick is how the races will start out with a sepia filter (a soft of colorized black and white) and gradually change into color. Oddly enough the custom soundtracks don’t work in this mode.
Is it a
Gran Turismo killer? Not exactly, but it’s a worthy addition to any racing fan’s library. The game is technically sound, visually elegant and best of all, it’s a blast to play.
SEGA GT 2002 is one of the Xbox’s true gems and Microsoft was smart enough to secure this product as a pack-in title for their system. Don’t miss out on this game, you’ll most likely regret it.
More On:
SEGA GT 2002 Companies:
Sega B
The Xbox gets its own version of Gran Turismo 3.
Page 2 of 2
