Now things are looking better & the catchy electronic pop music helps one to get into the racing mood. On this user interface, the player can then choose to play a new game or a saved game, clicking on the ‘New Game’ & ‘Load Game’ buttons respectively. The player can also try the ‘Quick Race’ mode for an immediate experience of Formula One racing in this game.

Graphics

Be warned that the New Star Grand Prix is not a realistic Formula One racing game like many 3D games. This game is not one of them. Firstly, there is no cockpit driver view or a third person view for the New Star Grand Prix, a must for great racing games of today. In fact, the New Star Grand Prix is not a 3D graphics game at all! Secondly, this game is entirely a 2-dimensional (2D) graphics game.

As a consolation, players can adjust the zoom within the Options area ranging from ‘Very Low’ where one can see the car, the immediate road & the boundary; to the ‘Very High’ mode where one can view the car in a smaller size & the surroundings like the spectator stands which can be seen as well.

Game Play

There are three difficulty levels to choose from - Easy, Normal, & Hard. Driving in this game is not as easy as it looks. The ‘Easy’ level might have an inexperienced gamer trailing a few laps behind other racers. This difficulty of play could have a new player become easily frustrated. All is not lost as once in a while, the game program will have all the other cars move around aimlessly on the race track for the player to actually win a race just by finishing it regardless of how bad one plays the game in ‘Easy’ mode

The player can choose any driver which names resembles that of popular Formula 1 race care drivers. Their names are purposefully misspelled perhaps due to copyright, legal, & royalty issues. For example, Lewis Hamilton goes as Lewis Himilton in this game. It does not matter which driver one chooses in the ‘Quick Race’ mode as only the color of the car will be profoundly different. Difference in car performance is more apparent in ‘New Game’ mode.

Just like in the real Formula One Championships, the 17 races long season starts in Australia, then Malaysia, China, Bahrain, & so on & so forth. The player has to compete in the Championship & race the qualifying sessions to clock the fastest lap times which in turn determines starting order for the main race.

Pros

Being a 2-dimensional ‘top down’ racing genre is not a drawback for the New Star Grand Prix. This racing game is fun to play & looks relatively great for its genre! Playing New Star Grand Prix is like playing a 80s Atari game that has been given a new lease of life. New Star Grand Prix is a state-of-the-art 2-dimensional ‘top down’ racing game. So much so, this game will perhaps even appeal to extreme computer gaming enthusiasts. This game could easily be one of the desktop games that an extreme gamer has because the New Star Grand Prix is quick to launch, easy to start playing & great for burning a few free minutes while waiting for a more advanced 3D game to load.

The New Star Grand Prix trial version requires approximately 24.2 megabytes of hard disk space for installation. The game does not require a high end computer & graphic card to be played. A low end computer system with 800x600 monitor support will suffice.

Cons

Speed & power of the New Star Grand Prix Formula One cars is an ironic issue here. It seems that every car is just too fast & too powerful! The cars drive very fast & will easily overshoot any corners at top speed, especially when it rains. Therefore, the player will not find a problem with lack of speed because there is none unless the car is badly damaged.

Rather the main challenge of driving a Formula One car in this game is ironically, in slowing down to control the car. One cannot help to feel as though the point of the New Star Grand Prix game in to slow down the race car instead of going faster. On a lighter note, the controls are very simple & straight forward. The controls use the up, down, right, & left arrow keys. Note that for the Brake, use the arrow down key & when pressed longer will have the car going in reverse.

Another issue with this game is the speedometer or more precisely the lack of it. A racing game without a speedometer is not fully a racing game. Racers like to go fast & want to see how fast they are going instantly. No speedometer to inform a racer how fast the car is being driven – essential data for decision making, is like driving with one’s eyes closed. Lastly, there is no multiplayer feature in this game which would have made this game more fun to play together with friends.

Conclusion

There are quite a few cons from the game but one cannot fairly expect a stellar performance from the New Star Grand Prix considering that it is only a $9.99 2D racing game. Racing gamers & Formula One fans will still like to race a few laps around 2D circuits that are true to the real world Formula One racing circuits on plan view. New Star Grand Prix is a simple & fun racing game in the most elementary 2D gaming form. New Star Grand Prix is a good game to have on the computer desktop (both PC & Mac) for folks who find that they have a few minutes to spare in between doing stuff on their computers. The New Star Grand Prix is given a final rating of 3/5.

Game Credits

Game Designer: Simon Read

Graphics: Ryan Sumo & Simon Read

GUI Code: Liam McGuigan

Background Photos: CJ

Music: Dynamedion

Copyright: New Star Games Ltd

www.newstargames.com

This game has been reviewed & played on a basic computer system with the below specifications:

AMD Sempron Processor 1.6 GHz 2800+

960MB of RAM

Microsoft Windows XP Professional