Le Mans 24h Review

Reading both official Infogrames' and independent announcements from various websites for Le Mans 24 Hours, one might get the notion that this game will really bring something new to the genre of racing simulations. It was meant to depict the atmosphere on the most famous race in France and one of most famous races in the world - "Les 24 heures du Mans". The thing that preserved this race for full 70 years was that, apart from speed, it requires tactics and strategy. Victory can here be achieved only with the combination of driver's skill, speed and endurance of the vehicle, and dexterity and competence of the pit-stop crew. This is why it is considered to be one of the hardest trials in the world of auto-sport. Participating classes are: GT1, GT2 and Prototype class. The most interesting thing is that all the participating teams gave the publisher permission to use all the data, colors, inscriptions and names. The "Le Mans" track is an exact copy of the original, but the remaining seven tracks are imaginary.

After a relatively quick installation, which lets you choose only the game directory, the game is ready to go. The intro is a collage of video sequences followed with an interesting rock tune, after which you find yourself staring at a spitting image of the "Main Menu" of some 99% of PSX games. Here you have several options for setting the texture quality and resolution, sound and control configuration and the most interesting one - the choice of three game modes. First, there is an Arcade mode in which you can drive cars from different classes on various tracks with no risk that the vehicle will get damaged. The next choice is the Championship in which you can sign contracts with teams and slowly advance through the game acquiring better cars. You can compete in Sprint championship where all the races last for three laps and you need not worry about the remaining fuel, or in Endurance championship where you have to drive 10 laps and the state of tires, engine temperature and the level of fuel are highly significant. Every victory unlocks a new vehicle, and your status among other drivers is scored by World GT rules. The most interesting mode is "Le Mans" race where, again you have to sign contracts and advance, but as this race in reality lasts for 24 hours, it is possible to choose several modes of time compression and make it last for 12 or 24 minutes, all up to full 24 hours. Hopefully, no one will ever condemn himself to this task, especially if he first played a couple of rounds in other modes. Why?

The all too promised realistic vehicle setup, which is of great importance for real strategy and victory in this game is pretty poor. All you can do is choose between soft and hard tires, automatic and manual gearbox, the quantity of fuel, and three steps of frame pressure. There are two more options - brake assist and traction control, but no serious player would ever consider using those. This simply cannot be compared to the complex vehicle setup in Sports Car GT or, better still NASCAR Racing.

The most important aspect of all games inclining to be race simulations is the physical engine. The physical engine of this game is utterly disappointing. Feeble control over all input devices, in combination with imprecise physical model does not offer a good feeling of a drive. Most people usually start racing games holding the acceleration key down. If you try to do it in this game, your wheels will slide and your acceleration will decrease. The car also tends to strafe left or right. In gentler curves cars seem to be stuck to the track, while sharp curves produce an unrealistic loss of friction. Some cars also have over steering effect, or skidding, which looks absolutely unrealistic on these cars. When lack of friction occurs between rear wheels and ground surface on real races, in some 90% of cases the car turns about 180 degrees. In this game you can use powerslide to pass a curve like in hard-core rally games. The feeling of a drive is similar to one you could experience some five years ago playing a game on an arcade machine or console.

Cars can be damaged but you can conclude that only by the way the car responds to your commands. There are no visual representations of any form of damage, apart from the final explosion of the car, achieved after trying to produce some visible damage for some time.

Force Feedback support is one of the worst you could see for quite some time. There are altogether 3 FF effects, and poorly chosen ones. When back skidding, flying off track, or driving on wide embankments, the steering wheel shakes wildly left and right, with varying intensity. When front skidding, or changing gear, the steering wheel squeaks trying to tell you that it did shake, but in a so high frequency that you barely even noticed it. All through the race there is a force that is trying to return the wheel to its central position. You cannot feel this whilst standing. FF is completely redundant in this game, and impedes realism, rather than adding to it.

The graphics are not that bad. The cars are true copies of the originals, from Porsche to the experimental BMW-a cabriolet. You can notice the great number of polygons used for car models as well as pretty good textures. The tracks are somewhat monotonous, with decent, and sometimes even beautiful graphics. There are some really interesting effects like the blaze of brake disks in red heat and exhaust pipes explosions. The weather effects are not as good. The rain falls the same way regardless of your speed, and the only way to notice the road is wet is to see the reflection of breaking lights of a car in front of you. The fog is ridiculous. Decreasing the contrast and increasing lightness of your screen can achieve the same effect. The whole picture has been added some white with no further ado with things like shortened vision or varying fog density. The lights are inefficient at night and decrease line of sight. The MIP mapping was used rather badly. The place where new textures appear is too close, so that you can see the line of transition especially on the road lines and fences which does tend to be annoying

Leaving out the "in car" view was an incredible omission! Barely any serious driver will make do with the bonnet camera (on hood). There is no rear-view-mirror, just a key for rear view, which makes driving very difficult, because it is impossible to check if anyone is approaching you from behind, or is it same to make a turn. You can only afford to check the rear view on strait portions of road, where you least need it. There is also no feeling of speed in this game. 300 km/h leave absolutely no impression, and to be sure that I am driving at that speed I had to keep looking at the speedometer.

The sound is not too bad, but it is still far from being adequate. The roar of the engines does differ from car to car, yet it could hardly be discriminated from a random noise coming out of semi-functional factory machinery. The difference between the noise on lower and higher gears is too small to conclude when it is time to change gear from it. Each car has one sample for gas outpour, and it doesn't take long before it becomes really irritating, still not as much as the announcer. His "wide" range of some 10 comments can really get on your nerves, and they seldom have anything to do with what's going on.

Hardware requirements are quite acceptable. On a Celeron 333A and TNT running in 1024x768 and 32-bit color palette (which is the same as the 16 bit one) the game has well over 25 FPS.

It is weird that there is no multiplayer option. Nowadays when more and more multiplayer-only games appear Le Mans ignores those trends and leaves you on your own against relatively stupid AI of your opponents.

All in all, the game proved to be a big disappointment. Sports Car GT did a far better job at representing the atmosphere of these events. Le Mans 24 hours might be interesting to those who enjoy in races of these car classes, with not much fuss about realism and car setup. Fans of games like Rally Championship, Grand Prix Legends or NASCAR Racing will certainly not have their expectations fulfilled.