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Meet the Evolution, Ultima’s latest development of the GTR, a supercar that claims to be the quickest production vehicle in the world, thanks to its lightness and supercharged V-8 rated at more. The car, called the Ultima GTR, hails from the fertile race-car turf of Britain, the land where McLaren, Reynard, Williams, and Van Diemen build race cars that win with remarkable regularity.
Expert reviews and ratings
By IGN Gear on 85 SimBin has become one of the premier developers of racing games since the studio was founded just five years ago. The studios GTR and RACE series haven proven to be great games year in and year out, and its latest, an expansion to RACE 07 titled GTR...
By Game Chronicles Magazine on 88 Entering a solid score for a great race simulator is GTR Evolution with its 49 different cars in 12 classes you can participate on 20 tracks for a racers dream. GTR Evolution is a great race game on all those smooth miles of track with extremely...
By BrightHub on 100 A review of the recently released sports car game. The secret behind GTR: Evolution is that the game is nothing but an expansion to the famous WTCC racing simulator. It gives us the opportunity to try some new cars, an improved driving system, and to...
By VideoGamer on ![Online Online](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125744339/849926900.jpg)
The amazing Nordschleife circuit, Almost perfect driving physics, Superb track and car modelling, A few graphical...
By Games Radar on 80 Ignore the name. GTR Evolution is a standalone expansion pack for Race 07, with new cars, new tracks and SimBin’s first arcade mode. Arcade mode means you no longer have to fart about qualifying, nor waste time buried in a tire wall trying to work...
By GamePyre on 76 I’m not too good with math and physics and engineering, but I can almost guarantee it that you’ll get a lot more miles out of GTR Evolution than you would out of your car for the same twenty dollars. No, this is not the perfect racing game;...
By Gaming Nexus on 92 Every now and then, a product comes along with a name that perfectly defines what you, as the potential purchaser, can expect from the product. Viva Media and SimBin Studios have released just such a product in GTR Evolution. GTR-E is exactly what it...
By GameZone on ![Gtr Evolution Reviews Gtr Evolution Reviews](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125744339/577126517.jpg)
GTR Evolution is a fine addition to SimBin’s repertoire of driving sims, offering some great features and unrivaled tracks for fans of authentic racing...
By 1Up on 75 Deep in the World Wide Interweb exists a riveting head-to-head video showdown pertinent to any critique of SimBin's latest racing-simulation opus, GTR Evolution. In the center of the screen: in-car footage of noted real-world driver HJ Stuck as he...
By Cheat Code Central on 80 Realism certainly has its place in video games; it’s an ideal many developers push towards and a feature players typically come to expect as technology advances. However, there are times when striving to make the experience a little too realistic...
By ImpulseGamer on 85 Howard BourkeClassification: G8.5GTR EvolutionGTR Evolution is developed by acclaimed game developers SimBin that allows gamers to race a plethora of real world vehicles in a variety of different gaming environments. Best of all, the title also...
Every now and then, a product comes along with a name that perfectly defines what you, as the potential purchaser, can expect from the product. Viva Media and SimBin Studios have released just such a product in GTR Evolution. GTR-E is exactly what it professes to be: the next evolutionary step in a line of products including GTR 2 and Race '07. In fact, the best, most concise description of GTR-E that I could come up with is a marriage between GTR 2 and Race '07.
If you were to take the tracks and cars included in both of those, and throw in the 14 mile monster track that is the famous Nurburgring, you would have GTR Evolution.If you have experience with either or both of those preceding releases, you can probably just stop reading now. There's nothing much I can tell you, other than that GTR-E exhibits the same attention to detail and quality that we have come to expect from SimBin, which is to say superb. In fact, if you already have Race '07, you should just pick up the Expansion Pack version, although at an Amazon.com price of $17.99, it would be just as easy to buy the full standalone version.So, if you're still with me, you must be interested in just what this GTR thing is.
Well, in my opinion, it is the most realistic, highly polished, PC-based racing simulator available today. Well, if you want it to be, that is. Not everyone is willing or able to devote the effort required to learn how to competitively race with the realism settings set to the highest levels, and fortunately for them, the GTR series are configurable to allow for a more relaxed approach to it. Antilock brakes, traction control, steering assistance, and a plethora of other settings are available to allow novice drivers to participate in pulse pounding races. As skillz improve, the settings can be bumped up to allow for an increased challenge.
GTR-E has, in one of the evolutionary features included in the new game, even included a setting called Arcade Extreme. The “truth in naming” exhibited in the product title is also evident in Arcade Extreme, a racing mode that makes the driving easier and the bumps the visual and auditory elements up to a higher level than you will find in the more simulation oriented modes. There has been some evolutionary attention paid to those modes as well, and in ways that I found to be highly favorable. It has long been a pet peeve of mine (and remember, I collect pet peeves like a lonely widow collects cats) when I buy a game, and then have to spend hours working my way through mindless three lap sprint races to unlock all of the cars and tracks that SHOULD have been unlocked when I pulled out my credit card to buy the game. There is none of that silliness in GTR-E. You bought the game with an intended use in minds, and SimBin has made the proper decision: get out of the way and let you play the game the way you want to play it.
With GTR-E, you can set up a race or championship any way you want. You can mix classes and types of cars to your heart's content. If you want to race a class of Dodge Vipers concurrent with a class of Mini Coopers, well, that's up to you. Choose your competitors, choose your track (or tracks, in the case of a championship), and go racing.
You can customize your own rules, or you can use the preset WTCC or GT rules.Some of the existing issues that I had with previous versions are still there, however. They’re nit-picky, of course, and I only point them out to remain in compliance with the Game Reviewers Code, a fundamental tenet of which is the immutable belief that there is no such thing as a perfect game. Here’s an example: when you race in an open cockpit car, your first-person view is restricted at the top and bottom by the confines of your virtual helmet.
This is a pretty cool touch, and the feeling of actually being in a race car and dressed for the occasion is only enhanced as you collect smashed bugs on your visor. Similarly, the view from inside a touring car is restricted, to a lesser degree, by the car frame itself. But here’s my issue: every driver, whether racing in an open cockpit car or a fully enclosed car, is wearing a helmet. But in GTR, you don’t where a helmet in the enclosed cars.
Hey, I told you they were nit-picks! The other issue I’ve always had with the SimBin GTR series is that the AI cars are preternaturally fast in qualifying, but as slow as pizza delivery on the night of the Super Bowl on the first lap of the race. I don’t even bother qualifying anymore; I just start at the back and pass half of the field on the first lap.That said, the AI is very good.
Some of them will race you smart, others will race you aggressively. In fact, I prefer the AI racing to racing actual humans in the multiplayer mode. The AI drivers don’t exhibit ghosting from ridiculously high pings, nor do that find adolescent glee in disrupting races with infantile behavior, a trait found in at least one participant in every online race I’ve ever been in.
If you want decent racing against real people, find and join a good league.So, while evolutionary in nature, SimBin has presented us with yet another most excellent racing sim. GTR Evolution in and of itself is complete justification for the cost of a good PC and a force feedback steering wheel. I’m using the venerable Logitech G25 myself, but if dollars are limited any of the lower cost Logitech force feedback wheels will suffice. About AuthorI've been fascinated with video games and computers for as long as I can remember. It was always a treat to get dragged to the mall with my parents because I'd get to play for a few minutes on the Atari 2600. I partially blame Asteroids, the crack cocaine of arcade games, for my low GPA in college which eventually led me to temporarily ditch academics and join the USAF to 'see the world.'
The rest of the blame goes to my passion for all things aviation, and the opportunity to work on work on the truly awesome SR-71 Blackbird sealed the deal.My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 that I bought in 1977 when they first came out. At that time you had to order them through a Radio Shack store - Tandy didn't think they'd sell enough to justify stocking them in the retail stores. My favorite game then was the SubLogic Flight Simulator, which was the great Grandaddy of the Microsoft flight sims.While I was in the military, I bought a Commodore 64. From there I moved on up through the PC line, always buying just enough machine to support the latest version of the flight sims. I never really paid much attention to consoles until the Dreamcast came out.
I now have an Xbox for my console games, and a 1ghz Celeron with a GeForce4 for graphics. Being married and having a very expensive toy (my airplane) means I don't get to spend a lot of money on the lastest/greatest PC and console hardware.My interests these days are primarily auto racing and flying sims on the PC.
I'm too old and slow to do well at the FPS twitchers or fighting games, but I do enjoy online Rainbow 6 or the like now and then, although I had to give up Americas Army due to my complete inability to discern friend from foe. I have the Xbox mostly to play games with my daughter and for the sports games.
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