Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 4

"The game has reached the 4th version but is it any good?"

I’ve always been a fan of Crammond ever since Grand Prix 2 (never played Grand Prix 1) and because I liked GP3 I couldn’t wait for GP4 to appear.

While I was waiting I saw F1 2002 and decided to give it a chance (because previous versions didn’t impressed me at all). After a month Grand Prix finally hit the shelves and I bought it. Now I was pretty impressed with F1 2002 and I had high hopes for Grand Prix 4. If the game fulfilled my high hopes or not, my answer would be YES and NO. Here’s why:

GP4 is a major graphical improvement compared to GP3. Actually there isn’t such a big difference between F1 2002 and GP4 in the graphics department. After how sucky the graphic was in previous games some would say that this is towards for the good of the game. I said it also until I got the game and tried playing it. I selected highest graphical settings and off I went for some spins on Melbourne. Overall the game was running smoothly until I was on the start/finish line straight. Man the game was dragging in that location. I then left the race and went on tweaking the graphical settings. In the end I ended selecting the smallest setting with background included (the game is horribly without background). And to my big surprise the game performance was almost the same with the high settings. The only way that Melbourne start/finish straight would have worked, was if i would have taken the background out of the picture and trust me the game sucks without it. This leads me to believe that the GP4 engine is badly written. In F1 2002 with equally graphics I had a very smooth performance. The computer on which I tried GP4 is AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with Gf3 Ti500. I am afraid to try out that game on a weaker computer. So to sum up if you have a high-end machine Grand Prix 4 will work but with occasional dragging points. Curious is that Monaco (which is supposed to have the richest background) works so smooth that I barely have the time to react if I make a small mistake.
The nice addition are the humans. Your pit crew together with the race officials that are using the flags are captured with motion camera. In the official game description it says that your pit crew can even make mistakes by forgetting a wheel or something similar. This “feature” hasn’t met me yet so I cannot confirm it.

Because I am a happy owner of a steering wheel I went to calibrate it in order to use it while playing. Setting it wasn’t too difficult. Had small problems with it but in the end worked just fine, nothing out of the ordinary for the GP series.

The main thing why I stick with Crammond’s Grand Prix 4 is the AI. There is no other Formula 1 computer game with such a good AI. In this version the artificial intelligence is even more human like. The drivers at the back of the grid usually make mistakes during the race. Hakkinen and Coulthard from time to time hit each other right at the start (and you guys know that’s real). Ah yes, the game season is 2001 with all the drivers and tracks. This time we even have Villeneuve in the game.

The sound is pretty much the same as the one in previous versions. I didn’t saw any major improvements on it so there is not a lot to say, perhaps that the sound is somewhere between average quality and high quality.

Graphics – 9

Sound – 7

Control – 9
Can get a little difficult configuring the wheel if you do not know what u are doing. But once u have it the game is drastically changed then with keyboard.

AI – 10
I just felt like adding this because of how great the artificial intelligence is coded.

Overall – 8

Oh and to answer to the question why I said YES and NO at fulfilling hopes: If you have a high-end machine like mine then the answer is YES because the game runs overall smoothly. But with a weaker computer I don’t see how the game could have acceptable performance and that’s why I said NO.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/02, Updated 07/18/02