Group S Challenge

"Utterly medicocre, but then this is a Capcom racer after all"

As quiet a release as there ever has been, Group S Challenge is Capcom's little known Xbox-exclusive semi-sim racing game that once again (after Auto Modellista) shows that they should leave racing games to Codemasters, Bizarre Creations, DICE, Sega, Polyphonal Digital, or just about anyone else...

This title is the perfect 5/10, utterly mediocre and unambitious, a barely competent, Japanese racing tech demo that no one asked for when there are PGRs, RSCs, Colin McRaes, Burnouts, etc all to be had on Xbox.

GAMEPLAY

Very little effort was made in localizing this game. Most of the game is set in accordance "with conditions in Japan", as the game will legally note to you on bootup. Not only does this mean that your Lexus GS morphs back into a Toyota Aristo, but also that most of the tracks are stuck in Shibuya of all places. Here are 8 of the 20 tracks in the game: Shibuya A, Shibuya B, Shibuya C, Shibuya Long, Shibuya A-II, Shibuya B-II, Shibuya C-II, Shibuya Long-II. Even more interesting, the game uses a time format that goes 00'00,00 instead of 00:00:00.

True, there are a few nice American/European sports cars here (dominating the Group S tier in fact)...but they are not well integrated into the main game. For instance, all the "Extra AERO" special cars that you can earn in Circuit Mode are Japanese models, almost all different variants of basic Aristo, Primera, Fairlady, MRS, etc with different sets of aero body parts from companies such as Abflug.

This Circuit Mode is the main single-player component, offering the chance to earn credits ("DP") to buy new cars, upgrade them, and ultimately win all 4 championships through Group C, B, A, and S. Secondarily, in this mode is the Line-Line score/time-attack race, where you can earn some minor amounts of DP by running a random course and "eating" a trail of glowing dots like Pac-Man as you follow the racing line. Finally, there is the Duel subsection of Circuit Mode.

Duel is where you seek to earn those Aero cars. This is also where the game imparts artificial replayability. If you want to earn an Abflug Aristo or somesuch, what you do is race three specific cars against it. Then to earn the DSpeed Celica you'll need to buy and race three entirely different cars. So through this rigmarole the game intends you to buy and play almost every worthless car, sometimes just for one easy 1-lap race...

Stupidly, in Arcade mode you are essentially given all cars, even the S-rank Vettes, Vipers, the covercar Ruf and the top dog Saleen S7, right off the bat. So in Circuit Mode, all your hard work is to earn Aero-modified versions of average cars that are inferior to many cars you already have access to in the first place.

Arcade mode also offers 2P vs, Time Attack, One Make race, and when you finish through Group S in Circuit Mode that opens the Dirt Track submode in Arcade Mode.

Through all this you have a basically competent, drift-enhanced racing model. Oddly, the game is very twitchy in 3rd-person view, but in 1st-person it plays much more cleanly and responds tightly. I have never played another racing game that feels so completely different between the two cameras. A neat feature unique to Group S Challenge is an on-the-fly external video camera that shows what you are doing in a picture-in-picture window while you drive in fps view. However, this removes your rearview mirror when used.

You will need that mirror though, because especially in the hard Group S level in Circuit Mode, it is more a game of "block the Ruf" than racing cleanly. The AI goes one step further into lunacy in One Make Race in Arcade Mode. The only way to get ahead in that mode against 5 other exact-same cars is to punt them into the walls and hope for the best. You have no choice because they are aiming to do exactly that to you. No damage models here in any way shape or form as is typical of simpler non-Western racers, so bang away!

Finally, I must mention the Dirt Mode. As what sounds like one of the lamest extra modes ever conceived, this is simply the Shibuya street tracks covered in rally-quality dirt, complete with dust storms kicked up when racing. Ridiculous...but believe it or not the cars handle BETTER in this mode! The drift style in this dirt makes it into a basic rally game, except you can reasonably use basic rwd sports cars in this mode as though they are prepped rally cars. I recorded a flawless replay in Dirt mode using a low-to-the-ground Aero Nissan Fairlady Z that handled as though it were the newest race-prepped Focus or Sube rally car...

GRAPHICS/SOUND

The game looks merely adequate for an Xbox racer. It has the requisite nice lighting, and the cars are well-modeled, but there is nothing special. "Digital Studio" is credited with creating the game for Capcom and it feels like they merely tried to do their best...while learning on the job. Especially problematic is the slowdown with multiple cars on screen. It doesn't make the game unplayable, but what is generally a nice 60 fps racer can bog down to 15 fps during some starts off the line in 6-car races. Sloppy.

Sound is--you guessed it--merely adequate. There are differing engine sounds here, but they never register as strongly as the thunder of V8s, zinging 4's, throaty 6s, gravelly flat 4s, etc that you get in higher production-quality games like the PGRs and Sony GTs. And unfortunately, the music sounds like the lowest of low-rent J-pop, which is the nice way of putting it.

REPLAYABILITY

The Duel mode alone could take maybe a dozen hours if so inclined. But it has NO challenge. You just buy a car, mod it to the 2/3 setting on engine, weight reduction, etc, and there won't be any Duel, you'll win every time. The main Race section of Circuit Mode, where you get up through Group S, is simply one set of 5 races each. The Group S tier can be challenging simply because without buying the ultra-expensive Saleen you have to crash/block everyone to win. 6 hours max to win Group S if you just buy the Vette like I did and block the Rufs/Saleen to the finish line rather than play several more hours to earn the 200,000,000 DP Saleen.

BUY/RENT?

Bought more for curiosity and novelty sake (a sim-like Xbox-exclusive racing game from Capcom?), it has been worth my $10 since at that price and for a car nut it can entertain at least through the completion of the Circuit Mode through S-tier.

Otherwise, in a world populated by PGR2, RSC2, TOCA 2, Sega GT and for multiplatform owners of course GT3...you can easily forget about Group S Challenge.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/15/04