While we await the Reiza DLC Christmas Extravaganza of 2022, I desided to fill the one discipline that AMS 2 features but isn't very well flushed out yet, vintage GT/Touring car racing, by reinstalling GT Legends. Holy crap how times have changed. GTL is how I got my start in simracing after I accdently stole a copy from my school's bookfair in like 4th grade. (Casher put it in the wrong bag and I didn't notice until I got home.) In some ways GTL holds up suprisingly well, and it still has some tracks/cars that haven't offically featured in any of the modern sims. But dear god, I can't believe how differently the FFB acts and how driving feels compaired to a modern game... To be clear, this the straight from Steam version of GTL with no mods what so ever. So with that, lets hit the good/unique things. 1. A Fleashed out Career mode To me, this is one of the coolest things about going back to GTL. Back in 2003/4, I don't think people appecated just how lifeless and goaless modern racing games (Not just sims) would feel 20 or so years later. What I mean is, GTL isn't just "Do X race to win Y and adavance the career", but it actually acts as a interesting teaching tool to learn how to drive these cars as well as the clear advantages/disadvatages of each car within a given class. For example, the first championship has you drive the Mini Cooper in a 1 make series with 2 short races. The tracks are simple, the car is super easy to drive, but the AI is still challenging enough to force you to push the car to it's limits and learn what the Mini Cooper can do. The second champsionship moves to the Cortina, and puts you against not just other touring cars, but a pair of select GT cars too. You also move to faster tracks that favor the cars your racing against, so you have to learn how to slide and race with your elbows out. The third champsionship lets you race the Jaguar MK2, like a true gentlemen racer... The point is, the championships and the AI is crafted in such a way, you can't just buy the "BEST" car and blow through. Instead your forced to learn about each car, how to drive it at it's limits, and struggle a little bit, which is nice. By the time you get into the higher championships with faster cars, and things sort of... stabilize... as cars become more competitive, you as a driver are better equipped to handle that. Not only do you have a well crafted stucture, but you get rewarded with some pretty cool cars too. IDK why racing games as a whole have moved away from this (Other than just to sell them as DLC) but I like having 5 or 6 cars that you have to earn. It better than letting a Insurance company artificially inflate the price of the digital cars to the point we can't even afford them in a video game now... (Cough cough, GT7) 2. Tracks! Although I like many was disapointed with not having the Historical versions tracks that these cars would have raced on in period, the tracks included are still super well done, and some are fairly unique. Tracks like Anderstorp, Dijon-Prenois, and Mondello Park are still favorites of mine, and I really like the shorter layouts that don't feature in any other games, Nürburgring Müllenbach (South end of the track only) and Monza JR with the chicane of death are tons of fun in the smaller more nimble cars. I would love to see these versions of the tracks featured in AMS 2. 3. Cars, or more the details of cars. One of the things that still stun me about GTL, is some of the cars are unique within themselves. For example, the De Tomaso Pantera has 2 different versions with different levels of preformance. One is widened and has a more powerful engine, the other is more street like. The Corvette Stingrays cover the C2 and C3 generations, and not only is there coupes, but convertibles. What this means is, even if you do a 1 make race for Corvettes only, there can be several different types of Corvette each with slightly different levels of preformance, and drastically different apparances. The same could be said for the Porsche 911. Also, theres a handful of cars I adore but just seemed to get skipped over by modern racing devs. Porsche 914, Abarth 1000TC, Ferrari 275 GTB/C, even a Mercedes 300SL! Why non of these cars have been in any modern racing game outside of being added in as mods to Assetto Corsa is Beyond me? 4. Track side life. AMS 2 is starting to add animated marshals and crowds (even if they are cows), so this is slowly being fixed. But having flag waving, people moving around and doing stuff, adds so much atmosphere to the moment. I also love having a pitboard, PLEASE bring this back. It actually makes driving without a Hud possible, plus it just looks cool! Now, lets talk about some of the not so good things. 1. FFB and Sliding... Holy crap GTL's FFB sucks. High FFB feels compleately numb and lifeless and has no power behind it even at 100% strength, Max FFB feels fantastic but at 7% strength shakes my table to death. Also, often the FFB seems to get confused? Like you'll start sliding, and instead of the wheel going light, it will just lock. You'll have to crank that wheel like Soulja-boy just to try and catch the most basic slide, and 9/10, it just doesn't matter. Once you get past a certain percentage of yaw, your just a passanger, and it reminds me a lot of Iracing's old v6 tire model but worse. Why? because you can slide a little bit, and you have to slide to go fast with these cars, but 1% too much and it's just instant death. Thank you god Reiza has figured this out for AMS and AMS 2, and the dude who made Content Manager for Assetto Corsa too, because it honestly makes me want to pull my hair out. Everything else actually feels fine, and in someways the game actually feels pretty solid. 2. The CD version will wipe your hard drive on a modern system because DRM. YAY DRM, everyone's favroite thing! Need I say more? Overall, GTL is still a fairly good game, but instead of satifying my hunger for more historic content, it's only made it worse. Here's hoping 2023 has a lot more historic GT cars to flesh out the GT classic class and the touring car classes.
You probably know this already, but to anyone else: if you actually want to play GT Legends nowadays, use the Anniversary Patch and HQ Track Pack: Anniversary Patch: Part 1: GT Legends HQ Anniversary PATCH part 1 Part 2: GT Legends HQ Anniversary Patch part 2 HQ Track Pack: GT Legends HQ Tracks You might need to globally balance the AI strength a bit with the patch, but it's descreibed in the included readme file.
