At the start of the race mode, you’ll see your pit crew working on your car. My pit crew all have VW uniforms which is a nice touch. Before you get racing, you can see a video course guide which gives you the history of the track; also a nice touch. Finally you can get racing – selecting driving options such as the AI level, number of laps, transmission type for your vehicle, whether or not steering assists are on and the type of driving physics you want. Now you are ready to race on a field of 16. What do you think this is, NASCAR? Only 16 cars are on the track here, which is another disappointment.

Of course, control wise your best bet is to purchase a steering wheel for the game but spending $135 for a wheel seems rather extravagant for one game…what is this, Rock Band? Thankfully the controls with a regular Dual Shock gamepad are passable, although not really intuitive. The car physics are very good, and each car that you drive does indeed drive differently. While the physics are good, we still continue to lack a damage model and for something that is supposedly ultra-realistic, it’s rather silly to plow into a wall and not see one bit of damage to your vehicle.

Opponent AI is better than in the free version of the game. It’s tough to say if the other drivers are just complete idiots from time to time or if they are just supposed to be awful drivers. While it’s neat to see the other drivers involved in accidents, it seems that they are caused for silly reasons like ignoring where the other drivers are and just trying to get that spot on the track, regardless of anything there, like other cars.

Of course, if you play online, you’ll also run into your share of dolts, but online is definitely the best part of the game, not to mention the easiest place to make money to purchase other vehicles (and to get the really good vehicles, you’ll need to save every last credit you can!). Once you can login to a game (remember to clear out that cache), you’ll fine lag is very respectable and you don’t see a lot of cars magically showing up in front of you as you race.

In a racing game like this one, although the tracks are limited, there’s a lot of replay value because you’ll want to purchase more vehicles. The lure to purchase and drive all the cars is strong. However, forty dollars is still a steep price to pay for a limited version of the game. If you’re a fan of the GT series, it’s certainly worth picking up and at the very least is worth a rental to get your Turismo fix. New players may want to wait for a sale at the PS Store.

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