Sound Awfulness
The sound: well, I have to admit that for the latter three hours of some eight hours of playtime, it was turned well down aside from when I turned it up to make sure nothing had changed.
In the singular world of GT Pro, all cars not only handle the same, they sound the same: exactly the same. The exhaust note of the Diahatsu Move differs not a jot from that of the Subaru Impreza STi. The music (thankfully equipped with its own volume control) is lifted from the trash of the Initial D team - a horrible dub J-Pop Euorbeat that succeeds in being neither amusingly camp or excitingly slick. It's just drivel.
Gameplay Awfulness
The gameplay offered is a true Venus flytrap for the racing game fan. On the surface it appears fantastic, 80 licensed cars with full modding options from some of Japan's finest motor companies. The fact is, there's one car, just with a different shell on top of it. The game’s no reference to reality at all. Why does my Impreza STi top out at 119-mph? Why can I achieve the same lap times in a 70-bhp car than I can in a 270-bhp car? The cars revolve on a central axis ala Square's dire Driving Emotion Type S, the only variant between the cars being how fast they revolve. The differences in this botched control scheme are negligible.
There's also the point that this game is stupidly easy. As long as you master GT Pro's only trick of entering a corner, lifting off the gas, then reapplying it, you will sail around each of the courses with ease. Indeed, if it were not for the game starting you at the back of the grid in every race, you would not see another car throughout.
GT Pro tries its best with a Ridge Racer-inspired single car that tries to keep up, but the fact is that half way through the first lap, you're on your own. This is where the hidden difficulty comes in. GT Pro is so boring, so utterly unengaging, that your mind starts to drift, no pun intended. You find yourself bouncing off the walls and then you stop playing altogether.
In another utterly pointless, unrewarding, unrealistic, unchallenging 'race' you see you have five laps before the next phase of punishment. Your brain just switches off half way through, starts concerning itself with more important things. Why is my heating system not working properly? Should I do my recycling today? What's the dog doing? Shall I buy wine or a few beers tonight? I swear, this is not down to me being an inattentive gamer. GT Pro just drags on and on and on, changing unnoticeably and becoming increasingly protracted and dull with every new phase.
My version (NTSC-U) came complete with a little Kinder Egg-style bonus, a small steering wheel in three pieces that, when constructed, held the Wii Remote in its centre. This is so the player can opt to use the controller in all its USP glory, tilting it like a steering wheel with buttons acting as accelerator and brake. It works actually, really well. But after a few races, you realise that the game isn't changing. After a few hours, it hits you. There's going to be no change from start to finish. The extra effort is simply not worth it, and you change the control settings to reflect those of a standard D-pad.
I would be amazed if there's anyone else who owns GT Pro who didn't go through this exact process. Even with the addition of multiplayer, the game is so bad that people will not play it. True multiplayer gaming is built around brilliant software. You can't bolt something on (in this case four-player split-screen) to a title that's inherently broken.
The AI is pitiful with the computer controlling eleven cars with dev-kit-hindered speeds all following exactly the same path, bringing nothing whatsoever to the experience, and serving only to compound the endless errors in logic inherent in GT Pro, the first being, "let's release a game like this!"
SPOnG rating: F
GT Pro Series is, without doubt, an interesting title. It's interesting because it asks questions such as: why the developer thought this was finished product? How Ubisoft, a resurgent game publisher with a cracking portfolio of true AAA gems, could have thought it a good idea to put its name to it? How Nintendo could have sullied its Official Nintendo Seal with such a dire and unacceptable nonsense? Don't buy GT Pro, don't rent it. If you know someone who has it, don't play it. If they tell you it's worth playing, never speak to them ever again.
The sound: well, I have to admit that for the latter three hours of some eight hours of playtime, it was turned well down aside from when I turned it up to make sure nothing had changed.
In the singular world of GT Pro, all cars not only handle the same, they sound the same: exactly the same. The exhaust note of the Diahatsu Move differs not a jot from that of the Subaru Impreza STi. The music (thankfully equipped with its own volume control) is lifted from the trash of the Initial D team - a horrible dub J-Pop Euorbeat that succeeds in being neither amusingly camp or excitingly slick. It's just drivel.
Gameplay Awfulness
There's also the point that this game is stupidly easy. As long as you master GT Pro's only trick of entering a corner, lifting off the gas, then reapplying it, you will sail around each of the courses with ease. Indeed, if it were not for the game starting you at the back of the grid in every race, you would not see another car throughout.
GT Pro tries its best with a Ridge Racer-inspired single car that tries to keep up, but the fact is that half way through the first lap, you're on your own. This is where the hidden difficulty comes in. GT Pro is so boring, so utterly unengaging, that your mind starts to drift, no pun intended. You find yourself bouncing off the walls and then you stop playing altogether.
In another utterly pointless, unrewarding, unrealistic, unchallenging 'race' you see you have five laps before the next phase of punishment. Your brain just switches off half way through, starts concerning itself with more important things. Why is my heating system not working properly? Should I do my recycling today? What's the dog doing? Shall I buy wine or a few beers tonight? I swear, this is not down to me being an inattentive gamer. GT Pro just drags on and on and on, changing unnoticeably and becoming increasingly protracted and dull with every new phase.
My version (NTSC-U) came complete with a little Kinder Egg-style bonus, a small steering wheel in three pieces that, when constructed, held the Wii Remote in its centre. This is so the player can opt to use the controller in all its USP glory, tilting it like a steering wheel with buttons acting as accelerator and brake. It works actually, really well. But after a few races, you realise that the game isn't changing. After a few hours, it hits you. There's going to be no change from start to finish. The extra effort is simply not worth it, and you change the control settings to reflect those of a standard D-pad.
I would be amazed if there's anyone else who owns GT Pro who didn't go through this exact process. Even with the addition of multiplayer, the game is so bad that people will not play it. True multiplayer gaming is built around brilliant software. You can't bolt something on (in this case four-player split-screen) to a title that's inherently broken.
The AI is pitiful with the computer controlling eleven cars with dev-kit-hindered speeds all following exactly the same path, bringing nothing whatsoever to the experience, and serving only to compound the endless errors in logic inherent in GT Pro, the first being, "let's release a game like this!"
SPOnG rating: F
GT Pro Series is, without doubt, an interesting title. It's interesting because it asks questions such as: why the developer thought this was finished product? How Ubisoft, a resurgent game publisher with a cracking portfolio of true AAA gems, could have thought it a good idea to put its name to it? How Nintendo could have sullied its Official Nintendo Seal with such a dire and unacceptable nonsense? Don't buy GT Pro, don't rent it. If you know someone who has it, don't play it. If they tell you it's worth playing, never speak to them ever again.