Reviews// Ferrari Challenge: Trofeo Pirelli

The issue of crashes in driving games, and the effects they have on cars is a thorny one. Many manufacturers are touchy about having the crumple zones of their cars depicted in a computer model which may at best misrepresent their crash performance. As a result some games (Gran Turismo again) enable you to experience incredible crashes from which the cars drive away with nary a scrape on them.

Other games eschew 'real' cars (though sometimes they have models which are so uncannily similar that it's a surprise their copyright lawyers get any sleep).

A third kind of game deals with the problem by limiting your ability to crash so spectacularly that it gives the game a spectacularly unnatural feel. Ferrari Challenge falls firmly into this last category.

The tracks are designed in such a way that there is a wide section of “kitty litter” between most corners and their attendant barriers. This gravel slows your car as soon as you drive onto it, and reduces your ability to hit barriers at speed. Other parts of the track are designed to avoid offering you the kind of obstacles - stanchions, bridge bases etc - that you could crash into. The aim is clearly to reduce the opportunity for spectacular crashes.

When crashes do occur, they are surreal affairs, with your car decelerating from 150mph to standstill without any serious drama or destruction to the scenery or the car.

System 3 has proudly stated that the game includes crash deformation of the cars, but in reality all that happens is that your bumpers at first split neatly in the middle, and then fall of either half at a time or in their entirety. After a really serious smash, you may lose your bonnet – but the car panels remain pristine and untouched.

The cars themselves handle like no Ferrari I've ever driven. When you turn, even a small amount on the straight, they seem to do so from the rear wheels, putting the back end out alarmingly. "Lurch" was the word most used here in the SPOnG offices when people first picked the game up. For a race-bred machine, with perfectly balanced drum-taught suspension, this seems a little unrealistic.

I'm sure Mark Cale, who has owned 57 Ferraris, and the boys from Eutechnyx and Maranello will say that this is absolutely realistic handling. Even Bruno Senna was consulted to handle handling (see our interview with him right here). But as someone who drives a 450bhp hand-built racing car, and who has bought several cars after experiencing their handling in Gran Turismo, the handling of the F430 in Ferrari Challenge would put me off buying a Ferrari.

You can tune the handling of the car, and doing so does make a noticeable difference to the handling. But as I've often found you do so at your own peril, because knowing which changes best suit your driving style, and which yield the best results on which tracks requires a patience and an attention to detail that I simply do not have. Your mileage may vary.