Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Mar 9, 2022

  GTR 2 is still one of the best sim you can get. Full FIA GT 2003-2004 season, real time 24 hours race, drivers swap, animated pit stop,AI and Player mechanical failure,dynamic weather, good damage model, great physics, and it runs pretty well with an old laptop. The AI is not really good though, but there's a tweak for it on the internet. Also, i recommend you to read the engineers handbook made by Simbin : https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/gtr-engineers-handbook.18045/ That's all, give GTR 2 a try!
• gamedeal user

  Nov 3, 2014

  Personally this is my favourite racing game. Literally hundreds (if not thousands) of additional content available from the modding community. Also, the game doesm't hold your hand and force control off you (unless you want it to) meaning that unlike the Codemasters F1 games you actually drive the entire race. Pitlanes and post-race inlap. 16/10
• gamedeal user

  Apr 9, 2015

  I've ran the championships a run once, currently working on my second run-through of the game. The time I've clocked in this game is closer to 40-ish hours than the 24 it says; the game launches a launcher (for file permissions) before it launches and when the launcher closes, Steam no longer says I'm in-game. ANYWAY. Right, review time. PROS - GRAPHICS. For a game made almost 9 years ago, the graphics hold up well. Vehicle liveries are clear and easy to read, cockpit decals are clear, and you can read the speed off your in-dash display. (All this, of course, can be downscaled, or in the case of the in-dash display, completely turned off.) - REALISTIC DAMAGE. Run your engine too hard and it'll blow out. Hit a wall wrong and your splitter may come off which will make your vehicle tend to understeer, or you might have a blowout which will cause the vehicle to pull to that side. Your engine may even catch fire if you're running it at too much throttle. (This can be turned off.) - TUNING. You can tune the cars almost how you'd like (within reason, of course!) and the minor differences in tuning can be felt on the track. The game includes native support for MoTeC, a powerful tool used in real-world motorsport, to be used for track data acquisition. (Sadly, the MoTeC acquisition is not live - you can't have it on one monitor and showing live changes in speed, steering wheel angle, etc.) Note that MoTeC is not included with the game, and you should either be familiar with the tool or search for a GTR2 worksheet, as well as how to use the data in tuning your vehicle before it will be useful to you at all. - GOOD AI. Most of the AI will follow a realistic racing line, including when passing a wreck under yellow, overtaking or allowing someone to overtake, or recovering from a wreck. You can even adjust how strongly the AI performs (I believe it goes 75% strength to 125%?) as well as how their racing style is (Timid, Clean, Realistic, Aggressive, Psychotic I believe the choices are). - DAY/NIGHT CYCLE. This is surprisingly one of the things I like most about GTR2. The game includes a day/night cycle which you can adjust the speed on in the menus. It goes from realtime (24 hours == 24 hours) all the way to 60× (24 minutes == 24 hours) and the opponent vehicles will turn their headlights on at dusk and off at dawn. - WEATHER EFFECTS. This isn't as surprising considering many modern games have it, but remember: this was made in 2006. It comes with basic rain effects (road mist, rain fall, rain splash on windscreen) and rain strongly affects traction in 4 stages, shown by the track condition with increasing amount of traction loss: Dry, damp, wet, and flooded. You also have 3 different types of tyres: Slicks (with 3 degrees of compound softness), intermediates, and wet tyres (with 2 degrees of compound softness). - MODDING. The game makes itself easy to mod. Want a new livery for that car you've been eyeing? Go online, find a template and make one. You don't even need to place it in GTR2's archive files if you don't want to, the game will load loose files. You can add custom music as well (note: it plays in order of filename, 0-9 then A-Z). All-in-all the bits above are what make the game great. CONS - PROGRESSION. While this isn't a bad thing in itself, the way it pulls it off leaves a lot to be desired, and could have been worked much better. In order to unlock tracks, you need to win different championships (under the CUSTOM tab in the championships menu) and in order to unlock the different championships, you need to - of all things - get the gold awards in the driving school levels. NOTE: This can be bypassed by placing a blank file titled SDNDTG.DYN in the root GTR2 folder. - NOT UPDATED. There is an updated patch of the game which solves some issues, such as Hockenheimring's AI not turning off their pitlane speed limiter after exiting pitlane, which was not released on Steam. The version you get is incompatible with versions using the most updated version, unless you manually patch the game. - NOT ALL CARS INCLUDED. Ferraris and Porsches are included with the game, however due to the Steam game's design you would need to manually do some stuff to the files in order to drive them - I'd go into detail but it's not permitted by the Guidelines, so if you must know, you can search it. If you do NOT do this, some championships are cut from the game, and any Porsche or Ferrari you see will be from a manufacturer titled "Gray MTR" and unable to be driven outside of tutorial, or if you are able to get the game to glitch where you're able to drive. - TOUCHY HANDLING. If you play with an XBox 360 controller as I do, you might be surprised in that the deadzone is virtually nonexistant. You have to gently nudge the joystick in order to take a turn, and speed-sensitive steering only goes up to a certain amount. Not a major con, and some people certainly may prefer this driving style over the traditional "smash joystick against detent" style on consoles, but it certainly takes some getting used to. OVERALL This game has aged quite well over the years from what I can see. All-in-all it's a decent game, though I would NOT recommend it if you prefer more arcade-styled racing games, such as Burnout: Paradise, Forza Horizon et al. I've got to give it a solid 8 out of 10 personally. Edited 2015-04-08 23:27Z to fix a fragmented sentence. Edited 2015-04-08 23:30Z to re-organize a sentence in the damage section. Edited 2015-12-31 00:59Z to redo lead sentence in the progression section. Lead sentence no longer implies I feel negatively about progression in simulator racing games.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 13, 2015

  After playing Assetta Corsa holy shit. This games physics engine and sounds are a lot better IMHO. The car even stalls when you brake on the clutch and everything. It's fantasticly made.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 25, 2016

  This game is still one of the most enjoyable racing sims around. Graphics are old but you don't really notice it when driving. Only the lack of dynamic cockpit shadows is a real minus. The physics and insane amount of modded content keep this one alive year after year, or decade after decade even.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 30, 2017

  GTR2 is one of the most well known and beloved racing sims for good reason. It is a game that got just about everything right and still holds up, 11 years since its release. It delivers on everything a fanatical GT racing fan like myself would want out of a racing game. Sense of speed is great, car models, interiors and sounds are spot on, physics are excellent and the game has full wheel support with lots of options. It also has mod support as well. The Steam version of this game does have some drawbacks. While I really like being able to own this game once more and being able to play it in 1900x1200 resolution with my G27, buyers should know that Ferrari and Porsche models are not accessible without mods, most likely to licensing issues at the time the game came out on Steam. Also, if you do not run Steam as an administrator and make sure to double click the game from your library and choose "Play Game", your playtime will not be recorded and you won't have access to the Steam overlay. It is a minor issue but it is quite annoying. This issue was also present in GT Legends. Minor laws aside, this game is absolutely brilliant and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of GT and Endurance racing.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 20, 2017

  A quick review: after 13 years, it's still the most complete title so far. 24 hours full cycle, smart AI, variable weather, a full series story and championships. A true study-case for the modern SIM-racing producers (actually most of them only hot lap simulators) learn how to do the stuff.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 20, 2020

  Despite it's old age, I still believe that SimBin's racing sims are the ultimate games for offline singleplayer simracing. With the proper mods (really recommend the 10th anniversary patch), the game looks fresh, runs great, very playable with a gamepad if you don't have a wheel (much more so than Assetto Corsa), and there's plenty of guides on the internet to get those modern direct drive wheels going with good force feedback tweaks. The reason why this sim is one of my most played simracer games (don't be fooled by the few hours on steam, I played the big box release way more than the digital one), is because, well, my PC isn't that great, and this game allows me to throw 60 cars on the track, weather effects, crank everything up, apply HQ texture and mesh patches, and still have a fluid, delicious framerate. For people who have steering wheels, having a nice framerate greatly benefits the quality of your force feedback as well. Combine that with a very mature mod scene (including some fantastic overhaul mods like Power and Glory), fantastic selection of cars and tracks, very good simulation of the FIA GT 2003 and 2004 championships (including the 24 hour endurance races!), competent AI that will race you well (well, as well as AI can anyway), and you get the strongest offline racing experience you can get on PC, in my opinion. It's also worth it getting Race 07 as well, as that game features some other cool tracks and cars and is slightly more polished and modern than this game. Because I love this game so much, RaceRoom ended being my simulator of choice for online racing. Those developers are just that passionate about bringing good racing experiences.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 30, 2013

  IMHO Simply the most complete and best-value PC sim ever made even until 2013 except MAYBE the pay to play ones. As for nowadays rating: Graphics (8/10) -has weather and time change which isn't anywhere else except for some older games which lacked others Physics (8/10) -not at its best when sliding, difficult but rewarding Gameplay (10/10) -many levels in AI performance, tons of setup adjustments which worked, custom weather and daytime Replayability (10/10) -driving lessons, limitless quality mods outhere to download, many preset or custom championships, impressive collection of vehicles for its time Price (10/10) Total: 9.5/10
• gamedeal user

  Nov 27, 2020

  Gtr2 has for a very long time been my favorite race sim . And now it got even better with Crew Chief and VR support http://thecrewchief.org/showthread.php?2012-GTR2-Setup-Instructions-and-Known-Issues With more info here https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/gtr-2-vr-support-not-asking-telling.193327/ And how to hex edit and fix clip planes here https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/using-plugins-with-steam-gtr2.193547/ On top some rf1 plugins will work but it is not the full rf1 API so a lot of plugins will not work and some only partial More features will/ might be added over the next months