Grand Prix Manager

The Good
The atmosphere the most, it's an old game now but if you're in for a bit of nostalgia you can really feel at home with this; an amazing soundtrack to the game and great detail involved in the game itself. You can set wing angles etc. and choose whatever sponsors you want.

The Bad
If you've seen GPM2 then all you can say is, I wish it had GPM2 features implemented.

The Bottom Line
If you love Grand Prix 2; you will love this. It goes hand in hand with GP2 and will keep you addicted for awhile.

The Good
A huge amount of attention to detail has been shown in almost every aspect of GPM. The player can adjust practically everything from the sponsors and staff to the tire pressures and the wing angles on the cars. All the drivers, teams and tracks from the 1995 F1 season are represented here, along with some fictional teams and drivers that can be optionally included. As it happens, the fictional drivers come in useful later in the game as the player is able to traverse a massive forty season career with his or her team, and so by year twenty all of the original drivers will have retired!

The race section of the game involves a top-down view of the track with small cars going round to simulate the race. While this is rather primitive compared to today's games, it is a novel way of not using much processing power while still communicating a lot of information about the race; the player can see overtaking maneuvers, etc from the top-down view. This view is also broken at intervals by fullscreen animations of various events during the race, such as a car making a pitstop. Overall the race section is very absorbing, accompanied by a background soundtrack recorded at a real F1 event.

GPM also has a large amount of re-playability in that many of the game's details can be edited before a player starts their campaign, such as the driver and team names, the number of points awarded after each race, and even the order of the tracks. By editing such details you can end up with radically different playing experiences.

The Bad
The large number of adjustments a player can make is also the game's downfall, as anyone without a reasonable grasp of Formula 1 will find the game inaccessible without a lot of practice. It can also be difficult to see the effect of such changes as tire pressures or wing angles; the same settings will produce different results at different times. This can be frustrating after a while. GPM is a difficult game.

Unfortunately, it is also quite a buggy game. While a couple of patches have been produced, some bugs still remain. I will not go into them here but suffice it to say they are annoying at times.

The Bottom Line
Grand Prix Manager is a very in-depth simulation of managing a Formula 1 team. While the game can be very difficult for novices, once a player has gained experience it can also be very satisfying. An absorbing game!