by Jay "THE FLEA" Wade
It’s hard to come up with something original in a racing game. Capcom has done something different with racing games, not in the gameplay but in the graphics.
Think of Auto Modellista as an arcade Gran Turismo racer with Speed Racer graphics.
The cars are realistic looking only look like they are in a well animated cartoon.
You build a garage to store your cars and you can customize it and decorate it with objects you win in races.
You can customize real cars and make them sportier looking by adding special parts or add your own logos. You can even design the logo your self.
The graphics look wild while racing, you can see the wind when your reaching over 100 mph.
The game has high running frame rate and the anime graphics are very colorful. It runs fast with no pop up.
While the Auto Modellista is great eye candy, the gameplay and control could have been a lot smoother.
The game plays more arcade then simulator.
You can hit a wall at 200mph and the car will bounce right off, some turns are just easier to ram the wall and bounce around the corner then slowing down and missing it.
The cars suffer no damage so there’s no reason not to. This really hurts the challenge that is racing.
The control takes a lot to get used to. At first your all over the road, the cars handle very loose, and you can loose control very easy.
The game gives most of the good cars at the beginning of the game, most all the cars you earn are just extra cars that are worse or no better. So you really don’t get that excited when you open a new car.
Championship mode doesn’t have a lot of gameplay. There’s five championships with about six in each. You can finish this game in a weekend.
There is many multiplayer modes, including online play.
It does require a broadband connection, which is understandable, dial-up would lag so bad you’ll never be able to keep up.
But it’s cool to view how other people set their cars up and their own cool custom designs.
Overall I liked Auto Modellista especially for it’s graphics, it just needs more gameplay, damage, control and modes to make this game a classic.