So much potential

Tourist Trophy has so much potential to be a great game. The riding physics are superbly detailed. There is a great variety of tracks and bikes (which, as you play the game more, you will come realize are all very different). To top it off, for me, the biggest appeal of Tourist Trophy was that I had never played a motorcycle racing game before. Since I had been a fan of Gran Turismo since the first game came out, I just knew that Polyphony Digital could make a great bike racing game.

Unfortunately, PD took this fantastic game engine and handicapped it by adding ridiculous time penalties and all but eliminating the close racing. Let me explain: in this game, you get 10sec penalties for going off the track or making contact with another rider. That by itself is only mildly annoying and would force you to become a better rider. However, these penalties become infuriating when an AI rider bumps into you or pushes you off the track and then continues on while you have to slow down. The computer doesn't get penalties, only you do. It's maddening to watch a rider that you have been dicing it out with for a couple of laps stray slightly into the grass but still keep going, knowing that you would have just thrown away your whole race. Even worse is when you finally catch an AI rider only to subtly get bumped and loose the whole thing right there.

The other strike against this game is the actual racing format. To the best of my knowledge (I haven't completed the game yet), there are no standing starts. At the start of each race, the riders are spaced so far apart that, if you can qualify first, you will probably never see another rider. I suppose that, in light of the computer's immunity to the penalty system, a standing start would be a nightmare for the human player, but this format makes each event feel more like a time trial than an actual race. I've watched a lot of real motorcycle racing (MotoGP mostly), and the thing that really draws in the fans is the close racing. The lead can change four or five times in an hour long race, with two or three riders dueling for the lead (and, yes, occasionally touching without the world ending). That kind of thing simply will not happen in Tourist Trophy.

But for those two drawbacks, Tourist Trophy would be a spectacular game and I would recommend it to anyone looking to a slightly different racing game. I sincerely hope that PD makes Tourist Trophy 2 soon and they unleash it's full potential.