Grand Prix 3

Herald rating: * * * * *

Hasbro, PC

All ages, $99.95

Review: Peter Eley

Few of us will ever handle a Formula One car under real conditions. It's just as well.

Piloting a lightweight combination of carbon fibre, rubber and steel at 350km/h, just a few centimetres above the ground, requires a rare mix of nerve and reflexes.

Computer simulations can only provide a taste of the real thing. The best example is probably Microsoft's Flight Simulator, which is good enough to be used for pilot training.

And Grand Prix 3 is probably the most realistic of the motor racing games around today. At its most demanding level, the cars are almost impossibly hard to drive, just as I'm told they are in real life.

But you don't have to push them this hard and there are several "dummy" options which make the game much more playable.

As well as this awesome realism, GP3 is also graphically excellent and gets better the higher up the technology curve you go.

With a Pentium 3, 128mb ram, a decent monitor and a 32mb video card the game is stunning.

Its predecessor, Grand Prix 2, is still very much playable and that's four years old.

In fact, GP3 is very similar — only the visual quality and the cars have really changed.

If you're really keen, a steering wheel set-up is essential. One word of caution, though: GP3 is probably the best Formula One simulation around, but it may just have too much grunt for those who want a mere game.

Peter Eley e-mail: peter_eley@herald.co.nz