Grand Prix Manager

You Know The Intro Just Said that GP Manager 2 is the 'sequel' to GP Manager? Er, well, it sort of depends on your definition of the word, to be honest. My dictionary says this: Sequel, se'kwel, n. That which follows; a succeeding part.

Fair enough. Here's the definition of the word 'sequel' as I see it, however, when used in conjunction with GPM2... Sequel, se'kwel, n. The same as before, but this time the bugs are fixed and it actually works. You see? If you wanted to be especially harsh you could say it's a bit of a fiddle, really. Mind you, having said that, there are some additions and 'tweaks' included, so I suppose I'd better give you a rough outline of what they are.

(1) The interface has been jiggled with, making navigation through the myriad screens a tad easier. Nevertheless, there's still some backtracking required when you need to visit inter-related screens (which makes it easy to 'lose your thread', as it were).

(2) The drivers' feedback after test sessions is more helpful. You're told specifically what they did/didn't find edifying about their car set-ups, meaning it's less of a guessing game this time round.

(3) When on the overhead in-race track screen, the cars don't 'disappear' any more, which was always a wee bit of a bummer in the first version. (0 Massive Understatement Ltd.)

(4) There's telemetry info during races, but when you compare it to the telemetry graphs from Crammond's superb GP2 it's pretty nonsensical. Just squiggles, really.

(5) The helicopter view: a small pip in which pixel sizes are doubled, meaning your tiny svga dot of a car becomes a slightly less tiny vga dot of a car. (Or something.)

(6) And that's about it, really.

Wouldn't it be nice...

In a really pleasant 'fluffy' world, where a British driver would win every Grand Prix, petrol and fags were free, and every house had a special tap that spouted beer, owning a copy of the first GP Manager - the bugged one - would automatically entitle you to swap it for this one. In the cold light of reality, however, you're going to have to fork out again. Or not, of course, seeing as even in its new 'it actually works' guise, GPM2 is still the shonkiest of the three F1 management titles. The improvements that MicroProse have made are worth while, and they've obviously thought about the feedback (and the complaints) they received after the first game was released. Having played all the recent F1 manager sims. I'd say this was undoubtedly the best of the bunch, though there's still a long way to go in terms of presentation. Ho hum.