Test Drive Le Mans: 24 Hours

  This is yet another attempt from Infogrames to give the Test Drive series a comeback, in hopes of bringing the series back to the greatness of the good ol’ days of Test Drive 1, 2, &3. 4, 5, and 6 failed horribly, and V-rally didn't take the series anywhere. 

  The good game in the TD series was Test Drive Off Road. Now Le Mans has changed that. While not successful in terms of money, it was successful in giving the aging series its first magnificent game since Test Drive 3.   

  Le Mans has realistic physics, detailed courses, good handling, and just about everything else that could make a racer great.

                     Graphics

  Beautiful! It really shows what the DC can do, and is the first game to have photo-realistic cars that I know of! It puts over 5 million polys on screen per second, even though the Dreamcast is supposed to be limited to 3million polygons per second. Just marvelous. 

  Each car is great detailed, with each sponsors name on the car, imitating how the car really looks in real life. While you can still easily tell that the cars are fake, they still look darn good!  

  The sky is also cool. if you pay attention, you can actually see the sky change color, go from sun up, to sundown, to night. To light grey skies, to dark clouds. It can even change weather in the middle of a race. This game is one of the best looking games on Dreamcast, giving this game an easy 100% in this category!

Gameplay

Fun, fast, and furious. The 3 F's. Every good racer has to have 'em, and Le Mans has all of 'em!
  Fast: Heck, your car can go nearly 300 mph! If that aint fast, than Sonic's a sloth.
  Furious: In expert mode, other cars try and ram you off the road, there are tons of twist and turns in each track to make each a challenge, you have to time your pit stops, so you can fill up on gas and get some new tires before your tires blow out, you run out of gas, or lose your top spot! The AI is smart, and well, the game can be fast.
  Fun: Come on, how could racing a fake car on a fake track not be fun? Ok, so some of you aint into games, but if you are, this is the sweet part. The AI is very intelligent, and can be a big challenge. The courses are very hard, and can be very long, and there are 7 to unlock (bringing the total number of courses to ten). There are 11 championships to unlock, each harder than the last. There are a total of 40 cars to unlock, each with its unique handling and look. The game is fast, the game is furious, and most of all, the game is fun.
  

Sound

  This game has fairly average tunes. Each course has its own, jazzy theme that matches the mood of the game. And for anyone who doesn't like jazz, can listen to rock. But not the loud rock from EMINEM, but nice, calm rock. You can switch the music in the options menu. 

  This game has realistic racing sounds. The race starts with horns blowing and people screaming, heck if you have surround sound and a decent imagination you could literally think you are really there! It also has the standard screeching and bumping sounds like any other racer. The sounds are so realistic, and the music isn't annoying like "cough" Crazy Taxi "cough."

Replay value

  Good news my now bored-out-of-your-mind audience, were almost done. The replay value is very good; with over 40 cars to unlock and 7 unlockable courses, you will be playing and replaying this game, testing out each on each car, fooling with the weather, and heck, just having fun!
  The Dreamcast version is the best out of the three versions. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I am referring to the PC and PS2 versions. When the game was ported to PS2, it lost stuff along the way. The handling wasn't as good, and the graphics seemed almost down graded from the DC original. The PC version is an absolute disgrace, with controls that are not good for a PC gamers, and bad car handling. The graphics are good though, but that’s about it.

Graphics: 10

Gameplay: 10

Sound: 9

Presentation: 9

Replay Value: 9

Worth Buying Now? 9

Overall: 10

nuckles87