Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends

Quick Stats:

Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: 15 August 2012
Platform: PC
Genre: Racing
Last played: 22 May 2020

Introduction:

One genre that I haven’t yet explored as part of my very WW2 heavy start to this backlog is racing games. I actually grew up almost exclusively playing Gran Turismo games as a kid, with GT1 and GT2 being my main games for most of primary school and GT4 dominating most of my late primary school and secondary school years (sorry GT3).

Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends is of course a game about the supercar manufacturer Ferrari. I’ve also heard that it’s not particularly great either, but I purchased this and so I think that it’s time I got around to playing (and hopefully beating) the game.

Heads up though, please visit the following PC Gaming Wiki page in order to get this game to work on modern systems. The Games for Windows Live (GFWL) saving function does not work out of the box and so you will need to do some manual tinkering if you are on Windows 10 like me.

The theme song for Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends

Playthrough:

Session 1: Golden Era – A Good Foundation to The Rookies

Time: 1hr 45m

So before I even got to start playing this game I had to spend a good hour or so actually getting it to work. The GFWL functionality was not working at all and you cannot actually save the game if you cannot sign in (or create a local profile which also wasn’t working). I referred to a guide in the introduction above, but also if you’ve ever logged into GFWL on your PC before, I recommend going into the profiles screen and removing your profile before playing the game as that’s the only way I got it to work.

In addition to this, I had hoped to play the game on my Thrustmaster T150 wheel, but I couldn’t find any way for the game to recognise the wheel and even using the “custom wheel” setting in the controls menu didn’t bare fruit as it recognised everything except steer left and steer right (which funnily enough are important functions in a racing game). So instead I will be playing with a DualShock 4 controller using DS4Windows.

One of the rarer Ferrari’s in the game. Not one I’ve come across before in a racing game.

So the game itself… meh. It’s not had too much going for it so far. Not helped by the fact that in this session 11 of the 17 races I completed were either on the same layout of Monza or Silverstone. There were however some interesting cars along the way, which was a change from the norm in racing games where you start driving a hatchback. The saving grace for this session was the Misty Loch course, set in beautiful Scotland. Teh track layout itself wasn’t anything to write home about but the map is quite beautiful. I crashed getting this picture too, but I wanted to show this off.

Misty Loch is striking, much unlike Silverstone and Monza’s recreations,

So far I have completed 3 out of 35 of the missions (3 out of 10 for the Golden Age) so that’s at least a chunk of the game taken on. Plus it only crashed once! Which funnily enough was when I opened GFWL to see what an achievement was.

Session 2: Golden Era – The 250 Challenge

Time: 1hr 30m (3hr 16m)

This entire session was dedicated to one of the campaign missions and the biggest within the Golden Era campaign. Here you are basically stuck with the Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, so I hope you like it! Whilst I didn’t really enjoy this campaign, I decided that I needed to have music on in the background as having no music in a game this arcadey is bizarre.

Here is the 250 Testa Rossa, which believe me gets dull after a while.

This shouldn’t have taken long, but there were two issues that I came across. In one event, which is like an endurance event on the Misty Loch map where you’ve fallen way behind and need to catch up, I got flipped near the end of the last lap by the AI and therefore needed to restart and it took forever.

That doesn’t look like a survivable incident. The real casualty was the 10 minutes of my time that I shall never get back

Then something that wasn’t really my fault, on the “Day Off” challenge, I finally got to drive another car and so I was incredibly excited. However I was hardwired into how the 250 Testa Rossa handles and acts, so the Ferrari California was never going to be easy to control and in fact I ploughed my car into the barriers on the final corner and had to start again… yup.

Session 3: Golden Era – Drivers Training 101 and Seasonal Changes

Time: 1hr 32m (4hr 48m)

Well we’re back playing this again and honestly not much changed between the previous missions and this one. Funnily enough actually there was even less variation between the challenges and less opponents as most of the missions completed in this session were just me alone on the track. Also, I’m getting real tired of Monza because they use that for basically every single one of the Golden era missions in one form or another.

Got to drive a variety of cards in Drivers Training 101, an improvement from the mission before.

There was a pretty funny moment on Silverstone however where an AI car absolutely totalled itself and this happened just as I was passing it, which was actually hilarious to watch (and yes, I managed to capture a screenshot this time). Overall though, the missions are beginning to get gimmicky as they’ve run out of ideas. The obstacles on Monza and the “your hand is cramped, you cannot change gears” missions were both dumb. I have given up at this stage with secondary challenges as I just want to rattle through the missions.

This was followed by an impressive flip, a highlight in a dull session.

Session 4: Golden Era – The Big League and Celebration Tour

Time: 2hr 0m (6hr 49m)

So this was technically two sessions, but one took place in a weird “I’m still awake at 3am and I need something that will put me to sleep mood” and then the other was driven by me not actually finishing the whole series and feeling like I needed to get to a more definite cut off point. Basically what I’m trying to say is that this game feels like a mountain to climb and I do not understand how the Golden Era is still not over.

I must say The Big League and Celebration Tour show this game at its worst and how it could have been better. The Big League has you drive a single car across lots of different qualifying events, but frustratingly we are still on the exact same rotation of circuits. One thing I found funny was how the last race of this challenge was on Misty Loch and was 10 laps of pure boredom, so much so that even the weather on the track was miserable unlike its normal picturesque self.

Get used to seeing this grid of identical cars at this stage in the campaign.

My other big issue with The Big League was the wildcard entry in challenge. You finally get to drive something different, the utterly stunning Ferrari Daytona. However, you only get to drive it in this one mission. Also, the mission “Change of Pace” itself requires you to ‘go easy on the competition’ but in reality is just frustrating as trying to force yourself to come 7th when the AI is spinning out all over the place is just not fun. This for me was the worst mission so far and feels like it was wedged in just to add to the total playtime. In fact a lot of this game feels like that. As if someone said “this has to be at least 20 hours” and so they padded it with unmemorable events.

The only chance you get to drive this magnificent car.

Inversely however, the shorter 4 event “Celebration Tour” challenge was much more fun (despite suffering the track limitations again) and felt like if they would have limited the other car challenges to four races, perhaps with more unique scenarios, that this could have been a vastly better game. The 330 P4 was also just way more fun to drive too compared to almost anything in the Golden Era. Here’s hoping this means the Silver Era and Modern Era to come will continue that trend.

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