Adam Wolf

IGN

Hands-on with GT Pro Series
We got behind the "Wiile" in this revamped racer. New videos included.
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US, October 17, 2006 - Back in 2003 there was a Japanese racing game for GameCube that looked to bring the pure form of simulated racing to Nintendo fans. That game was GT Cube. It brought a bit of fun, kicked a little ass, and ran its course quite well, but never saw the light of day here in America. Now that the age of the Wii is upon us, the GT series is emerging from the woodwork under a new name,
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. It's still the same game from 2003, features the same cars from three years back, and hosts the same 11 tracks a few of you die-hard importers may have played through, but now offers a very intuitive angle on the world of racing: The Wii-mote. And though nearly everything from the original game is kept entirely in tact, GT Pro Series may still end up being a great choice for racing fans during the Wii launch, as the addition of Wii control has actually added a ton of entertainment value to the package.


At its core, GT Pro Series is a semi-simulated racing game. That is to say it plays like games such as Project Gotham Racing or Need for Speed, but doesn't go into the border-line obsessive amount of detail and precision of the Gran Turismo series. While the game is a bit more forgiving in the control department and harbors a bit of a rally feel, the package does offer over 80 licensed cars, including everything from a Nissan Skyline, Lancer Evo VIII, Toyota Celica, to the Mazda Rx-7, giving the game a bit more legitimacy to the world of racing.

Players will have the opportunity to grab a car, tune it up with anything from a new suspension, new tires, brakes, engines, and weight reduction kits, and hit the road in either race or drift competitions.

What really sets the game apart from its Cube release, however, is the incorporation of the Wii-mote, specifically when applied to the new wheel shell attachment. Much like other Wii racing games such as Excite Truck, GT Pro Series uses the Wii-mote in the classic position, having players hold the remote like an NES controller with their thumbs on both the d-pad and 1 and 2 buttons. To set the game aside from the norm, however, Ubisoft is including the wheel attachment (jokingly called the "Wiile" by developers) to give the controller a more solid feel. The attachment comes at no extra charge along with both GT Pro Series and Monster 4X4, and - call us crazy - it seriously works. The shell itself has a very solid feel (To be honest I personally was expecting a hollow piece of junk, simply because it doesn't need any internal guts to weigh it down), and it feels great to wrap your hands around a larger and more accurate wheel representation.

If the only difference in Wii control for GT Pro Series was centered around the wheel attachment, however, there'd still be a pretty big cause for alarm. Luckily the team responsible for adapting the game to the Wii format put a ton of effort into tweaking how the controller relates to the game, and how much user customization is given. The game offers four solid control schemes, changing everything from the gas and brake buttons to the handbrake and shifting, but more importantly allows users to tweak exactly how the Wii-mote turns.

Included in the control section is the ability to tweak both the controller's "dead zone", as well as the max amount of degrees needed to turn the controller to its fullest. We'll reserve our final judgment for the review next month, but as it stands right now GT Pro Series is looking to a game that, while a bit dated, still has a ton of appeal through the power of the Wii-mote.

Be sure to check out our latest videos of the game in action. GT Pro Series is scheduled to release some time in the Wii's launch window this November.


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