Replays are still restricted to 20 seconds, despite other games offering coverage of complete races. The graphics frame rates are hard-limited to 25fps, just as in GP2, and this is unnecessary in light of today's cutting edge PCs. Everywhere you look, you can see that the game is little more than an evolution of GP2 - some menus such as those for car setup and control configuration are virtually identical! It wouldn't be so bad if it were all up to scratch, but in some areas you can see that the basic architecture is getting very creaky. GP3 is an excellent game, but not a revolutionary one. You'll be made to fight hard to make the podium, particularly at the Pro and Ace levels, and it's all the more rewarding when you succeed. But put that aside and their behavior is remarkably realistic. Sadly the drivers in GP3 don't appear to be modeled upon their real life counterparts - for example Monaco specialists like Giancarlo Fisichella, Jean Alesi and Mika Salo don't always pull anything out of the bag here, and many drivers in the game put blocking maneuvers on you when you're trying to overtake, which I've not seem them do in real life. You can run side-by-side with these cars with the confidence that if contact is made, the fault was almost assuredly yours. In fact, GP3 's AI is absolutely superb! - they actually fight you aggressively for position yet always maintain a keen sense of positional awareness. Nor are they immune to the odd mistake, and it's always gratifying to see an opponent spin off in the middle of a hard-fought duel.

The AI cars are not so lucky, and can be seen spouting smoke (or even flames) from their exhausts. The developers of F1 World Grand Prix could learn something from this. And whilst we're at it, the entire menu system is worthy of a mention - it's a classic piece of intelligent design, and allows you to set up your desired race with a few mouse clicks without sacrificing the wealth of menu options that GP2 was renown for. Total time taken from opening the box to driving the first race: 5 minutes. The game also comes with a Quickrace option that lets you drive a 3 lap race without any fuss. These get switched off as you progress through the game's five difficulty levels, thus putting the onus on you to learn the skills required whilst providing a beautifully judged learning curve. The beginner driver can jump straight into the thick of things using the excellent array of driver aids, letting the computer take care of gearing, braking, throttle and steering control, and providing an ideal line trace, thus helping keep the awesome 750bhp on tap under harness. The initiation process in GP3 is not so extreme, and thankfully doesn't take years - this is no Grand Prix Legends.

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