Welcome to DTM Experience 2013, perhaps the most frustrating game I’ve ever played. It isn’t that it is a really bad game per se – I’ve played far worse, but these were ten years ago on a Playstation One – it’s just that there are several really silly things that make it an annoying game. I refused to play it for two weeks as I couldn’t bear to think about playing it again.
Take the pitlane for instance. In most racing games you’re free to pit for repairs and quite a few racing series (including the DTM in real life) insist that you make a trip through the pitlane to change tyres and the like during the race. You can’t in DTM Experience 2013; it refuses entry into the pitlane as if you’re not good enough for it – “you pitting types aren’t allowed, you scum” etc. This would be bearable (if a tad unrealistic) if the game didn’t force you into the pitlane plenty of times during a race (my record is 18 during a 100% race around Brands Hatch) for non-existent penalties.
If you think I’m being overly picky or am just a bad driver, I’ll give you this example of a penalty during that race at Brands Hatch. You know the AstroTurf on the exit of Paddock Hill Bend? You know, the same AstroTurf that in real life often gets more than two wheels over it, including in DTM when it went there? Yeah, that one. I was gunning it to keep up with a car that had just lapped me for about the fifth time and put a wheel on the AstroTurf.
“Warning: Corner Cutting!” popped in a font that made it look it like someone really wasn't happy with my supposed cheating. At that point I wanted to punch the man who decided that it would be a good idea to implement a broken system into the game, or at least sit him down and let him play his own game and watch him get caught out by his stupid anti-cheating system.
“How”, I pondered, “can this game be so unbearable?” I was flummoxed by it – sure I had the penalties on realistic but even so it should allow for some leeway of some sort, I thought as I trundled through the pitlane for the millionth time that day.
Ah, yes, the pitlane. For reasons that I’ve given up trying to figure out, every time you go into the pitlane the game forces you into cockpit view until you get to the pit exit. There’s no option to override this and I cannot see the logic behind this.
I have many gripes with the game (as you can probably tell by now) but this is my biggest bugbear. The pitlane is very narrow, so why not force the player to drive through it with a face full of scaffolding that would make even the most experienced builder in the world quiver at the knees? No, me neither.
While on the subject of the pitlane, during practice and qualifying session – when amazingly you are free to enter and exit at will – the AI cars often get stuck at the exit for some reason. As mentioned above, pitlanes are quite narrow and so you cannot drive around the car that is headbutting the barrier so violently it looks as though it wants to mate with the Armco, so you do what any sensible person would do and wait for the car to get out of the way.
After about fifteen seconds, an AI car comes out of his pitbox, ignores the fact I’m sat there waiting for his mate to stop thumping the wall and just drives straight through me and the stricken car. “Hmm”, I think, “I’ll try this too” and like many tourists with trolleys between platforms 9 and 10 at Kings Cross end up with a sore nose and – you guessed it – another sodding penalty.
Can you see why I left the game alone for two weeks before playing it again for this review?
You would be forgiven for thinking that I have nothing nice to say about DTM Experience 2013. Despite the massive flaws outlined above, and more (there’s no online multiplayer mode for instance), the game’s menus look superb, the game itself loads really quickly, and in the loading screen there’s fun facts about the DTM championship, too.
Most importantly though, the graphics are top-notch; Brands Hatch, in particular, looks resplendent and the liveries on the cars are very well done, too. Do the positives outweigh the negatives? They don’t by a mile, but there is a (small) ray of sunshine: anyone who buys DTM Experience 2013 will be upgraded to DTM Experience 2014 when it comes out, for free.
If I’m honest, I think that DTM Experience 2013 has potential – if the graphics were paired to a game engine that didn’t resemble Race 07 – it Is 2014, after all – then it would become a game I wouldn’t be so negative about and would enjoy playing. Ultimately, I think that this game was rushed; if SimBin took another eight months to develop it before pushing it onto Steam it would be a game worth investing in. SimBin are great at making fantastic games and I have every faith in them that DTM Experience 2014 will deliver what ’13 was billed to, and more.
All images © SimBin.
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