There are some games, or should I say simulations, which makes you beg the question why would anyone bother to make this game? Unless you are a diehard speedway fan the FIM Speedway Grand Prix 4 is likely to be the game which poses that question.

For the most part, Excalibur publishes reasonable simulations of a number of vehicles; one for every niche group, so I guess it was only time before they updated the FIM Speedway game.

The game consists of you taking your bike around a not very large course, although there are a number of very similar courses to explore, going round and round until the race ends. There are the usual option to tweak your bike so you have a better chance of going that tad bit faster.

Now, with such a limited amount of game play, Excalibur has attempted to spice things up with both a multiplayer game and an online version. In each you can choose from a list of venues and of presumably famous speedway riders.

Now, this could all be a bit of fun, except for a number of issues. The first has to be the really poor controls which are poorly laid out. Well, that can be changed, but what can’t be changed is the general unresponsiveness of the controls compared to a modern car racing game. This is not helped when you discover that the programmers have, for the most part, failed to put any spectators in the game, even though you can hear the crowd roar, they are generally conspicuous by their absence.

I guess if you’re a real speedway fan, then you may get a lot of fun out of this, but for the casual gamer the learning curve is too steep, the controls too unresponsive and the general presentation only just above average.

5

Charles Packer