You can blame Speedvision for this. They have me hooked on Touring Car racing! And World Rally! And Formula One! But not boat racing. Nope, just cannot get into speedboats. To me, a boat is a fiberglass hole in the water into which someone throws money.

I have been watching British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) racing for quite a while, and have grown very fond of it. Just incredibly tight, close racing. The cars are evenly matched, and driver skill and vehicle set-up is very much the deciding factor. I have been trying to find a sim to simulate that experience, and have found one. STCC2 is the second incantation of this series, the original having been released in 1999. It had its share of problems, and most have been fixed in this version. However, STCC 2 is not without its faults. This sim is a recreational of the 2000 Swedish Touring Car Series. The drivers, vehicles, and track signage are all adapted for the PC. It's just like you are there!

You have the choice of all the cars in the Series, including the BMW 320i, Audi A4 Quattro, Alfa Romeo 156, Volvo S40, Nissan Primera and Honda Accord. All are realistically rendered and look fantastic. This sim includes seven tracks from Sweden and Norway, two of which do not host a STCC race but were added into the sim for variety. You can very the weather from either wet or dry, and another nice touch is that all tracks can be run either forward or in reverse, thereby giving you double the amount of tracks. Nice for replay value.

GRAPHICS - You can tell from these screenshots that the game does look beautiful. These thumbs are with every possible option turned on. The nice thing about STCC2 is that you do not need a Cray to run it. The recommended system is a P2-300 with 64 megs of RAM, along with a 4meg 3D card. Very reasonable specs. I experienced no slow downs at all, even with a full field moving on screen. This was nice. Real nice was the wet weather effects. You could here the rain hitting the windshield, and the headlights accurately reflected off the road and other vehicles. Even brake lights come on, along with flames out of the exhausts when shifting. Very nice indeed. The forests, mountains and sky looked good, but up close they were just sprites. It could have looked better, but would have needed a stronger PC to push them. Still, they added nicely to the game. The spectators left a lot to be desired, as it was the same bunch of ten people over and over again. Rain or shine. Same clothes!  The car interiors are nicely detailed, if a bit plain. 

SOUND - Probably the weakest part of this sim, if any game was screaming for a third party sound pack, this is the one. All the cars sound alike, and the sound is just annoying. The Honda Civics' around town with the Borla exhausts and 6" tips sound better. Shriller, screaming. Theses sound like a turbine, not a 295hp four cylinder. When downshifting, you get a pop but its often like a fart, not the POW POW you hear on TV. There is very little tire screech, which would help A LOT when trying to feel whether the car is under or over-steering (NASCAR 4 excels in this respect). Also helpful would be the sound of contact with other vehicles. You often don't know that you are rubbing till you are facing the wrong way on the track. Not good. You do hear the rain falling, which is a nice touch. 

GAMEPLAY - Probably the most important part (you think??), overall the sim plays very well. The tracks are a joy to race on, as some would be great bike tracks. In fact, Anderstorp held the FIM Grand Prix until 1988. And since you can run the tracks in reverse, you can have two tracks for the price of one. Not a bad idea in real life, either. I have two major complaints about the sim. The first is the physics. I had a hell of a time trying to feel what the car was doing. Trying to detect under-steer became an exercise in watching the monitor and see if the image was "skipping", denoting that the fronts were hopping/sliding. As for over-steer, this was real annoying. If the rear began to come around, you should be able to just steer into it to avoid being spun around. With front drive, you also stay on the gas, so as the fronts will pull you out of it. However, STCC2 has a "canned spin". Which means, after the car reaches a certain point, it is spinning no matter what you do. This was incredibly annoying as often the slightest touch pushed the car, and then I was around. Tire wear was also a factor in this, as the car became even more touchy -as it should BTW. But in conjunction with the spin, just very annoying.

My second major complaint will be the AI. These guys are slow. Very slow. I often lapped the entire field, even on the hardest setting. They are fast in certain corners, and very slow in others. There is just no figuring them out. The backmarkers will race with you, and where is the blue flag? They will also slam into you in a turn and spin you around. However, if you slam into them as they move into your way while being lapped, YOU get a black flag! Very, very annoying. To solve this, race on-line. Internet multi-player is very good, and leagues have sprung up across the world supporting both STCC and STCC2.

Besides Touring Cars, you can also race the Swedish version of IROC, using Chevrolet Camaro's on all the same courses in a Series. These were fun, but had the same physics as the Touring Cars. If you go out and win the STCC Series, you get to run a DICE open wheeled car (looks like a Formula Three car). Very odd physics for this one, though, so I didn't race it.

One minor complaint would be the steering input. Force feedback is almost non-existent. And there is about a three inch dead zone in the center of you steering travel. I had to turn all my FF forces to low in order to get an easy turning wheel, thereby just rolling through the deadzone. There should be an adjustment for this. I was surprised there wasn't.

OVERALL - If you are looking for a Touring Car sim, this is not a bad choice at all. It's also one of the few out there at this point (the only other that comes to mind for BTCC type racing is TOCA2. STCC2 is better. Sports Car GT is physics wise a better sim, but graphically poorer.) If you learn to work around the physics and AI oddities, the racing can be very good. If you just do multi-player, the game would be an excellent sim as all players would be playing under the same physics issues. Once I was used to it, the game was a very good experience. Was it worth importing from England? You bet.

SCORE - 80%

POSITIVES - great graphics, large track selection, excellent choice of cars

Dave
04/15/01

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