Speed 3 Grand Prix is not your typical Grand Prix game. It doesn’t force you to learn all about the minutiae of keeping an F1 car on the track. It doesn’t require you to drive responsibly, memorizing what gears you …
Speed 3 Grand Prix is not your typical Grand Prix game. It doesn’t force you to learn all about the minutiae of keeping an F1 car on the track. It doesn’t require you to drive responsibly, memorizing what gears you need to use for which corners, which tyres to use, or when to take your pit stops.
No, Speed 3 Grand Prix is an arcade experience through and through. It has more in common with Burnout 2 than with F1 2020, and so you can put away your R&D masterplan, shelve your team management playbook, and forget about the technical specifications of dozens of cars. Everything happens on the track.
Here’s a brief overview of everything you need to know about Speed 3 Grand Prix.
First up, there are several different ways to customize the experience of racing, available in the settings.
For instance, you can toggle the rumble feature on and off. It’s enabled by default, and we recommend that you keep it that way because the force feedback really connects you with the on-screen action, letting you know when an opponent has nudged you from behind, or giving a tactile dimension to the spectacle of your car exploding against the sidings.
Then there’s the minimap, a little dynamic map that sits on the bottom-left of the screen showing you where you are on the track and warning you about any upcoming corners. Again, this is enabled by default and we only recommend switching it off if you know the tracks like the back of your hand.
Lastly, there are tilt controls. This setting lets you steer by tilting your Switch. This is disabled by default, and if you’re playing in portable mode we absolutely recommend that you keep it that way because it’s tough to follow the action when it’s constantly changing orientation.
As for TV mode, it’s very much a matter of personal preference but for our money the thumbstick control option is much more responsive and intuitive.
There are three single player modes in Speed 3 Grand Prix: Tournament, Quick Race, and Time Trial.
Tournament is the main campaign mode, and it sees you racing on the game’s six tracks in succession before repeating the process at the next level, until you’ve raced 24 times.
Quick Race is exactly what it sounds like: an instant race on a track of your choosing just for larks.
Time Trial, meanwhile, sees you racing on an empty track to beat your own best time. On each lap you’ll be able to see your own ghost from the previous lap, which helps you refine your approach.
In each mode you can choose a car. In the Tournament mode these are limited to the Formula One cars: the TMTT 73 LX, the FRory 992, the X XP31+, the GR 9 SE, the Bennot 6LS, and the McLeerders GS2.
There are some unlockable road cars available in the other modes, though, including the RoXs DL, the Dorel RT3, the Mc Red X, the Begon A2, the Monterolo X2, the Grantham C3, the Asson CLA, the ITAC E9, and the TWLGHT S3.
They all handle the same, so it’s just about completing your collection and driving a car you like the look of.
Quick Race and Time Trial are both available as split-screen multiplayer modes, too.
As we’ve already indicated, racing is a simple affair – which isn’t to say it’s easy.
You accelerate with ZR, brake with ZL, and steer with the left stick. In addition you can change the camera with R shoulder and look behind you with both L shoulder and X. And that’s your lot.
Each race is made up of a set number of laps, and you’ve got seven opponents to leave in your dust. You can do this by overtaking them, of course, but also by taking them out – nudging and barging their vehicles so that they spin off the road and explode into flames.
It goes without saying that you can get taken out too, but fortunately it doesn’t take long to get up and running again. Speed 3 Grand Prix is as fast-paced as they come, and at times it looks like a scene from Mad Max: Fury Road, with exploding vehicles littering the road ahead of you.
It’s possible to chain takedowns, too, with your total being reset to zero whenever you yourself get taken down.
As we mentioned, there are six tracks to race on: United Kingdom, a fairly straightforward course in clear late morning conditions; United States, a cloudy, grungy early morning course; Germany, a woodland course on a rainy afternoon; Russia, a cloudy course at sunset; Japan, a neon-specked night-time course through city streets; and Superspeedway, a super-straightforward oval course in clear conditions.
Your main enemy in Speed 3 Grand Prix is poor light. The cloudy, sunset, and night time courses force you to rely on your minimap more than usual, since your visibility is restricted.
Your other main enemy, aside from the drivers that are constantly trying to overtake you and/or shove you into the sidings, is the game’s corners. Give yourself plenty of time to brake coming off a straight into a hairpin bend, or you’ll end up a flaming wreck.
And that’s about all there is to it. Good luck out there! Check out the game by clicking here.
