Keyboard, gamepad, or the wheel; all are acceptable tools of the trade, but only one does GTR Evolution justice. If you just can’t guess or simply don’t want to, it is the wheel that I’m praising. With my Momo racing wheel, the game handled great.

Even as a little kid, I’ve always been fascinated by cars; all cars. Trucks, sports cars, formula cars, go-carts, basically anything with four wheels fascinated me. While in GTR Evolution you don’t get to race trucks, rigs, SUVs, or ATVs, you do get to race a wide variety of sports automobiles. As far as I could tell, while the gas pedal makes all the cars accelerate and while the wheel makes them turn, each car actually handles a bit differently.

The game features a wide variety of racing classes ranging from the not so speedy Mini Cooper, to the almost faster-than-light BMW Formula 1 race car. How you tackle the game is entirely up to you. Unlike so many other racing games where you have to unlock the next race, in GTR Evolution everything is unlocked from the start. All you have to do is select your racing class, chose from the available cars (if available in that particular class), and depending on the game-mode you either get to select your racing track, or if you’re in a preset tournament the game does that for you.

One great feature in GTR Evolution is its customization ability. Not only can you adjust a whole bunch of settings on your car (such as tire pressure, amount of fuel in tank, etc.), but you can also customize your very own tournament. While that can be fun on itself on the single-player mode, the custom tournaments work awesome in multiplayer mode. And here’s why. Tired of your friend winning race after race after race? Sure, he’s had the game for two weeks before you, and now he knows the tracks, so why can’t you have a little something-something yourself? Well GTR Evolution gives you that edge; all you have to do is set up a custom tournament. In a custom tournament you can create your own class; race any track(s), in any car or car classes. So, even though your friend knows every turn, let’s see him win a race in his Mini vs. your Aston Martin. Well, actually he’ll probably win; if you are like me you’ll crash out in the last turn right before the finish line. But hey… I almost won. As for the rest, the game features over 500 car variations (more like 20 cars with a whole bunch of different paint jobs), and over 40 real world tracks and their variations. And for all you racers who think racing on dry surfaces is just too easy, good luck racing in the rain; that gets really slippery.