Developer: Laudo Games
Publisher: KISS ltd
Platform: PC
Pitstop Challenge – Review
Finally a chance to experience one of the most underexposed parts of grand prix racing! In Pitstop Challenge you get to manage a team of mechanics during a pit stop and make strategical decisions concerning what parts go on the car.
Story
Pitstop Challenge is a game based on real-life Formula 1 but it lacks any licensing. It features tracks in the same locations as the 2015 F1 season and the teams are clearly inspired by their real life counterparts. Instead of Red Bull Racing or Scuderia Ferrari we have to make due with Red Box and Luciano Ferrara. During the game, you and your crew travel to the 19 tracks the season entails and you attempt to win races by beating the other pit crews during the pit stops.
Graphics
Although a large portion of the game is spent in the menus, Pitstop Challenge does feature 3D graphics to represent the cars and mechanics when the player goes in to “Pit Stop mode”. These graphics however, look poor. Better graphics are available on certain mobile titles and it feels like you’ve been teleported back to the early days of the PlayStation 2.
While there are big titles with poor graphics, like Football Manager, the difference is that the graphics on those games don’t have any impact on the gameplay and are just there to help the player visualize what is happening. In Pitstop Challenge, you directly control the game from the 3D environment. With poor camera angles, unintuitive button placement and disappearing UI elements this quickly becomes a cumbersome mess.
It’s also worth noting, that the game features no collision detection, and cars frequently drive through mechanics. All of this combined gives the game a surreal look, which can be a positive thing if you’re in to that we suppose.
Sound
We reckon not much effort was put towards sound design. Generic instrumental heavy metal plays when you’re in the menus. In “Pit Stop Mode” the cars make generic vroom noises. It’s like what an understaffed government agency would produce if you asked them to do the sound for a video game and gave them zero budget.
Gameplay
Most simulation games have a tutorial, Pitstop Challenge does not. You have to figure things out on your own. The game cover features a checkered flag, so a logical assumption to make is that you should click “Race” to make something happen. When the game then informs you that you need a crew before you can start a race, you quickly come to the conclusion you first need to accept a sponsor contract before you have enough money to actually hire anybody.
After that initial confusion things quickly get even worse. When a race starts you get the option to make a stop or not. No explanation is presented for what the impact will be of any choices you make. Should you decide to make a stop, you get to pick what tires go on the car, with again, no explanation on what the differences are between them.
After clicking a few buttons you finally go in to “Pit Stop mode” and you are presented with a view on your pit box with your crew just standing around. You then click on the crew member you want to control and then you click on the icon of what you want him to do. After that you have to wait for the car to appear in the pit lane. A little while later the crew finishes working on the car and you are again presented with the option of making a stop. And that’s all there is to the game. After this point the gameplay never changes. Assigning the pit crew cannot be automated and has to be done manually every time. This gets extreme repetitive and boring.
Between races, money can be spent on improving the skills of your crew members, but it doesn’t appear to make much of a difference during the actual pit stops. The game can be beaten without spending much time on upgrades.
Conclusion
The entire variety of gameplay Pitstop Challenge offers can be played through in under 30 minutes. After that, nothing new is introduced or taken away. The disappearing UI elements can cause game breaking bugs and sometimes a race can no longer be finished. The lackluster graphics, sound and gameplay make this game impossible to recommend. Compounding the problem even further is the ridiculous price of €8.99. We haven’t even mentioned the game misspells pit spot as “pitstop”. Stay well clear of this title.
Pitstop Challenge - Review,
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