Capcom's Auto Modellista was, by most accounts -- including this very website -- a racer that valued neato-keeno cel-shaded graphics and a fancy instant replay editor over decent control and solid gameplay. Group S Challenge is, by comparison, a much more conservative effort that takes the Gran Turismo route of icon-based option screens and photorealistic cars that are magically impervious to damage even when smashing straight into walls at 120 miles per hour. (I understand that the various automotive licensors won't allow body damage, but it's a ridiculous concession nonetheless, and it's the only exception to my fun-over-realism rule.)

Group S's arcade mode has four variations: single (one-player race), double (two-player race), One Make (in which only one type of car competes), and the ubiquitous time attack. There's no four-player mode, System Link support, or Xbox Live support that I could find, which isn't shocking, but still disappointing.

The circuit mode, meanwhile, has three variations. Championship, you can surely figure out for yourself, and if you can't, well, I guess I'm fired. Line-Line -- yes, Line-Line, which could be used as the name of any number of anime characters -- is an unusual mode in which you race along a randomly selected track, picking up many hundreds of glowing green spheres laid out along the perfect racing line for that track. The faster you complete your lap, and the more spheres you snag, the more DP (Group S's unit of currency) you earn. Line-Line is addictive, educational, and rewarding, and it's the most -- and only -- original aspect of Group S. The third variation, duel, allows you to engage in a series of one-on-one races against Xbox-controlled opponents; as you win duels, you also win additional vehicles for your garage. Group S Challenge features 20 courses and 87 real-life cars from a host of real-life manufacturers, including Lotus, Volkswagen, Mazda, Audi, Mitsubishi, Renault, Honda, Ford, and oh-so-many more. As is the Turismo way, you start the circuit mode with a very modest amount of cash, which you invest in the best ride you can afford, slowly building up the cash and skills to upgrade your ride and enter more competitive and lucrative events. (In the arcade mode, you can select any vehicle except the mighty aero-cars, which are unlocked via duels.)

The game controls are totally reconfigurable, and the game is compatible with Xbox racing wheels, but no matter how I dinked around with the settings, the steering in the preview version was always a bit slow to respond. The sluggishness even extends into the races themselves, which rarely achieve a satisfying sense of speed. (This would be true even if I hadn't seen the upcoming Need for Speed Underground, which creates the illusion of speed like no other racing game before it.) Going into the first-person cockpit view somewhat helps, but not enough. This might very well be addressed in the final version by using the Xbox's hard disk for speedy data access; Group S seemed to continually access the DVD drive while I was playing, and I wasn't sure if it was doing so to play music or to spool track data.

The car AI was standard issue in all of my races, with all the competitors sticking to perfect lines and staying in a tight pack: no breakaways, no sloppiness, and no human behavior. Even when I'd smash into the side of an Xbox-controlled car on a hairpin turn, it would almost instantly recover and return to the, uh, Line-Line. The AI cars are also too obvious about dropping speed to keep you in the race when you falter.

Choose a car from your garage to race with.
Group S's graphics are quite nice, but not gorgeous, especially not for the Xbox; the roadside trees and crowds are much too obviously 2D, and there's no foreground or background animation, which adds to the game's sterile feel. The music is a solid assemblage of techno, but the game doesn't include a custom soundtrack option, which is absolutely unforgivable for an Xbox racer. And, while the sound effects are solid, I don't know if Capcom sampled the individual engine roars of each vehicle, but I would tend to doubt it.

Group S Challenge brings nothing new to the table other than the wacky Line-Line, but it's a solid and playable racer -- and seeing as Gran Turismo will be a PlayStation-exclusive franchise until the end of time, it certainly helps fill a void in the Xbox library, which is loaded with an overabundance of arcade racers. I just hope Capcom continues to experiment with its racing games in the future.