The Evolution GT demo has been released. Screenshots for this game have been floating around for months now and they looked fairly good. The videos that were released gave the impression that this game would be more of an arcade racer than a sim. With low expectations, I downloaded the demo to give it a try. While I much prefer the racing sims such as rFactor and Live for Speed, I do occasionally enjoy an arcade style racing game if it's well done. Unfortunately the Evolution GT demo didn't even come close to reaching my low expectations. The interface feels like it's ripped straight from a console. Don't bother grabbing your mouse in the options screen, it will be useless here. So with the options set, it's off to the races in my shiney new Mercedes.

Other than the fact that Evolution GT seems to have some nice licenses as far as the cars available, the graphics engine might be the only redeemable quality I noticed in this demo. The game uses the RenderWare engine and the visuals are decent. I did a three lap race around a city street course and the physics are very poor, some of the worst I've seen in an arcade racer in a long time. Upon crossing the finish line, the demo crashed to desktop at which time it raced straight to the recycle bin. If you're looking for a arcade racer to have some fun with, check out ToCA Race Driver 3 instead. While TDR3 is far from perfect, it's leaps and bounds better than Evolution GT. But hey, don't take my word for it! Here are a couple of download mirrors for the 492MB Evolution GT demo:

FileShack
3D Gamers