Being a proper licensed Lotus game you obviously get the pick of their models from the last 46 years or so - it's an impressive selection from the Seven S1 and its descendants to sleeker things like the Elite, the Excel, various Elans, Europas, Esprits and Elises. There are an assortment of roadsters and concept cars and Lotus-tuned cars like the Lotus Carlton and the Proton Satria. They even included several F1 cars (the 18, 49b, 72, 79t, 99t) and the 2001 Formula Lotus car.

Tracks from all over include London, Swiss Alps, Arizona, Florida, Tokyo and even Lotus' test track at Hethel. Some are public roads, some purpose-built tracks.

The big problem with the PS2 game was the unfriendliness of the handling. So twitchy and unforgiving was it that if you got round a track without any of the driving aids on, then you could consider yourself a driving game genius. The usual pattern of a race would be that if you drove slow enough to keep the car under control and on the track then the competition had all disappeared off into the distance (on all but "rookie" difficulty setting anyway). Turn the aids on and you'd be ok, but who wants to drive with the equivalent of water wings and stabilizers on?

   

This Xbox version certainly seems to have a more intelligent difficulty curve and more controllable cars (maybe thanks to better analog control). You can make races as difficult or easy as you want, and the behaviour of the nine other cars in a race seems to border on the human sometimes, with them clearly racing each other and making mistakes - it's a refreshing change if you're used to GT3 or PGR. But this is a videogame after all, and the stars of the show (the cars) have a few problems when compared to the aforementioned royalty of the driving game world. As a licensed game I'd expect perfectly modelled cars, and sadly you don't get them. Dimensionally they look ok but they're constructed of fewer polygons than the competition and it shows, with too many straight lines and a distinct lack of detail close up - the Lotus Elises and Esprits in GT3, PGR, Sega GT 2002, Racing Evoluzione and even Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 are considerably better looking to the eye and closer to their real-life counterparts. Kuju went to the trouble of giving you working lights (white button) and obviously several Lotus' (Lotuses? Loti?) have pop-up headlights, so you can play with them for ages until you break them (in true Homer Simpson style). Body damage is of the smashed glass, huge dents and deformations kind, and looks rather unconvincing. Cars can lose wheels and wings though, and the various bits of debris retain physics and collision detection for the remainder of the race so you better watch out for that wheel you lost on the last lap.

I mentioned the physics and handling of the PS2 version briefly and unfortunately I have to return to them - they're still unfriendly, suddenly violent and overly fussy. Trust me, I've driven some extremely fast cars and if they were all as difficult to drive as this lot, then there wouldn't be any racing drivers left because they'd all be in hospital or the cemetery. The handling allows for power sliding (with practice, it's never as immediately enjoyable or instinctive as other games) and subtle effects like snap oversteer, power understeer or riding curbs to help the car around a bend, but too often (even with traction control or ABS turned on) the car gets away from you in a split second and a slide can turn into fishtailing that invariably ends up with you in a wall, and a lack of tuning options means that there's sod-all you can do about it. There just seem to be too many strange forces acting on these Lotus' at times, and the tyres rarely seem to give you as much grip as you'd realistically expect. Although for the most part it's only an option, Kuju have again tried to inflict their very own "circular" steering method on us. This involves moving the analog stick around the top 180° of its movement rather than just left and right, supposedly giving more control; it works (kind of) but doesn't feel right to me.

   

Some of the tracks are fun, and the road surfaces have some nice textures to them, but some circuit layouts lack imagination and have annoying things like blind corners or jumps just before bends - unfriendly stuff with this game's vague brakes and 'lively' physics. Scenery varies from washed out and low detail typical generic racetracks to some quite pretty and evocative English countryside with nice cloudy skies and watery lighting - but Lotus Challenge's PS2 origins are always apparent and despite being a significant improvement, the game lacks any Xbox visual sparkle.

Structure-wise Lotus Challenge is a bit of an oddbod too, with only 2 players allowed in multiplayer (on the Xbox? - you're kidding, right?), single races, a championship that unlocks further cars (and little else - there's no "Congratulations, YOU'VE WON!" message at the end or anything). The Challenge Mode involves various tests, time trials, races and stunts. This challenge mode gets you doing things like skidding for as long as possible or driving around like an idiot on an oilrig (no, really) supposedly doing a tyre advert. It's a very strange mixture indeed, like the game wanted to be Stuntman, only chickened out. Or maybe it wanted to be Crazy Taxi? - because some of the sub games involve vehicular bowling and football penalty shoot-outs. Again, a strange mixture in a game that's handling obviously wants it to sit at the 'sim' end of the market…

The shame of it is that Lotus Challenge's biggest flaws are what are most likely to alienate it from its target audience (i.e. racing game fans/Lotus nuts). As far as I know, Lotus cars are famous for their speed, excellent feedback, fun handling and stunning looks - and the game's unforgiving handling and less than gorgeous cars are what will immediately disappoint. I hope Kuju do another racing game with Xbox quality graphics and more predictable handling & physics, because if you give it a chance, there's some decent competitive racing in here, and you can see the potential for a really good racing game. Sadly it's only 'potential'.