E3 2002: "The women sitting next to you have different bodies," says some guy on the booth, somewhat spookily, as he pans the in-car camera around to the rich looking lady sitting in the passenger seat. Welcome to the world of Mercedes Benz - a driving game that seeks to replicate the feeling of zooming about in very expensive, very German, cars with very expensive, and possibly ( though not certainly) very German women. With ´different´ bodies.
The game is split into ´sightseeing mode´ and ´racing mode´, with sightseeing an excuse to basically cruise around the beautifully rendered and impressionistically textured environments with your date, who is presumably only your date because you´re driving a Mercedes Benz. It´s your job to test drive the cars and complete basic missions in order to unlock over 36 different Mercs ( and a number of different ´companions´). With over 50 km of tracks and in race mode, courses of 10 km each, there´s plenty of opportunities to show off, and the game engine, unlike most driving titles, allows you to pretty much drive anywhere you want.
The physics model is customizable, so if you don´t fancy the rather dull experience of the realistic physics, you can just move the slider over towards ´arcade´, and scare the living crap out of Miss Different Body as you powerslide around winding cliff-top roads with the roof down, presumably playing ´The Heat is On´ on the radio.
Symetic is working closely with Benz to make sure every car is replicated in excruciating detail, right down to the ( unlockable) custom interiors, though quite how you´ll be able to appreciate the difference between kid-leather made from the soft palms of tiny goats that have been hand-reared on strawberries and quails in aspic, and the Joe-sixpack standard seats, in a videogame, is a mystery.
Apparently Mercedes isn´t exactly thrilled about the prospect of giving losers like you the chance to wreck their finely tuned driving machines, and even more worried about people seeing repeated images of their safe cars exploding and crashing and generally disintegrating in front of them. So wave goodbye to damage, at least in any meaningful way.