If you were to ask anyone in the street what they thought of when you said the word "motorsport," the chances are that nine out of the proverbial ten would reply "Formula One." What with its multi-million pound investments and extensive TV coverage, it gets all the attention and glamour. On the other hand, if you asked them what they thought of when you say "Swedish Touring Car Championship," they'd probably think you were talking about racing turnips.

The Swedish Touring Car Championship is virtually the same as the British Touring Car Championship, except that it's in Sweden, obviously. Get an ordinary everyday road car, such as a Nissan Primera or Ford Mondeo, throw an obscene amount of money at it and you've got a touring car. Send them all to Sweden, and you've got a championship…and a lot of fun. STCC2 follows a season of touring car racing: you pick your team, choose your car and belt around in circles as fast as you can. All the cars, drivers and tracks are taken from the real thing, so if you're the sort of person that loves sponsor's logos to be in the right place on the right car, you'll love STCC2. If you're looking for a bang up to date racing sim, however, you won't.

As far as realistic physics are concerned, STCC2 falls way behind the likes of uber-realistic games such as Grand Prix Legends, F1 2000 CS, Mercedes Benz Truck Racing et al and if you're after a seriously real Touring Car sim, you're asking for trouble. For a start, the difference between front and rear wheel driver cars has been exaggerated greatly. Take a RWD car out and the back end will kick all over the place on corners, and if you're unfortunate enough to clip some grass, you'll be lucky to avoid a spin. Front wheel drive cars on the other hand under-steers like crazy. You can belt up to a corner, jam the anchors on, but when you release them and turn the wheel, the car should turn…except it doesn't. In fact, it will only turn when you hit the throttle again - the exact opposite of what it should do.

Once you get into the habit of doing this, other little problems start to emerge. For instance, there is no tyre squeal when you approach their limits, and you can only tell you're drifting by the fact that you seem to be floating somewhat serenely towards the outer edge of the corner.

The force feedback in the game also proves to be extremely disappointing. You can hit other cars and you'll feel nary a tug, slapping the back end into concrete walls doesn't so much as cause a jitter and as for feeling concrete humps on corner apexes and exits… well, forget about that. You can't even wander off the track; go too far onto the grass or cut down a little side road and you'll be dumped unceremoniously back onto the circuit. You don't have to go off wandering deliberately, either. Spin off far enough and you'll be picked up and put back on, totally destroying any semblance of reality.

Conclusion:- Whether you'll like STCC2 or not depends entirely on what you want from a game. If you're after the most realistic sim ever created, then you can't do anything but walk away disappointed. On the other hand, if you're new to sims or you're more interested in racing that chooses fun, unthreatening gameplay over fanatical attention to detail, then STCC2 could well be a worthy addition to your gaming collection.

Star Rating: HHHII

Producer: Digital Illusions

Required Spec:

96MB RAM

16Mb 3D AGP Graphics Card

Pentium II 400

4x CD-ROM drive

430MB Hard Drive space.