Grand Prix Manager 2

Grand Prix Manager 2 was improved version of 1995 Grand Prix Manager, also published by the MicroProse, and developed by the Edward Grabowski Communications Ltd. As Formula One team manager we were given the chance to take care of different aspects of our organization - from signing driver contracts, negotiating with the sponsors to preparing setups for our cars.

The game offered top-down view on the whole track so we can see the progress of the race and the location of the drivers, which was a nice choice - in simple way we had the overlook of the whole situation on the track. The communication with drivers was also simple enough, set up and feedback from the driver were well developed. Everything seems to be ok, right?

Well, that’s where the good ideas actually ended - first of all the management options were rather limited, the economy of the team was hard to master, but the biggest problem was with the race engine itself. It was very hard to actually get the points in the race, often the drivers simply did not finished the race without clear reason, to make things worse it was very hard to prepare good strategy for the race that would give us the chance to actually compete with computer-controlled teams.

Overall an interesting concept that somehow got broken in the details - it was too hard to play to actually enjoy it.