If you’ve ever wished you could get out on the track with Jeremy Clarkson, James May or Richard Hammond (maybe not the Hamster, as he tends to be a bit accident-prone…), then you’ll want to keep an eye on the upcoming Top Gear The Grand Tour game making its way to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
As Eurogamer reports, the game is being produced by Amazon, the producers of the hosting trio’s latest show The Grand Tour, which they started after their departure from b0th Top Gear and the BBC following several Clarkson-related controversies.
Built by the Amazon Game Studios in Seattle, the game is trying something a bit unique, and will be released episodically alongside season 3 of the TV show,which airs on Amazon’s Prime TV service. It’s also doing something pretty unusual in the current climate by including four-player split-screen play – a rarity in most new games, but something that seems integral to recreating some of the competitive vehicular horseplay the hosts are famous for.
“It’s a video game featuring me, the crashy one, and the slow one,” Eurogamer quotes from the press release, in a passage written by (or at least in the style of) Jeremy Clarkson. “That’s all you need to know. If you’ve always wanted to come on the road with us, this is as close as you’ll ever get. Unless you kidnap James and steal his face.”
“If you’ve ever wanted to do my job, now you can,” James May chimes in. “Obviously not literally, it’s just a game, so please don’t go through the drawers of my desk.”
“I live in the deep countryside, so frankly I’m impressed by anything that runs on electricity,” adds Richard Hammond, “but I have to admit this game is particularly brilliant, especially the four-player splitscreen.”
Despite the claims of brilliance, however, I still have some reservations. Just as Top Gear and its hosts were probably closer to their peak a decade back, the game also looks a little tired, with some pretty dated graphics being shown off in the trailer.
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Also, the inclusions of “cheeky power-ups like High Tea, which spills tire-shredding cups and saucers, and More Horsepowers, which lets you blow past the competition,” all seem a little forced, and more like a budget arcade game than the more serious sim a lot of rev-heads crave.
It’s also hard not to feel like bonkers series like Forza Horizon have already scratched the itch for open-road mayhem this generation, even if they don’t feature the sarcastic Clarkson voiceovers that were included in Forza Motorsport 4, or the potentially repetitive vocal snippets we’ll no doubt fin here.
Having said that, don’t judge a book by its cover, and all that, so give the trailer a look below. There’s no release date as of yet, but Eurogamer notes that the show’s third season is expected to drop in December, and presumably the game will follow suit.
Watch The Grand Tour Game announcement trailer:
