Well, surprisingly Kunos is actually still alive and apparently also able to work on netKar Pro. So it happend that nkp finally got the long announced 1.03 patch, with the promise that the game would now be usable.
Download:
http://www.netkar-pro.com/download.htmIt even comes with a 150 pages manual, but more about that later.
Once you installed and started the game it looks pretty much as the old one: rubbish.
The interface is still one of the worst ones I have ever come across, not to mention thats it's one of the most intuitives ever faced the earth. That said I tried 2 hours to configure my wheel (dfp) to get linear steering. Apart from the 150 pages with lots of colored pictures no wrod is lost in the manual about how to so I ended up asking in a forum and even got an answer.
After you have firgured out where all the options are hiding you can think about to drive the car. There are now some help messages when being in the car telling you how to start the engine or lift the throttle when shifting. Even the display is now working in the demo and so is the multiplayer. Well, unfortunatly there seems to be only a little online driving around (at least the times I tried) and if you select a server with a track you don't have (probably licensed content) the game will crash itself.
The driving of the car feels very nice and has some real force feedback (curbs, tire flatspots) and even some visual gimmicks like dirt on your visor. Apart from that you should spend some time with learning to shift and fiddle around with the ff and brake options to get a proper drive.
Anayway: If you like to drive single seaters only, are a real hardcore simracer who thinks that any hud or list of keycombinations is hell, you can live with a crappy interface and a soundengine that can make your ears bleed this probably your game.
For the rest it's still a game you can try out and have a long laugh at it. In other words: you can tell it's itallian.
