Now, although I've used Juliet in a shootout, I haven't actually reviewed it/her yet, so I thought I'd take this chance to finish this off. And although it was tested on the 'Ring, don't be expecting a race report style review telling you where this car went wrong at which corner. I'm not good enough for that yet. But let's get on with the review anyways:
Lotus Elise review:
Of all the 70 odd cars tuned by RKM, only 3 of them has given me the motivation to keep on driving them on the ‘Ring. They were the NSX, the Castrol Tom’s supra, and the Yellowhat Supra. And now, it’s joined by Juliet. The car that can give the NSX a fright in the corners and slap a smile on your face even on the most dreary, dismal days. But she’s definitely a handful, that’s for sure. Don’t let the girly personifications fool you, the girl/car bites. She doesn’t tolerate fools who treat her badly. But you can’t be gentle on her either. Just because the Elise has been personified as a girl doesn’t mean you treat it with the gentleness that you would use to treat your pissed off girlfriend. If you get prissy with this, it’ll kill you. And on the ‘Ring, this means you’ll end up in the armco every three turns or so if you aren’t careful. But you can’t ever actually hate it/her for that, because you know, deep down that it was your fault it happened. Which is why I found myself apologising to it/her like I did when I accidentally put several scratches on a girl’s legs. And it’s very rare I do that to a person, let alone a computer-generated model of a car. This setup has very literally brought the car to life. And when the sun is rising over the ‘Ring, and the little Elise finally listens, life in GT5 can’t really get any better. You string together a series of tight and challenging turns, wrestling it in for the first one and letting it flow out of the rest. The sun glimmering in the distance, its reflection shining off the Laser Blue paint. Out of a corner on two wheels after flying over a curb, you accelerate down towards the next set of twisty joy with the tiny Toyota engine revving its little heart out at 9000 rpm. Seems like quite a nice experience, doesn’t it? But sadly, the Elise has one flaw which just ruins it on the ‘Ring. Its light weight and rear spoiler may help it stick to the road on flat, smooth tracks, but on a track as old and bumpy as the Nurburgring, it makes the car to bounce about and can cause a lot of understeer which can make driving this car very terrifying. It also a bad habit of dispatching you when you don’t pay it enough attention, it needs you to concentrate, and if you do, you’ll be rewarded with every corner you take being a fluid flow of oversteer, grip, noise and tire smoke. But I’m not going to pretend that it hasn’t got its faults. And its faults can best be described by saying that it has a distant relative. Called the Devil Z. This is like that, but it’s the Devil Z of the corners. it has the same supercar beating abilities, it has the same sense of danger, and it also has the same feeling that it’s alive in your hands, that’s speaking to you. The engine note isn’t a noise, it’s its voice. The hyper sensitive steering is its eager spirit, desperate to eat the corners. But it’s also inherited the devil’s flaw. It’s tendency to play games with the driver by stuffing him into a wall with every chance it gets makes driving this a very inconsistent mix of fun, frustration and swearing. A lot of swearing. And yet, you could never beat it, you never want to just park up, get out, and drive any old Ferrari or Lamborghini. They don’t have the character this has, they can’t deliver the joy this can, and, most importantly, they aren’t named after a girl.
Tested on Nurburgring Nordschielfe (I think that's how it's spelled, I guessed it) No laptimes were set