Auto Modellista, at first glance, looks like it's trying to be a Gran Turismo styled racing sim. In the Garage Life mode, which is what most racing fans will jump into, you pick a car and start tweaking every aspect of it for performance. Everything from the suspension stiffness to the paint scheme can be chosen. If you're a real stickler for detail, you can even draw your own custom decals with the in-game decal designer, then apply them to your car. While in Garage Life, you'll be given racing tips through an artificial email program, and you'll be able to customize the garage itself. There's really nothing useful about customizing the garage, it's just something extra Capcom added to Auto Modellista in hopes of making it more interesting.

Outside of the Garage Life mode, you can play the basic Arcade mode, which allows you to pick any available car and race against the AI or other players to your heart's content. Network mode is just arcade mode played online via the PlayStation 2 Adapter. Network mode, which sounds like it'd be the greatest thing to grace the racing genre ever, turns out to be a miserable experience for two reasons. The first reason is that the interface to setup a network game is absolutely horrid. There is nothing good I can say about this, it is overly complex, nauseatingly colored and it simply takes too many steps to go online and play a game. Just when you think you're set to play, there's yet another menu to dig through. For some unknown reason, network games marked as "open" frequently give a "cannot connect to game" error, which just ends up infuriating you to the point you give up playing online entirely. The second problem with the online mode is there's no obvious way to take the car you've built in Garage Life and use it online. Instead, you get stuck picking from the stock vehicles that you normally use in arcade mode. One of the fun things about going online with a game like this, you would hope, would be the ability to bring out your baddest looking, most tricked-out, screaming machine online to express your skill and personality. Alas, you can't bring your custom beauty online, so why bother building one?

Whatever mode of gameplay you choose, the controls are standard for the genre. You've got gas, brake, hand brake, gear up/down and change camera. Speaking of the camera, there aren't enough available options with it, you end up playing the game from chase-camera 99% of the time because the other angles are awful.

Once you're in the game, the real disappointment begins. While Auto Modellista starts out trying to be a racing sim, it immediately turns into a nightmarish arcade experience. Normally, an arcade racer is fine in my book, but Capcom's implementation is completely horrid due to the inability to get the car to stay on the road. In all seriousness, Auto Modellista has the absolute worst vehicle handling and physics I've ever seen in a racing title, bar none. I cannot stress how truly random the handling is in this game. Cars slide like they're driving on greased ice, making driving on even the driest pavement a chore. Actually, "chore" is putting it lightly, as you'll find yourself flinging the controller more than once while you play this game. Capcom should include a trial bottle of Valium with Modellista as many players will need it to come out of the berserker rage this game's handling will put them in.

The physics in Modellista are as bad as the handling. You can be racing along at 120Mph, hit a wall head on, and lose absolutely no speed as your car bounces back onto the track. Slamming into other cars causes no damage to either party whatsoever, and only leads to you flying across the track while the other driver suffers no ill effect. As I played Modellista, I was reminded of Tokyo Xtreme Racer in this "lack of damage" aspect, but at least in TXR (a far better game), if you hit something, your car stopped dead as a penalty effect. In Modellista, you can ram anything and anyone and keep on truckin'. In many online races, I found my car being used as a sort of guardrail by other racers having a hard time making it through turns; they would simply bump off of me to regain their position in the track.

Auto Modellista's graphics are what got everyone really excited about the game in early demos, and the finished graphics are pretty fantastic to look at. The cel-shading makes you feel like you're racing in a beautiful anime world. Graphical touches such as rain splashing off of cars and sparks being thrown by sliding cars are great. When you're racing, the graphics simulate the wind tunnel created by your car, which looks very cool at first, but starts to make it incredibly difficult to see what's going on around you as your car hits higher speeds. Thankfully, you can turn off many of these extra visuals.

Backgrounds and tracks are pretty well detailed, though they can be difficult to navigate when the game simulates dusk or the evening hours. Many a time during a twisty downhill course I found myself slamming into walls because I couldn't see an upcoming turn.

While most of the graphics are top notch, the in-game menus are hideous. There's no other way to say it, they're just plain awful to look at with their mix of cartoony colors and jagged edges. When you're forced to look at layer upon layer of menus to get to the race, you might have to fight off a complete shutdown in your optic nerves.

Can we say annoying? The sounds in Auto Modellista are beyond obnoxious. From the announcer's voice to the artificial screech of tires, there's nothing good here. You'll quickly tire of the snide comments made by the announcer during the game, such as "Why are you so bad?" and "Don't dent it!" The in-game music, basically synth-enhanced heavy metal, isn't all that bad, and there are enough audio tracks available to ensure some variety.

Should you find yourself enjoying the strangeness that is Auto Modellista, you should get plenty of replay out of it thanks to the huge amount of unlockable cars, tracks and equipment. Along with the unlockables, there are the multiplayer and online modes, which, if you're a glutton for punishment, should allow you to pull a few more hours out of the game. I'm giving Auto Modellista a low replay score due to the fact that it becomes difficult to continue playing after you get a taste of the poor handling.

Auto Modellista has a lot going for it, being the first PS2 online racer and having some of the fanciest graphics around, however, it falls apart in the gameplay department. The handling and physics are a complete nightmare, making the game practically unplayable to all but the most dedicated racer. After playing Modellista for countless hours in a vain effort to try and find something good in it, I was left wondering if anyone had actually playtested this game before it was released. I would not recommend Auto Modellista to anyone, not even as a rental.

See more screens and media on the Auto Modellista media page