Overall, Driving Emotion Type-S game comes off looking like an unpolished PC or a high resolution, good looking PSX game. The car models are actually quite nice, and all feature a nice coat of glossy specular highlights and environment mapping. The fact that the vehicles are licensed, is a definite plus as well. The courses in Type-S, on the other hand, range from average to just plain ugly. Low resolution textures, bad filtering, and heavily overused depth of field effects do a good job to destroy the entire look of the game. In many racing games the replays frequently look better than the real in-game visuals, although it is the exact opposite in Type-S. The smudgy d.o.f. effect gives the replays the impression of looking through glasses which are covered with Vaseline. On the other hand, the framerate never drops below 60fps, and there is not a hint of pop-up or draw in.

Both the music tracks and sound effects in Type-S, are equally weak. The engine sounds aren't all that bad, though the Atari 2600 blips and bleeps that accompany certain menu and race events just sound terribly out of place. The soundtrack consists entirely of average and generic-sounding rock/techno, and is mostly forgettable.

All graphical and audio issues could be overlooked if Type-S were held together with at least, a consistent semi-tight, level of control. Type-Slippery or Type-Sluggish is more like it most of the time, as both control problems rear their ugly head throughout the game. To be fair, the US version of Type-S is an improvement over the Japanese release, although not by leaps and bounds. You don't spin out quite as often now, but it is frequently a chore to keep the vehicle even pointing in a straight line. Some vehicles do handle better than others and tweaking/tuning the settings also help tighten things up a bit, however with the amount of time it takes to get any car to consistently handle well, many may find themselves frustrated. Escape decided to utilize the Dual-Shock 2's pressure sensitive buttons, with sometimes annoying results. By default, in order to actually hit top speed, you are required to press the acceleration button down way too firmly. This can be adjusted, though there is no way to just turn it off without manually turning the analog setting down on each individual button.

The course layouts are pretty good overall, and I found a few grew on me over time. Oddly enough, in the US version of Type-S it isn't as important to stay on the asphalt, because you maintain almost all your speed and traction while traveling over grass, and some dirt as well. This little oversight actually helps out by providing several shortcuts on a few courses. Many real life courses are depicted, such as Suzuka and Tsukuba, and there seems to be enough variety to keep most fans of the genre satisfied.

Square certainly is not known for sports or racing games, though they have made a valiant attempt at their first PlayStation 2 title. It is difficult to recommend Driving Emotion Type-S to anyone who is not a hardcore fan of the driving sim genre, or those with a short fuse. Those that fall within that narrow vertical and don't mind tweaking, tuning, and testing to the extreme, may find some enjoyment with the game. If you can't wait a few more months until Gran Turismo 3, give Type-S a rent.