There are plenty of real world vehicles to choose from the world’s best auto manufacturers. Players will find favorites from Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Audi, TVR, RUF Renault, Lotus, and more. You start out with enough money to buy almost none of the vehicle selection, but once more challenges are raced through players can acquire enough to money to customize, purchase, or win prize cars.

Group S features an arcade and circuit mode. Circuit mode is where players can buy a car, enter in races, and customize vehicles. There are three divisions in circuit mode – championship, line, and duel. Championship is a standard race mode to compete in four group divisions and win cash. Line is a cute but ultimately not fun way to earn money by collecting dots on each course. Duel is a mode to win new cars by challenging another vehicle.

Vehicle customization isn’t that deep. There are options to tune suspension, weight, turbo, tires, and more, but all are done through a level up system. More depth could have been added to the title considering the lack of depth in every other mode.

The race engine in Group S isn’t bad. It’s a mix between simulation and arcade play – the game leans towards the latter. The power slide gameplay is fun and easy to get into. It’s the horrid AI that will keep you from enjoying the game. The other five vehicles race like a pack of drone wolves that drive in one pack and aren’t effected much by your driving. An AI vehicle won’t stop bumping your car until you budge. At times if they hit the corner of your car you might start to spin out; if you did the same to them it would never budge the AI car.

There aren’t too many track locations to race in. Much of the tracks are devoted to various races in Shibuya. The others, Paradise Island and Monaco are standard race tracks seen in most titles. The locals are modeled to good quality. There’s plenty of detail in every bridge, sign, and building in Shibuya, and the various weather patterns utilize a good color palette.

All the vehicles are modeled nicely with plenty of detail devoted to each car body. Vehicle sounds are distinct and reminiscent of other GT titles. Though the music can be a bit annoying. What can best be described as light, techno pop bumps in fast beats in every race, and there isn’t any variation to this. It gets old quickly and a custom soundtrack option would be a fine way to escape it.

The strange frame rate deviation makes the sensation of speed awkward. At the start of every race the frame rate will slow between the 30-60 range. The game then speeds to a full 60 frames per second when all six vehicles aren’t on screen. The Xbox should be fully capable of rendering the cars and backgrounds at 60 frames, and the slow down can’t be blamed on anything but lack of programming refinement.

It’s a shame that Group S Challenge doesn’t have more to offer. There are glimpses of fun within each race. But the lack of race types, tracks, shoddy AI, and frame rate issues slow the fun down to a putter.