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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Speedy, 8 Mar 2004
The concept of this game is that you are an underground illegal racer who performs races in the dead of night in order to earn style points. Style points will gain you respect and allow you to unlock visual upgrades to your car. This car upgrade piece is unique to this game. As you win races, you unlock new upgrades for your car (visual and performance). The performance upgrades effect the car handling and speed and its pretty staple console port race game stuff. The cool bit is that you can unlock visual upgrades such as alloy wheels, spoilers and body kits. These visual upgrades do not affect the driving ability of the game but you can spend hours getting those funky hardware items to look “just right”. Its not just hardware, you get to unlock stickers to put on the car and paint jobs etc etc. Cool.There is a good range of cars, mostly Japanese, but there are a few European models to tinker with and paint purple with 20” rims. Race wise, there are three basic themes:
- Race: first past the post wins
- Drag: as above but the skill is in the gear change
- Drift: Try to slide your way round a course getting sideways as much as possible
All are fun, but the drag is possibly verging on frustrating. Now for a game like this, with such an emphasis on the car looking good, obviously the game engine needs to be up to the job. I am happy to say that the graphics are excellent. Little details on the cars stand out (e.g. painted brake callipers) and since its all done at night time the neon lights in the city look fab reflecting off the shiny bodywork. There are lots other details such as tyre marks that stay around and dust coming off the car when you “catch some air”. Sound effects are pretty standard engines, tyre squeals, crashes, but the game’s sound track really comes into its own. Underground racers obviously have to have their stereo cranked up, the sound track on this game is great. Hip-hop and rock tracks are used to good effect. The game does have its downsides, for those used to the GTA freeform there is none of that, each circuit is fixed (though there are a few shortcuts) and if you take a wrong turning you get the car reset back in the right place. The circuits are all based on the same city, so different streets are reused in different races and it can get a bit samey. There is no damage modelling and the physics make the cars seem a bit light, but this is an arcade game so you can’t mark it down for that. For a pure arcade racer, this game rocks! If you are after a realistic driving game then you ought to try something else.
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