Vehicular combat with some recycled icons and rehashed ideas is disappointing – nevertheless there’s fun to be found.
This is unfortunately a glamorous knock-off of Mad Tracks. Handling and basics are the same, the basics are the same, it’s just in a new look. Though, it’s still an enjoyable RC car racing game, that you easily can play for a few hours with friends.
It’s straight forward, race and win. The game is a bit spiced up by a so-called blog, that makes a little story to follow throughout the game, as you progress. Nothing important, just a sweet little story about you helping out a friend, who was unlucky and broke his hand, so he couldn’t drive in the Citrus Cup. You meet Carla, she builds the cars, and cupid starts to join the company of RC racer drivers.
Fun, but with a catch
The feel and look are pretty decent for an XBLA game in this genre. Unfortunately there’s WAY too much in common with Mad Tracks, so it’s definitely not a new feeling at all, if you have been playing Mad Tracks. There’s a somewhat short Champion Mode, and an arcade mode, where you can change a few settings, like which car types are used in the game, how many CPU/AI’s to race against, number of laps and difficulty.
Multiplayer seems acceptable – there’s a few different modes, including team racing, get the fastest lap, elimination race (last player on each lap is taken out until one racer is left). So it’s pretty straight forward, and for the multiplayer, I feel there’s enough different tracks to choose from.
The game is beautiful to look at, environments are colourful, peppy and changing quite much from level to level. You will want to own the cars, feel them between your fingers and enjoy them in full – they are that beautiful, shiny and glamorous. I really like the design of the cars – and all the tracks are really fun to drive in.
Background music are non-existent in this game, though it has a repetitive, off-beat sound in both menu and tracks – maybe three different versions. Sound effects for motors and cars is mediocre and not varying too much, but this I accept in fully, as it’s an XBLA game, and not a full disc one.
Lacking
Really easygoing. Maybe too easy (not enough playtime for achievement hunters). There’s no secret achievements or guessing games here, besides from two treasure chests, one of them referring to Load Inc.’s other game, Mad Tracks. Finish story, a timed and an endurance (win x times consecutively) run, a single game online, and then you should have all the achievements. But I know for sure the game will be loaded a few times when friends interested a tiny bit in gaming are coming over at a visit.
Too few races in championship mode – even for an XBLA game. Too easy as well, as experienced racers like me will only have a bit trouble here and there beating the races in championship mode, and beating the whole thing within 5-6 hours. The endurance achievement was easy, even that the AI is on hard. Sure thing, you have to race 80% perfect to win and not crash heavily more than once, but that’s still a big margin error to have with a single achievement – maybe this margin error was included as the sister-achievement in Mad Tracks is basically IMPOSSIBLE to get (believe me, I’ve tried!!).
I do have trouble beating the timed achievement, but I’ll get it eventually. The WORST mistake with this game is how equal it is to Load Inc. other game, Mad Tracks. Physics and feelings in the game is one thing – using the same word, font and color when you get lost or drive the wrong way is another – the basics are build up the exactly same way, but the game glitters a lot more – I really like the design and look of the cars and the environment, but that’s about what differs between the games.
At the end...
Another thing really bugged me every time a new blog post were made in the ingame blog, was that if you want to read it, as you unlock the posts, you have to jump out of the level menu, to the main menu, then go into the blog, read it and then go all the way into the level menu again. A single button that opens up the blogpost and another button to close it and get back to the level menu, would so much have helped this problem out.
The need of more variation ruins the game, but being a knock-off of an earlier game of the developer totally crashes the game – I don’t hate the game, but I really dislike that the games are SO close to each other as they are. The game gets an extra heart for being beautiful.
