When I first picked the game up, one of the employee’s at the local game store informed me that this particular game was not specifically written for the Nintendo DS but for the N-Gage. This didn’t surprise me too much, because games were being ported to other consoles all the time, I actually didn’t mind. That is until I fired the game up and started playing. Poor graphics, Poor sound, Poor Sound Track and the touch screen is barely used, except for browsing through the menu’s.
After being unimpressed with the game so far I decided to give a couple races a try. First I tried out Evolution mode. This is basically a career type game where you earn cars, buy more cars, upgrade, and paint them. This was incredibly boring and became repetitive after about 5-10 minutes of game play. After going through a couple of races in evolution mode and upgrading the car I did get, I decided to give out arcade mode a try. Arcade mode was a little more fun, you actually got a wide selection of cars to choose from, and more tracks. Arcade mode offers a variety of race types, including instant play, road challenge, free race, time attack, and cop chase. The most fun by far was cop chase. The goal is to chase down escaping vehicles before your time runs out. The more vehicles you catch, the better you do. Nothing really fun, but it was the most interesting mode of play available for this title.
As I said the graphics were poor, I found myself positioning my DS approximately 3 inches away from my face so I could see the oncoming traffic, and the road ahead. After a while I figured out that the in-car view gave me the best visibility. The sound was 10 times worse. The engine revving up was the same sound looped for each of the gear changes, and it got really really annoying when you hit the red line. So if you like to drive fast be prepared to be annoyed or just turn the sound off. Also, the engine sounds are the same sound for every car. This really takes away from the reality they were trying to create.
During the races the map is displayed on the bottom of the screen which is completely pointless, I never ended up looking at it so I went into the options menu and turned off the back light for the bottom screen to conserve energy. Another major problem I had with the game was the “Elastic Band Effect” the opponent cars had. No matter how far you were ahead, they always seemed to catch up. No matter what. If the computer players hit you from behind, you slow down significantly and the opponent usually passes you.
Multi player mode was a lot more fun because in my opinion its better to beat some friends than to play against a computer any day. We went through the variety of race modes available, laughing and taunting each other. One great thing about multi player, is the fact that their is no street traffic to smash into and ruin the flow of the race.
Then we decided to give cop chase mode a try. This is simply the best element of this game. Even though it is limited to two players. We stuck to this mode until our batteries were done and we were out of breath for laughing so hard.
My only gripe about multi player is that it is required that each player own a copy of the game, instead of having a downloadable copy for your friends. A small problem, but a big pain in the ass.
Pros:
– great multiplayer
– first racing game for Nintendo DS
– cop chase mode multiplayer
– liscensed vehicles
Cons:
– poor graphics
– annoying sounds
– bad use of bottom screen
– “Elastic Band Effect” was annoying
– needed multiple carts for multiplayer
This review was published on http://www.elecplay.com at http://www.elecplay.com/reviews_article.php?article=11220