4x4 Evolution Hands-On

4X4 Evolution played somewhere between an arcade and a simulation style racing game. Your cars handled the terrain in a fairly realistic manner, but still gave you the impression that you could gun it around corners and over hills. Like real off-road racing, 4X4 Evolution had you run your vehicle through a series of gates, and let you decide what path between them was best. This feature is really cool, as at any time you can simply hop off the track and go exploring. In that sense, the game had an infinite number of shortcuts and alternate routes. Unfortunately, I found that most of the 'shortcuts' I was taking were actually longer than just following the well-worn path.

The graphics in 4X4 Evolution were nice, especially on the truck models. All of the trucks had realistic suspension, and the body of your car would bounce about very convincingly. Also, the courses themselves looked good. There was no real popup, and the terrain textures were so good you could easily make out what was going on.

Unfortunately, 4X4 Evolution existed only in the form of a short E3 demo. From what I played I can't wait to see if this game outshines other off-road racers.