Leadfoot Preview

Much like Papyrus is seen as the leader in NASCAR racing games, the development team at Ratbag is generally regarded as the leader in dirt-track racing games. Ratbag's second game, Dirt Track Racing, was generally well received by dedicated racing fans because of Ratbag's focus on realistic driving mechanics. But there were problems with the game, including tracks that were much less entertaining than those found in Ratbag's first driving game, Powerslide. After listening to complaints about Dirt Track Racing, Ratbag went back and designed a follow-up game named Dirt Track Racing: Sprint Cars that not only fixed most of the problems in the original Dirt Track Racing but added a number of new features like more tracks and sprint cars. Leadfoot is the latest inRatbag's series of racing games, but it takes a slightly different approach than the two previous games by introducing you to the world of off-road stadium racing in which massive jumps, powerslides, and split-second decisions play a crucial role in your performance during a race. Though the latest build of Leadfoot lacks many of the features that are planned for the final release, it already looks as though Leadfoot may be Ratbag's best effort to date.

At the start of the game, Leadfoot lets you select one of three settings--novice, amateur, and professional. If you don't know much about dirt-track racing or you're more familiar with arcade-style driving games, you should probably start out with the novice setting because it features control that's much more arcadelike. The amateur setting is specifically for drivers who know about dirt-track racing, but there are still a few settings to ease you into the experience and prepare you for the professional mode. This mode automatically sets all of the options so that you get the most realistic driving experience possible in Leadfoot, and needless to say, if you're not prepared for this mode, vehicle spinouts and mistimed powerslides quickly become a source of aggravation. Unfortunately, in the current build, after you select one of these three difficulty settings, the game doesn't prompt you with this choice again, but you can go through the options menu and change all of the settings accordingly.

Once you select from one of the three settings, you can move into Leadfoot's multiplayer mode or its single-player mode. The multiplayer mode is incredibly simple to use, so starting a multiplayer race shouldn't take more than a few seconds, but there's still the issue of actually being able to find other people to play against. This problem continues to plague just about every driving game that offers some form of multiplayer mode without a built-in matching service, but thankfully, third-party matching services like GameSpy register Leadfoot servers, making it even easier to quickly join and play a multiplayer game, which supports up to 10 drivers. Once you're in a multiplayer game, you can select from most of the options available in single-player, such as which track you want to race on and which type of vehicle you want to use during the race.

Almost Ready to Race

As fun as the multiplayer mode sounds, the bulk of Leadfoot's gameplay is in its single-player mode. The single-player option lets you select from a quick-race mode or a career mode, but it looks as though Ratbag isn't quite ready to take the wraps off the career mode since you can't select it in the current build. This was initially disappointing, but Ratbag plans to include 180 events spread out over 15 series of races, so not only will it take a sizable portion of time to complete the career mode, but it will also require some solid driving skills. If you're not really sure how much you know about dirt-track racing or you don't think you have the necessary skills to compete in the career mode, the quick race offers a perfect opportunity to learn about dirt-track racing or to brush up on your driving.

While the quick-race mode essentially lets you drop right into a race, there's actually a surprising level of customization tailored for different levels of skill and knowledge. For those who select the novice option at the beginning of the game, the only options you really need to worry about are track selection, vehicle selection, vehicle color, the number of laps or opponents, and the difficulty of the AI, which you can adjust by moving a slider from easy to hard. But if you happen to know a lot about dirt-track stadium racing or just cars in general, you can also customize your wheels, suspension, and drivetrain--each of these give you an incredible amount of control over your vehicle and how it performs in a race.

Under the wheels option, you can alter settings for tire pressure, wheel size, brake strength, and even the angle of the tire grooves, which can be circumferential, perpendicular, or diagonal. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the wheel customization is that you can have a different setup for each of the four tires. In suspension tuning, you have access to bump dampening, rebound dampening, and spring strength. The first two options affect the way your vehicle reacts when it hits walls, vehicles, or other obstacles, while the last option helps determine the general stability of your car when it does get pushed around on the track. Finally, the drivetrain customization lets you tweak various aspects of the gears such as transmission and final drive ratio. If these terms mean absolutely nothing to you, then it's probably best to leave them alone, otherwise you might make your driving experience a little more difficult. This part of the quick-race mode is definitely for people who like to customize every aspect of their vehicles.

The rest of the quick-race mode is much more straightforward. There are only three tracks to choose from in the current build--Strelan Park, Leadfoot Stadium, and Bracken Bowl--all of which give a pretty good idea of what you can expect from the 12 tracks Ratbag plans to include in the final release. In addition, only two--sport truck and stadium lite--of the five four-wheel vehicle models are available, but again, they still give a pretty good feel for how the game generally controls.

Final Thoughts

Out of all the tracks available in the current build, the one that serves best as a learning track is Strelan Park because it doesn't have the quirky turn designs found in other tracks. Instead, there are a few wide turns where you can learn how to properly powerslide, and there are a few massive dirt hills to introduce you to jumping and keeping control of your car after it lands. Leadfoot Stadium has similar features, but it introduces hairpin turns, which are incredibly difficult to maneuver through properly on your first few tries. The last track, Bracken Bowl, is incredibly difficult for a number of reasons. Unlike the other two tracks, Bracken Bowl actually lets you choose which route you want at a specific point in the track, so when you come to that point, you must quickly decide what might be the best route to take to move you ahead of the pack. There's actually much more strategy here than you might think--if you take the inside track, which is generally the one that the computer opponents take, then you run the risk of bumping into other vehicles and possibly being disqualified from the race. If you take the outside track, then you don't run that risk and you don't have to make a hairpin turn when the courses intersect, but you might lose a few seconds off your lap and even possibly drop a few places back assuming that the computer opponents don't cause a massive wreck. Regardless of the strategy you choose, it's clear that Ratbag wants to give each track a distinct feel and level of difficulty that actually help you learn the mechanics of the game before you can perform well.

Though much of the game looks promising, Leadfoot still has its share of problems at this point in development, the most obvious of which is the steep learning curve that's escalated by damage your car receives during a race. Even on the novice setting with the AI turned down to easy, it's not only difficult to win, but it's also equally difficult to control your vehicle effectively. Just learning how to powerslide properly--or at least execute a powerslide that doesn't slow you down tremendously--takes a while, and if you don't have the patience to learn, then Leadfoot becomes frustrating to say the least. There are changes you can make in the tuning menus to improve your car's handling, but so far, there's nothing that helps define what the different tuning options mean. Hopefully Ratbag can transform the novice mode into something that's a little more suitable for casual driving-genre fans so that they don't get scared away by the intimidating learning curve.

Leadfoot looks like it may be the best in Ratbag's long line of racing games. If the first few tracks are any indication, the bland track designs of past games shouldn't pose nearly as much of a problem this time around. The sheer number of customization options and the realistic gameplay should appeal to the dedicated driving fan and to those who want to learn more about the mechanical side of their vehicles. Leadfoot is currently scheduled for a May release.