Supercar Street Challenge Preview

Unless you're in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent of the wealthy, you've probably never sat behind the wheel of a vaunted "supercar." You have heard of these things, though, right? They're the ultra-elite and mostly unseen breed of automobiles that run faster, look sleeker, and cost more than practically anything else on four wheels; they're the cars that give Formula 1 models a run for their money and make Ferraris and Lamborghinis look like your neighbors' Fords and Chevrolets.

The exclusive world of the supercar makes for an ideal video game concept. The more off-limits a real-life product is, the more attractive the prospect of possessing it--even in a diminished form--becomes. Such is the genesis of Activision's upcoming PlayStation 2 racer, Supercar Street Challenge. Developed by Exakt, the game formerly known as Street Lethal lets you drive these six-figure street-legal race cars and pits you against a series of heinous challenges set in the world's urban centers. Supercar's objectives are simple--you'll follow the tried-and-true racing guidelines: beat your opponents, race for the best times, and avoid wrecking your high-priced rig.

Like in Sega's Metropolis Street Racer and Kuju's upcoming Lotus Challenge, the competition takes place in famous cities like Rome, Monaco, Paris, Los Angeles, and London. Supercar's spin is that most of its missions take place in environments populated with both pedestrian and automotive traffic, which you'll have to avoid to succeed. The developers also promise that the courses themselves will be similarly interactive--you can destroy signs, garbage cans, and other small objects as you race through the city streets. Of course, driving with such reckless abandon means that your supercar may absorb some serious damage. In addition to just bumping off the scenery and losing some speed, though, you'll feel and see the repercussions of your hazardous driving in the form of real-time model deformations and a noticeable loss of performance. Thus, success depends upon more than just simple course memorization--you'll have to learn to use local traffic to your advantage, boxing your opponents in between cars while you weave through the street lanes unimpeded.

For realism, Exakt has secured the big names in supercars--Fioravanti, Callaway, and Modena have all lent their trademarks and models to the game. More importantly, though, they have given the developers permission to render damage on their prized cars' chassis. Exakt is promising a substantial amount of customization, as well. If you want, you can build your own supercar from the ground up using dozens of preset modifications and designs. Also, superior performance in the game's races will unlock everything from additional modifications in the build-a-car mode to totally outrageous supercar models based on manufacturers' concept sketches.

Expectedly, the supercars' performances are only somewhat based in reality. Acceleration and maximum speeds will be accurate (these cars can exceed 200mph in real life), but Exakt is taking liberties with the handling and physics. You'll be able to perform gravity-defying stunts and make some impossibly tight hairpin turns with minimal amounts of skidding. Still, you'll want to drive carefully--these supercars, for all their extraordinary abilities, aren't built like tanks. The damage you incur by bumping into walls, objects, and traffic will seriously hamper your ability to compete.

The game's current build lacks much of the visual detail you would expect from a PlayStation 2 racer. While most courses feature excellent draw-in distances and all the pertinent landmarks (the Colosseum is one of the sights in the Rome course, and the Eiffel Tower is prominently featured in Paris), too much of the character and flavor of the cities seem forced into low-polygon buildings and blurry background bitmaps. Even the supercars are somewhat unremarkable, and the game's unflattering lighting engine--which is best compared to a fluorescent sun--certainly doesn't enhance the supercars' wild visual styling. The graphics aren't a total wash, however; the game runs at an excellent clip, and recent additions to the engine, like reflections on slick pavement, suggest that Exakt may tighten the visuals more before the game is released.

Supercar Street Challenge is unique in that it'll be one of the first racers to give gamers a crack at driving the world's most exotic automobiles. The game also gives you the option to make your own mean street-racing machine while you're at it. These features are laudable, but the game's uninventive objective of simply racing as fast as you can around big cities and its mediocre graphics may cause this otherwise promising racer to be written off by those who've heard the premise one too many times. Supercar Street Racer is scheduled for an April release on the PlayStation 2.