Rip- off
Gameplay value: None
How long it takes to beat on Easy difficulty: 2 hours max
Replay value: Blecch. Don't play it again.
Verdict: Don't Buy it. I must have been nuts when I bought it
Review:
When I first bought this game, I though that I had finally found a good racing game. Boy, was I wrong! This game supposedly boasts a ton of cumstomization features, but you can't even choose what color paint you get to use. They said that you can do tons of stuff to outrun the cops and even showed a screenshot of that being done. In reality, though, you are not allowed to outrun them. Also, the game does something I really hate: Turn hard- core street racing into a sissy game. Here's what I mean: I only have to bump into my opponent and I lose the race and some money. Even if they hit me, I still have to shell out money anyways and I lose the race as well. What really ticks me off is how they use so much fake urbanization. If you ever saw the Dubious Honors awards at Gamespot, you'll know what I mean. The A.I. players sure act like they can walk the walk, but the only thing they can do is fake the ability to talk the talk. Back to the customization, although they say you can add audio systems and things like that, you have no freedom of choice. Something that I loathe about this game is the career mode. The thing is rigged, I swear! When you start career mode, you can only use one car and $5,000. While that could buy a lot in another game, it can only buy you one or two items. Those are a pair of bad tires and a low level exhaust filter. The level 1 nitro kit costs way too much and you can't afford it unless you use cheats. The reason: With the money you have availabe combined with the power of the opposition's cars, you can never win very much money because the ones who are worth a lot have cars way faster than anything you'll ever have and you need an incredible amount of rep to get to them on top of that. Here's what I hate most: In this game, the only thing you need to win every race you enter is a ton of cash. The class A racers drive like amateurs, but they always beat you because they're rich snobs and you aren't. If you use cheats and are skilled at racing, you'll blow 'em away. How I know this: I beat the game that way. There is literally no way to beat the high class A.I. without cheats because you start out so poor that even the class D racers porbably have better cars than you. As a matter of fact, you start out so poor, your car doesn't even have tires on it. The part about the tires brings me to the subject of realism. This game is nothing like the Need for Speed games because A: It stinks, and B: The cars are trash. When you activate the nitro in this game, the car steers you rather you steering the car. Seriously, you can have the best tires, suspension, and aerodynamics and it will begin to spin out. When you pour on the boost (Which you will probably never be able to afford, by the way), you completely lose control of your car and it has a major rollover. I don't know if it's a glitch or something, but it never fails to happen when you use the nitro. If ValueSoft's objective was to create an expensive ripoff of a game that has too many flaws to count, then this game was a success. To me though, this is a hate crime towards street racing games everywhere. As a matter of fact, I'd be tempted to jump in front of one of those cars during a race if this game got any worse than it already is. If you want to know what the cheat is, get lost. Uninstall the game and put the CD towards a more noble cause, such as something for your little brother to break up instead of your Greenday CDs or maybe for some indoor skeet shooting with that sawn off shotgun you have lying under the bed.