Definitly NOT the greatest racing game!
The next thing that I'd like to cover are the graphics. They were so poor. I mean, when the OCCASIONAL traffic comes, you can't see it until you're about to hit it! It blends in with the road and it's hard to see. The race cars look pretty bad too because of the graphics. Would you want to buy a car that's blurry because there aren't enough pixels? No. When you're racing, it's a lot harder. You have to constantly keep your eye on the map which makes it harder to keep out of the way of traffic. This happens because of the graphics. Sometimes, you can't even see which way the road ahead of you turns! You can't tell which way to turn unless you read the map. This makes it boring. You buy video games to have fun right? Not to learn how to study a map. Compared to this game for other systems, the graphics are just plain bad.
The most flawless part of the game is the sound. They have rap music which is appropriate for street racing and the sound effects are okay. When you accelerate, you hear the car rev up and when you crash, you hear a smack. There's even the sound of brakes screeching when you stop at high speeds.
Another flawless part is the controls. The D-Pad controls the steering and like normal, the A and B buttons are Accelerate and Brake. Down on the D-Pad is look back. Select is change camera, and Start is pause. R/L is shift up/down.
Now, for game play in general, I'd have to say that it really isn't that fun at all. You play for a couple of minutes, beat the boss, buy a new car, and then go to the next chapter. It's that easy. When you're racing, as you can see on the box cover, the main thing is about the cops coming' after you. You're the bad guy. Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that there are police. The bad news is that they come so rarely that they may as well not be included. Even when your heat meter is at it's fullest. When they do finally come, they chase you until they can finally pass you. When that happens, they have a way of disappearing and nothing really happens. Congratulations. You just evaded the police. Or should I say that they evaded you? Without police, there is no suspense and it's plain boring.
The game modes are pretty lame. There is the traditional circuit mode where you race around on a couple of tracks and point to point, where you just race for around 30 seconds without even completing one lap. Time trial, is where you try to beat the clock, tollbooth is basically the exact same as time trial, barricade is when you pass 2 police cars trying to attempt a road block, and tournament is just circuit mode but competing for points. For all of these modes, they use the same 10 tracks. If they use them for so many things, they could have made more tracks. All of the tracks are really small. In career mode, there are hardly any full courses and many of them are sprints. You don't unlock any new tracks at all in career mode so...there isn't much point in completing it. When you finally get to the last boss on chapter 15, it's easy. I beat it on the first try.
Overall, this game took me about around 6 hours to complete and once I finished, I didn't fell like redoing it. It wasn't worth it. You can rent it, but it isn't worth buying. It's easy and you go through it fast. If I got it as a gift, I would return it and use the money on a copy for a different system. I have it for GameCube and it's really fun. So my final recommendation is, don't buy it. It isn't worth it.