This death and gravity defieing sci-fi racer has a lot up it's sleave, if you invest enough into it.
It's the way of racing which gets more interesting: your vehicle is basically a tank, heavily armoured, but without a gun and instead of tracks four massive wheels which stick out as much underneath your car, as they do above it. This means when you flip over, you can keep driving like nothing happened.... pretty sweet right? But that's not all: when you drive your car fast enough, and don't worry, they all are extremely fast and accelerate like a madman, you can drive up walls and ceilings, which is a great way of overtaking someone and in certain places in a lot of stages there are speed boosts there or weapon pick-ups.
Oh yeah, I said no gun, but there are plenty of weapons. Not all are original, like the heat-seeking missile or the turbo-boost, but even those have a nice twist to them. Turbo's can be doubled and used simultaneously for insane speed and the heat-seekers automatically lock on certain objects in stages, which will crumble and form obstacles if you choose to shoot them. There are some more missile form weapons, like three small rockets circling around each other in a spiral, and more original gadgets, like electric ice which will decrease grip on any car that happens to drive into it.
You will be using these weapons in 3 different leagues in singleplayer, or on any of the tracks in multiplayer. But you'll have to play the leagues to unlock all stages. The first 2 leagues have three races for you to finish, the last one has four. Depending on what difficulty you chose, easy, normal or hard, the number of laps will be either 3, 4 or 5.
Then there is a time-trial mode, which will allow you to beat the preset times for every stage, or your own if you beat them. No weapons here, just boosts, both on the road to drive over and as weapon pick-ups.
All good fun to play, but it may take some time, not more then half an hour, to get used to the speed and driving style of the vehicles. In the easy difficulty there's an auto-correct button, which will make you face the right way if you get into trouble, to help you out.
Graphics are good, not awesome, but won't bother you or interfere with gameplay. Weapon effects are pretty cool and environments have enough atmosphere to keep you playing.
This atmosphere is heightened by the excellent sound and music. Engine sounds, explosions and more sfx are complementing to the various drum 'n base, garage and jungle tracks blasting on each stage.
If you like racing games, like me, the speed and chaotic races will have you coming back to this game over and over again... finishing leagues on all difficulties is something you'll probably achieve fairly easy, but trying to beat every preset time in time-trial is something else... not to mention getting maximum points, win all races, in each league. The multiplayer mode is something that drives the lifespan of this game even further: you can battle a friend on normal stages, like in the leagues, where it's just whoever comes in first wins, or in special deathmatch arenas, where you score points for kills and try to win by getting the amount of points that is required.
My final word on this game: Not the best racing game out there, but unique in the genre and definitely worth a try!