Shox Review

Launched alongside the PlayStation 2 some two years ago, EA Sports' Big franchise has come to be widely recognized for its outrageous characters and over-the-top depictions of popular sports. From SSX Tricky to NBA Street, EA Sports Big games feature a style all their own. The latest game in this franchise, Shox, is a rally racing game that continues the Big tradition of frenzied sports action, though it's the first Big game that doesn't have any characters. There are no drivers to choose from here, and no archrivals to hold grudges against. But that doesn't mean the game lacks personality. Shox places the focus of the game squarely on its wide selection of cars and its well-designed courses, makes use of an interesting and unique racing mechanic, and presents itself in a very slick and stylish overall package. Like the last EA Sports Big game, Freekstyle, Shox can be frustrating at times, but it's yet another solid game in the short but noteworthy history of this Electronic Arts franchise.

Damage and dirt become quite evident on your car model, especially toward the end of a race, when you'll note missing bumpers, scraped paint, and dented doors.

As a racing game, Shox is particularly interesting because it doesn't feature the genre's traditional gameplay modes. While it's become commonplace to expect time trial, single race, and career modes in driving games, Shox has only one: the championship mode. Here, you'll take one of 24 officially licensed cars like the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII or the Lancia Stratos through 30 different races that are spread across five unique leagues. These leagues--compact, sports, turbo, power, and shox--dramatically increase in difficulty from one to the next, and they require you to place first overall to progress. Within each league, you'll find six individual courses, two for each of Shox's sand, snow, and jungle environment types, all three of which require you to adopt a unique driving style in order to cope with the different surface types. Unlike more realistic rally games, Shox pits you against five other cars, not the clock, and you'll finish the game after placing first overall in the shox league, but doing so isn't as straightforward as it might sound.

While it's become commonplace to expect time trial, single race, and career modes in driving games, Shox has only one: the championship mode.

Every course in the game has three "shox zones." These are segments of the track that you are timed on and given a gold, silver, or bronze ranking within the actual race. The idea here is to earn a gold ranking in all three segments within a given racing event, and since each race consists of three laps, you'll have three opportunities to earn that ranking in each shox zone. The game will always take the fastest of the three times you post in each track's three shox zones, so there's no need to worry about losing a gold ranking that you earned in the first lap of a race, for example, after a particularly slow run in the third. There are two reasons why you'll want to earn a gold ranking in each shox zone. First, the better your shox zone segment times, the more money you'll earn. There's a prominent financial element to Shox, and you have to buy any car that you want to race with. You don't unlock cars in this game--rather, you unlock the opportunity to purchase them. Second, if you earn three gold rankings in a given race, you'll unleash a "shoxwave." This bubble of condensed air will travel slightly ahead of you on the racetrack, and if you manage to catch up to it, it'll not only give you a speed boost, but it'll also constantly feed you a steady stream of money as long as you're able to keep up with it. The shoxwave dissipates after one lap, but if you make good use of it, you can fatten up your coffers nicely. Interestingly enough, Shox, even though it's clearly an arcade-style racing game, models damage. Every time you collide with a wall on the track, a certain amount of money will be deducted from that race's total earnings, and you'll be able to see the damage on your car as well. This damage has absolutely no effect on your car's handling or performance, however.

Another noteworthy gameplay mechanic of Shox is its gambling feature. As you earn money in the game, you can purchase faster and more exotic cars in order to get a leg up on the competition. However, you can also gamble for a new car. Instead of buying a car outright, you'll be asked to place a certain amount of money on the line--usually a third of the cost of the car--and then forced to race against the car you're after. The advantage to gambling for a car is that, if you win, you'll get to keep that car at a fraction of its normal cost. If you lose, however, you'll forever lose the money that you put up to participate in that bet. What's more, the car you're racing against is always given a head start, and the later cars are especially tough to beat in a one-on-one gambling race. As you progress though Shox's five leagues, you'll find that it becomes increasingly risky to gamble, since the buy-in becomes increasingly more expensive, and the cars become increasingly faster.