Speed Kings is a fun, thrilling, and involving motorcycle racing game, but don't expect the graphics or sound to blow you away. First off, the gameplay: The game is very fun, partly because you can do more then just race, you can perform a variety of tricks to gain respect points that can then earn you new bikes and leathers or power up your boost meter. You can also punch and kick people, which is quite intoxicating, and can power up your boost meter/powerband. The game also gives you a Trick Attack and Time Attack where you try to pull off some stunts or improve your times which can then open up Grand Prix mode. The game also offers a large variedy of unlicenced motorcycles, one power-house you might reconize, is Susuki's Hayabusa. There are MotoGP bikes, sport bikes, and Street bikes each one with its own sound and look based on their real life counterparts. The only major thing I think they should of added is a stunt mode or some sort of Xbox Live support. Second, Graphics: The bikes in the game are modeled quite acurately and have good damage affects as well as good bump mapping. The animation also looks quite good, but can be a bit choppy at times. The traffic vehicles also take damage and vary a bit in each race, but aren't extremely detailed. The frame rate is generaly solid, but at times can hick up a bit. The major down Fall is its lack of detail in the races suroundings. The buildings and souroundings are pretty bland and don't show much detail, there are also many 2D objects, some which you can completely go through. There also aren't many differences between roads, and the weather effects aren't anything speacial. Lastly, the major problem is that when you use your powerband the game shows retarded streaks protruding from each vehicle.(This can make it hard to avoid cars) Sound: The sound has its ups and its downs, but lukily has a little more ups then downs. It has good envirement sounds, you can here birds chirping and cars honking. The bikes also have pretty realistic sounds and differ a bit, but they lack high winding noises which bikes should have and the tires don't squeal when you do a burnout or dounut. The music is also average, the game has some pretty good soundtracks, but they don't all really fit the game and aren't always very suspensful. The game case also says that it supports custom soundtracks, but it realy doesn't. Value: The game has plenty of things to ecomplish in 1 player and its multiplayer modes make it a game that will be played for quite a while by motorcycle enthusiests. Tilt: The game combines some of the best elements of Road Rash and Bournout 2 and buids on them, making this game an enjoyable game to play. It has the fun experence of being able to knock your opponents to the ground, and earn new, more powerful vehcles like in Road Rash, but also has the excitement of racing against the clock inorder to beat your fows who seem to always be on your tail. On top of that it adds a trick system which makes the game even more enjoyable. I only wish it would of spent a little more time in production in order to acheive great graphics and sound aswell as some more options and features. Lastly, Speed Kings is a fun racing game that lacks a little bit of polish, but could be a good start to an arcade styled motorcycle racing series. P.S Ecxuse any typing errors I may have made, I typed this out when I was very tired.
‘Burnout on 2 wheels’ is the best way to describe Speed Kings. Though not as polished as its sister racer, the game offers reasonable arcade race antics with some decent graphics and gameplay. The handling of the bikes... Read Full Review
